Value Enhancement of the Cultural Heritage of the “Enapino” Past of Magallanes, Chile. The Case of Oil Camps at the End of the World

Abstract

In December 1945 commercially exploitable oil was discovered in Tierra del Fuego, Magallanes Region. This finding motivated the lifting of five oil camps, considered the most austral of the world of their kind, ready to meet the productive and social needs of this mining-productive activity. In the immediate vicinity of these spaces developed an imbricated social and cultural life that led to the development of an oil identity, plausible to identify as enapina and that seven decades after the discovery of this resource and with almost all of the uninhabited camps still remains in force In the collective magallánico imaginary.

In 2015, 70 years of the discovery of oil were commemorated, and the Institute of Heritage Studies, Non-profit organization formed in 2014 by academics dedicated to heritage research, together with the National Historical Museum and the National Petroleum Company, set out to develop a temporary exhibition called "Enapinos. The oil camps of the End of the World. This article gives an account of the process of developing, for the first time in the history of national oil, a temporary exhibition in the National Historical Museum alluding to the deployment, impact and sociability that implied the exploitation of oil in the southern part of the country chilean territory.