The Ice Girl | Translation

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The following English translation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence. 

[Daniel Alarcón]: This is Radio Ambulante. I’m Daniel Alarcón.

Today’s story takes place in a place without trees or fresh food. A place without movie theaters, stores, or supermarkets. A gray land in its summers and covered with snow the rest of the year.

We’re going to travel to the South Pole, to Antarctica, the coldest continent in the world, a place where no one would think to establish a neighborhood with families and children…

Well, no one… until Argentina came up with the idea almost 50 years ago.

[Juana Benítez]: And he comes to me with the news: You know what I heard? They’re going to build a neighborhood in Antarctica. It’s being planned, he says.

[Daniel]: She is Juana Benítez and the one who told her was her husband Néstor Delgado. It was 1977, Juana was 35 years old and Argentina was governed by the last military dictatorship. Néstor worked as a cook in the Argentine Army and had already participated in two Antarctic campaigns that lasted almost a year. From one summer to the next. And whose objective is to supply the bases on that continent and conduct scientific research.

At that time Juana and Néstor had two children, Norma, 13, and Gabriel, 6. Antarctica was the topic of conversation at the family table: it was the reason dad wasn’t home for months.

Juana already had a rehearsed answer when her children asked why dad didn’t pick them up from school:

[Juana]: And I had to explain to them that it’s because he’s very far away, that when it’s not so cold anymore dad will come, because they have to go get dad by plane and now they can’t because it’s very cold and very windy.

[Daniel]: The two times Néstor had traveled to Antarctica, he had tried to maintain contact with his children. He died in April 2021 but Norma and Gabriel remember very well that time when they would sit by the phone waiting for their dad’s call. This is Norma:

[Norma Delgado]: He tried to call at least once a week and he would ask us how we were, what we did, how school went and he would tell us what he did.

[Daniel]: He was at one of the Argentine bases in Antarctica. From there they let them call by radio and he had to take turns with his colleagues to talk. Each one had 15 to 20 minutes. And they prayed there wouldn’t be much wind so the call wouldn’t get cut off…

[Gabriel]: But it was the only opportunity to have contact with him. And then, well, letters, packages that my mom prepared.

[Daniel]: This is Gabriel, who still remembers everything they put in those boxes: fresh fruits and vegetables, drawings that he and Norma made for him, cassettes recorded with their voices.

And when their dad came back, everyone listened to the stories of what it was like to live in that distant and strange world… sleds pulled by polar dogs, nights as long as months and discoveries in frozen seas.

[Norma]: On one occasion he brought us a whale vertebra. He brought us stones with petrified ferns, stones with fungi and lichens so we could see what they were like.

[Daniel]: Through the stories her husband told her, Juana had imagined Antarctica so many times that she felt almost as if she knew it…

[Juana]: And I liked it. I got used to the idea. It’s like what I saw because he explained it to me in a way that I flew with my mind over there. And it was like I was living that.

[Daniel]: But really being there, feeling the icy wind on your face, the silence of a world of ice, that, she imagined, would be something else…

[Juana]: I always wanted to go. When will they tell us we’re going to vacation in Antarctica, I used to say…

[Daniel]: So when Néstor told her about the possibility of the whole family going for a year, Juana didn’t even hesitate. A few days later they confirmed that the following year they would embark on the journey. Juana was in charge of giving the news to her two children. Norma remembers that she told them…

[Norma]: We need to know what dad experiences every time he goes. So this time we’re all going together and we’re going to enjoy and see and learn what dad did when he went away.

[Gabriel]: We knew where we were going from the photos and anecdotes he told, right? But as a family, we had never been to a place like that and we didn’t know what it was like either, you know? in detail.

[Norma]: And we thought it was an excellent idea. So, um, we got excited and prepared to go.

[Daniel]: Quite an adventure. And it wasn’t just any feat: they would be part of the first families to live in Antarctica. For the first time the proposal was for women and children to travel with their military husbands and stay in Antarctica for the complete season alongside them. Argentina had decided to create a neighborhood in one of the most accessible stations, at Esperanza Base. The neighborhood would be built just before the first batch of families arrived, in early 1978.

In total eight families plus the personnel assigned to the Base would travel. For the success of the campaign, it was important that the families get to know each other and form a bond before traveling.

[Norma]: The previous year was a very, very fun year for us as kids, right? Because they had barbecues and get-togethers to socialize and then to try on the clothes.

