Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [46]
In the 1845 edition of The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin provided one last footnote about the Fuegians. The Beagle’s lieutenant, Philip Sulivan, eventually became a captain and was assigned to survey the Falkland Islands in the 1840s. In 1842, Sulivan heard from a sealer that a woman had boarded his boat in the Straits of Magellan and that she spoke English. Darwin wrote, “without doubt this was Fuegia Basket. She lived (I fear the term probably bears a double interpretation) some days on board.”
After the singing FitzRoy had belted out his musical lesson, the show reached its conclusion. The characters exited the stage and the video screen came down again, with the old version of Darwin saying it was too bad he and FitzRoy didn’t see eye to eye on the whole evolution thing, but that the Beagle trip had been a good time all around. Then the sailors came back and belted out one more rousing chorus of “Our spirits will never die / The Beagle is flying high,” and the stage went dark.
I tracked down Marcos Gomez, the blue-eyed actor who had played Darwin, after the show. I found him in the Beagle Center lobby, watching the cruise ship passengers enjoy a nice local seafood dinner under a poster of naked Fuegians. Gomez was twenty-five, with blond hair still damp from the performance, and as he peeled back his rubber sideburns to reveal a hidden microphone, he told me he had studied acting in Buenos Aires.
I asked if he studied Darwin.
“Yes, a little,” he said. “To understand the part.” Gomez paused and looked thoughtful. “He married his cousin,” he added.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right. And do you like playing Darwin?”
“Darwin is a fun character to play. But I would like to be the captain. He has a stronger role.” He pantomimed singing and then shrugged. “You know. But last year, I was a sailor.” He found his picture in the program and pointed it out.
I asked what he thought of the Yamana, and he became much more animated. “They’re considered the most primitive of the tribes,” he said. “But really, they were very smart. They had lots of means of obtaining food. They lived in complete harmony with the land. If a whale washed up, they’d eat that. They covered themselves in grease for the cold.” He continued praising the Yamana, clearly enthused by the subject.
I wanted to ask how he felt about the musical portraying them as grunters, but Gomez had to run backstage to change. I lingered for a few minutes more then headed back to the hostel.
The next morning, looking for an academic of sorts to explain a bit more about current perceptions of Fuegians, I made my way through swirling mist to the local history museum. It called itself the “end of the world” museum, a tribute to Ushuaia’s self-declared status as the southernmost city in the world. (Like most everything Argentina claims, this is disputed by Chile, which says that its own naval settlement, Port Williams, is further south.)
The Yamana merited only a brief mention alongside the names and dates of famous European explorers who had visited the area. “They had a number of beliefs commonly found in other primitive peoples,” one plaque read (in English). “Yamana stories are known to be simple, with little humor or keenness.” I went to the front desk and asked if I could speak to the director and soon found myself ushered into the office of a very professorial-looking Argentine. He lit a cigarette and introduced himself as Santiago Reyes. We chatted briefly about Darwin’s visit. I asked what people in Tierra del Fuego, other than people who worked in tourism, thought of Darwin. “They don’t,” he answered quickly.
Reyes burned through three cigarettes and then switched to drinking maté.
“Darwin criticized slavery,” I said. “He defended the Indians of Patagonia. Then he arrived in Tierra del Fuego and was very critical of the indigenous people. He called them savages. Why do you think that was?”
Reyes took a sip from the maté gourd and reached back into his desk to pull out a postcard that he then slapped on