Bariloche - an optimistic future built on a troubled past

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Bariloche - an optimistic future built on a troubled past

Beside Nahuel Huapi, one of Argentina´s great lakes, and on the border of the Chilean Andes, lies the city of San Carlos de Bariloche. Although its inhabitants number only around 150,000, Bariloche is still the largest town for many hundreds of miles around. Its nearest neighbours, San Martin de Los Andes, Junin de Los Andes and Villa de Angostura, consist of little more than a few blocks loosely arranged around one or two main streets, in the steppe or amongst the forest, of the surrounding national parks.

Travellers from Buenos Aires face a westward journey of almost 24 hours, first through the wide and spacious pampas, and then through the foothills, scrub and winding rivers of Rio Negro Province. While to the south of the city there is only the empty wilderness of Patagonia, condors circling the rugged and windswept cordillera, unpaved dirt roads heading down towards the glaciers and the ice fields of Tierra del Fuego.

Despite or perhaps because of this remoteness, the city refuses to sit easily within a single readily defined identity. Bariloche is developing rapidly as a holiday resort, which has caused its population to double in only a few years. The European heritage of the area is strongly evident in the proliferation of German chocolate shops, fondue restaurants and Swiss chalets. The nearby ski resort of Cerro Cathedral has a distinctly alpine flavour, with mountain lodges playing a non-stop round of Euro-trash music, German rap and Anton aus Tyrol.

However, the scale and wilderness of the surrounding landscape gives the city a harsher and more self-reliant aspect than a typical European holiday resort. Like Grenoble, there may well be a mountain at the end of every street, but the functional, ramshackle, rough and ready construction of the roads and buildings creates a strong resemblence to the remote frontier towns of Alaska or northwest Canada. A few wild dogs wander along the roads, the most common vehicle is the 4WD personnel carrier or the open-backed pick up truck, while the local motorcyclists commonly drive around town casually sporting colourful bandanas rather than conventional crash helmets.

In addition to the quaint and twee touristy image which the town is actively and self-consciously cultivating, there are further projects aimed at cultural and economic development. Bariloche played host to a recent meeting of the leaders of UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) and regular conferences are also held in the city, whose delegates range from finance professionals to sixth form history students.

Bariloche has its own university, where conservation and ecology are popular and topical areas of study. The university works closely with the national parks of Nahuel Huapi and Lanin, as well as with the park rangers on nearby Isla Victoria, to study the wide diversity of species and trees native to the area: condors, wild boar, red deer, coihue trees and the Magellanic woodpeckers.

This rapid development has also created a burgeoning youth culture. There are numerous night clubs in Bariloche, and most nights of the week it is common to see large groups of teenagers, all in regulation denims, tracksuits, trainers and designer t-shirts, bussed into town to enjoy the entertainment there.

Social change has not come without a cost however. Many of the districts (barrios) away from the main two or three streets are poor and tawdry. To the shame and amazement of many longer established residents, street crime, particularly muggings of tourists, is on the increase. Protests in the main square are common - the failure of the local police to capture a serial rapist in the town being the cause of the most recent. Attacks on female hikers on some of the nearby mountain trails have also been reported in the last few months.

Yet for a town so immersed in the developing present, there are conspicuous signs that the recent painful past has by no means been forgotten. In the civic centre, amongst the day trippers, neatly trimmed lawns and St Bernard dogs carrying small whisky barrels around their necks, the names of some thirty or so local people killed or disappeared during the political repression by the military in the 1970s can clearly be seen painted onto the paving slabs together with the nationwide symbol of remembrance of these victims: that of the mother´s headscarf.

Bariloche is many hundreds of miles from Buenos Aires - this distance leading to a greater sense of independence from the capital. The area therefore saw some of the strongest resistance to the military and consequently some of the severest repression to instill order. Sadly the distance and isolation of the place also made it an easier target, with less fear of political consequences in the capital than disappearances caused closer to home.

But the violent past of Bariloche and Rio Negro province stretches back further than the last 30 years. A larger than life statue stands in the main square in commemoration of General Roca. At the very end of the nineteenth century, Roca sought to end once and for all the ´frontier problems´with the South American Indians in the province, and declared a conquest of the desert. This was designed to bring all land from Buenos Aires to the Rio Negro river under the direct control of the central government. Indians were therefore to be expelled, subdued or extinguished from the territory.

The conquest achieved its aims: though in the process 1,250 Indians were killed and a further 3,000 were taken prisoner. On the back of this Roca was put forward as a presidential candidate and duly elected. The cost of this success has never been forgotten in the province, for his statue is covered in graffiti: the words genocide, whore and murderer being the most conspicuous.

For a city so small, Bariloche has a incredibly rich and diverse identity, that gives it a significance and interest well beyond its size: fashionable tourist resort, great lakes, flourishing wildlife, mountain trails, complex history, rapid social development, and popular night life. Che Guevara stopped there briefly on his motorcycle travels through South America along Ruta 40. He writes very little about the town of the 1950s, being eager to move on across the lakes in Chile. Were Che to repeat this journey today, he would surely find a great deal more to arouse his political and social interest in Bariloche.

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