Francisco Pascasio Moreno
Francisco Pascasio Moreno, also known as Perito Moreno (Buenos Aires, May 31, 1852 - Buenos Aires, November 22, 1919), was a scientist, naturalist, conservationist, politician, botanist, explorer and geographer of the Generation of the Eighties of Argentina.
Biography
Personal trajectory
Francisco Pascasio Moreno was born in 1852 in a large house on Paseo Colón and Venezuela, Buenos Aires, into a wealthy patrician family. Son of Francisco Facundo and Juana Thwaites, he had three younger brothers and an older sister. His father had been in exile in Uruguay during the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas and his mother was the daughter of a British officer who had been captured during the second of the English Invasions, in 1807, and who later He settled in the Río de la Plata.
From 1863 he studied at the Saint Joseph College, run by the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Bétharram (Bayonese Fathers) and from 1866 at the North Cathedral College. Since childhood he showed interest in nature. When his parents moved to Bartolomé Miter and Uruguay and discovered petrified snails in the marbles, he asked what they were and set about collecting pieces, and when his number grew, his father gave him the loft. There he, at the age of twelve, and his brothers, created the "Museo Moreno", dedicated to natural history. When his mother died of cholera on December 27, 1867, the family went to live in a country house in Parque Patricios.
Due to the yellow fever epidemic that decimated Buenos Aires in 1871, they moved to Estancia Vitel, in Chascomús, where he filled forty drawers with fossil remains -including a glyptodont shell-. His father then gave him a 200-square-meter house to keep his collections.
At the age of twenty-one, he was appointed a member of the Academy of Exact Sciences of Córdoba.
In 1885 he married María Ana Varela, granddaughter of the writer Florencio Varela, and from this union seven children were born, three of whom died before they were three years old.
He was, from 1885, a member of the "Sociedad Exploradora de Paramillos de Uspallata”, in the province of Mendoza, which hired the engineer Germán Ave Lallemant for the mining project. This was the one who was in charge of technically supervising the installation of large mining working plants in the foothills, at 3000 m s. no. m., in the vicinity of the current town of Uspallata.
In 1897, on the trips he made to Chile as a boundary expert, he crossed the Andes mountain range on mule back with his wife and their four children, accompanied by Dr. Clemente Onelli. In June 1897 he was widowed as a result of his wife's death of typhoid fever, at the age of 29.
In 1900 she traveled with her children to London, for paperwork related to the border dispute with Chile, where she left her sons as boarders at Clayesmore, a prestigious English school. In 1903 one of her children died. Faced with such a misfortune, he undertook a new trip to Patagonia to mitigate his grief.
Moreno had an altruistic spirit, especially towards children. Adhering to the coherence of his own assertions:
a child with empty belly, cannot learn to write the word bread.
in 1904 he created the school canteens where, daily, 350 bowls of soup were served at his expense. To meet the expenses, he sold the lands that the Argentine Government granted him in recognition of his work as a boundary surveyor.
In 1910 he was appointed national deputy. He also assumed the presidency of the Sociedad Estímulo de Bellas Artes.
On July 4, 1912, he established the Organizing Commission of the Scout Movement in Argentina, creating an institution that was called in its early days “Association of Argentine Boy Scouts. Also in this year he is appointed vice president of the National Council of Education.
He died in 1919, aged 67. He was buried in the Recoleta Cemetery. In 1944 his remains were transferred to Centinela Island, in Lake Nahuel Huapi.
Trips to Patagonia
In 1874, Francisco Moreno undertook his first trip to Patagonia, driven by a spirit of adventure, an interest in learning about the geology, natural history, and flora and fauna of the region. On his way through the town of Carmen de Patagones, he had already collected numerous skulls, arrowheads, spearheads, and carved silica. These skulls give rise to new anthropological studies that were published in Paris by Professor Brocca and aroused interest in studying the indigenous races of South America.
