Bedwyr Meredydd
Shot in Chubut Province, Argentina and North Wales.
An exploration of the relationship between two nations and the contested interpretations of their shared colonial past.
In 1865, 158 settlers left Wales with the intention of establishing a Welsh-speaking colony that would be devoid of the English language in the hope that the Welsh language and culture would have an environment to prosper and survive. The settlers felt that their way of life, religious traditions, and heritage was diluted and dying due to increased English migration to Wales.
They were sailing to the desert province of Chubut in Argentina. The Argentinian government encouraged Anglo-Saxon Europeans to populate Southern Patagonia to create their idealised ethnic nation and settle on Indigenous lands. When the settlers arrived aboard the ship Mimosa, they discovered that the landscape was dry and akin to a desert. Few of the settlers were farmers, and many died over the years. Others resorted to eating grass due to numerous crop failures.
The settlers were helped greatly after establishing a relationship with the indigenous Tehuelche people who advised them on how to survive on the land. In 1885, the Argentinian government implemented a genocidal campaign against the Indigenous Tehuelche and Mapuche people. The Conquest of the Desert resulted in the decimation of the population.
The Settlers didn’t mount an effective protest to the conquest, and the Welsh colony was eventually assimilated into the Argentine Nation. The Welsh language was given secondary status in favour of Spanish during education and the dream of creating a Welsh speaking nation in the desert was dead.
Today, around 5000 Welsh speakers are reported to be living in Chubut. Despite the resilience of the language, the idea ofnationhood didn’t survive and the province is a testament to Argentina and Wales’s troubled shared history.
Find more of Bedwyr’s work below: