Ruins of Quilmes are located in 110 mi (177 km) Northwest of Tucuman, Tucumán Province in Argentina. It is famous for one of the largest settlements from pre- Columbian era. Quilmes archeological site was inhabited by Quilmes people and covered an area of about 30 hectares.
Location: 110 mi (177 km) Northwest of Tucuman, Tucumán Province Map
Open: 8:30am- dusk daily
Area: 30 hectares
Quilmes Ruins is a large archaeological site in the Calchaqui Valleys in the Tucuman Province of Argentina. It is the largest pre- Columbian Native American settlement in the country and the whole region. Apparent high density of its residence gave many historians right to call it "the first pre- Hispanic city of Argentina". Today it covers an area of roughly 30 hectares. It hey day was in the 9th century AD when Qulmes people inhabited this site. Historians believe it once housed over 5000 inhabitants.
The growth of the city was interrupted in 1667 when the Quilmes people suffered their most important military defeat at the hands of the Spaniards led by Alonso Mercado y Villacorta. Over 400 Spanish soldiers besieged Quilmes and prevent its residents to access the crops. Additionally they poisoned the source of water supply that flowed from the mountains. After a month of bitter fighting residents of besieged surrendered. They were allowed to keep their personal items, but they had to abandon Quilmes and move to a reservation on the La Plata river over a thousand miles away. Spaniards didn't bother to provide food or water for the Native population. It is estimated that out 2,600 survivors who started the march, only 400 people made it to the reservation. It is less than 10% of the original population of the town.
Quilmes Ruins was re- discovered in 1888 by Samuel Alejandro Lafone Quevedo. But first scientific exploration of the region was carried out in 1897 by the archaeologists Juan Bautista Ambrosetti.
History
The indigenous people known as quilmes, the
first inhabitants of this place, had a very high population density,
which allowed them a better distribution of tasks and a greater
exploitation of the ecosystem. Cities with such a high density index
were formed in the entire Calchaquí valley that specialists currently
consider them to be the first pre-Hispanic cities in Argentina.
These settlements began their existence in the 10th century, reaching a
great socio-cultural development and a good management of very complex
agro-pastoral and cultivation and irrigation systems. This continuous
progress was only interrupted in 1667 when the Quilmes suffered their
most important military defeat at the hands of the Spanish, led in this
case by Alonso Mercado y Villacorta, through the siege of their main
forts. Some 400 Spaniards besieged a town of more than 6,000 indigenous
people, first preventing them from accessing their crops on the fertile
plain of the Santa María River and then poisoning the water supply
source that came from the mountains. While the Spanish had armor and
firearms, they used bows and arrows, slings, spears, and stone-tipped
axes.
After more or less a month, the indigenous people decided
to surrender. Its cacique, Martín Iquín, was its spokesman at that time.
After their surrender and because the Spanish were unable to subdue
them, they were forced to travel a thousand kilometers on foot without
food or water. It is estimated that of the more than 2,600 survivors who
left, only a little more than 400 reached the humid and unhealthy swamps
of Quilmes on the banks of the Río de La Plata. The survivors ended
their days dying mainly from lung diseases. When they arrived they did
not find the carob tree considered sacred that gave them food, firewood
and drink. They did not know the local medicinal herbs and could not
heal themselves. The site located 35 km south of the city of Buenos
Aires is called Quilmes in reference to the mission of Santa María de
Quilmes.
property title of the place
Numerous chronicles refer
to the extinction of the Quilme people in 1716; but, according to the
following royal document, the Spanish Crown recognized the ownership of
the territory where they lived.
There is historical research that
shows that since 1770, the landowners advanced on the lands of the
Quilmes and the Amaichas, who were able to maintain part of the
territory on the east bank of the Santa María River until today, while
the remaining territory, located on the west of the aforementioned
river, was registered in the Property Registry of the Province of
Tucumán in the name of the usurpers.
From that moment they were
forced to work for free in order to pay taxes for the use of the land
and deliver two thirds of the crops or 50% of the animal husbandry to
the Provincial State.
However, said Royal Certificate is a
witnessed and protocolized document, in which the indigenous people took
refuge when claiming ownership of their Sacred City, as they used to
call it.
Discovery
The Sacred City of the Quilmes was
apparently discovered by Juan Bautista Ambrosetti in 1897, but, however,
it had been found earlier by Samuel A. Lafone Quevedo, in 1888. He then
wrote a series of letters to the newspaper La Nación, informing the
journalists the news. One of them mentioned the confusion of the
archaeologists, who believed they were facing giant-sized vizcacheras
and their resemblance to a honeycomb.
In addition, in 1893 the
pre-Columbian settlement was visited by Ten Kate, who observed that the
ruins were in a very good state of preservation, despite their age.
Finally, in the year 1897, Ambrosetti visited the ruins and made a
detailed study of them. He delimited their size, 1 km², made a small map
of them, established the biotope exploitation area, discovered a
cemetery in them and associated the Quilme people with that of Amaicha
for the first time.
Later, the Zavaleta museum catalog would
mention to his credit "more than two hundred arrowheads, about three
hundred clay idols and clay pipes [sic]." It is said that all these
belongings were stolen from the ruins by Manuel B. Zavaleta, who was
also the owner of the museum.
