Six years ago, the Chilean government created the Cerro Castillo national park, a 138,000 hectare (341,000 acres) swath of gleaming glaciers, emerald Andean lakes and jagged peaks spiking skyward like a row of mini Matterhorn. Now that the greater ecosystem is protected, small herds of endangered huemul deer – Chile’s national animal – are making a comeback and invasive plant species are being uprooted.
But in the narrow valleys below the peaks, real estate speculators are carving the landscape into thousands of half-hectare lots for sale to those who want to own a slice of paradise.
The sudden interest in Cerro Castillo (Spanish for Castle Mountain) has sent prices soaring. Twenty years ago, land here sold for as little as $500 (£410) for one hectare. Today, the price is closer to $50,000, and that increase is exploding the culture and traditions in this village of just 800.
Small farmers with a hillside of land, a few sheep and horses are now millionaires on paper yet struggle to find money to pay for petrol. “The people from Santiago or foreigners come here as tourists and fall in love with Patagonia,” says Pedro Aguilar, 57, who was born nearby and works a one-acre plot of potatoes and beets.
Sitting by a steaming iron stove while sipping a mug of maté tea, Aguilar says he understands the attraction of Patagonia. “It is tranquil, there is no pollution. The water – you can still drink it, it is not contaminated. And you have all these beautiful lakes. But new people have arrived with new customs. I feel as if we are losing our culture and our grandparents’ customs.”
Many local investment schemes are offering more than 200 separate lots, meaning the landscape is being carved up like a suburban development on the outskirts of a major city. Under current Chilean law, many subdivisions with fewer than 80 lots do not require an environmental impact statement. However, these lots often depend on municipal resources, including water, electricity and waste management. The arrival of hundreds of new neighbours change traffic patterns, increase wildlife roadkill and upend longstanding customs.
“Patagonia needs to be inhabited. It’s not that we just want to remain at a regional population of 100,000, and we don’t want anyone else. The question is where we put these subdivisions,” says Marcelo Santana, mayor of the Río Ibañéz municipality, which includes Cerro Castillo village. “We need people in the countryside, and it is not just about traditions and culture – it is also about food production and the protein that the majority of the Chileans consume.”
Lawyers for environmental groups have been battling for government oversight and enforcement, arguing that these sub-division permits were intended for dividing farmland, not building homes in picturesque rural communities abutting national parks. A law to address such concerns is making its way through the Chilean legislature.
Most of the lots are sold to residents of Chile’s mega city, Santiago, which is 870 miles (1,400km) north. And with little knowledge of the region, buyers are frequently scammed into buying land with no water, electricity or access roads. South of Cerro Castillo, lots were sold so high on a hillside that buyers would need to backpack for hours just to reach their land.
“Many of the lakes are now surrounded by private owners who have shut off access,” says Gemita Galindo, who runs a small hostel in Cerro Castillo. “It’s like a one-way street up there with padlocks and no-entry signs.”
Other condominium developments near Cerro Castillo seek to balance respect for nature with precautions such as making all owners sign a code of conduct that ensures a more ecologically responsible relationship with the land. These developments set aside as much as 95% of the land with conservation easements, ban pet dogs – which may attack endangered deer known as pudú – and prohibit fencing, thus allowing wildlife to follow natural migration paths.
For millennia, Indigenous coastal communities, including the Selk’nam, thrived by harvesting shellfish, trapping seals, taking meat from beached whales and seeking refuge in the many bays from Pacific Ocean storms so fierce that early Spanish navigators named the area the Gulf of Pain.
Using wooden canoes to migrate, these Indigenous groups camped and lived close to shore, but there is little evidence of deep inland settlements in northern Patagonia as the region’s dense underbrush and sparse soil made hunting, agriculture and grazing almost impossible.
Last year, about 15,000 people visited Cerro Castillo national park – just 40 a day – yet that is a huge increase from the average of two daily visits recorded from 2010 to 2015, when the area was a national reserve and not yet a park. Projections by tourism and state authorities suggest that, by 2030, annual visits to Cerro Castillo, which is near a regional airport, will exceed 50,000. Patagonia consistently ranks as one of South America’s favourite adventure travel destinations.
The arrival of hundreds of outsiders in Cerro Castillo has ignited a raging debate: who are these newcomers? Why do they suddenly want to live at the end of the world? Is it possible to align good intentions with good deeds?
“There is no longer any place to graze animals,” says Pedro San Martin, a longtime landowner. “I have to buy frozen meat. And even meat from other countries! No one even does any planting any more. They make a phone call and they have potatoes.”
Macarena Soler, founder of the nonprofit environmental organisation Guete Conservación Sur, says the danger is that “local identity and local culture are very vulnerable to becoming a folklore show for the consumer and not a genuine preservation of tradition, knowledge and culture”.
For many people who have lived in the area for a long time, the real estate boom has felt like an invasion. “I got chased off by an angry outsider who yelled at us. He was shouting that we were on his property,” recounts Edith Aguilar, who works at the local water company in Cerro Castillo. The man was accompanied by two dogs and cradled a shotgun in his hands. “We were with children,” says Aguilar. “We left quickly and never went back.”
With her husband, Aguilar helped organise a cultural festival to revive and promote local crafts, including weavings from wool from the many sheep that once filled these valleys. “Today, people throw out the wool. They don’t know how to make anything,” she says. She is aware that people like her will be sidelined unless they embrace tourism. “Outsiders with vision are going to invest and make money,” she says. “The question is: why don’t we do it?”
Thanks to coordinated efforts by the Chilean government and private initiatives such as those spearheaded by conservationists Doug and Kris Tompkins, a chain of 17 national parks created the backbone for long-term conservation in Chilean Patagonia. Formed over the past 25 years and known as the Route of Parks, this conservation plan was initially highly controversial. Many local people feared the land would be locked up and they would be locked out.
But as sheep ranches went bankrupt and goldmines shut down, the extensive protected areas began to be seen as long-term economic anchors, providing some with an income from tourism while also providing a refuge for native species seeking shelter from the human invasion of Patagonia. Balancing the ecological integrity of Patagonia while respecting traditional culture amid a tourism boom is a challenge that environmental defenders understand has to be faced now.
“It is like a plague. Everyone is selling the farms. They want a lot of money fast. So, someone pays them $100,000 or $200,000. This is an epidemic. We are seeing it in all these places [across Patagonia],” says Cristián Ugarte, a recent college graduate, who two years ago designed Vista Baker, a 69-lot real estate project several hours south of Cerro Castillo near the town of Puerto Bertrand.
Ugarte says he launched Vista Baker as an attempt to combine restorative environmental strategies on a plot of land with a small community of new landowners. Under his plans, only 40 of the 560 hectares bought will be developed. Money from the sale of lots is used for planting native trees, introducing regenerative livestock practices and implementing rewilding.
Ugarte says his team deliberately bought a piece of land that had been heavily damaged by overgrazing and unsustainable forest management. The idea, he says, is to leave the land in a better condition than when they arrived.
“We propose to share this model [with local landowners],” says Ugarte. “If they have 100 hectares, just sell five. Don’t sell it all. This way, local people can make some money and preserve the land for the next generations.”
Ugarte is aware that many greenwashing and land scams are under way in Patagonia. But he’s confident there is a way to accommodate the inevitable population growth, implement long-term environmental restoration and respect the cultural heritage of ranchers and cowboys known as gauchos.
“I have seen people who sold their farms and now live in town,” he says. “They don’t have a smile on their faces any more.”
