Champion of the Yaghan people and ‘national heroine of Chile’
CRISTINA CALDERÓN, who has died aged 93, was declared a “living human treasure” as the last native speaker of Yaghan
– an indigenous language spoken in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago at South America’s southernmost tip.
For at least 6,000 years the Yaghan people had navigated the waterways south of Tierra del Fuego’s Beagle Channel, making temporary settlements on land. Hardened to the extreme cold, they dressed chiefly in loincloths and insulated their bodies with seal fat.
Their language went unrecorded until the 19th century, when missionaries and hunters began to arrive. One, Thomas Bridges, compiled a dictionary of around 300 pages, drawing Yaghan to the attention of the Anglosphere with definitions for culturally specific words like tuockolla (“to employ a person to chop down bone for spears”).
However, the arrival of white settlers marked the beginning of a cultural breakdown. The population was devastated by foreign diseases like consumption. Efforts by settlers to “civilise” the indigenous people led to a loss of the skills and technology essential to their survival. Spanish replaced Yaghan as a first language as parents sought to spare their children from discrimination.
In 1930 a census put the Yaghan population at 70. Over the decades most would settle at Bahía Mejillones (The Bay of Mussels), a harbour on Navarino Island. Small communities then formed in Puerto Williams, a port settlement founded in 1953, and in the nearby hamlet of Villa Ukika.
Though a few dozen members of those communities remain, Cristina Calderón was considered the guardian of a culture now almost disappeared. That it will not be lost altogether was largely down to the work of her family, who spent years creating recordings, holding language workshops and transcribing Yaghan stories.
With her granddaughter, Cristina Zárraga, she created a dictionary from Yaghan to Spanish, accompanied by a CD on which some of the words could be heard. A book of native legends, Hai Kur Mamašu Shis (I want to tell you a story), was published in 2005. Eleven years later she was elected 2016’s “national heroine of Chile” in a public vote.
She was born on May 24 1928 in an akali –a traditional Yaghan hut – on Navarino Island, the daughter of Juan Calderón and Carmen Harban. Her father died in 1931 and her mother followed three years later, leaving Cristina in the care of her grandfather. After he was killed in a fight that same year, Cristina was taken in by her godmother’s family.
For the first nine years of her life she spoke Yaghan exclusively, before picking up Spanish and a little English. They lived a nomadic existence, travelling by boat and hunting for otters in wintertime. Their diet was supplemented with birds’ eggs and meat from the guanaco (a llama-like animal). In the summer they would seek employment as sheep-shearers on the ranches of Navarino.
Cristina was just 15 when her family situation forced her to get married – to Felipe Garay, a man several decades her senior. The couple settled in Puerto Eugenia and she had three children by him.
Their union was not recognised in civil law, however, as Felipe’s wife (who had left him years earlier) was still alive.
After he died Cristina Calderón lived for 10 years with Lucho Zárraga, who worked as a shepherding headman. They moved to Puerto Williams and built a house in Villa Ukika. Known as “Grandma Cristina”, she made money weaving rush baskets according to traditional techniques, and also sold knitted socks in the local market.
With her third husband, Teodosio Gonzales, Cristina Calderón had a daughter. He predeceased her in 2009.
In a 2016 interview she gave her two favourite Yaghan words as (moon) and (sun).