Qualla: Samay Huasi

Samay Huasi: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Patricio.lorente assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. Two men met over mining law and ended up trading a house. William Treloar, a British engineer, had come to the dry hills above Chilecito chasing ore and stayed to plant vineyards. Joaquín V. González, born just down the valley in Nonogasta, had grown into one of Argentina's most prolific minds. When Treloar died, he left his friend the finca he called La Carrera. González renamed it in Quechua: Samay Huasi, the rest house. For a man who would write more than a thousand things in his lifetime, rest was the rarest thing he owned.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Patricio.lorente assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Samay Huasi: The House That Quechua Named

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Patricio.lorente assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. The name is a small act of belonging. Samay Wasi means "rest house" in Quechua, the language of the Andes that the Spanish never fully erased from these provinces. González, who inherited the seventeen-hectare property in 1913, did not simply move in. He kept Treloar's vineyards ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Patricio.lorente assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Samay Huasi: A Thousand Things Written

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Patricio.lorente assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. González was the kind of polymath that an ambitious young nation seems to produce and then half-forget. Born in 1863, he earned a law degree, served as Governor of La Rioja, became a celebrated authority on mining law, and in 1905 founded the University of La Plata, one of Argent...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Patricio.lorente assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Samay Huasi: From Retreat to Refuge

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roberto Fiadone, CC BY-SA 3.0. González willed Samay Huasi to the University of La Plata and died in 1923, sixty years old, in Buenos Aires. The university formally took possession in 1941 and gave the house a new purpose that suited its old name. It became the Casa de Descanso para Artistas y Escritores, a re...

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Image: Roberto Fiadone | CC BY-SA 3.0

Samay Huasi: The Painter and the Portrait

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Patricio.lorente assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. Walk through Samay Huasi today and you also walk into a gallery. The Antonio Alice Pinacotheca takes its name from the Argentine portraitist and history painter who, among many works, painted González in 1917. The gallery hangs canvases from a range of Argentine artists, so that ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Patricio.lorente assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5