Main entrance
The regional museum Aníbal Cambas is located in The República del Paraguay Park, in the city of Posadas, in the province of Misiones.
Entry
old facade
Its brick style building has always been on Alberdi 600 street. It was donated by the Town Hall to The Historical Studies Board of the province. In its beginnings, it had a central room and two others on its sides where the historical collections were exposed. At the beginning of the current century, the government decided to attach a new building to the older one. The new building was inaugurated on March 17th, 2016.
On March 20th, 1939 the Historical Studies Board of Misiones was founded. It aimed to open the museum to the local community, to attest to the history of the region and expose the flora and fauna. Its inauguration was on March 20th, 1940.
When you get into the First cultures room you can see the geographical location of the guaraníes that covers parts of the La Plata river basin. It has landscapes of the jungle and the countryside with many watercourses, brick-coloured ground, sandstones, basalt rock, and some varieties of quartz. Its climate is sub-tropical with and without dry seasons.
Aníbal Cambas was a notary, writer, historian, Co-founder of the Historical Studies Board, and one of the museum’s founders which takes his name in his honour. Also, he was the creator of the shields of Misiones and the Historial Studies Board.
Exit
"First Cultures"(Sector A)
The province of Misiones is located in the geomorphological region known as Mesopotamia where the plateau of Misiones is extended. The geological units are Misiones formation, Posadas formation, Ubajay formation and Apostoles formation.
Sector B
Entry
The pre-Columbian population in the eastern highlands began 10,000 years ago. Two major cultural stages are known: the lithic and the agro-pottery. In the lithic stage two traditions were developed: Altoparanaense-Himaitá and Umbú-Mocoretá. They were hunters, collectors of sub-tropical forests. They were located along the valleys of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers. The pattern of their settlement: nomadism. Socio-political organization: the band.
The Altoparanaense tradition had an instrument industry on cores and stalks: straight and curved biface claps or axes to carve trees, picks, readers to work with wood, flat-convex scrapers, made of quartzite, basalt, and metasedimentary rocks.
Sector C
Sector A
Sector B
Sala 2
Areniscas yard
Library
Sector D
Ache Guayakí Room (Sector A)
Umbú-Mocoretá tradition: Industry: projectile tips with and without peduncles, worked on thin sheets of quartzite, opal and agate. small scrapers, drillers and knives to work leathers.
The agro-pottery stage had two sub-stages: Eldoradense-Taquara and Tupí-Guaraní culture. The Taquara-Eldoradense dwellers were hunters and collectors-farmers. They used lithic instruments: smoothed axes, mortars, simple ceramics and pots and conical or cylindrical vessels.
Sector E
Sector C
The inhabitants practised the following economic activities: hunting, fishing, gathering and agriculture (corn, cassava, sweet potato, pumpkins, etc). Settlement pattern: sedentary lifestyle. Sites: houses, wells and embankments completed with burial mounds and camps in which the only structures identified are stoves.
Exit
Sector D
The Guayakí: culture of hunter-gatherers, self-styled "Ache" ("our people"). Guayakí groups inhabited in Misiones and Paraguay at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. They formed small bands scattered in a large region occupied by the Guarani. They were unaware of agriculture and their economy was based on the exploitation of the resources of the forest. They were limited to products of hunting and collecting.
The camp is the space of the woman who makes basketry, pottery, cooking and takes care of the children. We represent it with the NAKU, a large flexible basket made by her, interwoven with a single sheet of Pindó, where she transports the camp's items.
Sector B
Auditorium
Auditorium
Exit
The jungle is of the man who hunts and gathers for the group. The AXE is made of encased stone; it serves to open holes in the trees, obtain honey from the hollows of trunks, crush the inside of the pindó to extract its marrow, cut vegetable fibres and turn down trees.
Matrilocal family, extensive. Daily they improvised the camp, to eat and rest. We display black clay pots and plates; pumpkins for carrying liquids; tatá to make fire; “reiti” or basket braided with tacuarembó fibre and waterproofed with a mixture of wax and charcoal, to transport honey and other liquids.
Children's toys: small stone axe, wax tops, string games, pets such as small snakes. Music had a special place in the camp. Musical instruments: wooden bass drum, horn and flutes. The body ornaments are bracelets and pendants, which symbolize the triumphs of hunters over their prey or serve as adornment for women.
Sector C
They used wooden bones to spin and knit. The palm tree offers many alternatives for feeding and making everyday utensils: beetle larvae, hearts of palm, basketry leaves, fibres for ropes and bows, and honey for children.
