February 27, 2025

Ushuaia, Argentina is known as Fin Del Mundo (The End of the World) because of its southern most position in Argentina the last stop before reaching the Antarctic. I enjoyed seeing the monuments along the waterfront to Magellan and other polar explorers who went beyond the “end of the world”.

This continent has been obsessed with the End of the World for centuries. At least a half a dozen times by now South America has thought the end of the world was supposed to have occurred, yet we continue to go on.

The prediction you might be familiar with was that according to the Mayan Calendar the world was going to come to an end. The date was December 21, 2012. In Buenos Aires, locals partied at the cities night clubs and judging by the bar tabs party goers took a hedonistic approach to the world ending wanting to “go out with a bang!” In Chile, astronomers star gazed, UFO enthusiasts gathered, and mystics used psychedelic drugs, but the world did not come to an end.

Hundreds of years earlier the Guarni people of Peru and Chile took a more spiritual approach to the world ending with the philosophy of Yvy Mara Ey (land without evil). The Guarni people believed that a paradise existed somewhere on earth free of suffering, free of hunger, free from death. For centuries their leaders lead their people on great migrations. Deep within the mountains they would travel sometimes reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Looking for this new world land of peace some would throw themselves into the ocean to their death believing that this land must be somewhere beyond the horizon. (This was different that “Suicide Cliff” that I described in my blog of February 20, 2024. Thousands of Saipan civilians jumped to their death, sometimes holding their children, because they were told by the Japanese armed forces that American soldiers would commit atrocities against them if they surrendered. A tragic event, indeed.)

Look at the map below.

You will note that there are many islands beyond Cape Horn that could qualify for the end of the earth. Yet it is Argentina and Chile who have fought over the end of the world for hundreds of years.

Magellan discovered the straits that bear his name and in 1881 a treaty was signed that whichever country had the highest peak in the Andes would control the islands at the end of the Beagle Channel. There was, however, ongoing ambiguity over the words of the treaty.

In 1977, Argentina and Chile continued to claim ownership of the islands, so they submitted to an international tribunal overseen by Great Britian. Great Britian ruled in favor of Chile. In December 1977, Argentina headed to the Falkland Islands instead and attempted a military siege of the Falklands. The siege was short-lived as Pope John Paul II intervened confirming Chile’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. As I shared in a previous blog, this is why you see so many crosses at the entry to ports in Chile honoring Pope John Paul II.

The morning after I finished this blog, I read an article in the digital New York Times that I subscribe to, and it showed the results of a recent Pew Poll regarding Religion in America. Here were the results:

“Spirituality is not declining. And in fact, it’s high; it’s stable,” said Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota.

And what might surprise you is that The United States is an outlier compared with most other Western countries, which are far less religious. America’s persistent religious and spiritual curiosity is at the center of its power.

Americans pray more often, are more likely to attend weekly religious services and value faith in their lives more than adults in other wealthy democracies like Canada, Australia and most European countries.

Although some might suggest that faith is on the decline in the United States the Pew Research data does not support that. More importantly it is evident that the age-old question of what happens at the end of the world is one that the world still continues to seek an answer for. Seventy-Nine percent of Americans believe that there is something spiritual beyond the natural world.

How you relate to that spiritual world is the most important question you will ever answer.

Thanks for traveling with us.

(I am sending this blog out late as internet connections may be lost without warning due to our Antarctica position and satellite interruptions from local geographical blockages.)