Another Reconstruction is Possible

Along the course of El Maule, any relationship between human life and the larger ecological field was absent. There were no visible settlements, or camps. Hillsides were scarred by It caused me to feel anger and suffering towards the professionalization of landscape as a discipline more closely related to industrialization than to the plants, animals and human cultures—the life sustaining forces of the natural world. Also, to the respect accorded to other life forms and worldviews. I found myself foraging through plantations to find the plants that resist, the patches that remain, the crevices of tradition before extinction. The most I hope to accomplish with this account still scratches the surface of what environmental justice means as we take stock of the abuses of the past and grapple with the adaptation required to live with a changing climate. It is a daunting task, but I see potential to rescue, preserve, and reseed following a devastating event. I am referring to the consequences of reconstruction in light of how the community of Constitución displayed respect for the estuary and regard for the land that was left behind.

While we were at the estuary of El Maule, we met with Alejandro Hormazábal, a community member from de Fundación AcercaRedes Maule Costa. Alejandro grew up in Constitución and not only survived the events of 2010 but led the community through the process of healing once the storms subsided and the damage could be assessed. As a result of his engagement with the community, and with the storm, Alejandro was also an advocate for not building back on the lands affected by the tsunami, lands immediately adjacent the estuary. And he was not alone. Many of the survivors who witnessed the force of the event were restless, and uneasy about reconstruction. Rather, they imagined planting a forest-park rather than rebuilding, conceivably because trees would help attenuate waves, and the community knew trees well enough because they worked so closely with the plantation industry. Although Constitución is a company town affiliated with the tree-planting industry, it was remarkably hard to simply acknowledge the flood line, and plant trees instead of buildings. Instead of a community project, the vision of the community, informed by the environment, entered a long engagement with the state, with property owners, with architects and engineers. Years of negotiations led to the community being isolated from the design. The ensuing parklands were elevated by concrete seawalls, filled with imported soil, planted with the same two species that supply plantations and enclosed by a 10-foot fence. We met Alejandro at the edge of the park, after a series of phone calls to have the gates were unlocked:

The earthquake worsened the relationship we had with the river. The north bank is very close to the south, so the mouth, or estuary is very narrow. There are times when the opening is barely 40 meters. Engineers removed strength from the river flow by building these walls. They told us the purpose is to prevent flooding when the river rises in the winter, but it also reduces the speed and the water gets stuck, so sediments accumulate. The walls affect fishing primarily because they block access and fishermen cannot reach the Maguillines dock, where they carry out their activities. So, the reconstruction worsened the relationship with the river too.

Alejandro and his colleagues entered a long process following the tsunami event, starting with an appeal to the state for a housing subsidy so that community members could afford to buy or build a home elsewhere. Individual payments ensued progressively, as houses were demolished, and people slowly moved out. The expropriation was approved over a period of almost 2 years:

The ground where we now stand used to be private property and was expropriated for the park. Now it is owned by the state. It was a very difficult process to engage 170 plots that were extremely fragmented socially and economically. Plots were owned by different socioeconomic classes, so owners wanted to negotiate individually. Wealthier people wanted to lead a separate group in order to negotiate directly with the state. As a united community, we opposed that initiative and declared that everyone had to live the same reality.

Alejandro and his group worked against the traditions of rebuild and reconstruct, creating instead a community group committed to building consensus. The appeal for a “forest-park” was made to the state because they understood trees and felt strongly that a setback from the river showed respect for the floodplain. This is a landscape of retreat, a commitment to the land that is left behind, to appreciating risk and adapting in turn.

Of Pinus, On Eucalyptus

In Constitución, ‘local’ expands to include thousands of acres of plantation forest, the silent disaster that transformed the relationship between Chilean society and the landscape.
 

I am referring to the managed exploitation of land, the ongoing processes that replaced the temperate rainforest with monocultures of Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) Eucalyptus (E. globulus) plantations. The plantations pull the Chilean landscape in multiple directions, as watersheds are pacified by dams, soils are polluted by chemicals and livelihoods are interrupted by iterations of colonial conquest and industrial development.

Layers of infrastructure standardize everyday life, shifting patterns towards supply chain capitalism. One feature of the plantation economy is the replacement of scattered settlement and small hold farms with industrial workers, housed to serve corporations, a society structured by management and consumption of global commodities.

Can we add a more general paragraph here on Chile as a site of historical plunder (Galeano) and the cradle of neoliberalism (Harvey / Bruey)?

Another contemporary feature is the rise of tourism, a sign of economic prosperity that expresses the diversity of the country despite the enactment of singular, objectified landscapes. The impact of fragmented vacations and eco-adventures draws attention to the rivers, coasts and valleys by carefully avoiding the strteches of destruction that fuel everyday life, which is why we surrounded ourselves with knowledgeable individuals linked to the local soil.

