"The state of poverty of the officers at Fort Paz ... ". Discordant narratives about life conditions at Fort General Paz (Buenos Aires Western Frontier, 1869-1877)

In this paper we discuss the discordance arising when testimonial literature is compared to other information sources, such as contemporary government reports and the archaeological record, in a temporally and spatially discrete part of the process of construction of the Pampaean frontier space. We focus on Fort General Paz, headquarters of Buenos Aires Western Frontier between 1869 and 1876. This fort was the setting of many popular tales written by renowned author Eduardo Gutierrez, who served there as a junior officer in 1875 and 1876. We particularly question the extended idea of poverty and scarcity, expressed in those tales, and which is challenged by the variety of archaeological materials found in our investigations. These materials indicate that the garrison had access to a wide range of goods, many of them of foreign origin. Thus, the tensions between different information sources allow us to question widely reproduced stereotypes, as well as to contribute to a more complete characterization of life in a frontier facility of the second half of the XIXth century.