The Watchmaker of Punta Arenas
Punta Arenas, Chile
6,996 miles from San Francisco
“The wishes of the customer don't matter to me at all." - Pierre Hermé, globally recognized as “The Picasso of Pastries”
Precision. Science. Art. Calibration. Dedication. Craft. Mastery. A mere layman, having just passed through the shop door into what may as well have been another world, I made the inexcusable error of ignoring that those words lie at the heart of pastry making. It is a matter of scientific exactness. A matter of great consequence, where even the slightest error of hand or judgment can doom a dish to any undesirable circle of flakey, buttery hell.
So who was I? And how dare I ask?
We stood in an empanada shop in the center of Punta Arenas. It was no bigger than a broom closet and it was completely empty save for us, our growling stomachs and a tall man with a wizened, mustache-adorned face who didn’t acknowledge us as we entered.
The menu was limited to a dish we’d had our fill of between Chile and Argentina, the delicious meat-filled chamber of masa called an empanada. However, after roughly 10 such pastries over the previous 3 days, I longed for a change from the ubiquitous carne or pollo options. Shining like a beacon, my eyes were drawn to the option of camarón y queso. My lactose intolerance knew better than to tempt fate and order the dish as is, and my quest for improvisation powered my lips as I leaned on the counter and made the off-menu special request, “Puede hacer una empanada de camarón sin queso?“ Sin queso, without cheese – I may as well have cursed his family name. The reply was short and swift: a scoff and turn back towards his bowl of masa and baking tray of empanadas.
I bristled at the thought of further patronage, but the howl of arctic wind blasts at the door reminded me that the advantage was his. I gave in and tension gave way to conversation.
His name is Mario, and he is one of the oldest watchmakers in Punta Arenas. For geographical context, Punta Arenas is 500 miles as the crow flies from Northern Antarctica. It is a harsh environment, but Mario describes his home of 40 years as far less remote than the home of his youth. Before Pinochet built the now-famous Carretera Austral (for far more dubious reasons than providing a scenic route for Wicked Campers), Mario lived in Coyhaique – a town of 11,000 at the time – tucked among the snow-capped, jagged peaks and electric blue rivers of Chilean Patagonia. Mario’s father was also a watchmaker and it was clear from the first words we exchanged that precision ran in his blood. As the conversation began to flow, I asked him a few questions about how he grew up and the path that landed a watchmaker in an empanada shop. He described his childhood as largely peaceful, but that tranquility wouldn’t last. Despite the innate placidity of the place that he was raised in, the period of history that his generation was captive to was incessantly filled with upheaval. It all began with a President and ended with on the brink of war.
Following his democratically-held election in 1970, socialist President Salvador Allende pursued an aggressive plan for “Chileanización” (i.e. nationalization) of the country’s copper industry, which was previously primarily controlled by US-based corporations. He also introduced policies that would provide government healthcare and services to the people of Chile – with particular focus on the large quantity of Chileans that suffered under poverty. His socialist tendencies ran counter to the anti-Marxist views of the US, and the nationalization of major US copper interests flew in the face of those indoctrinated by Monroe. Whether he understood it or not, Allende was doomed from the start. The nationalization of the mines prompted US leadership to cut Chile off from the global economy, leading to incredible hardship. After a few years of turbulence, in 1973, General Augusto Pinochet took power of Chile following a violent coup d’état that lasted a single day and was widely recognized as backed by the United States. Amidst shelling and gunfire surrounding the Presidential Palace in Santiago, Allende gave a final radio address to the people of Chile and then committed suicide – allegedly using a gun gifted to him by Fidel Castro. As Eduardo Galeano eerily anticipated in 1971, “The strategy for the crime (the coup) was planned in Washington. Kissinger and the intelligence services were carefully preparing the fall of Allende ever since 1970.” Allende and his ideals were gone as suddenly as they had arrived, and the years following the rise of Pinochet were riddled with the disappearance, torture, and death of over 100,000 Chileans designated as “leftists.” Mario no longer wanted to remain in the increasingly brutal land that he called home.
