Óscar Viel was about thirty and a navy commander when he was named governor of Magallanes at the end of 1867. He arrived in February 1868 at a penal colony that had been struggling for two decades.
With him, things turned. In 1868 Punta Arenas was declared a minor port and a free port, and an 1867 decree already eased the way for free settlers. Viel drew the town's first street plan, with blocks a hundred metres square, and drew in European immigrants: according to Mateo Martinic, between three and four hundred arrived in 1873 and 1874 alone, mostly French, British, German and Spanish. By 1870 the colony was close to a thousand people and was starting to have its own shipowners.
He was also the one who named the central square Plaza Muñoz Gamero, after the governor murdered in 1851. In 1874 he carried the flag to the Santa Cruz River, in the Patagonia that Chile and Argentina were disputing.
Later he fought in the War of the Pacific, rose to rear admiral and served as intendant of Valparaíso. He backed President Balmaceda in 1891 and died in exile in Paris in 1892.
