When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime .

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital Magazine NEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Countries

'Grandma' Cristina, Lone Surviving Voice Of Yaghan Language

Calderon in 2014
Calderon in 2014
Benjamin Witte

VILLA UKIKA — Just outside of Puerto Williams, the world's southernmost city, lives an extraordinary woman. This far-flung outpost on Chile's Tierra del Fuego, across the Straight of Magellan, is quiet literally at the end of the earth. And at 89, Cristina Calderón is nearing the end of her life — when she will take an entire language with her.

Locals call her "abuela" (grandmother, in Spanish), which isn't surprising given the many offspring, and offspring of offspring she has. But Calderón is more than just the mother of seven surviving children, 14 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren, the Chilean radio station ADN reports. She's the last full-blooded representative of an entire people, the Yaghan, which have inhabited the area on and around Tierra del Fuego — the far southern tip of South America — for millennia.

Since the death of her sister several years ago, Calderón is also considered the last surviving native speaker of the Yaghan language. "There are others who understand it. But they don't know it like I do," she told a group of reporters earlier this month in Villa Ukika, the village where she lives with some of the few hundred Yaghan descendants thought to still remain.

Little wonder that in 2009 the Chilean government recognized Calderón as a "Living Human Treasure," a distinction UNESCO encourages for people "who possess to a high degree the knowledge and skills required for performing or re-creating specific elements of the intangible cultural heritage." She was later honored as "an illustrious daughter" of the country's Region of Magallanes and Chilean Antarctica.

The Yaghan were once a nomadic people who traveled by canoe, fished and hunted seals around Tierra del Fuego and the archipelago of Cape Horn. Their days of fishing are over, but Calderón and others in Villa Ukika do still use traditional techniques to weave baskets and blankets, and build replica canoes.

There were an estimated 3,000 Yaghan in the mid-19th century, when Europeans first began to colonize the area. A census conducted in 2002 put the population at just under 1,700.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War

Palestinian Olive Trees Are Also Under Israeli Occupation — And That's Not A Joke

In the West Bank, a quieter form of oppression has been plaguing Palestinians for a long time. Their olive groves are surrounded by soldiers, and it's forbidden to harvest the olives – this economic and social violence has gotten far worse since Oct. 7.

A Palestinian woman holds olives in her hands

In a file photo, Um Ahmed, 74, collects olives in the village of Sarra on the southwest of the West Bank city of Nablus.

Mohammed Turabi/ZUMA
Francesca Mannocchi

HEBRON – It was after Friday prayers on October 13th of last year, and Zakaria al-Arda was walking along the road that crosses his property's hillside to return home – but he never made it.

A settler from Havat Ma'on — an outpost bordering Al-Tuwani that the United Nations International Law and Israeli law considers illegal — descended from the hill with his rifle in hand.

For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.

After kicking al-Arda, who tried to defend himself, the settler shot him in the abdomen. The bullet pierced through his stomach, a few centimeters below the lungs. Since then, al-Arda has been in the hospital in intensive care. A video of those moments clearly shows that neither al-Arda nor the other worshippers leaving the mosque were carrying any weapons.

The victim's cousin, Hafez Hureini, still lives in the town of Al-Tuwani. He is a farmer, and their house on the slope of the town is surrounded by olive trees — and Israeli soldiers. On the pine tree at the edge of his property, settlers have planted an Israeli flag. Today, Hafez lives, like everyone else, as an occupied individual.

He cannot work in his greenhouse, cannot sow his fields, and cannot harvest the olives from his precious olive trees.

Keep reading...Show less

The latest