Astronomies of the European Immigrants and Their Descendants in the Southern Argentinean Chaco Region

Abstract

This is a cultural astronomy study about practices and ideas among European immigrants and their descendants, who settled, like colonists, in the north of the Argentinean province of Santa Fe, in the southern area of the Argentinean Chaco. These colonists arrived among waves of immigration occurring in Argentina in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Through the analysis of these astronomical knowledge, it is clear, on the one hand, how the colonists and their descendants have understood the sky in a general way, how they have observed it, and the metaphors or models to which they have resorted in different contexts to make sense of astronomical objects and events. On the other hand, the ideas and practices collected also tell us about the importance that relations between the different immigrants and between immigrants and other social groups present in the region addressed, such as those chaqueños aboriginal groups and criollos had in the construction of social identity and celestial knowledgeby the colonists.