A few years later, in 1911, Carlos
Bruch briefly visited the ruins, and established that its extension is 3
km². In addition, he described the archaeological ceramic material found
there, purchased from the director of the El Bañado de Quilmes school.In
the year 1919, Schreiter focused on his discoveries of children's
cemeteries in funerary urns in the ruins. Some time later, Adán Quiroga,
in 1929, took it upon himself to spread his discovery of pieces of "very
fine fabric" around the area. After this kind of "euphoria" for the
ruins, the place would not receive more visits until 1978.
Recent history
In 1977, the Provincial State
expropriated 206 hectares of land from third parties and carried out the
reconstruction of the site in agreement with the University of Buenos
Aires. The cleaning and reconstruction reached only 5% of the sacred
city. The descendants of the aborigines had a property title granted by
the Spanish crown that was never valid when it became a Republic. Until
then, the owner was a landowner from whom the then governor, Antonio
Domingo Bussi, acquired 206 hectares through expropriation.
In
1992, during the government of Ramón Ortega, the concession was granted
to businessman Héctor Cruz for ten years in exchange for a canon of one
hundred and ten Argentine pesos that was never paid. This businessman
built a hotel on the site, which according to the descendants of the
original settlers, self-styled Quilmes Indigenous Community (CIQ), was
carried out without proper impact studies, but also without their
consent, which has caused irreparable damage.
The CIQ filed a
lawsuit to prevent the extension of the concession, which expired in
2002 and was supported by an amparo appeal won by the Community.
The province of Tucumán recognized in 2006, from the constitutional
reform, the legitimacy of the use of the land and the ethnic
pre-existence and decided to rescind the contract since the concession
had expired.10 As the claims were unsuccessful, on the 28th On November
2007, the CIQ became a Permanent Assembly, cutting off the entrance to
the ruins, demanding from the Provincial State the immediate execution
of Decree 2731/1 and the restitution of the so-called "Sacred City". In
response to the claims , the public force evicted Cruz and his employees
on December 13, 2007, but failed to comply with point number two.
On November 28, 2007, the descendants of the Quilmes cut off access
to the ruins as a sign of protest, and on December 13 they forcibly
evicted Héctor Cruz, who held the concession for the place, and finally
on January 9, 2008, in exercise of their rights, the spiritual takeover
of the place was carried out, performing a ceremony to the Pachamama,
enabling the passage to the place on January 10 of that year. On June
25, a local judge tried to evict them for a presentation of Cruz, who
intended to continue exploiting the area, but various appeals proved the
descendants right.
Reconstruction
In 1977 the "Quilmes Ruins
project" began to be discussed, whose proposal was to restore them, with
mainly tourist criteria. Finally, it ended up being approved in 1978,
the year in which the official restoration began. The Argentine Ministry
of Social Development financed the operation, aided by the provincial
government. Basically, the restoration process was carried out in four
stages: the first involved cleaning the land; the second, the
anastylosis of the most significant places; the third consisted in the
creation of a site museum and the fourth, in archaeological research.
According to an agreement signed in 1978, the area to be restored would
be chosen by the Tilcara Institute and one of the houses would be used
as a museum.
To carry out this reconstruction, in 1978,
$101,122,000 (approximately USD 126,000) were used from the funds of the
Argentine Republic, which had to be reinforced two years later with
$875,000,000 (approximately USD 430,000). more. The government of that
country contradicted itself many times, because at the beginning of
1980, the site was very damaged and affected, in a completely different
state from that of the 19th century, when they were discovered. The
final result of this project was inaugurated around 1980, although it
would be a resounding failure, since it did not serve to protect the
heritage, it was not integrated into plans for educational purposes, nor
did it provide the planned tourist infrastructure.
Architecture of the ruins
The ruins of the quilmes
are a set of houses that belonged to said original people, where you can
see rectangular and circular remains of the foundations of the
construction.
This settlement served as a home for Quilme
families, which was not well seen by their neighbors, the Calchaquíes,
with whom they had bloody clashes. They finally allied themselves to
fight the Spanish, who defeated them in the 17th century.
The
fortress stood from the 800s until the 17th century, with a stable
population of three thousand people, until they were finally forced to
move on foot 1,200 km to the area where the city of Quilmes is today in
the province of of Buenos Aires on January 2, 1667. During that journey,
many of the almost four thousand exiled indigenous people died. Thanks
to the work of a team of specialists, who restored the most important
buildings, the complexity of the settlement can be seen. Two fortresses
that served as defenses against possible attacks by neighboring
indigenous populations and one of the sectors of a citadel have been
rebuilt.
In the remains of the citadel you can see stone houses,
ancient rock walls and cacti. The original city also included a chapel
built by the Spanish in order to evangelize the population, which is
estimated at five thousand inhabitants. Another striking element of
these ruins are the outstanding constructions of water dams and the
large number of crops. , mainly corn, which were the food base of these
indigenous people. It is believed that the strategy applied by the
Spaniards to defeat this warlike people consisted of cutting off their
access to the sources of reserve resources, both water and food.