Mataco-Guayaki symbiosis. Collection donated by Mayntzhusen, in 1910. They belonged to two cultures that coexisted near Trinidad and Jesús, in Paraguay: Guayakí and Mataco. Made up of textiles, toys, buttons and small ceramic zoomorphic figures.
Sector A
Federico Cristian Mayntzhusen (1873-1949) was born in Hamburg, Germany. In 1902 he settled in Paraguay, where he had knowledge of the Guayakí culture, to which he dedicated his time to study it.
In 1939 Mayntzhusen began to collaborate with the Board of Historical Studies of Misiones and the Regional Museum "Aníbal Cambas" which received in donation an important collection of Aché pieces gathered by him, that we will expose. He was an Honorary Member of the Board, which published his unpublished works: "Los Aché Guayakí", and Aché guayakí Vocabulary.
Each hunter makes his own bow and arrows, which are buried along with the owner when he dies. The hunter establishes the hunting circuits according to the availability of food offered by the bush to meet the demand of the group.
Sector D
Sector B
Sector D
Behind
Stage
Behind
Stage
Sector D
Stage
Stage
Remains of pilasters, column bases, truncated images, all in carved sandstone rock, and of great bearing and weight, constitutes the Areniscas yard. They come from different Jesuit-Guarani groups.
Library
Social events room
Entry
Sala 1
Sala 3
The territory historically occupied by the Guarani includes a large part of South America, an area of jungles, fields and rivers
Land and water are sources of subsistence created by God for common use. It is the land where the Guaraníes developed the Teko. Their way of being, and their economic activities: cultivation, gathering, hunting and fishing. The rivers made them navigators and builders of canoes.
Sector B
Exit
The term Guaraní was a proper name. They recognized themselves as Ava (person in the Guarani language). The Guaraní social base is the teyy (lineage, kindred), who lived in a communal house. The inhabited space is the tekoha, a set of several teyy surrounded by a yard, and sometimes by a palisade. Furthermore, that term designates the social, political and economic relations that take place there.
A great variety of ceramic objects can be distinguished. They were used for the storage or transport of their production and daily consumption, or for their festivities.
Sector B1
The yapepó are large containers for community use. They were used to store corn or make chicha and their last destination was to serve as a funeral urn.
Sector A
The technique to make the ceramics was that of the impeller. Once the piece was shaped, it was decorated with fingerprints, nails or a sharp element; they could be painted with different colours or white slip. Tembetás are masculine lip ornaments.
Through the grazing system they developed a new agriculture method that included the cultivation, of corn, cassava, beans, squash, peanuts, cotton and tobacco using a digging stick. Hunting, fishing and gathering fruits and honey complemented this activity.
Sector C
Sector B
Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Guarani-Jesuit reductions were founded. There were more than sixty located in the regions of the Guaycurúes, Guayrá, Paraná, Uruguay, Tape and Itatín. However, various factors, mainly the Bandeirantes attacks, motivated transfer, abandonment or merger. Only thirty villages survived.
Sector C1
Sector B1
The reduction was a town made up of indigenous communities gathered to be evangelized. They became stable and large cities, with their own political, social and economic institutions.
Sector D
Sector C1
Currently, the Mbya society predominates in the province of Misiones, although there is also a presence of the Avá Guaraní people. They constitute about 124 communities.
The Guaraní people are religious; They relate to others, and to the world around them through marked ritual behaviour. Their gods are the Great Father Ñamandú, and his children, Karaí, Jakairá and Tupá. Its spiritual leader is the Opyguá; the temple is the opy.
Sector C2
Sector D1
Sector D
The chief is the one who puts the order in the community. His authority rests on the council or assembly of the assembled men. The esteem for his person derives from his qualities: courage, generosity and oratorical skills.
Each of the Guaraní partialities has a peculiar type of basketwork. Among the Mbya, the “ayaká” is characteristic, a basket made with strips of tacuarembó and the bark of the root of the güembé.
Sector D2
Sector D1
Exit
The Guaraní language began to be a written and printed language with the Franciscans and Jesuits, especially with Father Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. The printing press of the reductions published several works in this language.
The cainguás or monteses are one of the Guaraní groups. They had a very original dance, which was performed in front of the chief's house, and in which men and women participated. The women executed the tacuapu; the men played the rattles and small drums.
Weaving was one of the most developed activities; They used spindles and vegetable fibres in rustic looms. They use them to make blankets, headbands and other garments.
The drum was a hollowed-out piece of palm tree trunk that fulfilled the function of promoting the maturity of the fruits, the pubescent girl, and of increasing fishing.
