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Chapels, tea houses and gauchos: The Welsh in Patagonia. |
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Patagonia: The little Wales 8,000 miles away
By the turn of the 20th century, with the Welsh having established a European presence in Patagonia, the Argentine government stepped in, said "muchos gracias", took over direct control and extinguished the Welsh people's governmental and educational autonomy. Ironically, this happened just as the Welsh language was being grudgingly allowed into the education system back in Wales where, now, a quarter of all children attend Welsh-medium schools.
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In Patagonia, direct rule meant the end of Welsh in local government and in the schools, and the beginning of a flood of Spanish and other European immigration which quickly made the Welsh a minority in the colony that they had founded.
The dream should have ended then, with the Welsh assimilated within a generation. Astonishingly it persisted. Many generations on from the first emigrants, the Welsh language can still be heard in Patagonia.
Despite having received no further emigrants from Wales after 1914, and despite the Spanish-only education system, Welsh remained the language of the homes, the chapels, the eisteddfodau.
And when, in the last decades of the twentieth century, it started to show signs of serious decline, it was given an unexpected new lease of life. Cheaper air travel made communications with Wales much easier. More and more people from Wales began to visit. Measures were taken to support the language in its only outpost outside Wales.
In 1996 the Welsh Office began a programme, still continuing under the National Assembly, in which groups of teachers spend a year in Patagonia teaching the language. Some 700 people are currently enrolled in classes. A surprising number come to fluency. A British Council internet project keeps the groups of learners in touch with Welsh speakers in Wales. 21st century technology sustains a 19th century ideal.
Words: Grahame Davies
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