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CWM HYFRYD-A WELSH SETTLEMENT IN THE PATAGONIAN ANDES MOST of the attention given to the historical study of the Welsh settlement of Patagonia has focused upon the Lower Chubut Valley which was the first location occupied and which attracted most of the settlers who emigrated from Wales.1 The main offshoot of the first settlement, the Andean settlement of Cwm Hyfryd, has not exactly been ignored2, but a study of the origin and growth of this settlement has not been undertaken as a study in its own right. The value of such a study lies in the need to understand how a cultural group re-adapts in pioneering an area under conditions quite different from the area of original adaptation. While it might be useful to consider the settlement as a community, a fuller under- standing of the adaptive process can be gained by considering the articulation of the community to the wider society of which it is a part. This article considers the early history of this offshoot of the Welsh settlement in the Lower Chubut Valley by looking at the motivation involved in the establishment of the settlement, the spatial, cultural and social aspects of community organisation and the nature of the economic articulation. By so doing it becomes possible to recognise both continuities and change in aspects of Welsh culture within the new homeland. 1. Opening Up the Settlement While the settlement of Cwm Hyfryd of 16 de Octubre was a natural pioneer extension of the Welsh attempt to colonize southern Patagonia, it was the result of different motives from those that lay behind the settlement in the east. An understanding of them requires a discussion of some of the background to the earlier Welsh settle- ment in the Lower Chubut Valley. In many respects this earlier venture, which involved the populating of the barren steppes of Patagonia by those who felt obliged to leave their native Wales in search of a cultural dream, was a 'stop gap' measure prompted by I ?rlyniWTilliams' 'The Structure and Process of Welsh Emigration to Patagonia', ante, VIII, No. 1 (June 1976), 42-74. nf win?' for example, chapter 12 of R. Bryn Williams, Y Wladfa (Cardiff 1962); chapter 7 of Williams, Glyn, The Desert and the Dream: A Study of Welsh Colonization in Chubut (Cardii, 1975); and Egryn Williams, 'La Colonizacion Galesa en la Colonia 16 de Octubre Numero Especial deldiario Esquel, 25 de Febrero, 1950, pp. 69-78.