The city I was headed to – Puerto Montt – was only connected by rail in 1913. Once completed, this north–south railway served to bind the urban north with the agricultural regions of Chile’s central valley and south. Indeed, the Chilean state had consciously built the railway as an act of nation building, to seize territories previously unobtainable, no matter how much blood had to be spilled, and to more thoroughly integrate the wild southern regions into the country …
Bio:
Ian Birch taught business and finance at universities in British Columbia and Ontario before retiring onto a wooded acreage in the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands to pursue diverse projects. This article is an excerpt from the author’s book The Last Train through the Heart of the Americas: By Rail and Road across Two Hemispheres for which he is currently seeking an agent/publisher (ianbbirch@hotmail.com).