Starting in 1874, the Argentine authorities entrusted the young Moreno with successive exploratory expeditions that had a double objective: to consolidate Argentine sovereignty and to gather data for the advancement of science. In July 1874, during the presidency of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, he was commissioned by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, Dr. Carlos Tejedor, to investigate the vicinity of Santa Cruz Bay. Moreno embarked on the brig "Rosales" to explore the area where there was a settlement of Chilean settlers. Upon his return, he traveled to Entre Ríos to compare the tertiary formation of Patagonia with that of the Barrancas del Paraná. Encouraged by his achievements, the Argentine Scientific Society and the government of the province of Buenos Aires gave him financial support to make new trips to Patagonia, explore unexplored territory and study indigenous culture.
In September 1875, a new expedition to the south began. On the beaches of Pehuen-Co, 100 km from Bahía Blanca, he studied fossil deposits previously surveyed by Darwin. He continued heading south, wanting to cross the Andes through the Nahuel Huapi lake and try to reach Chile through the “Pérez Rosales” pass, doing the reverse path to that of Guillermo Cox. He skirted the Limay River and met the Saihueque cacique in the Collón Cura area, to request his help and permission to find the pass that would lead him to Chile. However Saihueque and his tribal council -annoyed by government actions- denied him passage to Chile, so Moreno toured the Pehuenia area and on January 22, 1876, at the age of 23, he was the second white man who arrived at Lake Nahuel Huapi from the Atlantic Ocean, raised the Argentine flag there, and later returned to Buenos Aires. On this tour, Moreno made contact with the indigenous nations of Patagonia, collecting valuable data and materials on these Indians. Moreno was very impressed by the drama of these towns dispossessed of their ancestral lands. For this reason, he tried to humanize the relations between the Argentine government and the indigenous peoples, advocating for the delivery of land to the natives and the establishment of schools for their children.
In Buenos Aires, he prepared a new expedition whose purpose was to reconnoitre the Santa Cruz River. In July 1876, President Nicolás Avellaneda offered his support to Moreno and provided him with an assistant to relieve the cartography and topography of said area. The border issue with Chile worried Moreno; especially that the subject was discussed by people who did not know Patagonia enough to have precise and well-founded elements of judgment about the limits of the mountain range and the watershed.
In October 1876 he returned to Patagonia with Carlos Berg on the schooner “Santa Cruz” under the command of Commander Luis Piedrabuena. The ship anchored at the mouth of the Chubut River, where Moreno toured the Welsh colony obtaining a large number of marine fossils. After three months, the ship set sail again, arriving at the mouth of the Santa Cruz River on December 21. He went up the river and covered it in its entirety, reaching its sources on February 15, 1877. There, as a defender of Argentina's sovereignty over those lands, he baptized the lake that gives rise to the river with the name of Lago Argentino and He came to be very close to the imposing glacier that was later designated in his honor, although without actually seeing it. In his contact with the indigenous people he took notes on their language, wanting to write a Tehuelche dictionary. In February, he discovered and named Lake San Martín, sighting Lake Viedma and Cerro Chaltén, which he mistakenly identified as a volcano and named Fitz Roy. That expedition was carried out together with the Cabin Boy Abelardo Tiola.
In 1879, during the Conquest of the Desert, he was the head of a new expedition to the south, to determine the limits between Chile and Argentina.
On April 1, 1879, he accepted the commission, requesting, as the only reward, that all the objects collected during the expedition be incorporated into the Museum under his direction. During his expedition, he studied the geological aspects of the route from San Antonio port to Nahuel Huapi, for the future construction of a railway line that crosses Patagonia and joins the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean. This was his second visit to Nahuel Huapi, and he began to think about reserving those lands for the creation of a national park. Advancing through the tolderías, he came to a lake that he named Lake Gutiérrez in memory of his former teacher. It was Mapuche territory, and the expedition members were taken prisoner by the Indians, although they managed to flee during the night.
Moreno influences the modification of the ideas of previous generations on Patagonia. They knew the descriptions of Fitz Roy and impressed them with the cursed ground criterion that Darwin applied to him, because they did not enter enough to form a global concept. When Moreno and other explorers penetrate their fertile areas and extasian in the presence of their paradisiacal beauties, Argentina takes effective possession of that immense and abandoned inheritance. The danger of a European coup then happens. And that of the Chilean annexionists will be conjured....
