ARDE

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When I left my house on the afternoon of March 9, 2021, I saw a massive column of smoke several kilometers high rising over Mount Piltriquitrón. A vast front of fire was devouring the Las Golondrinas area, one of the neighborhoods in this dreamlike place called the Andean Region of Parallel 42, which includes the towns of Lago Puelo, El Hoyo, and El Bolsón. The region became my home when, due to the pandemic, I had to stay in the Patagonian forests where I had previously been on vacation. That afternoon, I watched everything I loved burn: houses, forests, animals. The fire was heading towards my house, so I quickly prepared to escape and went out to photograph what became the most catastrophic fire in Argentine history in a populated area. That afternoon, nearly 500 houses and more than 13,000 hectares of forest burned.

 

For six months, I documented the different social and environmental causes and consequences of this catastrophe. The introduction of non-native trees, land grabs in old pine plantations that completely burned, and also the stories of people who lost everything to reclaim their homes.  Land ownership and the lack of planning are the biggest conflicts here, a land claimed by everyone and cared for by few. A place invaded by fast-growing foreign trees that burn even faster and do not allow the resurgence of native flora. This fire is a premonition of what is to come, a mirror of what is already happening in other parts of the world like the United States, Australia, or Greece. We inhabit a planet that is warming due to climate change, where humans are both accomplices and actors in our own destruction. The Earth will survive, even if it takes millions of years, and other animals, other vegetation will come ... but will others be here to admire it?

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