Primer Congreso del Hombre Andino
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Primer Congreso del Hombre Andino (First Conference of the Andean Man) was an academic conference in northern Chile organized by the northern branch of the University of Chile in June 1973.[1] Its subject was the Indigenous societies of the Andean world, be these modern, historical or archaeological. The conference was an important milestone in the development of Andean studies including Andean archaeology and for Chile it marked the maturation of academic studies carried out by scholars based in its northern cities.[2][3]
According to Lautaro Núñez he and other archaeologists at the regional see of the University of Chile in Antofagasta (today the University of Antofagasta) organized the conference as they saw a need for a more interdisciplinary study of the marginalized Indigenous communities they often encountered in their work.[4] From Antofagasta the university sees at Iquique and Arica were invited to participate in the organization of the event.[4] The initiative was supported by the Allende administration given its desire for more local participation on academic affairs.[3] The archaeologist and anthropologist Luis Guillermo Lumbreras, based in Lima, recalls he and some Peruvian colleagues readily accepted Núñez invitation as they admittedly failed to carry out a similar Indigenous-focused event of the same magnitude in the wake of the more successful Congreso de Americanistas of 1970 held in Lima.[2] In Chile the conferece was preceded by the Primer Congreso Nacional de Científicos held in 1972 in Santiago.[4]
The symposium "The role of the Andean society in the transition to socialism" emerged from discussions in the organizing committee on the future of the Andean society in view that the government at the time in Chile promoted transformations that were intended to lead the country to a socialist economic and social system.[4]