A Case Study in Hydrology and Cultural Identity: 2,500 Years of Landscape-Making in Mendoza, Argentina
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A CASE STUDY IN HYDROLOGY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY: 2,500 YEARS OF LANDSCAPE-MAKING IN MENDOZA, ARGENTINA DAVIS, BRIAN Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States, [email protected] 1 ABSTRACT 2 INTRODUCTION Through an analysis of the Parque General San On the western edge of the city of Mendoza, Martin in Mendoza, Argentina, this paper Argentina there is a large park whose origins examines the work of 19th century landscape date to the late 19th century. In the park a sinuous designer Carlos Thays alongside the material lake and verdant forests and lawns combine contributions of the indigenous Huarpes people to with tennis courts, soccer fields and cultural consider the discipline of landscape architecture as monuments, all set against the sheer wall of the part of a long line of landscape practice in the Andean Cordillera rising just to the west. From challenging environment of western the interior of this landscape a visitor can see the Argentina. Mendoza, Argentina is a modern city of great, jagged heights of the mountains and sense nearly one million inhabitants situated on the border the expanse of the arid semi-desert that surrounds between the great agricultural plains of Argentina the city in all other directions. While dramatic, and the desert foothills of the Andes from inside Parque General San Martin these feel Mountains. Historically it has been a frontier far enough removed to impress without settlement of utmost strategic importance, existing overwhelming. variously at the southern edge of the Incan Empire, In this paper I explore a simple hypothesis: that the the eastern edge of colonial Chile, and now the Parque General San Martin, and the modern western border of Argentina. In addition to its practice of landscape architecture in this place, is location at the political and geographic margins, it part of a long, complex history of landscape- leads a perilous existence at the edge of making in the American borderlands that mediates environmental sustainability- the region receives exaggerated and difficult environmental conditions less than seven inches of rainfall a year, is located while also actively forming cultural values amid in a highly active seismic zone, and is susceptible shifting political alliances. My methods include to flash flood events. In the late 19th century a large historical and theoretical research in Spanish and public was projected on Mendoza’s western edge. English in landscape architecture and related fields, Parque San Martin was intended to mediate including planning, archaeology and anthropology, environmental extremes for the growing urban as well as site visits and discussions with current population and offer a new form of public cultural administrators. By decentering the European expression. In this context landscape architecture tradition of park-making and considering the developed to mediate challenging environmental landscape in a broader cultural and ethnographic conditions and help form and reflect shifting cultural context, I reveal the role of hydrology and identities. This paper presents this landscape as landscape design in shaping cultural identity and both an early example of modern landscape design position the Parque General San Martin in in western Argentina and as part of a long lineage Mendoza, Argentina as a project that figures of cultural landscape transformation intimately indigenous intellectual and material contributions bound up with hydrological manipulation and alongside those of colonial and post-colonial shifting cultural values. societies, and the ideas imported from Europe. 1.1 Keywords 2.1 Historical Context urbanism, indigenous landscape, hydrology, For over five hundred years the city of Mendoza cultural landscape, Argentina has been a frontier settlement of utmost strategic importance. This history extends beyond the modern, republican, and colonial periods back to the Huarpes society of the 15th century. Before Spanish contact the area existed at the southern limit of the Incan Empire and was inhabited by the Huarpes (Michieli, 1983). The Huarpes constructed Landscape Research Record No.2 a sophisticated network of irrigation canals enabling and temperamental rivers for much of its water. agricultural production and habitation in an arid, Infrequent floods produced by the breaking of ice seismically active environment subject to flash dams deep in the Andes have historically been the floods and far from traditional centers of power cause of massive flooding on the Mendoza River, (Echaguë, 1945; Michieli, 1983). Later, in the and occasional rain events in the region produce colonial period, travelers and soldiers moving more frequent and smaller events (Ponte, 1987). through the Southern Cone of South America The climate is arid like many places throughout the between the capital of Santiago and the port city of American Cordillera. However, when irrigated the Buenos Aires would stop in Mendoza to rest and soils are incredibly productive and Mendoza has