“We can never understand a plant without having understood what the world is”
Emanuele Coccia.
Helecheros (Fern Harvester)
Since I learned about the profession of Ferns I couldn’t contain my curiosity. Maybe it was that I love the sound of the word HE-LE-CHO when pronounced; and because my childhood was surrounded by flowers and plants. I remembered how ferns are used in the wreaths of the dead and in cemeteries… I didn’t like that part as a girl; Luckily, my florist grandfather made few wreaths. He detested the “saw” ferns, which were the most coveted.
Determined, I called Vasco and the range of workers began to open. I met cousins Daniel and Héctor, fourth generation of Helecheros and grandchildren of the first female helechero: Doña Ángela. They told me that it was the Italian immigrant Forza who introduced the craft to the town in the 60s. Then, they themselves began to sell them in the flower markets of La Plata and Buenos Aires.
The curiosity of the beginning led to a day of work with the Helecheros, I accompanied them to see and feel in my own body the weight of a harsh way of subsistence. The meeting was scheduled at 4 in the morning, on the side of Route 226 that connects Balcarce with Mar del Plata. In complete darkness, I could barely see two lit streetlights when I had to abandon my car due to the mud from the previous night’s rain. I continued the night trip among many people packed together, in a van shaken like a shaker.
I did not go alone, I asked for help to be able to record what was happening, the physical effort of climbing the mountains was accompanied by taking photos and videos. The images were offered but, above all, through listening and feeling at each step I was able to perceive the ground, understand the richness of that black and light earth, of layers of ancient peat, germinal strata for spores scattered through the air. The cold wind sows and reproduces ferns, mosses and lichens, witnesses of the first forms of life that populated and dominated the earth’s surface millions of years ago. I felt the eternity of time in my hands.
I saw how between the gaps in the stones, full of colorful specks like polka dots, green beings grew curled up and hidden. Its bulbs with roots escape the quick and safe sickle of the Fern Trees, but there are at least between 10 and 12 branches that fall, careful and light. A yellow and agile thread transforms them into prodigious and seductive “pinitos”, which are lying on a canvas half to one side, half to the other, like trees between neighboring fields. Then, a rope mixes them and tightens them without damaging them. All together and girded in a bundle, the initial lightness of the leaves is transformed into a bulk, into a fat shape, because it is fat and spongy, which the men forcefully make climb on their backs. And like giant 70 kilo caterpillars they push from behind and accelerate the already fast feet of the guides, in a forced descent towards the vehicle that will transport them.
The Fern Workers’ work day ended before noon with the sun almost high. All of us together returned to the city to resume our routine the next day. On the other hand, the final journey of the ferns, the green pines, will be in two weeks to celebrate the dead and decorate other lives.
Marcela Cabutti , 2022.
Marcela Cabutti. Chronicle of the fern day of February 22, 2021
The photographic and video story are donated to the Museum in order to incorporate this invisible profession along with the Museum’s historical photos that include hairdressers, singers, boxers, thieves, announcers, entrepreneurs and even the most famous dog in the city.
Thanks
Zarategui´s Family
Municipalidad de Balcarce
Esteban Reino, Sebastián Vidal, Juan Best.
Museo Histórico de Balcarce
Cesar Gustavo De Gerónimo, Irene Rodríguez, Sonia Van Vliet, Beresiarte Silvia, Romina Contrera. Celeste Ridao.
Asociación Civil Centro Cultural Salamone, El Matadero
Ana Ramos
Collaborators
Gustavo Muñoz, Martín Oscar, Santiago Pando ,Claudia Bruschetti, Ale y Horacio Fontana, Mory Said, Inta, Federico Miri, Adolfo Ibargüengoitia, Marcelo Bruschetti, Sandra Bruschetti, Rosa María Collavita, Emanuel Pastorino, Carlos Ogando, Mario Angelini, Eduardo de Gracia, libros de Jorge Dágata y Malena Sabatino.
Colección Fasy, Gastón Wyslawsky, Silvina Rancich, Silvina Cavallaro, Carlos Servat, Natalia Pastorino, Mario Moltedo, Fausto Tolosa, Tercera Persona editorial (Juan Pablo Montero y Leticia Barbeito), Mariela Vita, May Borovinsky, Alvaro Rufiner, Carolina Muzi.
Territorial context
Precambrian geography
The project to work artistically in the mountain territory of Balcarce arose through an invitation in 2018, which took place during the Pandemic.
From a geographical point of view, the Tandilia System, including Balcarce, is part of the Río de Plata Craton, along with the province of Entre Ríos, Martín García Island, part of Uruguay and Brazil. Cratons are the oldest tectonic plates and basements on the planet, where the outer crust of the Earth rests. The Río de La Plata Craton and the African Craton, in the current cities of Balcarce and Namibia, were part of the continent of Pangea and Gondwana millions of years ago. Dating studies of the stones in both places (so distant today) prove that both territories have the same mineral origin and demonstrate that they were united in a very remote past.
The mountain ranges that surround the city of Balcarce are 7 and were named: Cerro El Morro, Sierra Larga and Sierra La Chata, Sierra la Barrosa including Cerro El Triunfo, Sierra la Vigilancia and Sierra la Brava, Sierra del Volcán (Puerta del Abra), Sierra Bachicha that includes Cerro Primero, Cerro Segundo, El Paulino, El Sarnoso or Heusser and finally the Cinco Cerros hill, which in turn includes El deceased, El Partido, La Paja, Piedra Alta and El Quemado.
The exceptionality of the Punta Tota site where the territory of Argentina was “born” geologically, at the foot of the Sierra Bachicha, consists of the existence of rocks of Precambrian origin that are 2,200 million years old and granites that are 1,700 million years old. There are also vestiges of marine sediments from an ancient extinct sea: all these geological treasures, just a few meters deep, allow us to “read” traces in the terrain of the extensive temporal process of formation of the Earth’s surface. The most abundant rocks are orthoquartzites: a sedimentary sequence called the Balcarce Formation, the misnamed “Mar del Plata Stone”.
I immediately link it with time: geological time, historical time, individual and social times and above all the time of preserved and degraded nature.
Step on the rocks of the past and those of the future. Feeling the strangeness defined by millions of years in our body while we also exercise our memory, in a proposed conscious journey, configured by pieces shaped by the force of nature, it is no coincidence that during the Pandemic these landscapes are revisited and enjoyed.