[Daniel]: Orange coveralls made of special fabric for the Antarctic cold, wool jackets, fox-tail hoods, thermal pants and shirts, gloves, hats, boots…

In addition to clothes for the family, Juana had to think about what she would need during that entire year: birthday gifts, a soccer ball for Gabriel, wool and needles for Norma who would learn to knit, feminine hygiene products, some books, and not much more because the request was not to overload the luggage.

They also had to undergo several medical checkups. The adults even had to have their appendix removed to prevent appendicitis in the middle of nowhere.

Juana, being cautious, also made an appointment with the gynecologist. Although her husband had always wanted to have another child, she didn’t want to get pregnant again. Now, with the Antarctica adventure on the horizon, even less so. So to avoid any risk she decided to start birth control treatment.

[Juana]: And we continued that medication and I think not even two months passed and I felt terrible. I go to the doctor and I’m pregnant. I get scared, I cry and I tell the doctor that I don’t want to be pregnant. I want to go to Antarctica, but I don’t want to be pregnant.

[Daniel]: The happiness about the idea of living a year in Antarctica was now overshadowed by the fear of carrying a pregnancy and giving birth in the most remote place in the world, where there were no hospitals either, of course.

After the break, we return with the story.

[Daniel]: We’re back on Radio Ambulante. Journalist Patricia Serrano along with our producer Aneris Casassus investigated this story. Here’s Patricia…

[Patricia Serrano]: Juana found out about her pregnancy at the end of 1977, months before traveling to Antarctica. The news had taken her completely by surprise. According to calculations, the baby would be born in June 1978, in the middle of the austral winter. She was very worried… because it wasn’t just about traveling pregnant to a place without hospitals or the comforts she could have in Buenos Aires, but also because of what all that implied.

[Juana]: Because I knew the pregnancy was going to disturb me. I wasn’t going to be able to do what I wanted to do, go where I wanted to go… who knows…

[Patricia]: And although it was hard for her to accept the idea of traveling pregnant, her husband ended up convincing her…

[Juana]: I’m going to take care of you, he tells me. I’m going to be there 24 hours, we’re going to be together.

[Patricia]: They immediately notified the Antarctic Command about the pregnancy. And after giving Juana some medical checkups, they told her she could travel.

So just a few weeks later, the adventure began.

The eight families boarded a Hercules plane from the Argentine Air Force. A military plane where a priest and a doctor also traveled. They took them to one of the southernmost cities in the world: the Argentine city of Ushuaia.

There they waited for the perfect weather conditions that would allow them to make the rest of the transfer to the final destination: Esperanza Base. They would have to navigate almost 1200 kilometers by water in one of the most dangerous areas on the planet.

They did it on a cargo ship from the Argentine Navy. An icebreaker also accompanied them, a special ship to open passages in frozen seas.

It wasn’t a trip suitable for fearful people. They had to cross the Drake Passage, where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet. They managed it in the middle of a storm with waves that could reach 15 meters high.

Juana, who was entering her sixth month of pregnancy, spent the trip tied to a bed in the ship’s infirmary, sick the whole time…

[Juana]: And there, with the movement of the sea, my stomach churned and I practically spent more time in the little room, in a crib, because since the crib moves along with the movement of the ship, that calms you down.

[Patricia]: The trip lasted more than a week. Gabriel was six years old but remembers very well those days at sea that seemed endless…

[Gabriel]: And I was desperate to see icebergs. Days passed, days passed and we never arrived. Until I clearly remember that one day I look through the porthole and I start to see a couple of icebergs and there I got happy that we were arriving in Antarctica.

[Patricia]: It was February 14, 1978 and the families were about to begin the most extreme year of their lives…

But let’s stop at this point.

Before continuing, it’s necessary to understand the purpose of this mission.

Let’s start with Antarctica.

It’s the coldest, driest and windiest place on the planet, contains the world’s largest freshwater reserve and is a key laboratory for science.

How does Argentina enter this story?

Well, although many don’t know it, Argentina is a bicontinental country. And that’s due, precisely, to the sovereignty claim over a part of Antarctica delimited by the meridians 25° and 74° west longitude, which extends to the South Pole.

And it’s based, above all, on three reasons:

By historical inheritance: Argentina inherited rights over the territory after independence from Spain, since it was part of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

Then, by continuous presence: It was the first country to establish itself in Antarctica in 1904, with a base called Orcadas. Since then, it has maintained an uninterrupted presence with scientific, military and civilian activities, reaching thirteen bases on that continent.

