Lic. Carlos Pedro Vairo

Director of the Maritime Museum, the museum of the Presidio of Ushuaia, the Antartic museum ushuaia jose maria sobral and the museum of marine art ushuaia

CUSTODIAN OF THE SEA

Graduated in Business Administration, Museologist and specialist in Maritime Anthropology, Carlos Pedro Vairo worked since 1989 in the creation of the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia. His extraordinary work and that of his team have given the institution a worldwide position. No one of them has been able to recover the memory of Ushuaia and its indissoluble relationship with the Sea.

(Excerpted from the newspaper Tiempo Fueguino, Special Anniversary Edition / 1987 - August 15 - 2007)

Ushuaia has beautiful landscapes, snowy mountains, almost impenetrable forests, some small valleys where you can do winter sports, but above all, it has an immense sea.

A sea that tells stories of shipwrecks and feats of ancient sailors who on board small boats made incredible rescues in the midst of strong storms.

However, many years ago, when Carlos Pedro Vairo arrived for the first time, Ushuaia lacked, “as it still lacks today,” as he himself puts it, a “true seafaring culture.” “I imagined that if it was a built city facing the sea, people would go on fishing excursions and its inhabitants would know endless stories ", of which only the sea can give us something to talk about." However, there was only one business that sold fish and some seafood, and a man who was dedicated to street vending, shouting out loud while pushing a cart. the city to take a radar course and was "surprised by the lack of seafaring tradition."

“The port worked but not so much, the ships that arrived then were those of the Argentine Navy, especially Transportes Navales, and those of the Argentine Prefecture. The rest were small sailboats that belonged to the first Fuegian families such as Padín, Beban and Figuelli ”, says Vairo.

Graduated in Business Administration, Museologist and specialist in Maritime Anthropology, Carlos Pedro Vairo took courses in Denmark, Norway and Spain among others, which allowed him to have a specific look at vessels according to the society to which they belong. Among them, the boats made of basketry and leather, studied in La Coruña, to compare with the bark canoe made by the primitive Yámanas Indians. That is how, together with a group of friends, they decided to return, back in 1989, and began to perform Scale reconstructions of various boats with the idea of ​​exhibiting them in a place where the Ushuaia community, and the few tourists who arrived at that time, could contemplate them.

At that time they did not imagine that the prison building would be ceded to them, which since 1977 had been abandoned and in very poor condition, almost completely flooded and lacking electricity, gas and largely destroyed.

Although two weekly visits were made in the afternoon for those who wanted to visit the former Ushuaia prison, who were shown the Historical Pavilion and the Central Hall, the community had no interest in preserving the building since “once the jail, for the people the curse had ended, and the bad memory of having grown up in a city where prisoners walked the streets and a giant gray building (painted in 1970 by the Argentine Navy in the current color: yellow walls and red roof ) that kept stories of pain and suffering ”.

“The intention of rebuilding or saving part of the building and the need to have a Maritime Museum, made us get together with a group of friends and do the archaeological and historical research and collect the necessary material that allowed us to inaugurate the museum in March 1995. current Maritime Museum ”, recalls the director.

The museum in its beginnings was made up of the entrance hall and the first six cells of pavilion 4, a place that "during the first summer was visited by 200 people, between January and February." Currently 80 thousand people per year, between schools that organize non-formal education activities and foreign tourists, attracted by the naval models, and Argentines who want to know the history of the jail and famous prisoners, visit the former prison.

Today the Museum has enabled the entire building and has Maritime and Antarctic exhibitions, visited with guides who narrate the history of the prison, an Art Gallery that offers painting and drawing workshops and a room dedicated to the Island of the States, complementing with regional history. It should be noted that the samples are adapted to each public, according to the nationality and age of the visitors. For this, each area has specialized advisers who work as a team with the other areas.

“When I arrived in the city,” says Carlos Vairo, “society was made up of a rare mixture of Spanish, Italian, Croatian customs, etc., which made it even more picturesque. I remember that once they invited me to eat an Italian pasta but the sauce had been made with beets ”. Particular facts that are cut from the rest of the history of Argentina. "Here, instead of hearing about San Martín, you used to hear about Luis Piedra Buena or other sailors."

The museum has a work team made up of about twenty men and women, as well as a team located in Buenos Aires that deals with historical investigations and models, made on a 1/100 scale.

Profile

Carlos Pedro Vairo

Director of the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia He visited Ushuaia for the first time in 1982.

In First Person
The Defense of Identity

I have known Ushuaia since 1982, when I came to visit and then settled down. I could say that I knew it as a small town where the streets did not pass much higher than Magellan. It grew very disorderly, given the large influx of people from different sides, with different customs and their own identities.

In this dizzying growth, the essence of the original Ushuaia was lost, where the new people who have just arrived were called those from the north, and it was believed that they came to change a way of life. Today I think we feel the same.

It is no longer the Ushuaia we knew. The constant waves of people looking for a better future and the building progress of the city has made us lose our essence a lot. In addition, with those pioneers who left, many of the typical constructions have also left, such as the delicately manicured gardens and orchards and the rare mix of Spanish food, with Croatian and Italian details, and Chilean and Creole influences.

For this reason I believe that it is very important, and in a certain way the responsibility of the Mass Media, to contribute in a committed way to understand the heritage of the place, be it tangible or intangible. It is normal that those who are arriving and joining society bring the identity of their origins, but in the same way it would be productive for them to incorporate the identity of the place.

As Director of the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia, in conjunction with the work team of said establishment, we work to promote knowledge of the Architectural Heritage, Intangible Heritage and Historical Monuments.We still lack a maritime culture today and an example was the literary contest organized in 2002 and intended for primary school students, under the theme Man and the Sea. Only one work recognized the Beagle Channel as a sea. All participants gave abstract examples of the sea, or narrated about places they had seen on the way, roads to regions of origin. The only story that referred to the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn was the one made by the granddaughter of one of the pioneers who was a great navigator and excellent person, Vicente Padín.

We need to continue working so that the capital of the Province of Tierra del Fuego is the best reflection of the southernmost sea in the world, and that is a commitment of all.

Carlos Pedro Vairo
Director of the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia.
February 2007.

We invite you to learn more about his research and travel on www.carlosvairo.com