Reading Fuegian Narratives and Nonhuman Sensibility in Francisco Coloane’s Patagonian Tales

Abstract

One of the first Chilean authors to write extensively about Patagonia, Francisco Coloane has long been revered for his tales of life in the region. In Coloane’s literature, murderous deluges sweep away entire homesteads and pinnipeds smother sealers to death, events that have often been interpreted as symptomatic of Patagonia’s inhospitable climate and the difficulties settlers faced in the region. This article proposes a reading of Coloane’s work in tandem with examples of recorded narratives of the Indigenous populations of Tierra del Fuego, many of which were recounted by Coloane himself in his journalistic publications. In so doing, I show how the violence that is common across Coloane’s oeuvre constitutes just retribution whereby nonhuman life is exacting revenge for settler and hunter incursions. I therefore demonstrate that by reading Coloane alongside Fuegian narratives we can uncover new ecological and didactic currents in his writing that further complicate his reductive position as Chile’s “Patagonian” writer.