And finally, due to geographical proximity: The Antarctic Peninsula is directly aligned with Argentine Patagonia and separated only by the Drake Passage, which reinforces the natural link between both territories.

But to further reaffirm that claim to sovereignty, Argentina also devised the plan that Juana’s family and the other seven were carrying out: being the first country to create a neighborhood in Antarctica. A place where life would be similar to that of the rest of the world: with births, weddings and children in school. It was an idea that had been around for many years, since Juan Domingo Perón’s government in the ’50s, and was only now being put into action.

They called it Fortín Sargento Cabral and that’s where Juana and her family arrived on that February 14, 1978…

The neighborhood, located at Esperanza Base, would house 31 people: it had five red wooden and metal houses, a large building, a power plant that generated electricity and a small plaza. All necessary materials were transported, obviously, by ships.

Juana’s family received house number three. But there was a small problem… This is Norma, the eldest daughter, again…

[Norma]: The ship carrying the houses suffered a setback. Many things had to be thrown away so the ship wouldn’t sink. So, the houses weren’t perfectly finished.

[Patricia]: The houses had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living-dining room and a kitchen. They were modular metal structures, that is, assembled with panels that had to be sealed at their joints…

[Norma]: One wall was fastened to the other, but it was missing the sealant so snow wouldn’t enter through the little side. And well, there was a gap there and snow would enter through there.

[Patricia]: And it accumulated on the floor of the house. Norma and Gabriel took it as an adventure. They bundled up and made snowmen in the living room.

Although today it seems almost impossible to believe, they didn’t have central heating. They heated the environment with small kerosene stoves that Juana moved from place to place as they moved around the house.

During the day the kids went to school but it was very different from the one in Buenos Aires. It only had twelve students, so few that they practically had private classes. Norma was starting high school and Gabriel was the only first grade student. Classes were held at his teacher’s house, the wife of an Army non-commissioned officer.

[Norma]: I learned to read in Antarctica. I learned to write in Antarctica. Of course, they gave me homework, so I did it at my house, with my mom and well, I did homework and then I went to play, to play in quotes, I went to see where my dad was, to accompany him.

[Patricia]: Although he was a cook, dad helped with whatever was needed: he fed the dogs, turned the power plant on and off and made repairs to the houses. And Juana took care of domestic tasks. It was a difficult life, especially for a woman in the last months of pregnancy, but Juana adapted quickly.

[Juana]: I got used to it. I got used to doing those difficult things and they became easy, routine for me. In our time we had to make water.

[Patricia]: Because they didn’t have drinking water either. So the kids went out to look for blocks of ice that Juana then put on the fire in a pot so they would melt.

Gabriel and Norma also remember the igloos they built with their father, the walks on the beach where they looked for seal teeth, the family excursions on weekends to see the penguins…

And of course the cold, the wind, the snow…

[Gabriel]: And it was 20 below zero, 30 below zero. That was normal, the best thing that could happen to you on a nice day and I think it was five degrees below zero.

[Norma]: But it really didn’t affect us. And for us it was more important to be all together than to suffer the cold of Antarctica.

[Patricia]: Juana spent the months of pregnancy practically locked in her house, afraid to go out for fear of slipping or falling due to the wind. And the winds in Antarctica can reach up to 200 kilometers per hour, and they can also appear without warning.

But when she went out, she didn’t do it alone. She had a friend, Adela Acevedo, La Flaca, wife of another military man, with whom she walked arm in arm when weather conditions allowed. And she told her about her fears…

[Juana]: I leaned closer to her and I asked her things. Of course, I know how to give birth. I’m not going to say I didn’t know but one is afraid because things happen too.

[Patricia]: La Flaca and all the other women in the neighborhood tried to calm her down. This is La Flaca.

[Adela Acevedo]: Because besides, she was doing very well with the pregnancy, so it’s like we all gave her encouragement that everything was going to turn out well.

[Patricia]: But Juana’s fears were logical. There was no hospital, no specialized doctor, no midwife, nor the necessary technology if something went wrong with her or the baby.

The only doctor present at Esperanza Base was a general practitioner, very young. The same one who had arrived with them. The plan was for a team with medical experience to travel by plane from another Argentine base 100 kilometers away when it was time for the birth.

On the afternoon of May 27, Juana began to feel sick. Something told her that her baby was about to be born. So she went to see the doctor. He told her no, that there were still about twenty days until the birth. Everything was arranged for that date.

But Juana sensed it was going to arrive soon.

