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“The Ashes of our Ancestors”: Creating Argentina's Indigenous Heritage in the Museo Etnográfico, 1904–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

Carolyne Ryan Larson
Carolyne Ryan Larson*
Affiliation:
University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming
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Extract

On September 28, 1927, the central atrium of the Museo Etnográfico on Buenos Aires's Calle Moreno was crowded with people. More than 100 men and women were in attendance, from Universidad de Buenos Aires rector Ricardo Rojas to Argentine president Marcelo T. de Alvear, wrapped in heavy jackets against the spring chill to participate in the inauguration of the museum's new building. Previously housed in “the gloomy catacombs” of an administrative basement, the Museo Etnográfico had now relocated to an airy, Baroque-style building two blocks south of the city's central Plaza de Mayo. In his inaugural speech on that chilly September morning, museum director Salvador Debenedetti proclaimed that the Museo Etnográfico, until then a predominandy academic museum, was undergoing a powerful transformation: it was becoming a public museum. Debenedetti proclaimed that the museum's new incarnation would be a place “of tranquility and of meditation, which will move the spirit of the people and lead them from epoch to epoch, from region to region, from culture to culture.” He described the museum's public visitors, or “the people,” as active participants in the institution's openly nation-building agenda, and celebrated their participation as a “patriotic conjunction, inspired by die desire for scientific progress, the love of truth, [and] the desire to know better and penetrate in its essence the thought of our native ancestors in the land of América.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , April 2013 , pp. 467 - 492
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2013

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References

I would like to thank Julie Gibbings, Isa Helfgott, Miranda Johnson, Florencia E. Mallon, Ron Numbers, Francisco Scarano, Steve J. Stern, and the anonymous reviewers for The Americas for their careful readings and invaluable input on earlier versions of this material. They have all offered clarifying and helpful advice without which I would not have been able to write this article. The Museo Etnográfico “Juan Β. Ambrosetri” in Buenos Aires, founded in 1904, is under the direction of the Facultad de Filosofìa y Letras of the Universidad de Buenos Aires.

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35. Ibid., p. 5.

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37. Wissler to Ambrosctti, March 20, 1909, Legajo “American Museum of Natural History,” Caja 1.10, MEA.

38. Exchange records, 1913, Caja 4.54, MEA.

39. Memoranda citing Dcbcncdetu’s official tides and payment at Musco de La Plata, March 28, 1924, Caja Debenedetti Institucional, MEA.

40. Samuel Lafonc Qucvado, Director, Musco de La Plata [hereafter MLP], to Dean of Facultad de Filosofía y Letras [hereafter FFyL], Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires [hereafter UBA], April 23, 1906, Caja 1.5, MEA.

41. Dean FFyL, UBA, to Samuel Lafone Qucvado, Director MLP, July 20, 1908, Caja 5, Folio 7, MEA.

42. MLP to Ambrosctti, acknowledging receipt of MEA’s donation to MLP, March 18, 1914, Caja Dcbcncdctti 3, MEA.

43. Luis Maria Torres, Director MLP, to Debenedetti, December 4, 1922, Caja Dcbcncdctti 3, MEA.

44. Secretary MLP to Dcbcncdctti, May 16, 1921, Caja Debenedetti Cartas, MEA.

45. Cristian Nelson, Director, Provincial Museum of Salta, to Debenedetti, April 21, 1923, Caja Debenedetti, MEA.

46. Ambrosetti, Memoria, p. 33.

47. Ibid., p. 4. See also El Museo Etnográfico (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1948), p. 45.

48. Ambrosetti, Memoria, p. 33.

49. Ibid., pp. 3–4.

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55. Carlos Brackibux to Juan Β. Ambrosctti, June 25, 1914, Caja 5, MEA.

56. Héctor Nuñez to Salvador Debenedetti, June 27, 1928, Caja 8, MEA.

57. Caja Visitas, MEA.

58. Comisión de Ayuda Social del Consejo Nacional de Mujeres to Director, Musco Etnográfico, May 3, 1920, Caja Visitas, MEA.

59. Comisión de Ayuda Social del Consejo Nacional de Mujeres to Salvador Debenedetti, Museo Etnográfico, May 3, 1920, Caja Visitas, MEA.

60. See Ambrosctti, Memoria; Ambrosctti, “La Facultad de Filosofía,” Anthropos Vol. III (1908), pp. 983–987; Patricia Arenas, “La antropología en la Argentina”; and María del Pilar Babot, “La arqueología argentina,” pp. 165–192.

61. Alfredo González Garaño to Debenedetti, September 14, 1927, Caja 7, MEA.

62. Tomás Le Breton to Debenedetti, September 13, 1927, Caja 7, MEA.

63. La Prensa, “La tumba de Tut–Ankh–Amon,” May 13, 1923; La Prensa, “La revolución religiosa y su aspecto sexual. Taras de Aj-en-Aton,” February 25, 1923.

64. “Inauguración del Musco Etnográfico,” Archivos de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (Boletín Informativo de la Revista de la Universidad), Año II, Tomo II (September 1927), pp. 434–439.