ARDE (It burns)

 

ALEJANDRO CHASKIELBERG FT. DON ROUGH

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When I left my house on the afternoon of March 9, 2021, I saw an enormous column of smoke, several kilometers high, rising over Mount Piltriquitrón. A vast fire front was devouring the Las Golondrinas area, one of the neighborhoods in this dreamlike place called the Andean Region of Parallel 42, which includes the towns of Lago Puelo, El Hoyo, and El Bolsón.

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The region became my home when, due to the pandemic, I had to stay in the Patagonian forests where I had previously been on vacation. That afternoon, I watched everything I loved burn: the houses, the forests, the animals. The fire was heading towards my house, so I quickly prepared to escape and went out to photograph what was the most catastrophic fire in Argentine history in a populated area. That afternoon, nearly 500 houses and over 13,000 hectares of forest burned.

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For six months, I documented the various social and environmental causes and consequences of this catastrophe. The introduction of non-native trees, land occupations in old pine plantations that burned completely, and also the stories of people who lost everything to rebuild their homes.

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Land ownership and lack of planning are the biggest conflicts here: a land claimed by everyone and cared for by few. A place invaded by fast-growing foreign trees, which burn even faster and do not allow native flora to resurge.

This fire is a premonition of what is to come, a mirror of what is already happening elsewhere in the world, such as the United States, Australia, or Greece. We inhabit a planet that is warming due to climate change, and in which humans are both accomplices and actors in our own destruction. The Earth will survive, even if millions of years pass, and other animals, other vegetations will come... but will others be here to admire it?

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Alejandro Chaskielberg