A letter from Emilio Wagner to Ernesto Padilla: the behind the scenes of the so-called ‘Chaco-Santiagueña civilization’

Abstract

In March 1926, Emilio Wagner wrote an extensive letter to Ernesto E. Padilla, Deputy for Tucumán, to request sponsorship and subsidy for an ambitious archeological project that was completed in 1934 with the publication of a controversial book The Chaco-Santiagueña civilization and its correlations with those of the Old and New World written by the French brothers Emilio and Duncan Wagner based in Santiago del Estero.
This article aims to show the behind-the-scenes of that regional and national milestone that meant Wagner’s conception of the “Chaco-Santiagueña civilization”, within a panorama of legitimization of regional cultures and the constitution of archeological science at a national level.
In that letter, Emilio Wagner talks extensively about his own life, interests, needs and desires revealing also some of his ideological positions, which translate into the emergence of certain ideologemes and thematic paradigms, such as progress, science, Latin-Saxon opposition that fulfill certain functions within his particular discourse. In this discursive exercise, the intimacy of the subject is exposed, his personal and economic vicissitudes, his limitations and even his imperfect spelling. The letter also reveals a lot about the state of archeological science in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century and about its recipient Deputy Ernesto E. Padilla, of whom there are only some explicit references, although the political power he holds in that context  ravitates throughout the letter.
Attached to this article is the full transcript of the letter extracted from the epistolary archive of Ernesto E. Padilla.