So when she returned to the house she sent for La Flaca, to ask for help…

[Juana]: And La Flaca comes and just looks at me.

[Adela]: And I enter and Juanita was in bed with pain. So I look at her and tell her: No, Juanita, you’re about to have a baby already.

[Juana]: I think so, I tell her, because I feel this way and I have this. And this happened to me…

[Patricia]: La Flaca had closely followed Juana’s pregnancy and was the person Juana trusted most. She was her friend, she had been there from the beginning. She knew her fears and knew that if Juana felt it, it was true. So she didn’t hesitate: she insisted to the doctor that Juana was about to give birth. There was no time to lose.

The doctor activated the protocol they had prepared and called the medical team from the other base that was designated to attend the birth.

Meanwhile, Juana was taken to an emergency room in the central building. Her baby was going to be born there. It was one of those Antarctic nights where the wind blew so hard that the snow hurt like needles. But Gabriel still went out to the door to see his mom off…

[Gabriel]: A motorcycle came with a little sled attached behind. They put my mom on the little sled. And from there they took her down, it would be 150 meters from my house to the central house, which was where the infirmary was. And I stayed at my house waiting for them to say the baby had been born, because we didn’t know what it was yet.

[Patricia]: But Norma couldn’t stand it. She ran out after the snowmobile. She ran so fast that she arrived at the infirmary before her mom.

[Norma]: Well, they finished putting mom to bed. But the poor doctor didn’t want it to be born yet. He wanted the team to arrive.

[Patricia]: But it was an impossible night for the team from the other base to take off.

It was very, very cold. And if it weren’t because a baby was about to be born, no one would have left their house.

However, Juana’s birth was the most anticipated thing in the neighborhood and the few neighbors gathered in the central house to support her…

[Juana]: “Come on Juanita, come on Juanita, you can do it, you can do it,” because they saw my complaining face and I was complaining because I was really annoyed and couldn’t wait for what had to happen to happen.

[Daniel]: Outside the small infirmary, the members of the first Antarctic neighborhood were getting more and more impatient. It was 8 degrees below zero and the wind was blowing in gusts of 74 kilometers per hour.

They didn’t know what would arrive first: the team of doctors or the baby.

A pause and we’ll be back…

[Daniel]: We’re back on Radio Ambulante. Patricia Serrano continues telling us…

[Patricia]: Juana was very scared in the emergency room, about to give birth to her third child.

The doctor was increasingly nervous, waiting for the arrival of his colleagues from the other base. But the weather conditions weren’t improving and the team still couldn’t fly.

The labor was already very advanced so the doctor began to come to terms with facing the moment alone. He asked his wife for help, who had once taken a nursing course.

As soon as Néstor, Juana’s husband, arrived, he also offered to help…

[Norma]: My dad acted as a nurse with the doctor’s wife. And when we weren’t paying attention my sister was born.

[Patricia]: Only then did they know it was a girl. The first woman in the history of humanity to be born in Antarctica.

[Juana]: And they took her to clean her up. And then they brought her to me clean, wrapped like that in a towel and put her next to me.

[Patricia]: It was her father who was in charge of choosing the name.

[Juana]: Marisa de las Nieves because she was born here in the snow.

[Patricia]: The base’s radio operator announced the news over the loudspeaker to the entire neighborhood.

The birth was celebrated in Antarctica but also in Argentina. It was announced as a historic event, an important point for the sovereignty claim on Antarctic soil…

This is how the military government communicated it through the newspapers and radios of the time:

“At the Fortín Sargento Cabral of Esperanza base, in Argentine Antarctica, yesterday, at 19:5, Mrs. Juana Paula Benítez, wife of Sergeant Néstor Arturo Delgado, gave birth to little Marisa de las Nieves…”

[Patricia]: Marisa’s birth certificate stated that she was a bicontinental Argentine. Place of Birth: Esperanza Base, Antarctica. Nationality: Argentine.

After the birth of Marisa de las Nieves, the weather became increasingly harsh: wind and snow storms, very few hours of sun per day. So the family spent almost all their time inside the house. Norma remembers that winter seemed eternal.

[Norma]: We were I think practically two months without going out, that we went from the bedroom to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the bedroom and we didn’t do anything else.

[Patricia]: Only when spring was approaching did Juana dare to leave her house with Marisa. But she had to bundle her up very well, even more than her other children.

[Juana]: From the Antarctic clothing, from the same fabric, I made a little bag for the baby so after all her clothes that are warm we put her in the bag.

