Gomez Romero, F. 2002 Philosophy and Historical Arch in Argentina

Journal of Social Archaeology ARTI CLE
402
Copyright 2002 SAGE Publications (London,Thousand Oaks,CA and New Delhi)
Vol 2(3):402429 [1469-6053(200210)2:3;402429;027914]
Philosophy and historical archaeology
Foucault and a singular technology of power development at
the borderlands of nineteenth-century Argentina
FACUNDO GOMEZ ROMERO
Museo Etnogrco y Archivo Histrico Enrique Squirrude Azul,Buenos Aires,
Argentina
ABSTRACT
This article addresses the application of a series of key concepts of
Foucaults thought, as developed in Discipline and Punish and other
works, in the context of interior frontiers with I ndians in nineteenth-
century Argentina. I t tests the premise that a particular technology
of power existed in this historical context that operated on every
social level, impacting strongly on the lower classes that inhabited the
incorrectly named desert. I ts implementation in the military eld
enabled the existence of an array of micro-powers that surrounded
the gaucho-soldiers and their womens lives. This schema was adopted
in different areas: in the enrollment and discipline of the gauchos, in
life in the fortlet-prisons and in the ritualism of power. The alterna-
tive chosen by soldiers to evade this technology of power and the
fortlet-panopticons was escape through desertion. The utility of these
observations is demonstrated with reference to the archaeology of the
border regions in Argentina, and their wider applicability noted for
other contexts with similar problems.
06 Romero (JG/d) 1/10/02 2:14 pm Page 402
403 Gomez Romero Philosophy and historical archaeology
KEYWORDS
desert G deserti on G di sci pl i ne G fortl ets G gauchos G mi cro-
powers G panopticon G technology of power
I INTRODUCTION
An important part of the area of research of historical archaeology that has
developed with the greatest impetus in Argentina has taken fortlets as its
subject of study (see Austral et al., 1997; Gomez Romero, 1999; Gomez
Romero and Ramos, 1994; Goi and Madrid, 1998; Langiano et al., 2000;
Mugueta and Anglada, 1998; Ormazbal et al., 1998; Pedrotta, 1999;
Pedrotta and Gomez Romero, 1998; and Roa and Saghessi, 1998). Fortlets
were fortied military structures used in the I ndian wars from the mid-eight-
eenth century until the end of the following century. Nevertheless, none of
the previous work my own included has considered fortlets as the eld
where a particular technology of power (sensuFoucault, 1992), perpetrated
by hegemonic sectors of society, was implemented. This article argues for
the existence of a framework of power, dramatized in the fortlets, that
presented a particular discipline that operated through the arbitrariness of
the levy system and affected the rural-poor social class most forcefully.
The purpose of this article is to explain the essential operational charac-
teristics of the technology of power perpetrated by the dominant classes on
the internal frontier with the I ndians in nineteenth-century Argentina.
Some of the key themes dealt with by Foucault (1977, 1992, 1996) in his
analysis of power will be used to try to characterize the above-mentioned
technology of power and its specic manner of implementation in the
military eld. Thus, in this article, brief and most probably incomplete
comments on references that use Foucaults ideas in the archaeological
discipline and a synthesis of the main characteristics of the nineteenth-
century historical context in which the fortlets existed will be made. The
workings of this technology of power will be analyzed, based on the follow-
ing indicators: (a) discipline in the levy system, (b) the fortlets as a prison,
(c) bodily torment, and (d) desertion as a means of escape. The coexistence
of these methods of discipline and surveillance will also be discussed,
together with practices of bodily torment.
I ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND MICHEL FOUCAULT
The search for ideas, concepts and analytical frameworks in Foucaults
work on the part of archaeologists is already more than a decade old.
404 Journal of Social Archaeology 2(3)
Patterson (1989: 556) argued for three currents in postprocessual archae-
ology, the second of which corresponded to studies grounded in the writings
of Foucault. Contributions of Miller and Tilley (1984) used concepts of his
philosophy, in I deology, Power and Prehistory. Subsequently, Shanks and
Tilley (1987) examined the many ways in which power is manifested, and
ascribed to Foucaults idea that western societies are disciplinary societies
that are based on institutions that control the handling of time as well as
individual spaces. Miller et al. (1989) pointed out the usefulness of the
differentiation Foucault makes between surveillance and punishment, the
former being the way in which power was applied that was established with
the arrival of capitalism. I n his study of penal history, he brilliantly contrasts
forms of domination in the absolutist and capitalist Western state. The
contrast Foucault draws is that between pre-modern and modern modali-
ties of the exercise of power and social domination. I n the emerging
industrial societies of the capitalist West, disciplinary procedures and
surveillance of the population provide the primary modes of social subjec-
tion (Miller et al., 1989: 14).
Most of the chapters in Bapty and Yates (1990) discuss Foucaults
thought from the perspective of postprocessual archaeology. One of the
dening characteristics of postprocessual archaeology has been its interest
in the work of the most important thinkers in the contemporary social
sciences, such as Althusser, Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche and
Weber; thinkers who had always been ignored by processual archaeology.
Tilley (1998) described this phenomenon as the insertion of the discipline
of archaeology into the enriching eld of the social sciences.
Paynter and McGuire (1991) discuss the heterogeneous nature of power,
the dialectic of domination and resistance and its visual manifestation in
material culture. They further discuss Foucaults work as related to the
above-mentioned subjects, as well as the physical space built by power: the
new buildings associated with the disciplinary tactics of capitalism the
asylum, prison, and school. The buildings themselves are based on para-
digmatic form, Benthams panopticon (Paynter and McGuire, 1991: 8). I n
Tilley (1993), several authors discuss Foucauldian ideas in their analyses
of the British Neolithic (see Chs 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8). Among these, Kirks
discussion (1993) of the forms of knowledge and power created by early
Neolithic Breton society, based on the works of Foucault, stands out. Some
authors in Hodder et al. (1995) also make reference to Foucaults ideas.
Meskell (1996: 9) acknowledges the fascination that Foucaults work has
held for archaeologists, but considers that Foucaults ideas on power have
generally only been applied as a simplistic and formulaic binary equation
that is in conict with the original paradigm Foucault proposed. She refers
to a rigid application by archaeological theorists of models such as the
oppressors versus the oppressed, or domination/resistance, without
considering, for example, the operation of micro-powers. These reveal a
series of individual, alternating and multiplural relations that refer to the
stratications, the interlining that the exertion of power supports, an aspect
of power that will be drawn out in this article. Meskell (1996: 8) also makes
an interesting criticism of Foucaults concept of the body, where the body
is considered a mere recipient, a malleable and docile receptacle where
relations of power are registered and appropriated. I n her opinion the
body is not merely constrained by or invested with social relations . . . it
also forms a basis for these relations and contributes for them (see also
Knapp and Meskell, 1997; Meskell, 1999). Hill (2000) has also criticized the
notion of body conceived of by Foucault in a similar fashion to Meskell.
