Using libtool to package whole archives in shared library

I'm working on converting a home-grown makefile mess to using the autotools (the GNU build system) for building and deploying our shared library.  The shared library exists in two forms: a traditional C++ *.so and a python module which is also a *.so but is, obviously, consumable by python only.  The directory structure looks like this:

Main  (has a Makefile.am and configure.ac files)
  |
  |-Shared
  |    |
  |    |- HwMgmt  (Makefile.am, makes libhwmgmt.a and libhwmgmt.so)
  |    |- Misc    (Makefile.am, likewise for libmisc)
  |
  |-sata  (Makefile.am, produces libsatacpp.so and sata.so)
  |   |
  |   |-satacpp   (sources for the C++ API for SATA lib)
  |   |
  |   |-sata      (sources wrapping satacpp,hwmgmt,misc in boost.python)

In our home-grown system, we build HwMgmt, Misc and satacpp into *.a files and then, when building sata.so for python these *.a files were wrapped between -Wl,--whole-archive ... -Wl,--no-whole-archive.  I've got to replicate this into the GNU Build System.  I've tried several attempts and nothing has yet worked.  Using the GNU docs, I've placed these libraries using

 sata_la_LIBADD = /path/to/libsatacpp.la /path/to/libHwMgmt.la ...

Which links with the dynamic libraries built earlier.  This isn't what I'm after.  I've tried something like this:

 sata_la_LDFLAGS = -Wl,--whole-archive /path/to/libsatacpp.a ... -Wl,--no-whole-archive

This variable is preserved throughout Makefile.in and Makefile.  However, when make is run, it seems that libtool yanks the libraries between --whole-archive and --no-whole-archive and places them elsewhere.  That is, I always ended with "-Wl,--whole-archive   -Wl,--no-whole-archive" with my *.a file unceremoniously moved to a different place in the command line.

What is the proper way to tell libtool to wrap the entire batch of symbols into the final python library?

I'm using CentOS 6 which, sadly, prefers to be older than the hills in its toolset.  The versions are as follows:
	autoconf: 2.63  (I think I recently updated this for something unrelated)
	automake: 1.11.1
	libtool: 2.2.6b  (This one appears to be woefully old)

Thanks,
Andy

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