TAG 2017, Cardiff.

Temporalities Otherwise: Archaeology, Relational Ontologies and the Time of the

Other.

The Ruins of the ‘Sacred City’:

Alternative indigeneity in the other-
history of Quilmes (NW Argentina)

Francesco Orlandi
Department of Archaeology,
University of Exeter
An archaeology of indigenous re-emergent in North West Argentina
(picture taken in July 2017 during a march claiming justice for the
murder of an indigenous leader by local landowners in Tucumán.
Signal at the entrance of the Quilmes archaeological site. Once known as
The Fortress by local people, then scientifically described as The Ruins of
Quilmes people, and since 2007 re-appropriated by the Quilmes
Indigenous Community (CIQ) who considers it a Sacred City, and part of
its historical legacy.
View of the Santa Maria (or Yocavil) Valley from (almost) the top of the mountain
surmounting the site.
The signal reads “Visit the Sacred City of Quilmes, the strength of an ancestral
people”. The site is now run by a splinter group of the CIQ with the endorsement
of the Provincial Government.
 ● Regional Development of the
Diaguita People in NW Argentina
(X – XV centuries).

● Incorporation into Inca domain (ca.

1470-1530)

● Spaniards’ Invasion (1535)

● Calchaqui Wars (1535 - 1666)

● Destierro [Forced Displacement]

● Royal Title (1716 / 1853)

Garnier, F. A., 1862

Whitening the Nation

while defining internal
alterity and expanding
the frontier.

‘Ethnic fear’ (Segato

2007) and
determination of
‘Aborginality’ (Briones
1994).

● Mapuche are
“Chilean”

● Diaguita was
“Argentinian”
Martin de Moussy, V., 1873

https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servl
et/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~20543~510069
:Catamarca-et-Tucuman-#
“The Old City of Quilmes (Calchaqui Valley)”. First scientific publication on Quilmes by Juan B.
Ambrosetti, 1897.
 “Tata antiguo, coquea, me obligaron a hacerlo!”

[Old father, chew some coca leaves, they forced me to do that!]

In the red circle is Manuel Zavaleta, police officer and looter. His name is associated
to a catalogue published in 1906 of more than 12.000 objects (source Sosa 2008, 8)
The old hosteria in Amaicha del Valle (15 kms from Quilmes). This now abandoned
building was in 1973 the venue of the First Regional Indigenous Parliament of the North
West Argentina, named ‘Juan Calchaqui Parliament’. This event agglutinated the peasant
movements emerged in the 1960s after the dismantle of the sugar cane industry in
Tucumán. The indigenous activism was brutally persecuted during the dictatorship, but it
could re-emerge after the back to the democratic order in the country, leading to
constitutional reform of 1994.
 Appropriating the Past during the self-proclaimed “National
Reorganization Period”:

● Cultural policies of the military-civic dictatorship (1976 – 1983).

● Authoritarian origin of Multiculturalism.

Source: Sosa 2008
 Privatizing Heritage in the
Neoliberal juncture of the
1990s

Advertisement appeared in the

national newspaper El Clarin
after the promulgation of the Law
6.166 promoting funding for
“tourism development” by the
government of the province of
Tucuman (source Sosa 2008).

Local entrepreneur, Héctor Cruz,

was awarded with the provincial
concession for 10 years (1992-
2002). He built an hotel with
swimming pool, a restaurant and
a market in the archaeological
area.
 Roadblock by the CIQ in
November 2007 claiming for the
restitution of the administration
of the archaeological site
(source: La Gaceta, 29 Nov
2007).

Police intervention enacting the

eviction of Héctor Cruz from
the administration of the site in
accordance with a provincial
decree and the art. 57.17 of the
Argentinian Constitution
(source: Argentina Indymedia,
13 Dec 2007).
Community ceremony for the re-appropriation of the site, 9 Jan 2008
(Source: Crespo and Rodriguez, 2013)
Community
workshop
organised by the
CIQ and the
National University
of Tucumán in
2008 in order to set
a plan for the
communitarian
management of the
site (source Lazzari
2011, 184).
● November 2013: A group of Delegates composing the Council of the CIQ
claims irregularity in the management of the site by the community
authority (cacique) Francisco ‘Pancho’ Chaile. The groups convene
unofficial election resulting in the proclamation of another cacique. The
splinter group attempted taking control of the site, but the judicial power of
the province ordered the restitution to the official cacique.
● March 2014: a second attempt to take control of the site succeeded. The
Province through the Tourism Office calls for a proper conservation of the
heritage.
● June 2015: a group led by the cacique Chaile tried to occupy the City. This
intervention led to a fight with several injured. Chaile was arrested and
released only three months later.
● In such a hectic situation, a group of tourist guides occupied the
administration of the site at the end of 2015, and it is currently running it
with the endorsement of the Province. A new local museum is going to be
inaugurated.
Qhip nayr uñtasis sarnaqapxañani

“Mirando atrás y adelante

(al futuro-pasado) podemos
caminar en el presente-futuro”

[Looking back and forward (to the

future-past) we can walk through
the present-future]

Nayra = eye / past

Qhipha = shoulder / future

 Conclusions (and further directions)

● Quilmes is a great example of ‘multi-temporal’ landscape crossed by the practices

of past an present social actors, both human and non-human.

● The very politicised situation around the management of the site has made CIQ’s
struggle for the land to come out, along with the ontological disagreement on which
“indigenous” history is deemed to be preserved, and for whom.

● “Heritage”, in this framework, acts as a disciplining material-discursive practice in

which the ‘common’ interests of CIQ and the State are pretentiously put together for
the benefit of an alleged “tourism development” of the region, which determinates
the ongoing multicultural production of the “allowed Indian” (Hale 2004, Rivera
Cusicanqui 2014).

● A ‘political ontology’ of heritage entails reconsidering its foundation trough a

process of ‘un-commoning’, in which an ‘undisciplined’ archaeological knowledge is
produced from the relation of people and territory; that is, from the “political
activation of relationality” (Blaser, De La Cadena, Escobar 2009).