Page:Isaiah Bowman - Desert Trails of Atacama (1924).pdf/255

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San Pedro de Atacama
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tion of white residents born outside the district. Each has been the center of a certain amount of revolutionary ferment and the refuge of those who sought to escape from persecution by officials of a rival administration. Men come and go for po- litical reasons in such situations in a manner to which we are not at all accustomed in this country. One sees the same thing

Fig. 74—Conde Duque, the principal settlement of the many that go under the collective name of San Pedro de Atacama, The view is across the valley with the main chain of the Andes in the background.

illustrated in many places in South America on opposite sides of a boundary line. A politician in difficulty in Peru or Bolivia may flee to San Pedro de Atacama, as those in political dif- ficulty in Chile may flee to Salta on the other side of the moun- tains and in the territory of another sovereignty. At Puno and Guaqui at the opposite ends of Lake Titicaca, the one in Peru, the other in Bolivia, one will generally find little groups of political refugees who find it healthier for the time being to live in the territory of a neighboring state.

Because of its remote situation (it is still two days’ journey from the railway) San Pedro has felt but little the effects of the general economic change which the railway has brought about elsewhere and which produced so revolutionary an effect in the life of Calama to the northwest and of Salta to the east. Its