New features from the Patagonia

By Pedro J. Fri'as
For The NATION

The newness does not come now from the central Capital, Coast or provinces: anotició to the country from the Patagonia. The hypothesis of a fusion between Neuquén and Ri'o Negro, if it did not even take shape soon, installs a very necessary laboratory of projects and ideas for the Argentine territory, its institutions and also for the change impatiences.

The fusion is possible because there is no excessive local identity in that deep South, united only by the wind. Negro river would improve its fiscal balance with the oil exemptions of the Neuquén and this province would obtain the Atlantic coast; between the two, they would concentrate lakes and snow for an attractive tourist supply. In addition, those that we have crossed the High Valley of the Negro River we had a feeling that Neuquén is almost like its "capital".

More ago than ten years, in Trelew, I spoke of "the Patagonia in a federal world". I said that it preferred to imagine those beloveds six provinces like a region: the Patagonia. Not only because there are scale advantages, but because the same name penetrates deeply in imaginary the western one.

What is the imaginary one? It is that deposit of imaginations of the man, the world, the society. And in the representation of the world, the Patagonia is a deep voice, that says more reason why it suggests reason why it reveals, more by its mystery than by its reality. This interest is born of the history of the discoveries, of the old cartography that I have crossed, of novels like the one of Jean Raspail Moi, Antoine de Tounenc, roi of the Patagonie. It is also born of the satelite images that show that close South like a peninsula in a blue sea, and of pieces of theater like Ushuaia , released in Avignon in 1991. It is an almost novelesco, similar effect to the one of the jesuíticas missions, that have an imaginary superior projection in the western one.

The treaty signed by both governors, with some reluctance of the one of Negro River, anticipates a referendum in occasion of the presidential elections well, because, although it is not constitutional exigency, it will register the will of his inhabitants. The treaty must be approved by the legislatures, and the fusion, by the legislatures and the National Congress.

A difficult question is the election of capital, because Viedma is an administrative city and would arise difficulties if the option were by Neuquén. It is certain that the Executive authority can settle in a city, and the Legislature, in another one, like in Chile, but in Chile the Congress already wants to leave Valparaiso, because the power tends to the concentration.

How is put the power to the service of the inhabitants? A deep administrative decentralization will be indispensable, that assures services with immediacy, without for that reason the bureaucracy must grow. The councilmen can be ad honórem, as they are it the leaders of so many intermediate associations, professional, religious, et cetera.

It will be necessary also to dictate to an internal legislation uniform, and in this I went ahead a long time ago already suggesting to the Patagónico Parliament that insisted to the six provinces of the region to do it.

The governors protagonists look for adhesions and surely they so far install a quiet debate in the rest of the region. Three provinces can be visualized: The Pampas, like this '; North Patagonia with Neuquén, South River Negro and Chubut, and Patagonia, with Santa Cruz and Tierra of the Fire. Bureaucratic inertias and the in favor apparatuses can prevent this integration and is probable that Santa Cruz does not want to share her surplus with "the aim of the world". In August, in Villa the Narrowness, we will debate these subjects in the days summoned by the School of lawyers of the Neuquén.

At the moment in which I write, the governor of Jujuy, so far insolvente province, rescues the autonomy, because he feels difficult to be united with Jumps by the local identities. I recognize it. But in any case it is necessary to promote the cooperation between near or border provinces and municipalities. Of that cooperation, flood in the civil society, will be born solutions. And we needed them with urgency.