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Pucón (Chile) (AFP)
A solar eclipse that lasted about two minutes plunged southern Chile and Argentina into darkness on Monday.
Heavy rains had threatened to prevent thousands of stargazers in Chile from seeing the eclipse, but at the last moment the clouds parted enough to make the phenomenon partially visible.
“It was beautiful, unique. The truth is that nobody had much hope of seeing it because of the weather and the clouds, but it was unique because it cleared up just in time. It was a miracle,” an emotional Matías Tordecilla 18, told AFP from the Pucón town on the shores of Lake Villarrica.
“It is something that is not only seen with the eyes, but also felt with the heart,” added Tordecilla, who traveled 10 hours with his family to see the eclipse.
In Argentine Patagonia, several families and foreigners had camped between the towns of Villa El Chocón and Piedra del Aguila in the hope of seeing the eclipse.
While there was no rain there, strong winds had threatened to affect the visibility of Chile’s second total eclipse in the past 18 months.
It hit at 1:00 pm (1600 GMT) when thousands of tourists and residents gathered, hoping the clouds would clear in time.
“It gave me goose bumps,” said Cinthia Vega, a resident of Pucón.
Despite movement restrictions imposed by authorities to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, nearly 300,000 tourists had arrived in the Araucanía region some 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of the capital Santiago.
Dozens of amateur and professional scientists mounted telescopes on the slopes of the Villarrica volcano, one of the most active in Chile, to observe the phenomenon when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth.
The eclipse was to be visible along a 90-kilometer-wide corridor from the Pacific coast of Chile through the Andes mountain range and into Argentina.
In July 2019, some 300,000 people flocked to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, home to several observatories, to view the previous eclipse.
– Battle with the force of evil –
Chilean authorities were concerned that the eclipse would attract large concentrations of people.
There have been more than 570,000 coronavirus cases among the population of 18 million with nearly 16,000 confirmed deaths.
Strict controls were announced for the areas where the total eclipse would be visible, with free movement prohibited both the day before and after.
This event was eagerly awaited by the Mapuche indigenous community of Chile, the largest group of its kind in the south of the country.
In Mapuche culture, an eclipse signifies the temporary death of the sun during a battle between the star and an evil force known as “Wekufu”.
The indigenous people worshiped the sun “like a God,” astronomer José Maza told AFP last week.
According to indigenous expert Juan Nanculef, people lit bonfires and threw “stones and arrows into the air” to aid the sun in its battle against the Wekufu.
Nanculef actually performed a ritual when the eclipse began asking nature to end the rains and make it visible.
“Previously it was 100 percent effective,” he said.
This time it seems to have worked well enough for people to get a glimpse of the eclipse.
© 2020 AFP
