The announcement of the death was made, Wednesday, February 16, by one of his nine children on Twitter: "My mother, Cristina Calderon, died. I am deeply saddened not to have been with her when she left. C This is sad news for the Yagans," wrote his daughter, Lidia Gonzalez Calderon, deputy vice president of the assembly responsible for drafting a new constitution for Chile. 

[DECLARACIÓN PÚBLICA]


Sobre el fallecimiento de mi madre, Cristina Calderón



Hoy, jueves 16 de febrero de 2022, falleció mi madre, depositaria de nuestras tradiciones, última hablante activa del Yagán.

Con ella se va important part of the memoria cultural de nuestro pueblo



[+] pic.twitter.com/P3SXHhavZM

— Lidia González Calderón (@lidiayagan) February 16, 2022

"All the work that I currently do [in the Constituent Assembly, Editor's note], I do in its name," she added. 

The Yagans are considered the southernmost inhabitants of the globe after having populated Cape Horn and the Great Island of Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of the American continent, more than 6,000 years ago.

This people of seasoned navigators has long been nomadic. 

Their population reached 3,500 people before the arrival of Europeans in this area in the 19th century.

It then fell sharply in a few decades, in particular because of the diseases carried by the settlers. 

The one her relatives called "grandmother Cristina" had become a symbol of the cultural resistance of the indigenous peoples of Chile. 

"I am the last yagan speaker. Others still understand, but they don't speak and don't know like me," Cristina Calderon told a group of journalists visiting her in the village of Ukika in 2017. 

This is where most of the approximately 100 descendants of the Yagans who still survive live, one kilometer from Puerto Williams, the southernmost city on the planet, south of Ushuaia (Argentina). 

"An irreparable loss"

Chile's President-elect Gabriel Boric, from Punta Arenas in southern Chile, said on Twitter that he mourned the death of Cristina Calderon, but stressed that "her love, her teachings and her struggles from the south of the world, where it all begins, will live forever". 

Hoy a los 93 años ha fallecido Cristina Calderón del pueblo Yagán.

Pero su cariño, enseñanzas y luchas desde el sur del mundo, donde todo comienza, seguirán vivos por siempre.

Un abrazo gigante a toda su familia y Villa Ukika.

No están sol@s.

— Gabriel Boric Font (@gabrielboric) February 16, 2022

After the death of her sister Ursula, Cristina Calderon was recognized in 2009 by Unesco as a "living human treasure", in particular for her role in disseminating the language and traditions of her people. 

Until the last years of her life, she devoted herself to crafts and managed to pass on to one of her granddaughters and a niece part of her knowledge of this unwritten and melodic language in endangered.

"Other generations also know the Yagan language but not at Cristina's level, so there will be an irreparable loss," anthropologist Maurice van de Maele warned five years ago.    

With AFP

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