La antropología solitaria de Branislava Susnik

Branislava Susnik (1920-1996) was an anthropologist of Slovenian origin who had a prolific and unique career in Paraguay as director of the Andrés Barbero Ethnographic Museum. Her vast work in ethnolinguistics, ethnography, ethnohistory and comparative ethnology makes her an essential reference for studies of the Gran Chaco and Paraguay, although the hermetic style of her texts and a certain academic seclusion kept her on the margins of the great Americanist lineages. This article offers a review of her life and scientific work. Through documents preserved in archives in Paraguay and Slovenia, it reconstructs her biography from her university studies to her arrival in Paraguay, her accidental introduction to Chaco ethnography, her work as director of the museum, her frustrated project to turn it into a large anthropological research laboratory, and her ethnographic travels to a dozen indigenous groups. It then examines her academic output, highlighting the main lines of her career (from her early and unique linguistic studies, through her ethnographic works, to her work on ethnohistory and comparative ethnology) and tracing the development of her interest in the processes of cultural change and the adaptations of indigenous groups in the face of colonization and evangelization. Finally, the main thematic axes and methodological principles of her work are identified, which certainly deserve to be re-evaluated by ethnology and ethnohistory in the South American lowlands.