| Summary: | The present paper deals with the twofold toponymic and taxinomic Calchaquí category. Coined after the 1562 rebellion, whose leadership was attributed to Juan Calchaquí, this name was later assigned to the rebellious inter-Andean valleys’ Diaguitas Indians. With the passing of time, it came to be more specifically applied to the rebellious part of this Andean region – Valle de Calchaquí - and its inhabitants, generally classified as Calchaquíes. By the first decades of the 18th century, Santa Fe colonists used it to name indigenous groups they had hostile relationships with. These groups were reportedly coming from a place similarly called Valle de Calchaquí. This paper intends to demonstrate that while applying the same word to several indigenous groups, Spaniards didn’t necessarily point to any shared cultural identity. Conversely, the vicissitudes of Santa Fe’s Calchaquíes, who disappeared at the very beginning of the 18th century as suddenly as they had once appeared, indicate that in the colonial identification process, functionality prevailed over cultural classification. The Calchaquíes disappeared both because the pacified groups among them were no longer called this and because new paradigmatic enemies, Abipones and Mocovíes, were replacing them. The Valle de Calchaquí equally vanished from maps, literally submerged under the overflowing Chaco, the new refractory space.
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