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Chile
President Michelle Bachelet (L) accepts a donation of land from Kristine
McDivitt (R), widow of Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of The North Face and
clothing brand Esprit
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Douglas Tompkins's widow
vividly remembers the suspicions the late billionaire raised when he started
buying up land in Patagonia, the natural paradise at the bottom of South
America.
AFP
report continues:
Some
accused him of preparing a storage site for American nuclear waste, she says.
Others said he was starting a cult, still others that he wanted to launch a
Jewish state -- even though he was raised Episcopalian.
Now,
just over one year after his death, she hopes her late husband's final wishes
for the land will lay the controversy to rest for good.
Tompkins,
the co-founder of The North Face outdoor label and clothing brand Esprit, has
donated a tract of land the size of Rhode Island to the Chilean government as a
national park -- the largest such donation in history.
This
week, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet accepted the 407,000-hectare (one
million-acre) donation in a ceremony held in a verdant Patagonian meadow and
attended by Tompkins's widow, Kristine McDivitt, a former CEO of the outdoor
clothing and gear company Patagonia.
The
ceremony came a year and three months after Tompkins's death at age 72 in a
kayaking accident in the Patagonia region he adored.
"Douglas
Tompkins's generosity and love of nature" shine through in his gift,
Bachelet said on accepting the land on behalf of the Chilean state.
"If
there were still any suspicions, with this gigantic donation they have been
definitively left in the past," said Chilean journalist Andres Azocar, who
has written a biography of Tompkins called "The Green Billionaire."
- Powerful enemies -
Much
has changed in the quarter-century since Tompkins moved to Chile and started
buying up huge swathes of land here and in neighboring Argentina.
The
American magnate stoked controversy with his outsized ambition and ability to
use his massive fortune to gobble up privately owned land in the remote
southern region.
His
plans to turn the land into national parks made him some powerful enemies in a
Chile just emerging from the bloody 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
It
was a time when the country was deeply suspicious of outsiders, especially from
the United States, which had backed Pinochet's coup.
Tompkins's
opponents included President Eduardo Frei, whose administration stalled him on
his first initiative, the creation of Pumalin Park -- a private nature reserve
of 3,000 square kilometers (1,200 square miles) in southern Chile.
And
while the animosity faded over the years -- the parks Tompkins created are
today broadly hailed as an environmental and tourism boon in both Chile and
Argentina -- some still harbour lingering bitterness toward the late
conservationist.
"He
pressured landholders to sell their land at despicable prices," Belisario
Velasco, the deputy interior minister under Frei, told AFP Friday.
"I
don't see the benefit of this deal for the state."
- 'Skin of a hog' -
Tompkins
launched North Face as a mountaineering store in San Francisco in 1966.
He
and his first wife, Susie Tompkins Buell, soon began selling quirky fashions
that, in 1971, became the Esprit brand -- today a hugely popular global chain.
Tompkins
sold his stake in The North Face in the late 1960s and in Esprit in the 1980s.
The
rugged, white-haired adventurer moved to Chile in 1990.
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| North Face co-founder Douglas Tompkins dies while kayaking in Chile | PBS NewsHour |
The
controversy around him also extended to Argentina, where some accused him of
buying up freshwater supplies for a future business venture.
"They're
accusing me of all kinds of things," he told Argentine newspaper La Nacion
in 2013.
"I've already developed psychological armour against it. Sometimes it's tragicomic. You have to have a good sense of humour and the skin of a hog: hard and leathery."
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