resupply right after, or just before, beginning the long been home to agricultural societies (Michieli, difficult journey over the Andes Mountains through 1983). This region is not marked by scarcity but the Libertadores Pass, located at ten thousand feet rather by a complex, syncopated interplay between above sea level (Gobierno de Chile). scarcity and excess (Figure 1). Living here requires Mendoza is situated on the border of two of the the construction of a landscape that both “speeds major geographic regions of South America. To the up and slows down processes of nature” (Jackson, east lie the great Argentine plains, known as the 1984). pampas, which stretch over seven hundred miles to The alliance between the city and its river is a the Atlantic edge of the country and become powerful and delicate one. Describing this progressively more humid. To the west are the relationship Echagüe (1938) informs us that: Andes, the South American portion of what geologists know as the American Cordillera, the Without a doubt, the area would be a wasteland mountainous spine running throughout the Western without its always timid and always ferocious portion of North and South America. The Argentine rivers… Wherever there is irrigation, the land historian Juan Pablo Echagüe described the produces a magnificent bounty. The Mendocino, province of Mendoza as a dry and rugged land therefore, loves their river, even though at times tucked roughly against the highest portion of the they fear it… Truly! How sweetly the domesticated Andean Cordillera. Seventy miles to the west of the waters of the ditches and irrigation canals murmur. city is Aconcagua, at 22,841 feet the highest peak To them the Mendocino owes the sweet-smelling in the Americas (Peakware). The difficult crossing marvel of the gardens, yards, and vineyards and all here is mandated by its position directly between the places that generate life in the whole province; Buenos Aires and Santiago and the presence of the that is, work, industry, economy, customs, well- Libertadores Pass; if one drew a straight line being, domestic life, and public life in the province between the capitals of Santiago and Buenos Aires, are all conditioned by the desires of the crops and Mendoza would be on it. It is here where the great the demands of the water system. (p.17) Inca Road network reached its southeastern limit (Hardoy, 1968), here where General San Martin’s In this passage Echagüe develops an interesting Ejercito de Los Andes (Army of the Andes) began strand. He suggests the idea that this situation its journey through the Libertadores Pass and into demands more than mere cultural response or Chile as part of the South American War of adaptation. Instead, together with the desires and Independence (Ponte, 1987), and here where the expectations of its inhabitants it seems to conjure great railroads of the Argentinean agricultural forth culture- political life, domestic habits, heartland had their terminus during the post- processes of production, labor and consumption colonial, republican period (Mignone, 2012). And are all generated from the rhythms of the regional today it serves as the critical land link between Chile hydrological systems, and the need to modulate its and the MERCOSUR trading block (similar to extremes. The regional landscape of Mendoza NAFTA); annually over one and half million people throws into relief the fact that landscapes are and four million metric tons of cargo move through historically produced rather than simply offering a the Libertadores Pass (CIE, 2014). background or screen upon which culture and society are projected, or the raw material from 2.2 The Edges of Feasibility which they are carved. This sentiment is something Mendoza typically receives a little under eight between the environmental determinism of inches of rainfall per year, about half of what the Frederick Jackson Turner and the idea that parched city of Los Angeles, California enjoys universal knowledge and practices must be (NOAA). Like many Andean cities, Mendoza relies adapted and applied locally as a “hybrid or pale on melting snows and glaciers carried by fluctuating copy” (Raj, 2007). This third way suggests an Landscape Research Record No.2 Figure 1. Map of Mendoza in 1761. The River Moving Across the Map (south-north) is the Primary Source of Irrigation; the Pluvial Arroyos Running West-east Can Also Be Seen. (Ponte, 1987, p.71) alternative framework for conceiving of landscapes, about 20,000 (Pyle, 1976) in the 16th century when one that “cannot be confused either with the causal they were encountered by Spanish settlers, a chain of ‘historical’ events, or with a sequence… of number that would quickly fall to 2,500 through customs and law, ideals and ideology, and socio- forced deportations to work camps in Chile. economic structures or institutions” (Lefebvre, Historian Fernando Morales Guiñazú (1938) noted 1991). that “when Francisco de Villagra in 1552 and Pedro Cultural landscape theorists such as Setha Low de Castillo in 1561 arrived in the Valley of Huentota, have shown that these places are best they encountered a region irrigated by three canals understood as syncretic products (Low, 2000).