In 1883 the Geographical Society of France awarded him the gold medal.
Because of his knowledge of the southern Andean region, he was appointed in 1896 as an expert of the Boundary Commission between Argentina and Chile. Clemente Onelli, as general secretary, and Emilio Frey, as Topographer, also participated. The arbitration allowed Argentina to retain 1800 square leagues of land.
His travels meant geographical discoveries of transcendence, allowing him to know, inch by inch, the Argentine southern soil and face, with success, the defense of the rights of Argentina, in the border dispute with Chile. The data that he contributed opened new horizons to South American anthropology and enabled several European scientists to study the original races of South America.
Boundary expert in the border dispute with Chile
The boundary treaty between Argentina and Chile of 1881 established as the border between the Republic of Chile and the Argentine Republic the summits that were dividing waters, but the effective demarcation of the border had to be submitted in 1896 to the arbitral award of the British Crown, at that time under Queen Victoria, as there were differences of opinion between the two countries regarding the implementation of the terms of the treaty on the ground. From 1896 Moreno served as an Argentine expert or expert on border issues with Chile. Moreno concentrated on defending Argentine interests, especially considering that the most recent boundary arbitration against Brazil had been highly unfavorable. The dispute covered part of Patagonia, and disputes over the demarcation of Catamarca and the Puna de Atacama. In the analysis of the issue, Moreno based himself on the principle, understood by Argentina, of Argentine sovereignty over the Atlantic and Chile over the Pacific.
Therefore, the task consisted mainly of drawing a border line along the high peaks, studying the course of the rivers as they flowed towards the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. To be effective in the task, it was necessary to know the terrain in detail in order to be able to take positions and make proposals that were based on the geographical characteristics of each section of the extensive border between Chile and Argentina. Due to his work as an expert witness, Moreno made numerous trips to Santiago de Chile at the end of the XIX century.
In 1897 and 1898 Moreno traveled regularly between Argentina and Chile, helping to make possible the meeting that Presidents Julio Argentino Roca -of Argentina- and Federico Errázuriz Echaurren -of Chile- held on February 15, 1899, in the Strait of Magellan. In a relatively short period of time, Moreno gathered abundant information that led to the discovery of numerous lakes, rivers, canals, islands, hills, and mountain ranges, which until then were unknown. In a few months Moreno prepared his work Argentine-Chilean Border , in which he presented a synthesis of the geography of the Argentine borders. Moreno's theory that the border with Chile should conform to the line of the high peaks was supported by a detailed field study of the entire border region. In addition, Moreno contributed the testimony of the Indians of Nahuel Pan, and of Welsh settlers to retain the region of Colonia 16 de Octubre, and of a former collaborator of the Museum, Germán Koslowky, so that the valley of the Huemules, in the nascent of the Aysén river remained in Argentine territory. In 1899 he moved to London, as geographer adviser to the Argentine representative. In 1900, while Moreno shared the voyage back to Argentina by ship with Sir Thomas Holdich, the English arbitrator; he said to him:
all that wins the Argentine foot to the west of the continental division is due entirely to you.
In 1901 Moreno accompanied the Commissioner of the Arbitral Tribunal, Thomas Holdich, in the reconnaissance that took place from Lake Lácar to the heart of Última Esperanza. In April 1902 Moreno met with the Welsh settled in the area of [Trevelin], getting them to pronounce themselves in favor of Argentina, expressing their agreement with being "under the Argentine flag". In May he returned to London with the English referee. On May 28, in Santiago de Chile, representatives of Argentina and Chile signed an arms limitation pact and accepted English arbitration. The arbitrator was His British Majesty Edward VII and, her representative before the disputed countries, Sir Thomas Holdich. Moreno returned to England and returned with Holdich in 1902 to participate in the work to fix the boundary markers in accordance with the arbitral award signed that year by Edward VII of England. The arbitral award meant that Argentina retained 42,000 square kilometers of territory. For his expert work, the Royal Geographic Society awarded him the King George IV Medal.
Action for the preservation of natural wealth
Francisco P. Moreno was the first Argentine who promoted the creation of national parks in his country.
