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Chuschagasta.

Chuschagasta.

I was reading about a recent documentary called Nuestra Tierra (apparently translated as both Our Land and Landmarks), which “examines issues of land ownership in Argentina and interrogates the role of this history in the murder of Javier Chocobar, a Chuschagasta leader in the struggle for indigenous land rights,” and of course wanted to know more about the Chuschagasta and their striking ethnonym — what language did they speak, for instance? There was no link attached to the word in that Wikipedia article, so I tried Indigenous languages of the Americas with no luck, even though its long list of “Widely-spoken and officially-recognized indigenous languages” went all the way down to languages with zero speakers. The List of Indigenous languages of Argentina and Indigenous peoples in Argentina were likewise no help. Eventually I googled up Manuel Lizondo Borda’s Estudios de voces tucumanas, Vol. 1, Voces tucumanas derivadas del quechua (M. Violetto & cia., 1927; Google Books, HathiTrust), where on p. 168 we find “CHUSCHA, n.p.”:

ORIG.: De CHHUJCHA: cabello (I; III, p. 176 y 239). La razón de nuestras acepciones 2ᵃ, 3ᵃ y 4ᵃ, parece estar, o está, en un poblado indígena llamado Chuschagasta o Chugchagasta (V. II parte), situado más o menos donde hoy se halla Chuscha, 2ᵃ acep.. Y habitantes de ese poblado, trasladados a Chuscha, 3ᵃ acep., dieron sin duda el nombre a este lugar; y de éste se originó seguramente el del río citado.
G. Holguín y Torres Rubio registran la voz quichua citado.

So apparently the name of the people is derived from the Quechua word given in Wiktionary as chukcha ‘hair’; I still don’t know what language they speak or anything more about them (or why they’re called both Chuschagasta and Chugchagasta), but let this serve as a reminder that there are many things in heaven and earth that are beyond the ken of Wikipedia.

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Tagged with

#word meaning
#language evolution
#philosophy of language
#humor in language
#creative language use
#Chuschagasta
#Nuestra Tierra
#indigenous land rights
#land ownership
#Javier Chocobar
#Argentina
#Indigenous languages of the Americas
#Indigenous languages of Argentina
#Indigenous peoples in Argentina
#ethnonym
#Quechua
#Manuel Lizondo Borda
#Estudios de voces tucumanas
#chukcha
#poblado indígena