The sacred musical instruments were the mbaraka, used by men as a sleeper, and the takuapu, a drum stick used by women. Also the mimby hetá, or bread flute.
Entry
Sala 2
Exit
After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1768 the governor of Buenos Aires, Francisco de Paula Bucarelli, introduced liberal reforms that altered the political, social and economic order in the reductions. Those politics caused dire consequences, such as economic decline and depopulation. In 1803, there was the Creation of the Autonomous Government of Misiones through the Royal Decree of Aranjuez.
In 1810 ocurred the May Revolution; Misiones was in charge of Tomás de Rocamora. The Board of Buenos Aires sent the memo on May 27 by which they communicated their installation and requested the recognition and the sending of representatives. Rocamora joined in and asked the departmental sub-delegates to consult the opinion of the peoples through open councils. At the Candelaria meeting of July 8, 1810, this department adhered to the revolution.
When Manuel Belgrano was in Misiones, during his campaign to Paraguay, he observed the state of misery in which the peoples found themselves. To improve this situation, he pronounced the Provisional Regulations for the 30 towns of Misiones. It aimed to recognize the rights of indigenous people on an equal footing with the whites.
José Gervasio Artigas formed the Federal League or free peoples, on the basis of federalism, republicanism, the autonomy of the peoples and social equality. In 1815 Artigas appointed Andrés Guacurarí commander general of Misiones.
Sector B
The bust of Andresito that we exhibit is the work of Luis Perlotti. It was one of the three models that this artist made for the monument to the hero that is located at the access to Garupá. As General Commander of Misiones, Andresito carried out several Campaigns; against Paraguay, the Portuguese and in defence of the federal system in Corrientes.
In 1832 Misiones was incorporated into the province of Corrientes. Paraguayan forces advanced on our territory and built the Trench of San Miguel in Tranquera de Loreto. Moreover, in 1834 they built a camp/fort in Itapúa, known as The Paraguayan Trench. Between 1865 and 1970 the War of the Triple Alliance took place, one of its scenarios was Misiones.
The Misiones territory began to be repopulated in the second half of the nineteenth century. This process was consolidated from the war of the Triple Alliance, on the economic basis of the exploitation of yerba plantations and forests. In 1870 the province of Corrientes created the Department of Candelaria, with its capital in Trinchera de San José which, changed its name to Posadas in 1879.
Sector C
Sector A
Sector B
On 20 December 1881, Law No. 1.149 established the National Territory of Misiones. The organization of the new territory was done through the Organic Law of National Territories.
Sector D
Sector E
Until the first decades of the twentieth century the economy was based on the exploitation of natural resources: forests and yerbales, and then on the cultivation of yerba. In this activity the main human resource was the mensú.
The monoculture of yerba mate continued until the installation of the colonies that required the diversification of production. To join forces in production, the settlers organized themselves into cooperatives and trade associations. The production of yerba mate reached important levels in the 1940s which was exhibited at the First National Festival of Yerba Mate. Furthermore, the industrialization responded to the needs demanded by the raw material: yerba and wood.
The exploitation of natural resources promoted the opening of roads, the development of river transport and the installation of ports, being the most important one the Posadas’ port. The land route was combined with the river and railway routes that arrived in 1912 with the Northeast Argentine Railway Company, linking Buenos Aires and Asunción city.
Sector C
In 1913 arrived the ferroship Exequiel Ramos Mexía and Roque Sáenz Peña that moved the wagons from the port of Posadas to Pacu-Cuá port in Encarnación.
The Paraná River was the main means of communication and transport; it was where vapors, chatas, jangadas and cotres moved. The boats crossed daily to Paraguay transporting goods.
Sector D
Sector F
Sector E
The organization of the National Territory of Misiones gave great importance to immigration and colonization, and the agricultural activity expanded. From 1897 came Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Finns, Danes, Swedes, Germans, Czechs, who, added to the Brazilians and Paraguayans. They formed the national or official colonies and also the semi-spontaneous and the private ones at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Sector A
Exit
Social events room
Sector B
Areniscas yard
Sector C
Sector A
We end our tour with a view of the Clotilde González de Fernández Ramos Library, specialized in regional and Argentine history. It has a documentation center, photo library and newspaper library with collections of newspapers: La Tarde, La Verdad, El Noticiero, El Eco de Misiones, El Pueblo, El Día; and period magazines.
Sector D
Sector B
Sector E
Sector C
Sector D
Exit
Sector B
Sector A