Like Dr. Exequiel Bustillo, Moreno maintained the same thing as one of the promoters of Yellowstone National Park in the United States, John Miur: that of the possible uses that would put pressure on the Parks, tourism was the alternative of more manageable and contributing usage.
The knowledge of the southern Andean region, his tenacity and skill as an Expert of the Boundary Commission between Argentina and Chile, and the defense that he faces before the British arbitral tribunal of the Argentine position, allowed that, at the end of the arbitration, Argentina retained 1800 square leagues of territory. For this reason, in 1903 the Argentine government -in gratitude and through the enactment of Law 4,192- granted Moreno 25 square leagues of public land, in a place of his choice.
With a generous spirit, he sold 22 square leagues of these lands to finance soup kitchens for the dispossessed, and the rest -located in the western region of the Neuquén and Río Negro territories, at the western end of the main fjord of the lake Nahuel Huapilas donated to the government on the condition that they be preserved intact, anticipating the need for environmental conservation that would come in the coming years. On February 1, 1904, the government accepted Moreno's donation and reserved the indicated area. It was not until 1916 and by decree dated May 26 that a person in charge of this reserve was appointed, the first in the entire Argentine territory; It was called the South National Park and would later become the Nahuel Huapi National Park. Mr. Jorge Newbery, a resident of the region, accepted the position ad-honorem.
Museum of La Plata
The "Archaeological and Anthropological Museum" It was founded in October 1877 in the city of Buenos Aires, at that time the capital of the homonymous province. This museum integrated collections made up of 15,000 specimens of bone pieces and industrial objects donated by Moreno, appointed Life Director of the museum.
Between 1882 and 1891, Moreno made trips to Córdoba, San Luis, Mendoza, and San Juan, in search of artifacts from pre-Columbian cultures and fossil deposits. In 1891, he discovered the petroglyphs of Canota, near the monument of the same name, on Provincial Route 52, in the province of Mendoza. At that time, he was a member of the & # 34; Uspallata Paramillos Exploring Society & # 34;, which exploited the mines of the place.
At that time, the Provincial Museum could no longer house such a collection, so the idea arose to replace it with a building more in keeping with the quality of the material studied.
After the federalization of the city of Buenos Aires, in 1880, and the founding of the city of La Plata as the new capital of the province in 1882, the provincial government ordered the transfer of Moreno's collections to this city in June 1884 and the construction of a building to house it, whose work began in October of that same year. It was then that Moreno also donated 2,000 volumes from his private library.
Moreno donated his entire personal collection of archaeological, anthropological and paleontological pieces to the foundation of the "Museum of La Plata". He dedicated himself to the gestation and organization of the same, which was inaugurated in 1885 and in which he was later named director for life.
In 1887 he created the Provincial Library, which on August 12, 1905 was transferred as a dependency of the University of La Plata. This heritage is currently in the Public Library of the National University of La Plata built between 1934 and 1935 in front of Plaza Rocha in the City of La Plata.
Acknowledgments and Honors
The National University of Córdoba, in 1878 named Francisco P. Moreno Doctor honoris causa, receiving, in addition, multiple recognitions from the most famous scientific institutions and prestigious universities, which awarded him diplomas and medals.
I am active in politics, holding the positions of national deputy and vice president of the National Council of Education.
Her last trip south was in the company of former US President Theodore Roosevelt, in 1912.
His name is remembered in Argentine toponymy; for example, the Perito Moreno Glacier, the town of Perito Moreno and the Perito Moreno National Park; Likewise, within the Patagonian area, in most towns there is a street that honors his memory.
Controversy over Cacique Inacayal
Their relations with the caciques were good in some cases, bad in others. Once they tried to poison him with toxins mixed with strawberries and milk, and he saved his life thanks to an indigenous girl who warned him of the danger. When he tried to cross into Chile, the distrustful cacique Valentin Sayhueque took him prisoner. The sorcerer advised to rip out his heart on the banks of the river. Moreno, along with his assistants, the Indian Gavino and Melgarejo, were helped to escape by Utrac, son of the cacique Inacayal. Sayhueque sent his son Francisco to pursue him, but she was saved when he was found by a party of the border army, after several days of fleeing, during which Moreno tied stones to his poncho that he was dragging to erase his tracks. As a consequence of his captivity, he suffered from incipient locomotor ataxia and cerebral anemia and traveled to Europe for treatment.