[Patricia]: And so, bundled up in Antarctic fabric, they went out into the snow. The first few times Juana didn’t dare to hold her in her arms: she was afraid of falling…

[Juana]: So everyone offered to carry the baby. No, no way, so Juanita doesn’t fall on top of the baby.

[Patricia]: She had the same fear she had felt during pregnancy, that feeling of feeling fragile in the face of the harsh climate and Antarctic terrain.

[Patricia]: Having a baby was quite a distraction for the neighborhood. Without television or radio, life centered on visiting the new member of the neighborhood.

[Juana]: My house was like the hospital, because people came in all the time whoever wanted to because I had just given birth and I had my baby. We were all like family.

[Patricia]: Here’s La Flaca again:

[Adela]: We all wanted to be there, to go see her. Me especially. I love kids. I wanted to see her every day, even if just for a little while in the morning or at some point in the day to see how the baby was.

[Patricia]: The baby’s arrival also changed life for her siblings. They had more tasks they could help with and less time to be bored when it was almost impossible to leave the house.

[Norma]: Once my sister was born, I already had my favorite toy, so I didn’t need anything else.

[Patricia]: Norma and Gabriel entertained themselves by giving her the bottle, helping to change her, washing her clothes…

[Gabriel]: We had made a song for her too […] I remember we went humming a song for her and everything was the joy of having the baby in the house.

[Patricia]: Those months passed quickly and soon it was time to return to Argentina… Since from the beginning it was stipulated that they would live there for only about 10 months and then exchange with new families who would come to occupy the same neighborhood. But Juana had already overcome her fears and if it were up to her she would have stayed.

[Juana]: I didn’t want to leave. I don’t know. I got used to those risks because it’s risky, you have to be careful, you have to know. And it’s beautiful. You just have to know the terrain and you don’t have to be afraid…

[Patricia]: But they had to follow the plan, so by the end of 1978 they returned to the American continent. The Delgado family returned with one more member and without knowing if any other time, any of them, would have the possibility of stepping on Antarctic soil again.

[Patricia]: Marisa de las Nieves was six months old when she arrived for the first time at her family’s house in Buenos Aires.

Everyone returned to the life they had left behind. Néstor returned to his job as an Army cook and Juana to her life as a housewife.

And Gabriel and Norma returned to their old school, but now with a great adventure to tell…

[Norma]: It was super important because I was a total star. You know when they start asking you questions and you feel like you’re the only one who lived that experience. It was a very pleasant feeling.

[Patricia]: Antarctica continued to be the great theme that ran through the family’s life.

So while little Marisa de las Nieves grew up, the stories about that white and distant world where she had been born were present all the time… This is Marisa:

[Marisa de las Nieves]: My personality was built based on photographs, on stories of experiences. I remember when I was little that sometimes I thought I remembered things, but no, no, I mean, no, I don’t remember. It’s the repetition and seeing the photos and everything else.

[Patricia]: It had become a family tradition to sit and look at the photos of that special year they had spent in Antarctica…

[Marisa]: It gave me, I think it’s called nostalgia, right? To sit and go through the slides from the time when I was born and see them seeing me there, in that place. And well, with all that, play with imagination, memory, the construction of memory, the construction of identity.

[Patricia]: Something very strange happened to her. Because she was the main protagonist of the story but at the same time she felt outside of it.

[Marisa]: I could even say it was a little bit of envy that my older siblings along with my parents knew the place of birth, lived the whole experience and I didn’t […] it’s like one, one is isolated from everything they had to talk about and what they shared. And I was just a spectator and only listened to those stories.

[Patricia]: Meanwhile, births like hers continued to be national news. Every year, in a rigorous government plan, a new family committee traveled to Antarctica and always one or two pregnant women were part of the crew.

Very soon Chile imitated the strategy and also sent families to its base on the continent. In 1984 the first Chilean Antarctic child was born in Villa Las Estrellas, a base located on King George Island.

To this day these births are talked about as a race between the two countries to claim sovereignty rights over that territory.

That tension between Argentina and Chile had been going on for some years. In fact, in 1978 they almost went to war over the so called Beagle Channel conflict, a territorial dispute over the sovereignty of three islands.

But there’s an important detail we have to mention: the Antarctic Treaty.

The treaty was signed by 12 countries in Washington on December 1, 1959. There were Argentina, Chile, the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Russia, among others.