There was no way to understand the over-engineered park without paying attention to the plantation system upstream because it is composed of only two hybrid tree species, each with a single genetic signature. More than a monoculture, the vastness of the endeavor shifts the potential risk from the coast to the entire watershed. Constitución has neither the political nor the social capacity to withstand the slower, more devastating effects of the tsunami of investment in Monterey pine and Eucalyptus plantations. Introduce quote, “The spread of pine during the 1930’s and 1940’s redrew southern Chile’s natural and social landscapes. The nature of Monterey pine itself drove the reorganization of land, labor relations and state agrarian policy.” Summarize this point and conclude or transition to kayak next paragraph.

We kayaked El Maule because there is no road access to the forestry economy and felt necessary to experience the breadth of the plantations first-hand, outside of statistics and maps.

Caption / Image?

Fig. 15.
Map of Chile with deforestation. Caption: Research conducted in advanced of the trip was confused by the scale of the abuses. Any attempt to map the scale of deforestation appeared as artificial as the plantations themselves, out of proportion to the size of the country. Scale out of whack. ]

OR 

Fig. 15.
Image of last standing house as reminder to community.

As it turns out, the most effective counterpoint to the statistics of research lay in the slow, steady movement of the water as we rounded each bend, revealing yet another hillside of Monterey pine planted in regular grids and evenly spaced rows. This was not a temperature rainforest. I had convinced myself that we might hike up one of the valleys and find a remnant forest, a piece of forest that didn’t make the cut. A leftover. We asked our guide Pablo if he knew of such a place, perhaps where even one nurse tree might have been left standing. Pablo was not only puzzled by the question, but even after running through all the translations of ‘remnant’ he found it hard to understand what we meant by ‘forest’. To his mind, we were in a forest, a distinct attraction that encouraged tourism. But a plantation is not a forest.

El Maule bends and twists through gentle slopes traced only by thick bands of silvery eucalyptus and shadowy pine. Strips are miles wide, often covering entire hillsides in a moiré of singular logistics. Oftentimes, decimated traces mark the boundary of each band, revealing the destruction of felling, a brutal suggestion of the submission of the environment to industry. The demarcations between species are a map of global consumer trends, the shifting demand for short-fiber wood chips.  Eucalyptus, the fiber that supplies high grade paper products was replaced by Pine, as human consumption shifts towards demand for lower grade pulp—newsprint and toilet paper. The pine economy now accounts for 95% of Chilean exports, which reminds us that supply chains must expand to include environmental practices. The pines are owned by Celulosa Arauco y Constitución, more commonly known only as Arauco wood.

During our stay, we met with Daniela Ruiz at one of Arauco’s nurseries. The nursery is the heart of the supply chain in the plantation economy. At present, Arauco plants 45 million pine trees and 20 million eucalyptus trees per year. At the nursery, Daniela is eager to discuss the “native planting” program as part of Arauco’s sustainability initiative. She offers us 4 native plants: Maitén, Quillay, Pelu, Maqui, and asserts that under the program, Arauco now plant’s 100,000 natives each year.

Fig 16.

Nursery images currently Fig. 12. - which is correct??

Daniela gifted us saplings, arranged in the center of their plastic pots, and described that it is frustrating for the scientists to work with native species, because it can take up to a year just to germinate seed, time that slows the workings investment strategies. Further, because propagation is mostly achieved by seed, which makes it difficult to breed by clone. Clonal breeding emerges from a selection process that targets a single, individual plant and propagates artificially by asexual reproduction. In other words, it is a breeding strategy that ensures pure and stable lines that retain their original traits. Due to asexual reproduction, clones are immortal, and can be maintained indefinitely. The nursery supply has been reduced through technological prowess, such that only the best individual, selected by phenotype and cellulose production is clonally reproduced. A clone is a perfect object that can be analyzed by cost estimation and the logic of corporate culture. The achievements of Arauco are found in just two clones. Despite millions of hectares of coverage, the plantations in Chile are composed of only two plants.

Monterey Pine grows quickly and can be harvested in a matter of decades, rather than centuries. It grows well on desiccated land, typically lands that are highly depleted by agriculture and requires little labor once planted. Homogeneity is easy to control and predict. On the other hand, plantations require two logistics to prosper: an initial investment in biotechnology and extensive land holdings, a commitment that suited industrialists with national signatures and the ability to wait decades for profits. It does not suit the livelihoods of small hold farms, or seasonal economies. Thus, the initial arrangement was simple: Pine plantations enabled landowners to evacuate smallholders, squatters and Mapuche who were creating unrest, and regain control of property from laborers who claimed it as their own. Planting trees quelled social unrest and met the desire for investors to engender a nationally supported capital economy.

Don’t Swim in the Maule

Water is ever present in the landscape, labeled hydrologically by flow and linguistically by names. When the flow is fast enough, we call this water a river. When it is forced up from the ground, we call it a spring. In this account, a forest is just a very slow river, calibrated to the speed of uptake in roots and shoots that grow into trees. This is where water code and forestry mingle.

