Aconcagua: The Invention of Mountaineering on America’s Highest Peak

Abstract

This book presents the history of mountaineering on Mount Aconcagua (9,692 meters above sea level), the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, as well as a history of the mountain itself. It traces mountaineering routes from Mendoza, Argentina, to Aconcagua’s summit, with analytical stops at the base camps, Inca mummies, and memorials along the way. The book locates these routes within broader trajectories of neocolonial scientific and adventure expeditions, regional and national identity and economy, and flows of global capital and tourists. Joy Logan argues that Aconcagua mountaineering both constructs and disrupts how modernity and globalization have shaped concepts of identity (including nation, gender, and ethnicity), tourism, and adventure.Joy Logan shows how mountaineering’s roots are largely masculine and Anglo- European in origin, from nineteenth- century scientific expeditions to Dick Bass’s 1983 ascent that made Aconcagua part of a new, global Seven Summits route. Throughout the book, the author provides a nuanced characterization of mountaineering as imperial adventure by discussing how it has been linked to Argentine nationalism as well. General José de San Martín’s 1817 crossing of the Andes, for example, is still central to how promotional tourism literature characterizes the region. The author takes pains to connect militarization and democratization in Argentina to mountaineering and tourism on Aconcagua. She places particular emphasis on the role of the Generation of the Eighties. In the 1980s, a group of Argentine climbers forged new routes on Aconcagua and on other peaks abroad. Several of these climbers went on to found a guide school and trekking companies in Mendoza and continue to have a significant influence on Mendocino mountaineering culture and economy. The author also argues that Mendocinos have sought to reterritorialize the mountain’s social space and to reconfigure regional identity. She shows how this has taken place via tourism narratives, the mountaineering economy, and park management. Reterritorialization of the mountain is not without tension, however, particularly as Mendoza’s global connections allow it to bypass national economic strongholds and discourse. Moreover, the reconfiguration of regional identity is, the author argues, an incomplete and hybrid one. On the mountain, for example, there remains a largely strict labor hierarchy that privileges male guides over female base camp workers. Mendocinos and foreigners alike celebrate the Inca- era mummy found on the mountain as evidence of the mountain’s indigenous past but fail to recognize that a modern Huarpe presence remains in the region.The author tends to utilize broad- brush phenomena such as neocolonialism and globalization to explain how and why mountaineering evolved as it did on Aconcagua. Another tendency is to describe how existing theories apply to the case at hand instead of proposing a wholly new theory of the history of mountaineering, mountains, or Latin American identity politics. The book’s strength lies in its synthesis of multiple phenomena and in the details it provides as to how, precisely, these broader trends are tied to particular places and events on the mountain. The author weaves together evidence from an impressive variety of sources, including written accounts of scientific and mountaineering expeditions, tourism artifacts including postcards, museum displays, and YouTube videos, and government and newspaper archives in Mendoza. Her analysis is largely discursive in nature. She shows how written texts and material culture reveal how Argentine and foreign actors construct the space of the mountain. While the author does include some numerical data (e.g., park entrance permits), greater attention to these data and the inclusion of other quantitative and geographical evidence (e.g., route maps) would have served to ground the textual analysis. Her analysis of historical materials is complemented by an ethnographic study of contemporary mountaineering culture, which includes participant observation on treks and interviews with guides and base camp personnel.The writing is generally clear and compelling. Each chapter tackles a different historical era and narrative theme. Chapters are further divided into sections that usually provide diverse and engaging discussions of distinct events, people, and texts. In a few places, the relation of a section to the principal chapter topic is less apparent. Chapters conclude with “Debriefs” that are quite useful in tying together argument and evidence. The author often utilizes expansive sentences that weave together complex concepts but are carefully crafted to make the argument’s essence relatively easy to follow. The compelling topic, accessible writing, and skillful blending of historical and ethnographic evidence would make the book an appropriate choice for a graduate or undergraduate seminar. The book makes a significant contribution to the history of mountaineering, the environmental history of the Andes, and the history of tourism and identity politics in Latin America.