Picone on Larson, 'The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History'

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Picone on Larson, 'The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History' H-LatAm Picone on Larson, 'The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History' Review published on Wednesday, June 30, 2021 Carolyne R. Larson, ed. The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History. Diálogos Series. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020. Illustrations. 256 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8263-6207-0. Reviewed by María de los Ángeles Picone (Boston College)Published on H-LatAm (June, 2021) Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz (Johns Hopkins University) Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=55740 In 1879, the government of Argentina unleashed a military campaign to northern Patagonia, known at the time as the “Conquest of the Desert.” What was the desert? For the Sarmientine generation, it was the vast lands that surrounded economic centers, unproductive, uninhabited, and usually beyond state control. Of course, the desert was far from empty. In fact, the raid of 1879 sought disarticulate indigenous chiefdoms in present-day Río Negro, Neuquén, and La Pampa. Behind the soldiers came authorities surveying, dividing, planning, and selling lands to whomever was willing to move to the “new” territories. This was the official story. The Conquest of the Desert joins a vast literature that challenges the official narrative of the Argentina military raid of 1879.[1] By shifting the attention to the experiences of Mapuche and Tehuelche living in northern Patagonia, this volume highlights the kaleidoscopic impacts of the violent removal of indigenous peoples from their territories during the raid and its aftermath. The volume brings together scholars from Argentina, the United States, and Canada in different stages of their careers and from different disciplines. It successfully weaves a multifaceted approach to the study of a single moment in a single space, benefiting from a wealth of sources and disciplinary frameworks. Additionally, the editors sagely decided to permit either footnotes or in-text citations, according to the disciplinary practice from each scholar. In an introduction and nine chapters, this ambitious project examines the relationship between the Argentine state and indigenous communities of northern Patagonia during and after a military raid carried out between 1879 and 1884. The introduction provides a synthesis of the history of indigenous people of northern Patagonia. Additionally, Carolyne R. Larson, the book’s editor, in chapter 1 provides a more detailed account on the motivations of military men and authorities to undertake the military campaign. While it might seem counterintuitive to begin with the official narrative, Larson presents it as the object that all remaining chapters scrutinize. In chapter 2, Julio Vezub and Mark Healey begin the task of dismantling the simplified version of columns and expeditions present in the publications from the Ministry of War. Using extensive correspondence and reports from the national archives (at a time when archives are closed due to COVID-19, they make us miss archival research!), the authors paint a vivid picture of frontier Citation: H-Net Reviews. Picone on Larson, 'The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History'. H- LatAm. 06-30-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/23910/reviews/7886729/picone-larson-conquest-desert-argentina%E2%80%99s-indigenous-peoples-and Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-LatAm relations from the caciques’ perspective, especiallylongkos Valentín Saygüeque and Manuel Namuncurá. Additionally, they incorporate the always-fascinating testimony of Ignacio Cañiumir, a handwritten document that mixes facts and fiction he allegedly sent to a professor in 1899. Rob Christensen’s chapter pushes against the trope of technological superiority of the military raid by providing evidence that weather and disease (smallpox) favored Argentine forces. The El Niño Oscillation of 1877 caused unprecedented precipitations followed by droughts, disrupting trading circuits. Additionally, the consolidation of confederacies facilitated the spread of disease. As extreme weather undermined Mapuche subsistence, so did their ability to fight disease. Finally, the mobile nature of the war and the imprisonment of indigenous soldiers made the Mapuche susceptible to disease. In a focal shift from the military trail to the aftermath of the campaign, Ricardo Salvatore studies the lives of Inacayal and Foyel, two Mapuche caciques captured by the Argentine military and taken with their families to the Museum of Natural History in the city of La Plata. Drawing on multiple reports from people working in the museum, the author confronts the experiences of the indigenous families in its halls with the rationale behind exhibits of crania and bones. In doing so, he joins a body of literature that has argued that by filling the museum walls and showcases, scientists symbolically filled the desert, advancing Argentine “civilization” to northern Patagonia.[2] In the first four chapters, however, we lack the problematization of the “Conquest of the Desert” as a historical construct, which scholars in Argentina have done for decades. In chapter 5, Walter Delrio and Pilar Pérez introduce this literature to the English-speaking audience and reconceptualize the “Conquest of the Desert” as a war that sought to disappear by assimilation, subjugation, or annihilation the indigenous presence in northern Patagonia. The authors aptly highlight the internal disparateness within state forces and policies, resulting in equally diverse response. While the authors have been working on such themes for nearly a decade, the chapter at hand explains how narratives of a victorious, finished, homogenous moment (a “conquest”) still loom large in present- day conversations of indigenous claims to land and reparations.