Cerro Torre, A Mountain Consecrated - The Resurrection of th

Well then talk; but we're still going to chop

It's a simple thing, really, that the vanguard - or call it what you want - will never ask permission and calling them pompous, playing God, bad and selfish men, has nothing whatsoever to do with what they do and will do. You and I are powerless over that small percentage of people doing seminal things - good, bad and otherwise. Our appraisals and evaluations of them are totally irrelevant to what they DO.

It was january 16th., 1965. If interested, here follows the real cronology and facts about the Compressor Route on Cerro Torre that began when with Fonrouge we were at the top of Cerro Fitz Roy via the Supercanaleta in the second absolute ascent of this mountain. Because this beatiful and exigent mountain merits the most from climbers we did it in alpine style, mostly in simulclimbing, without fixed ropes, siege attacks or artificial weaponry. Behind and below us the fantastic Cerro Torre in clear skies showed with brightness his beatifull icy shape. Time afterwards - I guess it was 1966 or 1967 - at a table of a bar in Buenos Aires with Douglas Haston, Mike Burke and (was there also Martin Boysen?) we were dreamming about giving a try Co. Torre thru the Southeast Ridge and our fingers traced an ideal line over the SE ridge of one of our Co. Torre's photos we took from Fitz Roy summit. Sometime after, Fonrouge joined the British team that arrived high in this line but misteriously stopped before the icy towers. Wonder how the famous expedition rawplug dissapear...? Don't know by sure, but I always remember the conversation I had with Fonrouge at home - and his decision - after our meeting with Haston and friends at the bar that we'll never use an spit. And I also said thst...to give a try to this empoisoned mountain by Maestri's 1959's claim was a nonsense having manny other virgen summits to make. Later, in january 1970 Maestri asked to meet us in Buenos Aires when he decided to make an attempt to the Southeast Ridge and looked for details of the line but didn't mention the use of a compressor and gave us the idea to try the climb by fair means. As it is known they didn't make the summit this time. Weeks after their return I was in Italy for business reasons and he invited me to Maddona were we spent some time talking about his programmed new intent to Cerro Torre in the following southamerican 1970 winter. No words were said about the use of a compressor for drilling holes to plug spits. Upon his return from patagonia having used the compressor and claiming for his new line on the SE ridge - and also mentionning that the top mushroom was not the true summit-, more doubts appeared about his 1959's line statements. Living for professional reasons in Milan-Italy, since late 1973, I had many contacts with the Ragni Group and got an idea about the national battle around Cerro Torre's Maestri claims at the time of his public statement directed to the Ragni Group saying that his climbs were discussed by whom couldn't climb Cerro Torre. Casimiro Ferrari's answer to Maestri was that the Ragni Group climbs mountains that can prove they climb and start to organize another attack to the west face of Torre. As we know today they made the true first ascent of the mountain. More recently Garibotti, Salvaterra and Beltrame proved that no one had transit before the line claimed by Maestri. In my name and the others that resign the dream to climb for first this fantastic mountain I claim for our rights to delete from the walls of Cerro Torre all the remainings - compressor inclusive - of the rape made by Maestri in the 70's and I think that no one - for any reason - can have more rigths than ours.
Carlos Comesaña

The term was originally used to describe the foremost part of an army advancing into battle (also called the vanguard or literally the advance guard) and now applied to any group, particularly of artists, that considers itself innovative and ahead of the majority.[3]
The origin of the application of this French term to art is still debated.
The term also refers to the promotion of radical social reforms. It was this meaning that was evoked by the Saint Simonian Olinde Rodrigues in his essay, "L'artiste, le savant et l'industriel," (“The artist, the scientist and the industrialist”, 1825) which contains the first recorded use of "avant-garde" in its now-customary sense: there, Rodrigues calls on artists to "serve as [the people's] avant-garde," insisting that "the power of the arts is indeed the most immediate and fastest way" to social, political, and economic reform.[4] Over time, avant-garde became associated with movements concerned with "art for art's sake", focusing primarily on expanding the frontiers of aesthetic experience, rather than with wider social reform.