“Por la salvación de los indios”: una travesía visual por la misión evangélica de Embarcación, Salta (1925-1975)

• Main Authors: Cesar Ceriani Cernadas, Víctor Hugo Lavazza
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centro Científico y Tecnológico-CONICET, Mendoza & Universidad Nacional de La Pampa 2017-12-01
• Series: Corpus: Archivos Virtuales de la Alteridad Americana
• Subjects: Christian missions; indigenous peoples; photographs; Argentine Chaco
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/corpusarchivos/1964

The article is an essay in visual history about the indigenous evangelical mission of Embarcación (Salta), created by Scandinavian missionaries during the 1920s. It proposes to advance in the knowledge of the sociorreligious change among the indigenous peoples of the Argentine Chaco, assuming the positivity provided by photographic evidence. Based on ethnographic research in the area and the examination of the archives of the Evangelical Mission Assembly of God of Embarcación, the study selects a set of images that the missionaries made during half a century between 1925 and 1975. The work examines the visual enunciation present in the photographs, delimiting its main thematic core in order to glimpse regularities and innovations attested in the historical process of the Scandinavian missionalization between Wichí and Toba. As a guiding hypothesis we hold that the interplay between Protestant evangelization, photographic representation and discourses of indigenous alterity presented continuities and divergences in the historical dynamics of the mission, marked by the territorial changes and leadership to which it was subjected. Three sections organize the work. The first refers to a brief comparative analysis of the role of images in the Chaco missionary enterprises. The second is a contextualized description of the photographic archive and its concomitant social process. The third, and broader, exposes the visual historical itinerary by the two stages that defined the course of this experience, the "old mission" (1935-1961) and Mission La Loma (1962-present).