Nevertheless, Hill continues to use Foucaults concept of body in her
analysis of the sacriced bodies of males and females in Moche iconogra-
phy. I n short, the few positions that attempt to reect on the seduction
that Foucault has exercised on archaeologists have been adopted by
women.
Recently, Leone (1999) has applied concepts developed in Discipline and
Punish(Foucault, 1977) to historical archaeology. He focused on Foucaults
explanation of the changes that popular consciousness suffered as a result
of the implementation of the new disciplinary regulations that led to the
advent of the capitalism system. Leone relates this to ceramic types corre-
sponding to that time period found in excavations in various houses
inhabited by people of different social classes in Annapolis, MD. He states
that the temporal routines and work discipline characteristic of capitalism
might be reected in the archaeological record. I n Leones words: Through
the materials we excavate, people once learned to work productively, go to
school, watch the clock, and eat with a fork and spoon from a mass-
produced, modular plate (Leone, 1999: 211). Brumel (1998) also drew
from Discipline and Punish in an article on the ideological characteristics
of the Aztec Empire. She considers that the dominant ideology of this type
of state was based on reafrming its power using coercion and public
punishment state-sponsored spectacles of human pain and death
(Brumel, 1998: 11).
Singletons summary (2001: 105) of Delles study of plantations in
Jamaica takes into consideration Foucaults analysis of panopticism: Delle
demonstrates how the placement of the overseers house served as a central
point in the surveillance in much the same way a guard tower does. I n her
study of Angerona and El Padre, two Cuban coffee plantations, Singleton
argues that the bell tower . . . possibly served as a panoptic surveillance
device at Angerona. Panoptic surveillance is less obvious at El Padre
(Singleton, 2001: 106). Thomas (1998) also draws upon Foucaults ideas in
his adoption of a dialectic of power in analyzing slave archaeology at the
Hermitage Plantation. Two volumes of the I nternational Journal of
Historical Archaeology(Spencer-Wood, 2001; Spencer-Wood and Baugher,
2001), refer to archaeological projects carried out on eighteenth-, nine-
teenth- and twentieth-century asylums and hospices. Some of the
contributions use various theoretical precepts developed by Foucault in
their investigations (see, for example, Casella, 2001; De Cunzo, 2001;
Spencer-Wood, 2001; Spencer-Wood and Baugher, 2001).
While the above works correspond to Foucaults ideas used by archae-
ologists, I consider that he derived his momentumwith the publication of
the article Michel Foucault: Towards an Archaeology of Archaeology
(Tilley, 1990). Tilley defends the validity of Foucaults ideas and their appli-
cation in archaeology. He refers to the main topics in Foucaults work: his
use of archaeology as a metaphorical concept; his genealogy of western
knowledge; his ideas about power, ideology and Marxist theory; his notion
of an epistemeand his history of sexuality, etc. I n short, Tilley covers all the
theoretical scaffolding that enables us to recognize Foucault as a key
thinker who has rendered the last 500 years of western culture transparent.
I HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS
The encampment of General Rosas is close to the river . . . the soldiers are
nearly all cavalry. I believe such a villainous banditti-like army was never
before collected together.
The greater number of men are of a mixed race, between Negro, I ndian and
Spaniard. I know not the reason, but men of such origin seldom have good
expressions . . . (Charles Darwin, 1934)
During most of the nineteenth century, the plains of the Argentinean
Pampas were called a desert, a metaphor which ignores two obvious facts.
First, a large extent of this territory was fertile, a vast tract of grassland
suitable for agriculture and livestock. Second, it was inhabited by various
ethnic aboriginal groups and by the gauchos, the free rural inhabitants, who
were of mixed race and had limited economic resources. Thus, desert for
the Argentinean political class stigmatized an image of emptiness, of a space
that could be potentially occupied and conquered. This image denied the
existence of its inhabitants, branding them as useless and thus dispensable,
conforming to the ideals of a country that grew with its gaze xed on Europe.
Through the concept of desert, power delineated a geography of absences.
This territory extended east to the Atlantic Ocean, west to the Andes,
while the southern boundary was marked by a frontier that began in
Buenos Aires and terminated in Mendoza, and corresponded to the borders
of the Argentinean state-in-formation (during most of the nineteenth
century, the country was merely a collection of sovereign and independent
provinces; see Figure 1). Beyond this tierra adentro (the interior), as it
was called, extended a vast territory of green plains, hills, salt mines and
dunes, broken by rivers, streams and small lakes with patches of forests,
consisting either of talas(celtis spinosa) in the wet Pampas, carob trees and
caldenes(prosopis caldenia) in the dry Pampas, or araucariasin the Andes.
This region was the epicenter for the articulation of complex inter-ethnic
relations between I ndians, gauchos, farmers, soldiers, criollo merchants,
blacks descended from African slaves and European immigrants. This terri-
torial space can be considered a typical borderland, in the sense of Cusick
(2000). He species the types of social relations that took place in such
spaces: Social identities in border areas are constantly in ux because
borderlands themselves are subject to ever-changing conditions. Negoti-
ation between people of different cultural background is a daily fact of life
in border areas (Cusick, 2000: 46). Thus, these areas are subjects to the
constant inuence of immigration and the periodic effects of political turn-
over . . . . Borderlands tend to be multicultural because previous population
are continually combined with new settlers (Cusick, 2000: 48). These
characteristics are apparent in the case of Argentina through the great
immigratory waves of the nineteenth century especially during the second
half of that century and the new arrivals contact with local elements, who
were connected by the ow of goods and human groups between Argentina
and Chile through the so-called desert.
This phenomenon manifested itself through the trade in livestock on the
hoof. After being brought and subsequently abandoned by the Spaniards
during the initial foundation of Buenos Aires in 1536, livestock, both bovine
Figure 1 Aboriginal southern frontier during the nineteenth century
and equine, represented the main source of wealth in the Pampas. I ts
possession and control was also the main cause of the struggles between
I ndians and criollos. By the early eighteenth century, the indigenous popu-
lation had already organized an intensive livestock trade with Chile that
helped bring about the ethnic fusion of Araucanian I ndians that crossed
the mountain range with the local Native Americans, the Pampeans, a
process known as the Araucanization of the Pampas (see Crivelli Montero,
1994a, 1994b, 2000; Mandrini, 1992).
