Reflections on Patagonia at the Cambrian Hall
 NEVILLE THOMAS and Victor Griffiths at the centenary statue in Puerto Madryn, Patagonia, commemorating the 1865 Welsh landing.
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 ONE OF THE MANY Welsh tea houses in Chubut Province, Patagonia.
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 VICTOR GRIFFITHS, his wife Liliana and children Iriel and Nicholas. Victor grew up in the Welsh colony in Patagonia.
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By EIFION WILLIAMS
VANCOUVER – In the summer of 1982, I joined a group of fellow Canadians on stage at the welcoming ceremony for Welsh Overseas Visitors at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, held that year in Swansea.
Representatives from over 30 countries were greeted with loud applause as they were announced but the loudest and most enthusiastic reception was given to the small group of visitors from Argentina.
This might have surprised many people as it was only a few months after the end of the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina. Yet it would take more than a war to dampen the emotional attachment felt by many Welsh people towards these descendents of pioneers who sailed from Liverpool in 1865 to establish a Welsh colony in Patagonia.
The 155 Welsh settlers who arrived at Puerto Madryn on the Patagonian coast in the converted tea-clipper Mimosa in 1865 found a stark and uninviting landscape.
Trekking inland, they settled along the Chubut River (Afon Camwy in Welsh) and eventually carved the valley into family farms and dug nearly 100 miles of irrigation canals with pick and shovel. An offshoot Welsh colony also sprang up hundreds of miles to the west in the Andean foothills on the Argentina-Chile border.
The settlers built communities with Welsh names like Trelew (named after pioneer leader Lewis Jones), Dolavon and Trevelin, and the landscape became dotted with Welsh chapels. Their numbers were later augmented by more immigrants from Wales and Welsh-American settlers from the United States.
Frontier life was never easy for these Welsh pioneers. In the early years they faced floods, crop failures, hostile natives and a struggle to maintain their independence, a struggle they eventually lost when Argentina asserted full governmental authority over Patagonia in 1885.
The original settlers sought a land where they could preserve their language, culture and nonconformist religion, all of which they believed to be threatened in their homeland by a dominant English culture. But in the ensuing years large numbers of non-Welsh immigrants moved into Patagonia and the Welsh have struggled to maintain their identity ever since.
Today, descendents of these Welsh settlers, though proud to call themselves Argentinians, still maintain a respect for the culture and traditions of their ancestors.
The number of Welsh speakers is sadly diminishing but Welsh institutions like the Eisteddfod and Gymanfa Ganu still play an important part in the cultural life of Chubut Province.
There are still strong links between Wales and the Welsh of Patagonia and visitors from Wales are increasing every year. There are also many ties with Welsh expatriates in Canada and the United States. In recent years several members of the Vancouver Welsh Society have been drawn to visit Y Wladfa, as it is known in Welsh.
On Friday evening, June 12, the Vancouver Welsh Society will present Reflections on Patagonia at the Cambrian Hall, presented by Welsh Society members Victor Griffiths and Neville Thomas. The presentation will include a film, Poncho Mamgu, recounting the story of one young girl‘s experience growing up in the Chubut Valley.
Victor Griffiths also grew up in the Chubut Valley and is descended from settlers who arrived in Patagonia from Wales in the 1870s. Both his parents were Welsh-speaking but he regrets that he himself did not learn the language.
Victor is an applied science technologist with Metro Vancouver and now lives in Port Moody with his Buenos Aires-born wife Liliana and their children Nicholas and Iriel.
Neville and Kathy Thomas spent several days last Christmas in the Chubut Valley meeting up with Victor’s family and friends. They were received with overwhelming hospitality and Neville still speaks of his surprise at being able to communicate in Welsh with residents whose only other language is Spanish.
Further information on Reflections on Patagonia and other Welsh Society activities can be obtained from the Society’s website www.welshsociety.com.
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