Before lunch on Saturday I met Mariana Camelio and her cat at their home in Punta Arenas.
I was in a lecture theatre at the Bodleian in Oxford; she was on a video link from Patagonia. She was participating in an interview with Philippe Sands about his next book due to be published in 2025. I have read East West Street and bought Ratline on Saturday. His new book, continuing his quest for a Nazi war criminal, leads him to Punta Arenas from where poet and author Mariana Camelio provided her memories of family and friends who had known him.
I like reading diaries and memoirs that capture a point in time; describing events as they happen with no re-interpretation benefitting from hindsight. However, almost as interesting is how events are remembered, re-interpreted or wiped from the collective memory. We all have our own experiences of this and the arrival of Nazis in Patagonia is just a small fragment of this re-stitching of the tapestry of history.
In his conversation with Mariana, Philippe remembers watching a parade of firemen in German uniforms in the streets of Punta Arenas. He is surprised to see such a spectacle, Mariana has never seen it and it is a small almost unimportant aside but it does have importance. I and I posit others in the room on Saturday morning were left with an impression that this parade was descendants of Nazi immigrants dressing up and glorifying their German heritage; even in denial about the atrocities committed in the war and its outcome. I would like to put this annual parade in context and a different picture will emerge.
The influx of sheep farmers in Patagonia in the early 19th century altered both the landscape and the demographic. Immigrants became dominant with substantial German, Croat and Welsh populations becoming established. In 1901 the Germans in Punta Arenas founded a volunteer fire brigade that continues to this day.
Today the Bomba Alemana is manned by about forty volunteers of German descent and there are five other volunteer fire brigades in Punta Arenas manned by descendants of immigrants: Croatians, English, French, Spaniards and Italians. Of course there is a Chilean brigade too. If this seems anachronistic remember the service the Royal National Lifeboat Institutution (RNLI), founded in 1824 and manned too by volunteers, provides in the UK.
In 1901 Germany was an empire ruled by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Bomba Alemena still has an original fire tender dating from 1901 and they proudly wear their original uniforms in the livery of the German Empire for the annual parade. This is what Philippe Sands was watching and it is no glorification of the mid-20th century German immigrants.