The destruction of the temperate rainforests depends on the slippery slope of policy. Chilean water code (1981) enabled the exploitation to take on vast proportions, as the triumph of corporate interests overwhelms social formation. The water code separated water rights from land ownership, effectively treating water as property. Under the code, water is considered a replenishable reserve, rather than an increasingly scarce resource. As rivers like El Maule degrade, attention shifts to abundance or absence of water and the free-market incentives that enable the shift from an agricultural to a forestation landscape.

The more informal extractive code of industrial forestry seizes water merely through the physiological activity of trees. Rainwater never seeps, or gets captured by the soils, encouraging flow in El Maule. The plantations are thirsty and desiccate the slopes. *note on 2017 fires? YES

There are so many Acacia tree species in Chile. These leguminous plants invite mycelium through the root system. This is such a simple way to start regeneration. But eucalyptuses are such magnificent plants that they can out compete the Acacias even once they are felled.  The response of the forestry companies is to use glyphosate (Monsanto’s Round-up) not even once, but twice or three times. The chemical journeys across the rivershed and makes its way to the river.

Conclusion

Working with an active medium such as landscape requires creative research, since the past has a direct impact on the realities of the present.  the chief difficulty of working across time is found in the challenges of the future. abuses of imperial forestry and the Landscape thinking compels action by considering the needs of the present in order to determine the needs of the future. Landscape is a predictive field, since it aims to materialize ideas, concepts and impressions into the environment. This makes it imperfect, as predictions tend to fail readily. Why do we divide human and non-human, myth and fact or material and non-material? What is an intermediary practice? Add transition.

In design, knowledge is not gathered, but experienced. Experience it cannot be ‘picked up’ like a book, or ‘sampled’ for further study.

“Anthropologists in general distinguish between works of theory, which will give you the keys for theoretical methodological research, and oral sources, which will always have a more concrete and epistemologically dependent status in comparison to ‘books’; this was not the case for Violeta [Parra]. The object that she would ‘pick up’ was both knowledge and ways to access that knowledge, because the source of both was knowledgeable people.”

— Paula Miranda "Violeta Parra, Creative Researcher,” page.

It swarms, matures, and tightens around time. In landscape studies, experience is augmented by fieldwork, spending time outside, under the stars and skies that condense terrestrial dynamics. Fieldwork helps define research that is unique to landscape. It encompasses both the relationship to place and memory and throws light on its meaning, but also pays close attention to those who travel through, are touched anew or dwell intimately with local earth. It does not distinguish between sources, and values non-material inspiration. Therefore, fieldwork, much like experience, expands the definition of landscape. This is one of the reasons that landscape—the fusion of culture and nature— is field for creative research is whether or not there is a place for material outcomes, or landscape-making practices. Some outcomes leave no material evidence.

1. Charles Darwin, 1876, Journal of ressearches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle round the world: London, John Murray, 519 pp. ▴


2. Ely, L.L, et al. “Geological Evidence of Predecessors to the 2010 Earthquake and Tsunami in South-Central Chile.” American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010. ▴
   
   https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFM.G32A..05E/1835abstract


3. For further reading: including James C. Scott and Lorraine Daston/Galison:
   Add references. ▴ 
    
4.  From (Abram, 15)- Add full reference. ▴


5. Paula Miranda, “Violeta Parra, Creative Researcher,” in Violeta Parra: Life and Work (City: Press, 2018), 83–104. ▴


6. According to Anna L. Tsing, supply chains are found in a legal gray zone that offer an intriguing frame to understand capitalism: “One feature of the mid-twentieth century dream of standardization production was the institutional and ideological separation of the “economy” from forms of communal identity and difference— “culture”. The economy would be transcendent and forward looking; culture would refer to particularistic communal forms imagined as having less and less relevance in the modern world. Culture would look backward to “noneconomic” forms; the economy could look forward to increasing uniformity and abstraction.”
   
   From Supply Chains and the Human Condition. (155). ▴



7. 
   
8. Controlled breeding is validated by embryogenesis in laboratories, but the nursery lies in the Maule rivershed and draws 1,700,000 cubic meters of water from the Maule estuary for every 200 hectares of plantation. At the nursery, cones of selected individuals are grown as ‘micro-plants’ to start production. Each micro-plant has a minimum of 200 copies, or clones. These copies are planted in a substrate of pine bark compost, perlite and tufa mixed at the nursery. Each copy is called a ‘mother plant’ and within 8 months, mothers are producing cuttings that will grow independently for a year until being moved into the field. The whole process of designing, growing and moving plants is achieved in approximately eighteen months. In contrast, it can take a native plant such as Maiten, Quillay, Pelu or Maqui up to one year just to germinate a seed. ▴
   


9. Please add Water code reference.
   


10. Max Liboiron, Pollution Is Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021).