The gauchos organized vaquerias, large-scale slaughters of cattle whose
main goal was to remove the hide and fat to sell, and some meat to
consume. These indiscriminate hunts decimated the herds in the country-
side around Buenos Aires and compelled the incipient commercial bour-
geoisie of Buenos Aires to try to appropriate the land situated to the south
of the city to control the ow of cattle. Nevertheless, the appropriation of
land to the south of Buenos Aires did not reach geographically signicant
dimensions during the period of Spanish domination.
After independence from Spain in 1816, the Argentinean state decided
that the material progress of the nation was intimately related to the
conquest and colonization of the desert, due to the fact that Argentinean
insertion into international markets depended on the sale of agricultural
raw materials to the industrialized nations, especially England (see Ferns,
1978). This project was accompanied by the notion that the barbarism of
gauchos and I ndians should be brought to an end in order to populate the
Pampas with European immigrants, emphatically considered civilized.
Thus, this mechanism of domination based its modus operandi on a
seamless adoption of the antinomy civilization or barbarity, the ideo-
logical medulla that explained and justied the very essence of that power.
I agree with Rotker (1999), who declares that the essence of the attempt at
Argentinean modernity during the nineteenth century was encased in that
dichotomy, as simple as it is arbitrary. Rotker (1999: 24) points out that,
history stops being a very complex process of social negotiations to become
simplied in a moving binomial of political practice: civilization or barbar-
ity . This process is known in Argentinean historiography as the conquest
of the desert, and nally ended during the 1880s (Walther (1964) presents
a revision of the conquest of the desert, giving it the avor of a civilizing
heroic deed, while Martnez Sarasola (1992) offers an indigenist perspec-
tive and more realistic view of the same historical process).
The conquest and colonization of the desert took shape in the estab-
lishment of military camp structures placed to create a defensive cordon,
known as the I ndian frontier line. These constructions were fortlets
defended by gaucho cavalry squadrons (known as Blandengues during the
Spanish period, and then Guardias Nacionales after independence).
According to a vivid description by Slatta (1998: 85), these crude,
makeshift sod huts (fortines) were an attempt to push back the frontier line.
Poorly armed frontier troops warned ranches and villages of I ndian attack,
often by cannon shot. Soldiers manned rickety watchtowers to afford a
longer view across the at, treeless plains. These cavalry units made up an
army that was neither professional nor voluntary, as the troops were levies,
sent to the fortlets by force. This particular technology of power, whose
main function was to make itself into the instrument of domination of one
class, rested on the reciprocity between the landowning class and political
power, and ensured that the land that was slowly taken away from the wild
native would quickly fall into the hands of the dominant elite. As Tilley
(1990: 285) has stated: Social relations are dependent on power. I t works
through them, in them and on them.
I LEVY DISCIPLINE
When by favour of none the gaucho rode
oer the rolling pampas wide;
but now alas, he grows sour and grim,
for the law and the police they harry him,
and either the Army would rope him in,
or the sheriff have his hide.
(Hernndez, 1935)
As mentioned previously, the technical procedure of this system of the
application of power on the frontier was the levy of the poor paisanaje (a
name for gauchosused at the time). This system was established through a
decree that considered that the political-juridical powers could conscript
any gaucho that was not employed, calling him, in the colorful language of
the time, vago y mal entretenido (a vagrant and lingerer). According to
Salvatore (1992: 41), The army imposed the obligation of the compulsory
service over a social class, the farm laborers. The law ensured their adjust-
ment and insertion into a system of production. This meant the application
of a very particular juridical structure, aimed at the incipient proletarian-
ization of the male workforce of the Pampas, a sine qua non condition for
the formation of a capitalist economy in Argentina, and submitting the
gaucho to a dominant will (for detailed studies on this matter, see
Garavaglia, 1987; Halpern Donghi, 1968; Mayo, 1987; Salvatore, 1992;
Slatta, 1983; for a detailed analysis of the genesis and development of nine-
teenth-century Argentinean cattle capitalism, see Sabato, 1989).
The word proletarianization encompasses the transformation of an inde-
pendent worker farmer, craftsman, small landowner into a salaried
worker, dependent for his sustenance on the sale of his labor. I n short, the
inhabitant of the countryside either worked under a landowners orders on
the large cattle farms (the estancias), a fact that had to be recorded on
article by the patron, as gauchoswere mostly illiterate, or they were labeled
vago, and sent to the fortlets on the frontier.
This procedure was usually put into practice in an unsubtle, arbitrary
fashion, implemented with the old arrogance of royal justice that was never
independent from relations of property. I n fact, the embryo of the vago y
mal entretenido category as an disciplinary element in legal power derives
from the mid-eighteenth century, at the pinnacle of Spanish colonial domi-
nation (Rodriguez Molas, 1982: 101), and was related to existing European
laws of the same period aimed at the most nomadic elements (Foucault,
1992: 61), beggars, tramps and idlers (see Berlinger and Colao, 1990;
Sharpe, 1983; Thompson, 1968; Weisser, 1979). The strong similarities
between the latter and the gauchos were not merely coincidental.
The person in charge of putting this disciplinary policy into practice was
the Justice of the Peace, a post created in 1821 with the goal of lling the
vacancy that the lack of the colonial institution of the Town Council had
left. The Justice of the Peace was the administrative and judicial represen-
tative of the state, and often also acted as a police chief and tax collector
(regarding the duties and detailed activities of the Justice of the Peace, see
Daz, 1959; Salvatore, 1992, 1998; Szuchman, 1987). Likewise, the army had
a relevant role in this disciplinary framework. The historian Salvatore
(1992: 289) writes, The development of a technology of power in areas
outside its production reinforces the discipline of the social body and gives
legitimacy to the political body. . . . The army, like the prison, or the
hospital, presents an idea of discipline to instill on the body and in the mind
of the conscripts. . . . Through connement, surveillance and hierarchy they
try to produce obedient, active, qualied and patriotic subjects. However,
the same author considers that the army functioned imperfectly as a disci-
plinary institution, due to organizational errors, internal corruption and the
existence of several mechanisms of resistance used by the gauchosforced
to serve in it. I concur with the arguments developed by Salvatore (1992),
and consider various practices, such as desertion, as instances of resistance
by the soldiers to the model being imposed upon them. I examine these in
detail below.
