La desesperación imperial de la burguesía provinciana. Apuntes sobre chovinismo historiográfico, lengua nativa y clase en Santiago del Estero (Argentina)

Abstract

In this paper we make a review of a recently published work dealing with the Inca "presence" in the land that is nowadays Santiago del Estero (Argentina). The modus operandi and the inconsistency of the author’s arguments (on the materials discussed, the references to the Quechua language, and the appropriation of others’ arguments) reveal not only the problems of the book, but also allows us to observe the kind of discursive production among provincial intellectuals identified with the local political hegemony. We developed a sociological approach wider than the one in the mentioned book, in which chauvinist ideology, provincial neo-ethnicity, impoverished class and political power were integrated. We asked ourselves about the academic discourse value within regional expressions of national capital (developed but delayed, parasitic upon national state, dependent on agricultural sources of income) seeking to raise its profit rates by adding value to its historical/cultural resources. In order to understand the material conditions of effectiveness of the kind of book analyzed in this paper, we describe an itinerary of the relative overpopulation in Santiago del Estero within capitalist contingency in the last decades as well as the use of ethnohistoric knowledge for the local bourgeoisie’s benefit from tourism policies.

Keywords

• Inca empire
• Quichua language
• relative overpopulation
• intellectual chauvinism
• political bourgeoisie