And NBA player Emanuel Ginobili to Butch Cassidy?
You can find the answers to all these questions here, thousands of miles from the USA or Europe.
Here, south of South, at the southernmost limits of America, in the least populated region of Argentina.
Here, between vast crystalline lakes and soaring snowcapped peaks.
Between the Andes and the Atlantic.
In Puelmapu, the ancestral lands of the Mapuche people.
On stage, two performers transform an empty set into a section of modern-day Argentinian Patagonia. Amid mountain ranges, lakes, virgin forests, and imaginary cities, they rewrite the history of the Argentine state, highlighting its ties to foreign wealth and the systematic brutality inflicted on South America’s indigenous peoples.
Tierras del Sud is the second part of the PACÍFICO trilogy, a documentary performance series that explores the atrocities committed against South America’s first peoples, the rise of new forms of colonialism, and the pervasive influence of dominant contemporary culture.
The trilogy delves into the intricate connections between multinational fortunes, South American states, former colonies, and the relentless exploitation of natural resources. Tierras del Sud focuses on the strong ties between massive foreign fortunes, such as those of Italian businessmen Carlo and Luciano Benetton, and the atrocities committed in the Patagonian provinces of Neuquén, Chubut, and Río Negro—lands to which the Mapuche people hold ancestral rights.
This conflict, over a century old, dates back to the Conquest of the Desert, a military campaign that seized indigenous lands for the benefit of Argentina’s oligarchies and foreign investors, particularly the English. This led to the creation of the Argentine Southern Land Company Limited, an English cattle-farming company that owned nearly a million hectares of Patagonian land, later acquired by the Benetton Group’s Edizione S.r.l.
Today, this land is a coveted asset, drawing multimillionaires and celebrities who now own over 20% of Argentinian Patagonia. The strategic geopolitical value of controlling this territory and its resources is central to our investigation, alongside real estate speculation, tourism, racism, and the criminalization of dissenting voices—revealing a complex web of neocolonialism and contemporary culture.