This system, based on coercion and injustice, was not free of criticism
and received the condemnation of a certain part of society. The seminal
piece of Argentinean gauchesque literature, El Gaucho Martn Fierro
(1872), written by the journalist and legislator Jos Hernndez, testies to
the abuse of power perpetrated by the hegemonic sectors through the
declaration of vago y mal entretenido. However, the practice of this tech-
nology of power was not the exclusive property of the ruling classes, since
in spite of its strong impact on one social sector, its daily work extended
beyond class differences and moved throughout the social structure. Here
it is useful to consider what Foucault called the microphysics of power,
that is, the existence of micro-powers practiced individually and indepen-
dent from, for example, the state system. These are small, personal
instances of power which spread molecularly throughout society, that act
through it layer by layer, fold by fold, lling in the interstices that general
power cannot cover. For Foucault (1975, as cited in Gordon, 1980: 39), this
is one of the main characteristics that power has: But in thinking of the
mechanisms of power, I am thinking rather of its capillary form of exist-
ence, the point where power reaches into the very grain of individuals,
touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their
discourses, learning processes and everyday lives.
I n the present study, the microphysics of power becomes evident in the
levy system, since its operation revealed a number of faults, ambiguities
and non-compliances that became visible in everyday practice. Among
these was a certain tolerated illegality that the relatives, friends and
favorites of the Justice of the Peace enjoyed. Their combined action
created a complex mixture that included corruption, embezzlement, accu-
sation and the purchase and sale of political favors. The dynamics of imple-
menting this law were corrupted by arbitrariness from the very juridical
nucleus of its conception, because according to the Rural Code of Buenos
Aires Province (edited in 1865), verbal testimony was enough for the
Justice of the Peace to discipline a rural inhabitant, considering him as vago
y mal entretenido and so eligible to be sent to the frontier to serve in the
army for three years. Article No. 289 of this code established the require-
ments to be met in order to be considered as vago: Anyone without a
permanent address and well-known livelihood that has offended morality
due to his misbehavior or bad habits will be declared vago (cited in Sarra-
mone, 1997: 32). These arrangements enabled the implementation often
deliberately unfair of suspicious conduct tinged with a blurred and
supercial patina of justice. As Foucault (1977: 222) argued: The general
juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in
principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by
all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and
asymmetrical that we call the disciplines.
The disciplinary plan within the army as an institution naturally had its
historical ups and downs. One of the most critical moments of its appli-
cation occurred during the so-called expedition to the desert conducted
by Brigadier General Rosas in 1833. The following were some of the rules
dictated by him to control the gaucho-soldiers:
I Any man who mistreated with a rearm, iron bar, stone, or hit a
priest, religious man or any of Gods ministers who were in habit
while receiving sacred orders was to receive capital punishment.
I For proven theft, the accused deserved the death penalty [during the
expedition, for example, the soldier Simn Duarte was executed for
theft on 29 November 1833].
I Any man who took a married woman, widow or single woman was to
receive capital punishment. But when his attempt to assault her was
not deliberate or extreme he was punished by 10 years
imprisonment.
I Any man who was proven to have taken weapons or munitions from
his comrades, the warehouse, or stores would receive capital
punishment.
I Any man who was the rst to turn his back on the war, involved or to
the enemys sight looking for it or waiting on the defensive, was
executed on the spot, in the presence of the troops (CGE, 1976: 418,
419).
A key aspect in understanding the operation of this discipline is that the
same struggle to get the gaucho-soldier subjugated and to the fortlet was
involved in holding him there, to establishing a presence that marked out a
territory that quickly reverted to the hands of the ruling classes (those who
called themselves civilized). I t was a disciplinary plan that created its own
dramatizing area: the fortlet, a fenced structure enclosed by a palisade of
sunken posts (palos a pique), a barrier that defended and held, isolated and
subdued, divided and enclosed the fortlet that was also, in a way, a prison.
Nevertheless, this discipline was in many other respects exible and mild.
For example, there was no rule that specied what should be done with the
waste that fortlets generated daily. Thus, rubbish was discarded inside as
well as out, with no distinction between glass, ceramic ware, faunal remains,
except for the precaution of not throwing sharp objects where the horses
were kept (veried by archaeological excavations at Miana Fortlet, see
Gomez Romero, 1999). Another example, where evidently the discipline
had cracks in this case cracks that showed the resistance of the soldiers to
serving in the army refers to the eating habits of the garrisons quartered
at the fortlets. Archaeological research at Miana Fortlet, as well as in La
Parva fortlet and Cantn Tapalqu Viejo, has revealed the presence of gin,
beer, wine and receptacles for other alcoholic drinks (Gomez Romero and
Bogazzi, 1998; Langiano et al., 2000; Mugueta and Anglada, 1998).
I t is possible that this weak, lax, eclectic and improvised discipline
manifested itself as such because it had yet to present the omnipresent
character that it would assume under the working conditions of full-blown
capitalism. These aspects are clearly observable in Gaudemars work (1981),
who emphasized the absolute importance that this has within the capitalist
work process. The author shows that discipline itself is historically deter-
mined, and dependent on the social and economic formation of its time. I
concur with this argument, which could, in this case study, explain the exi-
bility of the disciplinary schema of the fortlets. Regulations that strictly
codied the tasks and activities that were to be developed inside these rural
military structures did not exist until 1876, three years before the permanent
conquest of the desert and during a period when relations of production
were largely organized along capitalist lines. The historical character of the
disciplines is emphasized by Nievas (1999: 76), who argues that the disci-
plines are techniques to exert power and thus are the results of given
relations of power for a determined period and concrete situation. I t is
essential that we see their exhibition not as a sclerosed practice of power,
but as an applied, evolutive, continuous and uninterrupted political science.
I n summary, a legal power existed that acted to discipline the available
male labor force in the borderlands, where the will of several hegemonic
sectors of society to establish a particular technology of power did not pass
unnoticed. The free gaucho was a useless body, and law and state needed
useful, manipulable bodies; these they obtained with discipline, control and
surveillance, stigmatized through the coercion of the levy and subjected to
the fortlet-prison.
I FORTLET PRISON
He tested his knife in a thick clump of grass and, to keep from entangling his
feet, took off his spurs. Choosing to ght it out rather than be taken, he got
himself wounded in the forearm, in the shoulder, and in the left hand. When
he felt the blood dripping between his ngers, he fought harder than ever,
badly wounding the toughest members of the search party. Toward
daybreak, weak with loss of blood, he was disarmed. The army in those days
acted as a kind of penal institution; Cruz was sent off to serve in an outpost
on the northern frontier. (Borges, 1970)
A consideration of physical space is essential to understand the modus
operandi of any technology of power. As Foucault stated, space is funda-
mental in any exercise of power (Rabinow, 1984: 252). Orser (1988: 320)
emphasized that the interrelation between space and power provides a key
to the archaeological study of the past. He also proposes that, Years of
research are needed before a rm understanding of the relationship
between power and archaeological remains will be attained. Nonetheless,
plantations seem to provide a perfect arena in which to begin the search
(Orser, 1988: 321). I believe that the fortlets can be informative on this
matter, which is one of the purposes of this article.