The most important point of the treaty is that the signatory countries agreed to suspend or freeze their sovereignty claims over Antarctica and committed to it being for exclusive use for scientific research and international cooperation.

[Pablo]: According to the Antarctic Treaty, nothing done in Antarctica while the Antarctic Treaty is in force can be used to substantiate or claim sovereignty. In that sense, according to the Antarctic Treaty, these births or the families that inhabit Antarctica cannot be used for this purpose.

[Patricia]: He is historian Pablo Fontana, communication coordinator of the Argentine Antarctic Institute. According to Pablo’s explanation, it was more than anything a symbolic act, a way to foster national feeling about that distant territory…

[Pablo]: This issue of births, also as a patriotic function, a function of, well, sovereignty, of being patriotic there in Antarctica, right? It was seen that way.

[Patricia]: And on the other hand, betting that, in the future, births in Antarctica might serve to support that claim.

A strategy that lasted a short time since Argentina, with the return to democracy in 1983, stopped sending pregnant women to Antarctica. And the last Chilean child was born in 1985.

In total 11 human beings were born in Antarctica: 8 Argentines and 3 Chileans. 11 people in more than 200 years since the discovery of that land.

[Patricia]: But let ‘s go back to Marisa de las Nieves.

While growing up in Buenos Aires something inside her felt incomplete. Of course she had no memory of the first months of her life in Antarctica. All she knew were the stories they told her and the photos she saw.

Her mom kept a folder with newspaper clippings from that time. For the family it was a source of pride that Marisa was the first Antarctic woman, but for those who remembered nothing of that place, it was something difficult to understand and explain.

[Marisa]: Actually, when I was little, if I couldn’t say I was born in Antarctica, it was better. When they asked me where I was from, I said I was from Buenos Aires because I lived in Buenos Aires.

[Patricia]: Because, besides, Marisa remembers that in elementary school, when they studied geography, Antarctica didn’t even appear on some maps… And on the ones where it did appear…

[Marisa]: It was the map of Argentina. And in a tiny little square, there on the side was Antarctica, like added there.

[Patricia]: Something that felt insignificant. I don’t know if you did this when you were little… Look at maps of your cities or your countries and locate yourselves on them. Confirm that the place you call your homeland really exists. Maps guide us: they take us from one place to another, but they also tell us our place in the world.

For Marisa seeing her birthplace so separate from the map was a way —silent, but constant— of feeling that she didn’t quite belong.

[Marisa]: It’s like you don’t matter, you’re Argentine, but second-class, it seemed because they didn’t even study where you were born.

[Patricia]: So her relationship with Antarctica was complex. Juana remembers that Marisa often asked her…

[Juana]: And mom? And who are we who were born in Antarctica? Why are we Antarctic? Where am I from?

[Marisa]: The yearning to return was always very intense. Those desires of any child and then also an adult to want to know where one comes from, what one’s roots are.

[Patricia]: Marisa begged her mom to please take her. But Juana explained to her over and over that it wasn’t possible. Returning wasn’t so easy. To begin with, the only people authorized to travel to Antarctica are those who go to work at Argentine bases. Marisa’s own father was part of other committees after her birth, but she, who wasn’t part of the Argentine Army, as a civilian, couldn’t travel.

[Marisa]: At least he, who was my dad, who was part of the family, was always in contact. I mean, it’s like the umbilical cord was never cut with the continent, with Antarctica, and that was also like a relief, right? Even though I can’t go back, at least my dad keeps going.

[Patricia]: A kind of consolation prize.

[Marisa]: That, I think also added a lot to the attachment and also compensated too much for that lack.

[Patricia]: But her family knew that for Marisa it was very important to return. That’s why they asked the Antarctic Command of the Argentine Army to include her, exceptionally, in some campaigns. They did it over and over… throughout Marisa’s childhood and adolescence. And then, when she was older, Marisa herself also insisted several times with the request.

For almost 20 years they were claiming. And although they thought they would never achieve it, one day, when Marisa was already a university student, the phone rang at her house. It was the year 2000 and on the other end of the line they were about to give her the news she had waited for her whole life: she could finally visit the place where she was born.

[Daniel]: A pause and we’ll be back…

[Daniel]: We’re back. Patricia continues with the story…

[Patricia]: The news took her by surprise. After so much insisting, the Antarctic Command of the Argentine Army finally invited her to travel to Antarctica. She would be the first to return of the eight Argentines born there.

