(2010 A.D.) Ushuaia, Argentina, Dr. Siluk
I am writing a
memoir, perhaps with a little description of this far-off city, its prison, its
history, its surroundings. I have
written a few before, to which it has little to do with me, and more to do with
the place. It was on my three trips in 2010 A.D., one to the capital of the Tierra
del Fuego mountains of Argentina, the city being, Ushuaia, it is bounded on the
north by a mountain range, to the south the Beagle Channel, to which my hotel
room over looked, and one morning I walked down to it, sinking in the icy slush
and mud, with my little wife Rose, had she sunk any more, she would have
drowned, cute as a sparrow. My wife is somewhere
in the house now, she just brought me my morning coffee (October 16, 2016,
12:04 p.m.) I slept late today, I’m having late morning coffee and pineapple
juice, which I have daily, and it’s my breakfast.
Every day I write as she goes softly
about, doing the housework in our house. I came to Lima, to live in 2006, from
St. Paul, Minnesota. Having said all this I want to get back to Ushuaia, if you
look on a map it is the southernmost city in the world, a quaint city, and the
landscape most beautiful.
Ushuaia was founded casually by British
missionaries, dating back to about 1833.Then in 1896, twenty-three prisoners
from Buenos Aires were brought to the city, brought to Ushuaia, to build a
prison, and in doing so, built one with 380-single cells, it would house in
time 800-prisoners, under the leadership of President Roca. Serial and
political prisoners.
When you’re at
the prison, and I was at the prison, inside it, walked around it, the Tierra
del Fuego Mountains dominate the scenery. They closed it down, on my birth
year, 1947, to my understanding, the townsfolk’s got panicky. With owed right,
in that they housed some extremely dangerous criminals, such as Simon
Radowitsky, who killed the warden, Lorenzo Falcon, in 1909, placing a bomb in
his car, escaping toward Punta Arenas, to which I spent a number of days there
myself, in Chile, near there he was caught.
Also, Santos Godino, who enjoyed hanging minors. The irony of his demise
is that he, himself was killed by prisoners for throwing a prisoner’s cat
inside a wooden stove. For a prisoner, a pet is more like a goddess, or best
friend. In any case, a few have tried to
escape this prison, but where do you go? It is 400-miles to the nearest town,
and to sleep in those cold cells—for they have no heat—is like sleeping in an
open air cave in Alaska.
So this is an
old man’s reminiscence of a far-off city, where the town folks at one time, had
prisoners that were a terrible nuisance, and today is a winter wonder land, or
more like a winter getaway for those who can endure the trip.
#1181/10-16-2016