I n the current case, the fortlets comprised the space. The idea that these
small outposts were prisons is demonstrated by relating two of their
elements: architectonic and functional. Evidence for the former includes the
presence of structures, such as the isolating palisade, the wide ditch and the
mangrullo (watch tower), from where both the outside and the inside were
watched (the descriptions of different fortlets coincide regarding the exist-
ence of these basic architectonic features (see Alsina, 1977; Daireaux, 1945;
Ebelot, 1968; Memorias del Ministerio de Guerra, 1873; Racedo, 1965;
Ramrez Jurez, 1968; Raone, 1969; Ruiz Moreno, 2000; Sarramone, 1997;
Walther, 1964), although some variations may exist in terms of the general
morphology of the oor plans square, round, rectangular, etc.). Function-
ally, the gauchos were compelled to live in the fortlets, deprived of their
freedom and taken there against their will, having been labeled vagos y mal
entretenidos by those in power and so held guilty of that crime.
One also sees the operation of a very particular, perhaps unique, tech-
nology of power at the fortlet. The soldier who kept watch from the
mangrullo was also a comrade, the friend who could oversee the prelimi-
naries of a nocturnal desertion, because he may have been the next one to
try. I n effect, there was no guard. I t is valid, therefore, to wonder whether
the fortlet was, in fact, a type of functionally imperfect panopticon. The
panopticon of Bentham described by Foucault (1977: 200) presents a
peripheral construction divided into cells in the form of a ring with a tower
in the center from where it is possible to control everything. Foucault (1977:
204) describes it as follows: Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to
induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that
assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the
surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its
action. According to Maley (1990: 67), the panopticon functioned as an
authentic cyclopean eye. I n this manner, the panopticon plan is applicable
necessary modications apart to all establishments whatsoever, in
which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by build-
ings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection (Foucault,
1977: 2056), a quality that a fortlet evidently possessed. At the same time,
some architectonic elements reinforce this analogy because both the panop-
ticon and fortlet had a ditch, palisade and central tower (Bentham, 1989:
40, 76), the latter replaced by the mangrullo in the fortlet (see Figure 2).
I t is possible, therefore, to think of the fortlet as an imperfect panopti-
con. The guard on duty was a comrade who was not power, but its momen-
tary, incidental vehicle, and was thus a defective form of power. Watching
over apparently criminal actions that he himself may be incited to commit
was the interstice through which the apparent monolithic homogeneity of
power was dissolved, a trick that enables desertion that most common
form of escape to occur.
I n the fortlets, where observation was carried out by non-professional
agents of power, was the existence of a power that in praxis was neither
particularly strict, monolithic, nor brutal, permitted? The answer again lies
in what Foucault called the microphysics of power, a concept that, as
mentioned above, refers to the relations of power established among
people that are relatively independent of the power used by the state.
These relations have their own shape and a level of autonomy, and develop
a series of conditions that enable the acting out of micro-powers. They
have a taste of the homemade, the familiar, dark, ambiguous, transient;
occasionally awkward, eager, or voracious, and often unobservable, yet
inexorably present.
They prove that not all the devices of power derive from the state, nor
are they exclusive to it, a condition which guarantees an innitesimal distri-
bution of the relations of power. Foucault (1976, cited in Gordon, 1980: 72)
describes this point succinctly and clearly: There is a sort of schematism
that needs to be avoided here . . . that consists of locating power in the state
apparatus, making this into the major, privileged, capital and almost unique
instrument of the power of one class over another. I n reality, power in its
exercise goes much further, passes through much ner channels, and is
much more ambiguous, since each individual has at his disposal a certain
power, and for that very reason can also act as the vehicle for transmitting
a wider power. Nonetheless, it is possible to see its effects as subject to a
certain intermittency that results in discontinuities and irregularities,
because individual passions, personal heterogeneities and behavior arising
from the particular context of an exertion of power are all mixed up in its
application. As Tilley (1990: 2858) has argued, based on Foucaults
conception of power, power is everywhere because it comes from every-
where . . . the workings of power are everywhere. No one escapes.
This microphysics of power impregnated all segments of society with a
particular force, a phenomenon made possible by the context of the border-
land areas in which it acted. These are places where it is possible, as noted,
to observe laxness in the action of power, an aspect that favors the practice
of micro-powers. Guy and Sheridan (1998: 15) explain this with reference
to frontiers: they were shifting membranes of contact between different
peoples, where power was constantly being contested and negotiated and
where relations of race, class and gender were different than in areas where
empires or nation-states did indeed exercise a monopoly on violence.
Nevertheless, the weight of the rudimentary Argentinean state as an
agent of power made itself felt on the gaucho-soldiers. Thus, for example,
the punishment for a guard for not fullling certain disciplinary rules was
merciless (although this would hardly have been more humanitarian in any
army of the time). I n 1833, Brigadier General Rosas established the follow-
ing punishments:
Figure 2 Fortlet Mianas stockade post holes
I A guard who abandoned his post without an order was to be
executed.
I A guard could not talk to anybody while at his post. He had to
devote his attention to his watch. He was not permitted to smoke, sit,
sleep, eat or drink.
I A guard who saw someone climb or jump over the wall, ditch or
fence, either entering or leaving the fortress or enclosure, and who
did not re or issue a warning was to be executed (CGE, 1975: 416).
The idea of the defective panopticon, of a prison with particular charac-
teristics, is established by the fact that women were allowed to live in some
fortlets. Therefore, the women as companions to the soldiers entered
voluntarily to be part of this technology of power, carrying out the
cleaning, cooking, mending uniforms, gathering food, and some also fought
in combat, receiving military commendations (see Figure 3). Historical
research (see Malosetti Costa, 2000; Mayo, 1999; Rotker, 1999; Socolow,
1998; Vera Pichel, 1994) has established the validity of the subject, re-
evaluing the historical importance of women as signicant actors in a
historical process in which, for many people, men would appear to have
starred exclusively. The inclusion of the study of women is still pending in
frontier archaeology, and I argue that we must begin to develop the concep-
tual tools necessary to observe the presence of women in the archaeological
evidence recovered from the fortlets.
