Bentley Snow and Dr. Mark Grover, Harold B. Lee Library

The vitality of the Welsh culture has suffered significantly due to the pressures of globalization. Marginalized even in their homeland, the Welsh way of life was dying out due to disinterest on the part of the rising generation, something which greatly concerned the shrinking number of this people who still clung to their culture in the face of mounting pressures to accept assimilation. Even in 1865, in fact, pressures were such that 153 Welsh men, women and children left their homeland with hopes to preserve their language and their culture. The party sailed across the Atlantic towards the Patagonia—the rugged frontier of southern Argentina—and colonized what is now the Chubut province.

Despite the patriotism of the Welsh, both in Wales itself and the Patagonian colony, in the mid-1900s both areas were succumbing to the encroachment of the English and Argentine cultures respectively, and it was projected that Welsh—one of the oldest living languages in Europe—would die out in the Patagonia before the 21st century, and perhaps not long after in Wales itself. However, it seems the realization that their culture was truly facing extinction catalyzed the Welsh into action. The Welsh began a campaign of self-preservation which reached across the Atlantic and included the descendents of the Patagonian colony. The mutual investment of these peoples, both in terms of time and money, resulted in a rally that ultimately included not just people of Welsh descent, but many others who were inspired by the passion of that people for their culture. It seems the element of transatlantic cooperation played an indispensable role: whether it was direct help or simply the awareness that they were not clinging to the same language and identity alone, the campaign seems to have been successful. Both in Wales itself and the Chubut region of Argentina, all that must be done for the culture’s preservation is to follow its new trajectory, because now it’s headed up.

The initial aim of my project was to assess the vitality of the Welsh culture, and to ascertain its vitality’s trajectory, through interviewing a variety of Argentines. This included those with and without Welsh ancestry. By assembling a collection of personal opinions, I hoped to detect the climate of optimism or pessimism on an individual level—a valuable indicator of the direction things were headed.

Though I expected the warm Welsh-Argentine people to facilitate the project in some degree, I was unprepared for the enthusiasm with which they both greeted and accommodated me in any way they could. The director for the Welsh Language Project in Chubut drove me around the town of Gaiman, pointing out Welsh tea houses, chapels, and homes; the mayor of Gaiman put himself entirely at my disposal for a lengthy and invaluable interview; the Welsh instructor in Esquel welcomed me to her classroom and told me all about her lessons, her students, and her home (Wales); and with no other pass than the purpose of my project, I had complete strangers open their doors to me and share the pieces of their cultural that were often intimate aspects of their identities. Though my preliminary research mentioned the efforts that had been made to preserve the culture—and even told me it seemed to be succeeding—nothing was more convincing than knowing all the personal benefits I received were in the name of cultural preservation, or sharing a moment with a tourism director while he wept, describing singing the Welsh national anthem in the homeland of his grandfather.

And these were the reasons I changed my project from a research paper to a documentary. I had intended to assemble statistics and to quote authorities. As I mulled things over, prior to departure for Argentina, I realized that there was no way I could on paper capture many of the most beautiful aspects of the Welsh culture, and that I would thus be deprived of some of my most convincing evidence. Of course, I had been thinking of pictures of tea houses and footage of the beautiful Patagonian landscape. I am very grateful for Dr. Mark Grover’s support in this perhaps most significant revision of my project, which was critical for capturing its spirit and accomplishing its aim. As I have said, for me, the incontrovertible proof that the Welsh culture will continue to rally and even to thrive was the passion of individuals, the sincerity of their responses. They were totally committed, and independently so, because, as one said, “Being Welsh is a passion….It’s what I’m about. It’s what makes me, me.”

Crafting the documentary became the most difficult part of the project by far. I tried to represent the Welsh culture, passion of individuals for it, and maintain the narrative of the Patagonia’s settlement and subsequent cooperative rally between the colony and the homeland. About 10-12 hours of interviews made for plenty of information to sift, organize, and amalgamate, especially when searching for a small scrap of footage or single line. I wish I had had more experience in making movies, but despite knowing a paper would have been easier to write at a scholarly level, remained convinced that this was the best way and do not regret doing it. All participants requested copies of the final product, which I will mail them soon. The greatest flaw in the project was the practical impossibility of adding subtitles. The documentary ended up being an hour long, the vast majority of it in Spanish (except in the cases of the Welsh instructor in Esquel and a traveler met in a tea house: they were both from Wales and were interviewed in English). No equipment was available to facilitate transcribing Spanish audio (the thick Argentine accents precluded automatic options), translating it into English, or then applying it in sync with the Spanish speaking. I decided that capturing and telling the story of the Welsh as well as I could in Spanish was more important than investing a significant portion of the time to simply making it in English. So take that globalization. The project absorbed an incredible amount of time and would not have been possible without the help of a friend who traveled with me and facilitated the technical aspects of it with nothing short of magnanimity.

Ultimately I believe the project will serve to stoke the fire of Welsh revivalism further, which is my greatest satisfaction, but will furthermore contribute to informing anyone interested (who speaks Spanish) more about a marginalized culture and its tenacious determination to overcome globalizing forces such as economics in order to preserve something that to them means much, much more. Several friends I made on the trip enjoined me to learn Welsh, and if I get the chance, I will. I have already explored Masters degree options with representatives of Cardiff University, friends of my new contacts. If nothing else a copy of the project will be made available in BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library, and I will present it this summer at the annual Malad Valley Welsh Festival, in Malad, Idaho, where another branch of the Welsh Diaspora landed but failed to maintain its language. However, as they still cherish their culture, perhaps they too can be inspired to rediscover their language and themselves.