One of the more culturally distinct regions of South America is the Archipelago of Chiloé, a cluster of more than two dozen islands situated a few miles west of the Patagonian coastline. Residents of Chiloé have long resisted cultural pressures from mainland Chile, often identifying themselves as islanders (Chilotes) first and Chileans second. Anton Daughters first visited the region as an adolescent in the mid 1980s. Returning as an anthropologist two decades later, he was struck by the stark shift that much of the archipelago had undergone. Many families once reliant on rural fishing and farming had become dependent on low-wage jobs in the growing salmon-export industry. His research since 2004 has focused on those changes, emphasizing the impact that large-scale economic transformations can have on the collective identity of island communities. The images below–taken between 2006 and 2018–offer snapshots of some of the people and places in Chiloé chronicled in Memories of Earth and Sea.
Image 1 – A young man navigates his motor boat between the islands of Llingua and Quinchao in Chiloé. For decades, many islanders relied on small-scale fishing (carried out on motor boats like this one) to supplement farming, shellfish-gathering, and the tending of livestock. The arrival of large-scale aquaculture companies in the 1990s and early 2000s triggered a shift to wage labor, pulling some islanders away from more traditional rural livelihoods and, by extension, their networks of labor reciprocity. Islands like Llingua and Quinchao—whose populations were mostly or entirely rural—were hit especially hard by the changes. While families with motorboats were able to sustain small-scale fishing ventures and fulfill agricultural labor-debts with neighbors, other families were drawn to low-wage jobs and a cash economy that often divorced them of their rural livelihoods and ultimately placed them in more tenuous economic circumstances. (Photo by Anton Daughters)Image 2 – A fisherman scans the waters off Quinchao Island. The tallest peak in the background is Volcano Michinmahuida, located on the mainland of South America in Pumalín Park, a sector of Patagonia. Fishing boats like these form a mainstay of small-scale, artisanal fishing ventures in Chiloé, even while wild stocks of fish (hake, conger eel, and several varieties of bass) have fluctuated significantly over the years. Chile’s national fishing agency placed a series of bans on the extraction of wild hake (merluza) starting in 2014. A red tide crisis in 2016 dealt a further blow to fishing as a viable livelihood. Today, artisanal fishing is carried out only intermittently throughout the archipelago. (Photo by Anton Daughters)Image 3 – With help from neighbors, Irene Mansilla tills the earth for the planting and fertilizing of potatoes. Irene and her husband are among 400 or so residents of the island of Llingua. For decades, their primary form of subsistence has been farming, fishing, shellfish-extraction, and the tending of a few scattered livestock on their property. Agricultural work is typically done through reciprocal arrangements with neighbors (mingas). Despite the installation of large salmon farms and processing plants along neighboring islands, the Mansillas have been able to maintain a strategy of diversified rural livelihoods, thanks largely to their ownership of a fishing boat, their association years ago with a local fishing cooperative, and the labor assistance they get from neighbors. Other rural islanders have been less fortunate, finding their subsistence livelihoods nearly impossible to maintain in the face of a growing regional cash economy. (Photo by Anton Daughters)Image 4 – This view of Llingua Island’s steeple (built in 1912) and southern dock also shows the island of Quinchao in the backdrop. Communities on both islands have experienced significant economic shifts over the last two decades, leaving many families struggling to maintain subsistence farming and fishing and networks of labor assistance with neighbors. (Photo by Anton Daughters)Image 5 – Danny Leviñanco searches for shellfish on the shores of Quinchao. Danny grew up in a rural household on neighboring Caguach Island. Today she works as a resident schoolteacher on the island of Chuit (population 97). She also assists rural islanders in their efforts to legally resist the expansion of large-scale aquaculture industries into their offshore space. (Photo by Danny Leviñanco)
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Anton Daughters is an associate professor of anthropology at Truman State University.
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