I TORTURE
Poor paisanos, whose crime is having been born in the humble condition of
the gaucho, are taken away from their houses to serve without salary, naked
and many times without the necessary food, because for them the fortlet is
the prison and if they are arrested, the free hours they have won are given
back in lashes.
Councillor N. Oroo (Santa F) Chamber of Deputies, 1864.
I n a recent paper, Farnsworth (2000: 154) argued that the systematic use of
physical violence has to be considered in archaeological analyses of social
contexts in which it occurred, even if evidence is weak and barely visible
in the archaeological record, as artifacts that speak directly to violence and
punishment are rare in the archaeological record . . . . Skeletal material may
not demonstrate the kinds of physical abuse most commonly employed. I f
this is not taken into account then one of the key factors in understanding
the logic of these contexts in the past is ignored. Even though the above
authors refer specically to slave plantations in the south of the USA, this
observation is perfectly applicable to the Argentinean fortlets during the
conquest of the desert. Rodriguez Molas (1983) produced a detailed study
of the bodily torments and mechanisms of torture used in Spanish America
and in independent Argentina.
Foucault has argued that the body has become an essential component
for the operation of power relations (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982: 112). I n
reference to body punishment as a military practice, Foucault also considers
that this is an explicit way to carry out justice in the military; it is armed
justice, a demonstration of physical strength. I n the case of the fortlets, this
mechanism was put into practice in a particular way, comparable to the
previous example of the comrade-guard in the mangrullo, because the one
who dealt out the punishment was a comrade or superior a brother-in-
arms and not an agent that performed that function exclusively and was
paid by the state to do so (as the executioner was). Power was in the hands
of someone who could be shoulder to shoulder with one tomorrow in battle,
and shared daily life in the camp.
Despite this, the brutality of the punishments appeared to be guaran-
teed, a fact that can be explained by the workings of the micro-powers
developed by the common person, referred to above, and to the existence
of repressive power (Shanks and Tilley, 1992: 129). According to Shanks
and Tilley (1992: 129), Repressive power works within institutions and
mechanisms which ensure subservience to the social order (forms of legiti-
mate authority) and ultimately rests on a sanction of violence, direct
physical coercion. The operative mechanisms of these two kinds of power
resulted in the millimetrical practice of a micro-power based at an indi-
vidual level being the cause, while the effect showed in the resounding crack
of the lash, that is, in the torture of the body. They are both expressions of
power, or rather its demonstration, but they differ because the former was
generated individually and therefore has to do with the conscience of those
who put it into practice. The latter referred to the hegemonic workings of
the state and its need for laws to be fullled. Thus, the workings of both
resulted in a combination that shaped an authentic trade mark of this
borderland technology of power that extended to peoples bodies, as will
be illustrated by the following examples.
References to torture and bodily punishment are plentiful for the
frontier army. Two French engineers who traveled through the borderlands
at different times made almost identical observations. Parchappe (cited in
Grau, 1975: 54), in 1827 or 1828, declared that punishments are corporal
and very cruel. Fifty years later, Ebelot (1968: 91) stated that discipline is
cruel . . . one, two thousand lashes was nothing. Rodriguez Molas (1982:
170) mentions that some of the deserters detained in 1836 were given three
hundred lashes, two of them were shot and the rest were sent to serve in
the frontier for three more years. Mansilla (1994: 323) remarked that the
tortures the soldiers suffered were usual in the militia, and refers to over-
hearing the following order in quarters in Buenos Aires: give them two
thousand blows, to which he asked, who to?, and he was answered, to
some poor gauchos appointed to the army service (Mansilla, 1994: 323).
Other testimonies are equally signicant. Gutierrez (1956: 241) points out
that the soldier of the fortlets is made to endure staking, the Colombian
stocks. Salvatore (1992: 30) states that, A long time in the stocks or enough
blows could change rebel recruits into obedient soldiers at least this was
the general belief.
Figueroa (1999: 151) describes in detail the method of torture endured
in the army: staking consisted of making the accused lie on the ground,
limbs spread open and tied to stakes or bayonets stuck in the ground, which
produced great pain in the joints. Darwin (1934: 164; see Figure 4), in his
trip across the Pampas in 1833, described the torture of staking: This is a
very severe punishment; four posts are driven into the ground, and the man
is extended by his arms and legs horizontally; and there left to stretch for
several hours. The idea is evidently taken from the usual method of drying
hides. At the same time, the stocks (cepo), Figueroa (1999: 147) continues,
Figure 3 A comic scene showing the welcome given to a gaucho-soldier by
his woman (taken from the Argentinian gauchescocomic Martn Toroby
Jorge Morham and illustrated by Carlos Magallanes,19811985 (Mayo,1983)
had two boards joined by a hinge, with three semi-circular cavities in each
one. They were locked with a padlock, and when together three circular
holes were formed which trapped the accused by the neck and ankles or
neck and wrists (also cited in Becco and Dellepiane Calcena, 1978: 322).
The Colombian stocks were a version that, according to Figueroa (1999:
148), were used in the eld, where the prisoner was seated with his knees
folded, under which they put a stick or rie. He then was made to place his
arms under the ends and his wrists were tied in front of his shins. This left
him in a strained position that produced intense exhaustion and possibly
unconsciousness.
The arbitrariness with which these punishment were dealt out is
exemplied by Santiago Avendaos comments (as cited in Hux, 1999:
302), who, in 1851 served in quarters in Palermo, near Buenos Aires, where
captured deserters were taken: . . . they dealt the most atrocious blows
on the poor devils. The colonel who watched the scene from one end
thought corporal Vieytes, a black man, did not deal the blows with all his
strength. He approached and stopped the punishment, and pointing to
negro Vieytes he said: This scamp seems to feel pity for them. Give him
25 strong blows so he knows how he has to punish . When corporal
Vieytes punishment ended the colonel asked him: Do you like it now?
Have mercy again and youll see! Thus, the moment of public punish-
ment generated a not at all moderate or mitigated but brutally carried out
representation, an authentic ritualization of power that aimed at produc-
ing an exemplary impact on its audience. The implacable strength of this
ritual lay in the belief that their example must be deeply inscribed in the
hearts of men (Foucault, 1977: 49), turning the torture of the body into
one of the ceremonies by which power is manifested (Foucault, 1977: 47).
The cruel and bloody reafrmation of power was thus generated through
a pretentiously symbolic ritual, where the workings of micro-power were
manifested; in this case, through the racial hatred of the black soldier by
the colonel. Mixed-race soldiers such as the gauchos experienced similar
treatment.
