Today, perhaps most of us imagine Patagonia as a pristine place of wonderful beauty. But at the turn of the twentieth century and through 1930, authorities in Buenos Aires increasingly viewed Patagonia as a dangerous place, marked by old tropes of difference. These spatial discourses were grounded perceptions of immigrants in the Argentine capital and trendy hygienic views on how to regulate bodies, morals, and public spaces. Local and national elites increasingly saw public disorder as a symptom of an unhealthy society only treated with police action, civic moralizing, and physical education. But at heart, hygienic views perpetuated centuries-old spatial discourses of Patagonia as a no-place, constituting a persisting Desert.