Mario served his obligatory military service at age 18 in what would be the final cohort under General Prats, a commander under Allende who would go on to be assassinated by a Pinochet-planted car bomb. Once finished, Mario crossed the mountains that defined his old life and made his way to Buenos Aires. He would spend 8 years living in Argentina’s capital, all the while walking further along his perpetual path towards perfection as a watchmaker. He smiled when describing his time in Argentina and, without going into great detail, remarked that he has a daughter who still lives there. During those days he was a member of the leftist political party, perhaps not an all-out activist, but certainly a believer in the causes that stood against people like Pinochet. It was clear that his time in the metropolis was drastically different than how he grew up, and he described it as impactful.
In 1982, after spending nearly a decade living as a willing castaway from Chile, turmoil arose again when Argentina invaded Las Malvinas (The Falkland Islands), an archipelago situated 300 miles off the coast of Southern Argentina that has long been a British Colony. Britain rose to defend their colony, and the Falklands War – although never formally declared, ended with nearly 1,000 dead and several thousand more wounded. As the conflict approached its climax, Pinochet-ruled Chile sided with England and rumors began to surface that Chilean land claims in Patagonia and off the coast would be Argentina’s next target should they succeed in capturing Las Malvinas. Pinochet had years earlier, anticipating such a possibility, linked the small towns of Patagonia with a road that now enabled Chilean military vehicles to line the border in preparation. Mario heeded the call of his homeland and returned to serve in the Chilean army. His commanding officers drilled them to prepare to defend their hometowns in remote Patagonia, and he was told that “before you die, you must kill ten men.” According to Mario, the Argentine government sent young inexperienced soldiers to fight in the Falklands and positioned their battle-hardened units and the majority of their firepower to strike against Chile. Despite escalating tensions reminiscent of the US’s own Cold War decades earlier, Mario was never put into combat and no shots were fired between Chile and Argentina. The British eventually won the Falklands War and maintained control of their distant colony, but Argentina lays passionate claim to Las Malvinas to this day. The aftermath of the conflict has left palpable tensions between the two austral nations, and Mario described having his car vandalized just 8 years ago solely because he was in Argentina with Chilean license plates.
Signs like this are still present across much of Argentina, especially in Patagonia.
Despite the harrowing reality of the era that he grew up in, Mario shared his stories with a warm smile and with a clear sense of pride - both for his country and his craft. He had been a watchmaker for 53 years, 40 of which were spent in Punta Arenas, until one year before we met him. In 2018 after decades of service and commitment to perfection, his employer informed him that he was no longer needed. Rather than succumb to self-pity, Mario sought the next outlet for his pursuit of quality craftsmanship: empanadas. He prides himself on applying the precision of watchmaking to the process of making those golden tokens of South American culture. In speaking to Mario, it became abundantly clear that while the world around him has consistently presented him with conflict an confusion, he has found solace in the pursuit of greatness in his craft. Shortly before we parted ways, he said with utmost sincerity, “Life is simple, humans make it complicated. Approach life with the simple goal of recognizing your errors and advancing towards perfection.“
As we thanked him for the food and inspiring story, my cheeks flushed slightly at having asked this craftsman to alter his recipe on my behalf. It was clear, however, that Mario had thoroughly enjoyed imparting his wisdom and any embarrassment quickly gave way to inspiration. I sometimes find myself reflecting on the conversation we had with Mario. In his eyes, if you’re going to do something you should do it with the utmost quality, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether it’s making watches or preparing empanadas. The pursuit of perfection is the constant. If that’s not your goal, there’s no point in continuing. And as the modern world continues to do its best to pull us in a plethora of different directions, perhaps we should look to the empanada - as there is wisdom to be learned, indeed, from the simplicity of perfect execution.
Sources:
Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano, 1971
/Wikipedia - Salvador Allende/