I n the fort at Azul, where the military headquarters of the front lines of
the southern section were located, a military decree was written on 7 July
1857 that revealed the inhumanity of the punishments imposed on the troops
that garrisoned the frontiers. This document refers to the pernicious effects
of the use of a knife inside the fortlets in view of the ghts that were evident
between the men. For this reason, the decree ordered, As from today every
individual soldier in whose belt a knife is found will be punished with two
hundred blows in front of all the troops, adding that if the infractor was a
sergeant, his rank will be stripped without applying the punishment. I n the
following article it was ordered that, Every individual soldier that wounds
another army man in a ght with a knife, stone or blow will be irremissibly
punished with eight hundred blows in front of his regiment. And nally, the
last article of the decree established that, I f [the victim] died because of the
wound the aggressor will suffer the punishment of being shot in front of the
army instead of the blows (cited in Luna, 1996: 122).
This example shows the cruelty of the tortures inicted upon the victims
body, as well as their ritual and exemplary nature, since they were public
and it was public representation that this mechanism of power needed. This
power was . . . a power that not only did not hesitate to exert itself directly
on bodies, but was exalted and strengthened by its visible manifestations;
. . . a power that asserted itself as an armed power whose functions of main-
taining order were not entirely unconnected with the functions of war; . . .
a power that presented rules and obligations as personal bonds, a breach of
which constituted an offence and called for vengeance (Foucault, 1977: 57).
I n physical torture, the example was based on terror: physical fear,
collective horror, images that must be engraved on the memories of the
spectators thus Foucault (1977: 10910) described this aspect of power,
which believed deeply in the coercive power of the exhibition. I n the case
of the penalties applied for the use of knives, the punishment is a ritual, as
well as being a political act, that has a deep social signicance, since it
impacts strongly on a determined class and obeys social hierarchy. The non-
commissioned ofcer, in this case the sergeant, was to be punished in a
Figure 4 Gaucho staked in the fortlet.Drawing by Augusto Gmez Romero
(note the palisade and the gin bottle,which is similar to archaeological ones
found in several excavations of fortlets)
different way to the soldier. I n general, among the troops in the fortlets the
ofcers belonged to the bourgeois families from the cities, primarily Buenos
Aires. On the whole, the white ofcers did not hesitate to exert despoti-
cally the superiority of their race and position, imposing brutal punishments
on the mixed-race gaucho-soldiers repeatedly. One of the few documental
references on Fortlet Miana (Gomez Romero, 1999: 24) refers to the
desertion of a sergeant because of the beatings the commander had given
him (AMEA, Document No. 1, 1863). Joaqun Granel, representative for
Santa F Province, conrmed this practice: Punishment by blows is only
applied to soldiers, and in no case is it extended to superiors or ofcers,
although they had committed the same crime (cited in Rodriguez Molas,
1983: 30). Thus, the ritualization of these body tortures plainly showed the
unequal relation of strength that gave power to the law, a law that was
always attentive, in praxis, to the management, consolidation and survival
of certain privileges.
I ESCAPE DESERTION
He understood that his shoulder braid and his uniform were now in his way.
He understood that his real destiny was as a lone wolf, not a gregarious dog.
He understood that the other man was himself. Day dawned over the bound-
less plain. Cruz threw down his kepi, called out that he would not be party to
the crime of killing a brave man, and began ghting against his own soldiers,
shoulder to shoulder with Martn Fierro, the deserter. (Borges, 1970)
To imagine a prison implies imagining a method to escape from it. Escape
is fundamentally associated with the prison, and one escaped the fortlet-
prison by deserting. Desertion was perhaps the gaucho-soldiers most
important form of resistance against the coercive mechanism of an authori-
tarian state, and constituted a constant fact and permanent problem for
power. During the Rosas period (18291852) this was the most common
crime (Salvatore, 1998: 346). Furthermore, it was the topic of many debates
that examined its causes and looked for a solution (e.g. the report by
Minister of War, Gelly y Obes, to the Chamber of Deputies in 1864, related
in detail the magnitude of the problem). As mentioned above, a traditional
concession aimed at reducing desertions was to allow female companions
for the soldiers, who could, if they so desired, live in the fortlet. Ebelot
(1968: 184) wrote that, A regiment without women, dies of boredom and
of dirtiness, and the number of desertions increases remarkably.
Another possible solution to the problem of desertion was to increase
the severity of the penalty, eventually punishable by death. The written
references are eloquent in this respect. Marcos Paz, a colonel assigned to
the Chaco frontier, stated: The conscripts give me a lot of trouble. They
are unparalleled outlaws, and some of them have already deserted . . . . I ve
given them a good dose of beatings and I ve chained them again. Tomorrow
I ll shoot Benjamn Bradn, and from now on I ll do the same to those I
catch deserting (cited in Rodriguez Molas, 1982: 219). Daza (1975: 51)
described how the soldier Mardonio Leiva from the Pun fortlet was caught
by his own comrades, who were ordered to shoot him. Upon the Reming-
tons being aimed at him, his shout tore through the Pampas: shoot fellows,
for you kill a man! (Similar references can be found in Barros, 1957;
Ebelot, 1968; Mansilla, 1969; Prado, 1970.)
The bureaucratic scribes, the cagatintas(pen pushers), secretaries of the
Justice of the Peace, in service to this technology of power, wrote up the
so-called liaciones (posted descriptions of deserters). These were circum-
scribed, brief, and obviously police descriptions of the captured deserters
or those still at large. However, some present certain exceptional charac-
teristics as they do not comply with the usual aridity that a military text
apparently should possess. The details of these descriptions are vivid, lyrical
portraits of people that really existed, of anonymous gauchos whose lives
were destined to pass by in the margins of the ofcial discourse. Never-
theless, as in the case of The Life of I nfamous Men (Foucault, 1996), they
were temporarily examined and supercially dissected by the pen of power.
Because, as Foucault argued, For some of these lives to come to us it was
necessary that a light beam, during at least an instant, laid on them, a light
that came from outside: what pulled them out of the night in which they
could have and maybe should have stayed, it was its meeting with the power
. . . that marked them with a lash of a claw (Foucault, 1996: 1245). One
such description is as follows:
Dated 14 October 1846, Chascoms (Buenos Aires Province). Classication
of Juan Aguirre, deserter. Age 14, single. Address: San Vicente district;
farmer; illiterate. Brown, curly hair, belongs to the farm-laborer class. Horse
rider, suitable for cavalry. Dressed in a scarf tied around his head, old annel
ponceauundershirt, woolen ponceauchiripa, underpants and barefoot. Signs
of a beating on chest and back that he received at Melincu Fortlet (Santa F
Province), from where he supposedly deserted. (AMEA, Document No. 9,
1846, emphasis added)
The next is an uncommon liacin, as the deserter escaped with a woman
who is also described.