She had to prepare to leave in just three days. She didn’t think twice and accepted: she would spend 27 days in the place where she was born, she would travel with a committee of military personnel who would do the annual replacement of personnel and would finally get to know that white world she had imagined so much…

The trip was similar to the one her family made in 1978. They traveled by military plane from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia and waited for the exact moment to embark on the ship journey. Marisa, now an adult, had a much better time on the ship than her pregnant mother many years earlier. Then they flew by helicopter to Esperanza Base, her birthplace.

[Marisa]: I remember when we arrived it was very windy. It seemed like I was on the moon. There were these people with suits that looked like spacesuits because they were silver. I froze at the helicopter door. No, no, I couldn’t get down. I couldn’t take the step onto land. And when I got down, my legs were shaking.

[Patricia]: She was for the second time in her life at her birthplace. But this time she would remember it. So during those days Marisa dedicated herself to walking, observing, talking with all the people she could. She didn’t want to miss anything.

One of the things that impressed her most was the sound of that distant continent…

[Marisa]: It’s silent… At night it’s silent. During the day you can hear a little wind, maybe some bird or other. The sound of the waves. There’s no light, you can see all the stars, all the constellations and it seems like each little star or each little light has a sound.

[Patricia]: What she wanted most was to try to understand what her family’s life had been like there, what things had changed and which ones remained the same.

It saddened her to learn that house number three -her house- no longer existed. Now the houses were more modern, with greater comforts and the inhabitants were a little more than 60. But otherwise, almost everything remained the same, like the custom of everyone gathering in the central house to eat pizza on Friday nights.

[Marisa]: And well, it was just like my dad’s photographs, I mean, all white, the little orange houses, everything so monotonous but at the same time so beautiful, so sublime, so simple and so beautiful!

[Marisa]: And when I got there and saw and lived it and was there and touched it and breathed it. It’s like ‘Wow, here I do feel at home.’ This is me. This. This is true. This is part of me. It’s not a story, it’s not a photograph. If the photograph no longer exists I already have my own memory.

[Patricia]: Finally she was experiencing that story about her origin, and now she did feel that she could, somehow, complete that identity for which she had been known and named since her birth.

[Patricia]: Marisa de las Nieves returned to Buenos Aires changed by the Antarctic experience. And as usually happens after achieving something we search for so much, she continued with her life: she became a lawyer, fell in love, decided to get married and move to New York, had children… Well, life continued far from Antarctica. Until a few years ago, the curiosity to know what the lives of the few others who are like her were like returned to her mind…

[Marisa]: Because there comes a moment when you don’t have someone to share with, someone to reflect with, when you don’t have another who comes from your same place, I mean, with whom you can identify 100%, there comes a moment like you start to doubt or you say well, yes I know, I was born in Antarctica, but so what, with whom do I share it, with whom? With whom do I talk about this? With whom?

[Patricia]: So Marisa began to track down the other Antarctics through social media. The first one she found was José Manuel Valladares Solís, the sixth of the eight Argentines born in Antarctica…

They had only seen each other twice in their entire lives. This is José:

[José Manuel Valladares Solís]: I was eight, nine years old. They brought together the eight Argentine Antarctic natives at the Antarctic Command in Buenos Aires, and they took a photo of us. I think it’s the only photo we have together, on that occasion I met Marisa for the first time.

[Patricia]: Then they saw each other once more, at another event, when they were about 20. And after that they lost contact. Until, at the end of 2022, Marisa called him on the phone.

[Marisa]: And well, the first thing he said to me was I also wanted to call you. So there, that was the click. We started to chat, we started to realize that what happens to us is true, it’s real, it’s not invented, it’s not fabricated. It happened to him too. We started to… to have this connection of seeing yourself reflected in the other.

[Patricia]: It was a relief. Like her, José had also always been curious about that Antarctic birth that, he felt, differentiated him from the rest…

[José]: Since I was little I identified as Antarctic. I grew up listening to my dad’s anecdotes. My dad was military, he was a colonel in the Argentine Army and dedicated a large part of his life to Antarctica, right? And I grew up listening to movie-like stories that were truly hard to believe.

[Patricia]: Stories that, like Marisa, he couldn’t remember and that seemed from another planet… like hunting seals to feed the dogs.

But the story of his birth is quite different from Marisa’s. At the beginning of 1980, when Marisa was already in Buenos Aires about to turn two years old, José’s dad went to Antarctica as an emergency, after Esperanza Base suffered a fire. He was going on an official visit to bring materials for reconstruction and see how the families living there were doing.

