Patagonia Culture & Language

Patagonian culture is young, layered from several immigrations, and shaped by the indigenous presence the state tried to erase.

Welsh Patagonia

Y Wladfa, the Welsh colony in the Chubut valley, is the most unexpected thing in the region. Founded in 1865 and now in its seventh generation, it maintains chapels, an eisteddfod — the Welsh competitive festival of poetry and song, held annually at Trelew since 1875 — and a Welsh-language school system supported from Wales. Several thousand people speak the language, in a Patagonian dialect, and the tea houses of Gaiman serve a version of Welsh tea that is now its own Argentine tradition.

Mapuche culture

Weaving with natural dyes, silverwork, and the nguillatun ceremony. Mapuche communities in Neuquen and Rio Negro are engaged in ongoing land claims and a language revival.

Estancia life

Sheep stations with their shearing sheds, dog work and a gaucho culture distinct from the pampas version — more Chilean and Welsh in its influences.

Mate

The shared gourd of yerba mate is constant, and being offered it is an inclusion rather than a refreshment.

Writing Patagonia

Few regions have been so thoroughly defined for outsiders by books. Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia in 1977 created the modern idea of the place as a landscape of eccentrics and emptiness, and it is still what most foreign visitors arrive carrying — along with the complaint, common among Patagonians and some of his subjects, that he improved a good many of the stories.

Chocolate and beer

Bariloche’s Swiss and German inheritance produced a chocolate industry and, more recently, Argentina’s best craft brewing.

Spanish is the language, in the Argentine variety — vos instead of tu, the double-l pronounced as sh, and an Italian-influenced intonation that is unmistakable.

Welsh is spoken by several thousand people in the Chubut valley, taught in local schools and supported by teachers sent from Wales. It is the only place outside Britain where Welsh is a community language.

Mapudungun, the Mapuche language, is spoken in Neuquen and Rio Negro and is the subject of active revival efforts.

English is spoken in the tourism businesses of El Calafate, El Chalten, Bariloche and Ushuaia, and much less so elsewhere.

Useful: hola, gracias, por favor, cuanto sale for how much — Argentines say sale rather than cuesta — and dale, which means yes, fine, go on, and almost anything else.