[LINK] "Don’t cry for me Orania"

[rfmcdonald]

Stuart Graham's story in in The Sunday Times, "Don’t cry for me Orania" examines the descendants of the Afrikaners who immigrated after the Anglo-Boer War to Argentina's Chubut Province, in Patagonia.

The Van der Merwes descend from Boers who immigrated to Patagonia in the early 1900s after the Anglo-Boer War (South African War). The immigrants were bitter after the use of concentration camps by the British — when thousands of women and children died, they decided to leave South Africa, rather than live under the English. Camillo Ricchiardi, an Italian who fought with the Boers and was married to the granddaughter of the Transvaal President Paul Kruger, helped arrange land for them in Argentina. The first group left Table Bay Harbour aboard The Highland Fling. They arrived in the coastal town of Comodoro Rivadavia in the Argentine province of Chubut in 1902, a two-hour drive from Sarmiento. More groups arrived in 1905 and 1907. The Boer immigrants were assigned 2000 hectares of land by General Julio Roca’s government, infamous for heading an ethnic cleansing crusade against Patagonia’s indigenous population.

In those days, Patagonia was still seen as a wild frontier. The Boers, who were thought to be experienced farmers, could help develop the land. They lived in tents, later built huts and then started to trek into the hinterland. Along the way to Patagonia they gave Afrikaans names to the koppies: Spioenkop, Spitzkop and Transvaalkop. Some went north to the towns of Rawson, Trelew and Port Madryn, where they bought sheep from the Welsh colonists who had arrived 20 years before.

Today these Boer descendants speak an older form of Afrikaans, similar to the style used in South Africa in 1902. They often use words like voorgister (the day before yesterday) instead of the modern version, eergister. They have never heard of eina or braaivleis and they enjoy regular Argentine barbecues known as asados. But other cultural aspects, like Boeremusiek, have survived.

[. . .]

No one is too sure, but Kruger believes there are between 100 and 120 Boer families left in Patagonia. “Most of them came here with just the clothes on their backs. But they taught themselves to be mechanics, horse- men, builders and farmers. Die Boer is ’n slim mens. Wat hy moet doen, doen hy.” (The Boer is a clever person. What he must do, he does.)

In the beginning, the Boers stuck to themselves and married among each other’s families. “If a Boer wanted to marry a Spaniard, they would want to hang him,” Kruger says. “Hulle het so geleef.” (That is how they lived.)

Down the drag is the Gereformeerde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church). With its rusting green roof and pointy cement spire, it looks much like any other small-town Gereformeerde Kerk in South Africa. A Spanish sign on the door says there are youth meetings on Tuesday nights. Only about 15 to 20 people are said to attend the church on Sundays. The Catholic service, in the grand cathedral on the main road, is much more popular.

Other online resources on the Boer descendants in Argentina include Martina E. Will's review of Brian Du Toit's Colonia Boer: An Afrikaner Settlement in Chubut, Argentina and Nathaniel C. Nash's October 1991 article in The New York Times, "La Begonia Journal; For Afrikaner Gaucho, Arid Land and Hard Work".