[José]: My mother, who was six months pregnant, hadn’t reached the seventh month of pregnancy and insisted that she wanted to travel. My dad initially refused because he knew Antarctica very well and knew the risks involved.

[Patricia]: But mom insisted so a medical board was formed and they resolved that she could travel. The doctors assured that there was no possibility that the birth would be premature… But it was premature and José ended up being born, by accident, in Antarctica.

[José]: In fact, the most comical thing is that, right?, that my father questioned births in Antarctica because he knew about the lack of infrastructure and knew, firsthand, the harsh weather conditions and the risks that could exist. So he had a bit of a dialectic: do what the army asked him to do, as a military man, as a patriot, as an Argentine, or do what he considered correct. As a father. With a bit of common sense. And the reality is that he never imagined I was going to be born there.

[Patricia]: Unlike Marisa, since childhood José proudly told about his Antarctic birth. Although sometimes his identity also brought him some problems.

[José Manuel]: There are many things in between that happened, not nice things, ugly things. And I also understand why there’s a certain anger. There’s a certain resentment for how they treated us, right? And how things developed.

[Patricia]: For example, birth certificates. It took José years to be able to obtain a copy of his when he needed to present it abroad. Having been born in Antarctica, territory that is considered Argentine, but in legal practice is not, was a headache for paperwork.

[José]: That makes you angry, it makes you mad because on the other hand, you know that Argentina uses our births to increase a sovereignty claim, you understand? So you say, geez, for one thing we’re Antarctic and we’re useful, but for the other they can’t even give me a birth certificate.

[Patricia]: Marisa and other Antarctic natives have also had problems getting that document. They also feel that lack of recognition in not having the possibility to freely return to the place where they were born.

[José Manuel]: If you’re not a scientist or military, no matter that you were born there, you don’t have possibilities to return or visit, unless you have a lot of money and can go as a tourist, which is something more recent, right?

[Patricia]: So far, José hasn’t been able to return… It’s a pending account he has.

[José]: I would love for all of us to get together and meet in Antarctica. It would be a dream.

[Patricia]: A dream that Marisa understands very well.

[Marisa]: And it’s very important. It’s very important not only to finish forming one’s identity, but I think it’s also about being a right. Isn’t it true? To have the possibility of visiting the place that saw you be born.

[Patricia]: In that first call Marisa and José talked about all this and also wondered about what would happen to the others born in Antarctica, if that birth on the most inhospitable continent on the planet had also marked them like it had them. So they set out to look for them. They had crossed paths as children at events but had never met on their own initiative and, much less, to chat about what it meant to be Antarctic.

After a few weeks, Marisa and José managed to bring together six of the eight Argentines in a video call.

[Marisa]: That was another experience, like having arrived in Antarctica. Because we realized that we all thought the same and felt the same, we all said the same thing. I always felt like a fish out of water because no one could understand me.

[Patricia]: That feeling of incomprehension, or perhaps the recognition of the rarity as a group, led them to talk more about the history of their births.

[Marisa]: That it’s not a particular story of ours and nothing more. It’s part of the history of humanity.

[Patricia]: Sometimes one feels that they have doubts or questions that no one else can understand. It makes you feel weird or crazy… In the case of Marisa and the other Antarctics, in fact, only another 10 people among the billions in the world can have them. And they had them. And finally, for them, Antarctica stopped feeling like that lonely place, that place in the corner of the map.

[Daniel]: Only five of the eight Argentines born in Antarctica have been able to return to visit their birthplace.

In September 2023, Marisa, José Manuel and other Antarctic natives created the Native Antarcticans foundation to share their stories.

Patricia Serrano is an Argentine journalist and lives in Asheville, North Carolina. She co-produced this story with Aneris Casassus. Aneris is a producer for Radio Ambulante and lives in Buenos Aires.

Thanks to Eugenio Facchin, whom we also interviewed for this episode. And to Hugo Lapiana for lending us his voice to recreate the radio announcement.

This story was edited by Camila Segura, Luis Fernando Vargas and by me. Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. Sound design and music are by Andrés Azpiri.

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Adriana Bernal, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, Laura Rojas-Aponte, David Trujillo and Elsa Liliana Ulloa.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO.

Radio Ambulante is a podcast by Radio Ambulante Estudios, it’s produced and mixed in the Hindenburg PRO program.

If you liked this episode and want us to continue doing independent journalism about Latin America, support us through Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donar and help us continue narrating the region.

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thanks for listening.