In the middle of nowhere southern Sweden, there’s a popular Wild West theme park called High Chaparral, where Scandinavian tourists relive the action of the old American cowboy films. For over a year, the park served another function: a refugee camp for some 500 of the 163,000 migrants – many from Syria – who applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015.
That Syrians would find refuge here actually jibes with High Chaparral’s interpretation of the Old West, which emphasizes the new life that the frontier offered to beleaguered pioneers, and the community that was required to survive there. Americans tend to ignore this history, instead lionizing the gritty traits of the cowboy, the cultural basis for our obsession with rugged individualism.
OTM producer Micah Loewinger traveled to High Chaparral last summer, where he met Abood Alghzzawi, a Syrian asylum-seeker, who embarked on an incredible journey to the Wild West of Sweden. This piece explores how politicians seized the cowboy image to further their agendas, and how questioning the narrative of the Old West might influence immigration policy.
Special thanks to David Smith, author of the forthcoming book "Cowboy Politics: Frontier Myth and the Twentieth Century Presidency" from University of Oklahoma Press.
For more about High Chaparral, check out two fantastic documentaries about the park from David Freid and MEL Films:
High Chaparral
Return to High Chaparral
Songs featured in the piece:
A Fistful of Dollars (Titles) - Ennio Morricone
High Chaparral (Main Theme) - David Rose
Manolito - Lill-Babs
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly - Ennio Morricone
The Ecstasy of Gold - Ennio Morricone
Photos of High Chaparral:
