An old, little-known article written in French and published in Belgium provides the point of departure for bringing to light a mysterious 'Araucanian' collection from Mocha Island. This article reconstructs the history of the collection through the study of objects deposited in the early twentieth century in the Mus & eacute;es royaux d'Art et d'Histoire in Brussels, together with archival documents relating to their donation and preserved by the same institution. As history unfolds, the collector emerges from anonymity and becomes a recognisable figure, endowed with his own tastes, interests, and possessions, and even capable of influencing his son to become a collector. Yet the true protagonist of the story is a unique silver diadem recovered from a tomb on the island, an exceptional object at the time of its discovery and still unparalleled today. Despite its rarity and distinctive features, the diadem is displayed in the European museum as an icon of the peoples of Araucania and Mocha Island, even though its style and design recall emblems of power from the Central and South-Central Andes. In this sense, the article offers an open-ended chronicle that invites reflection on lost collections, overlooked collectors, and anomalous objects over time and across museums.
Following an ethnographic approach, this article traces the processes that enabled the global circulation of, and consensus around, the widespread technical adoption of Gatton panic grass in the Argentine Chaco. The article argues that Gatton panic grass function as an actor-network: a plant removed from its original ecosystem by the techno-economic networks of the Green Revolution and converted into its intermediary in the Argentine Chaco. These networks of entrepreneurs and technicians parasitized the properties of Gatton panic an other African grasses, transforming them into a mediators that expanded forage capacity and facilitated the colonization of a frontier space by capital from outside the livestock sector. However, unlike the techno-economic agricultural networks structured around closed technological packages produced by multinational corporations, consensus around Gatton panic emerged in a more flexible manner, through logics of negotiation andimposition among heterogeneous human and non-human actors. These actors established multifaceted forms of linkage within interdependent relations among technical artifacts, non-human components of the native biota, and Gatton panic itself. In this sense, part of plant's widespread acceptance has to do with this plant's ability to associate versatilely across multiple formats.
This article presents the results of archaeozoological, taphonomic, and technological analyses conducted at the Mesra 1 site located in the Sierra Baguales, northeastern Magallanes region (Chile), and dated to ca. 2500 years BP. The faunal assemblage is composed almost exclusively of guanaco (Lama guanicoe), indicating the intensive use of this species for the procurement of meat and marrow. Among the recovered materials there is significant number of pounders manufactured from bone fragments stand out reflecting practices of reuse and an integral exploitation of animal resources. Taphonomic analyses reveal the presence of natural agents-such as root etching, fungal hyphae, water, and rodents-that in some cases hindered the identification of anthropogenic modifications, although without affecting the overall representativeness of the assemblage. The results allow Mesra 1 to be interpreted as a specialized butchering site during the Late Holocene. Furthermore, it constitutes the first excavated record with archaeofaunal information in the southern sector of Baguales, contributing to the understanding of subsistence strategies and technological organization of terrestrial hunter-gatherers in a scarcely explored highland environment of southern Patagonia.
In the Amazon basin, the rubber industry reached its peak between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, transforming the jungle landscape of countries such as Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador. In Bolivia, this transformation was driven by technological, legislative, and political innovations, also by immigration policies that supplied labor to this extractive industry. Among the many accounts written by travelers, priests, politicians, and naturalists of the period, the journalistic reports of Rosa Oporto, a young woman from the La Paz bourgeoisie, offers us a unique perspective: during almost two years of travel through the jungle, she traveled the Amazonian rivers, experienced a tragic shipwreck in the rapids, and even suffered the death of her brother. Nevertheless, she managed to report her unique experience, and her testimony offers us a rare feminine glimpse into the rubber boom era.
Se examinan las iniciativas y debates legislativos desarrollados entre 1911 y 1918 en torno a la representación parlamentaria de la provincia de Tacna durante la ocupación chilena, en el marco del prolongado litigio diplomático con Perú. A partir del análisis de fuentes parlamentarias, archivos administrativos y prensa local y nacional, se reconstruyen los proyectos impulsados por Joaquín Walker Martínez y Ramón Briones Luco, además de la actuación política de Anselmo Blanlot Holley, quienes articularon la demanda de representación parlamentaria de un territorio en disputa. Se sostiene que la exclusión electoral no anuló la práctica ciudadana, sino que dio origen a formas alternativas de participación política expresadas en asambleas, comisiones, prensa y sociabilidad local. La representación se configuró, así, como un campo de tensión entre la soberanía simbólica del Estado y las aspiraciones de integración de sus habitantes. Este estudio contribuye a comprender la construcción de ciudadanía y las dinámicas políticas en espacios fronterizos y en conflicto.