In 1884, after the "Conquest of the Desert", the chiefs Inacayal and Foyel together with their families appeared at Fort de Villegas to negotiate with Commander Lasciar, but they were taken prisoner and transferred to the regiment Tigre, in the province of Buenos Aires. Francisco Moreno took steps with the national authorities to transfer the caciques and their families to the Museum of La Plata, where they lived in freedom, according to Clemente Onelli. Incayal passed away on September 24, 1888.
On September 27, 1887, the newspaper La Capital of La Plata indicated certain doubts regarding the circumstances in which the Indians who lived in the Museum died, but the courts did not investigate and the subject was not considered for more than a century.
The Museum's anthropology division preserved the remains of chief Inacayal, which in 1994 were handed over to his descendants, after the regulation in 1993 of Law 23,940 sanctioned by the National Congress in 1991. Other remains of Mapuche ancestors in the possession of the Museo de La Plata were restored to their descendants in 2017 as part of the Mapuche New Year.
There is a version that under the direction of Moreno the remains of various caciques were exhumed, among them Cipriano Catriel and Sam Slick, the remains of Cipriano Catriel would be found in the Francisco P. Moreno Museum of Patagonia. While the alleged remains of Sam Slick were returned in 2019 to be buried.
Institutionalization of Scouting in Argentina
In September 1911, Arturo Penny contacted Francisco P. Moreno to introduce Scouting in the schools of Barracas. In three months, Perito Moreno personally promoted the constitution of the 3.er Company of Scouts of Barracks (at present 3.er Colonel Pringles Scout Company).
In 1912, the idea arose to create a national association that would institutionalize the already numerous scout movement in Argentina.
On July 4, 1912, in the house of Perito Moreno (at 2841 Caseros street in the city of Buenos Aires), together with other prominent personalities they resolved to establish the Organizing Commission of the Scout Movement in Argentina, creating an institution which was called: "Association of Argentine Boy Scouts", being its purposes: to be a means of stimulating in the life of children and young people of the Republic, the taste for outdoor excursions, the observation of nature, the cult of the honor, loyalty and honesty, mastery and respect for oneself and others, love of neighbor, family, country and humanity.
The first President was Francisco P. Moreno, who was succeeded, in 1914, by Lieutenant General Pablo Riccheri.
His remains
Francisco P. Moreno died in Buenos Aires on November 22, 1919. On his chest he wore a reliquary with the flag of the Army of the Andes. In one of the many papers on his work table, his granddaughter, Adela, says that there was one that said:
How much I want to do, how much to do for the homeland! But how, how? I'm sixty-six and not a penny! How much are the cents worth in these cases? I have given a thousand eight hundred leagues to my homeland and the National Park, where the men of tomorrow, resting, acquire new strength to serve it, I do not leave my children a meter of land to bury my ashes!
Originally his remains were buried in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.
The Congress of the Argentine Nation, in 1934, sanctioned the law by which it was arranged to erect a mausoleum in Lake Nahuel Huapi to deposit his remains, an action that finally materialized in 1944, in a ceremony presided over by General Baldomero from Biedma.
Since February 16, 1944, his remains have rested on Isla Centinela, in Lake Nahuel Huapi, together with those of his wife, within the national park he founded. By a provision of the Argentine Naval Prefecture, each vessel that crosses in front of the island must sound its horn three times to honor it.
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Works of his authorship
- Francisco P. Moreno, "News of Patagonia" (1876)
- Francisco P. Moreno, "Viaje a la Patagonia Austral" (1876-1877).
- Francisco P. Moreno, "Travel to Northern Patagonia" (1876).
- Francisco P. Moreno, "Apuntes sobre las tierras patagónicas" (1873)
- Francisco P. Moreno, "The Study of the South American Man" (1878)
- Francisco P. Moreno, "Preliminary notes on an excursion to the territories of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz, Frontera Chileno-Argentina" (1902)
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