Dated 15 January 1847, Monte (Buenos Aires Province). Particulars of the
deserter Eugenio Galvn, age about 30. Married. Average height. Plump.
I ndian-like olive-skinned. Straight black hair. Sparse beard without a
moustache, black eyes, average nose, average mouth. Dressed in plush white
hat, woolen coffee-colored jacket, long underpants, chiripaand botas de
potro [colt-leather boots]. Description of Romualda Acosta, who is
travelling with Galvn. Daughter of Gregorio Acosta and Petrona Gongora,
resident of Ranchos district. Age about 15. Olive-skinned, straight black
hair, black eyes, snub-nosed, small thick lips. Dressed in a chali, purple dress
with black buttons with ponceaulittle owers, taking a woolen bedspread,
white, ponceauand green socks. (AMEA, Document No. 129, year 1846)
As can be seen, a distinctive characteristic of these liaciones was the
description of the deserters dress. This was essential because it determined
both the social status of the recruit or deserter, and whether he belonged
to an urban or rural environment. The gauchos carried on themselves the
signs of their social identity that showed their potential culpability. They
dressed in chiripa, botas de potro, native ponchos; while dress coats and
frock coats the basic distinctive elements of urban clothing, the natural
attire of decent people were missing. This fact, of course, was recorded
in detail in the liacin, as it was an important part of the identication of
the deserter. I n short, these brief accounts refer to real people; their
freedom, misfortune and at the very least their destiny were perhaps
decided on these words. As Foucault has stated: The most intense point of
those lives, that in which its energy focuses, lies precisely there where it
collides with the power, ght with it, try to reuse their strength or escape
from their traps (Foucault, 1996: 125).
I CONCLUSION
I n this article, I have given an account of the many state-level and personal
devices of power that operated on popular sections in the rural areas of the
so-called I ndian frontier in nineteenth-century Argentina. The most
reliable representatives of these areas, the gauchos, were compelled not
without resistance on their part to interweave their lives with a compli-
cated framework of power which was entirely beyond their will and made
them the target of a series of relations of domination. When the conquest
of the desert nally ended and the dominant groups no longer needed the
gaucho-soldiers, they sentenced them to marginalization and oblivion.
The marginalization of these mixed-race soldiers is understandable
starting from the perspective of the model of nation that the Argentinean
leading class aspired to, and into which the gauchos did not t. They were
the bearers of traditions and modes of life that differed from the ones they
had imposed upon them; in short, they were unassimilable. They were the
faces that a white, pro-European Argentina was not inclined to tolerate.
This was an ideology that conditioned the development and putting into
operation of a coercive technology of power that controlled Argentina in
the nineteenth century. The marginalization also worked on the memory
of the gauchos, as Argentinean liberal historiography has made relative the
contribution of the gauchos and their women as signicant social actors in
the history of the country; an example, as such, of one of Foucaults argu-
ments, that the manipulation of collective memory is an essential factor in
the ght for power.
I n this respect, the action of a number of micro-powers, minute requests
for individual power, an uninterrupted drainage of power that often acted
under the umbrella of state power like autonomous parasites, became
essential in the development of this historical process, as has been shown
throughout this article. I ts image becomes diffuse and distorted, an alter-
ation generally produced by the action of different gradations of authority
temporarily in the service of various aspects of personal power. This is
detectable in the pseudo-surveillance of the sentry at the fortlet, the brutal-
ity of the executioner on duty, or the insidious meticulousness of the secre-
tary of the Justice of the Peace; in short, minimum bifurcations of the
exertion of power that yet can be transcended in an understanding of the
essence of its domination. These were tiny mechanisms of power whose
combined effects form a generally abject facet of the technology of general-
ized power.
This was how punishment and observation worked during this period in
Argentina, through the implementation of a technology of power that was
deeply imbricated with class interests. This power determined that one of
the duties of the fortlets (overlooked by the archaeologists who excavate
these structures) was to function as actual prisons, defective panopticons
where the imposition of a mixture of repressive power of mainly state
action, and micro-powers manipulated in a personal way, was articulated.
I n other words, they were fruitful elds for relations of power to prosper.
I n conclusion, it would be interesting to evaluate the potential application
of these arguments and their implications through future archaeological
work, as well as their ability to broaden the spectrum of extant analyses of
these particular problems. This argument is equally relevant in analyses
where physical spaces were involved in the generation of an authentic
reality by power, and where the technologies of power that changed men
and womens lives at a given time and place can be uncovered.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the archaeologists Benjamn Alberti, Carmen Curbelo, Vicky
Pedrotta and Gustavo Politis for their helpful comments, criticism, and discussion.
Special thanks go to the entire research team of The Miana and Otamendi Fortlets
Project and my colleagues of The Museo Etnogrco E. Squirru in Azul for their
continuous comments on various points in this article. I owe a debt of gratitude to
my cousin, the noted artist Augusto Gmez Romero, who produced the illustra-
tions. My friend Roxana Melndez translated the text from Spanish to English and
Benjamn Alberti also helped with the translation. Finally, thanks to the JSA Editor,
Lynn Meskell. I take full responsibility for the opinions expressed in the text.
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FACUNDO GOMEZ ROMERO graduated in Anthropological
Sciences with a major in Archaeology from the Universidad de Buenos
Aires, Argentina; he received a Masters in Archaeology from the Univer-
sidad Autnoma de Barcelona, Spain. He is a researcher with the Museo
Etnogrco y Archivo Histrico Enrique Squirru, Azul, Buenos Aires
Province, Argentina, and CADIC (Centro Austral de Investigaciones
Cientcas,CONYCET,Ushuaia,Tierra del Fuego,Argentina).He is Director
of the Fortn Miana and Fortn Otamendi Historical Archaeology
Project, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. His work focuses on inter-
ethnic relations between indigenous groups and gauchos on the internal
frontier of the Argentinean Pampas during the nineteenth century, and
the archaeological examination of the diverse technologies of power
that operated in the military structures (fortines). His book is entitled
Sobre lo Arado:El Pasado,Arqueologa Histrica en los Alrededores del Fortn
Miana (18601869), Editorial BIBLOS, Azul (1999).
[email: fgomezromero@hotmail.com]

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