[3] In chapter 6, Jennie Daniels analyzes literary representations of the desert in Argentine literature. The author effectively synthesizes major works in four chronologies, concluding that the figure of the desert provided writers with a symbolic space to mark difference (civilization/barbarism, urban/rural, white/nonwhite). At heart, the figure of the desert remains a liminal space in literary production that revealed structures central to elites’ ideas of the Argentine nation, a paradox that Ernesto Livon- Grosman has also pointed out in his examination of travel literature, Geografías imaginarias: El relato de viaje y la construcción del espacio patagónico (2003). In chapter 7, David Sheinin asks how the memory of the conquest underpinned military policy toward indigenous people, especially during the last dictatorship (1976-83). Multiple celebrations commemorated the centennial of the conquest, accompanied by publications that exalted the campaign of 1879. Sheinin purposely brings to the fore the frontier as a space that escaped modernization and where the government sought to advance the civilizing mission it perceived to have begun a hundred years earlier. Fellow Latin Americanists of dictatorship will recognize similar anxieties in other countries as well. Citation: H-Net Reviews. Picone on Larson, 'The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History'. H- LatAm. 06-30-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/23910/reviews/7886729/picone-larson-conquest-desert-argentina%E2%80%99s-indigenous-peoples-and Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-LatAm An experienced ethnographer, Ana Ramos, continues the examination of memory of the conquest in chapter 8, but this time through the lens of Mapuche oral tradition and collective texts nütram( ). Nütram are not only their contents but also their performance. Ramos argues that these traditions were disappeared from the national narrative of the conquest, silencing the experiences of captivity, enslavement, torture, and death. However, the nütram have survived for generations and informed present-day Mapuche political philosophies. In the last chapter, Sarah Warren asks how the memory of the military campaign of 1879 appears in present-day Mapuche spatial epistemologies. To that end, she analyzes three maps of Mapuche territory (Wallmapu) published by Mapuche organizations. In these cartographic materials Warren recognizes toponymic and geographical markers that further revitalize Mapuche culture as a means to strengthen their territorial claims. The volume has a clear unifying thread. However, its contributions as a whole and in each individual chapter seem more fragmented. While the introduction states that “this book adds meaningfully to scholarship on frontier, borderlands, and settler colonialism,” each chapter engages differently with these analytical lenses, if they do (p. 12). Particularly, I found puzzling the uneven use of “Conquest of the Desert” both as a shorthand periodization and as the title of the book, especially since it represents the narrative these authors sought to dismantle. As these chapters show, the “Conquest of the Desert” was not a conquest, and the desert was not empty. Overall, this volume provides a good transdisciplinary introduction to the history of the genocide of 1879-85. In bringing this diversity of approaches to the same table of contents, Larson enables a conversation beyond the traditional chronological boundaries that typify Argentine scholarship. Additionally, each chapter
Recommended publications
  • Conflicts and Cooperation in the Mountainous Mapuche Territory (Argentina) the Case of the Nahuel Huapi National Park
    Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine 98-1 | 2010 Parcs nationaux de montagne et construction territoriale des processus participatifs Conflicts and cooperation in the mountainous Mapuche territory (Argentina) The case of the Nahuel Huapi National Park Renaud Miniconi and Sylvain Guyot Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rga/1151 DOI: 10.4000/rga.1151 ISSN: 1760-7426 Publisher Association pour la diffusion de la recherche alpine Electronic reference Renaud Miniconi and Sylvain Guyot, « Conflicts and cooperation in the mountainous Mapuche territory (Argentina) », Revue de Géographie Alpine | Journal of Alpine Research [Online], 98-1 | 2010, Online since 15 April 2010, connection on 19 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ rga/1151 ; DOI : 10.4000/rga.1151 La Revue de Géographie Alpine est mise à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. Conflicts and cooperation in the mountainous Mapuche territory (Argentina) The case of the Nahuel Huapi National Park Renaud Miniconi*, Sylvain Guyot** *Independent Geographer, Limoges. [email protected] **UMR 604 CNRS GEOLAB, Limoges University. [email protected] Abs rac : Over the past two decades, realities are more contrasted due to indigenous issues have ,ecome a ma-or regional sta6eholders2 divergent interests. concern for different countries all over In the particular conte9t of Argentina, the world. Argentina is one of these where a large part of the population countries, with 600 000 people who faces pro,lems gaining access to land, recogni.e themselves as indigenous, national par6s have emerged as a representing 1.01 of the nation2s entire relevant tool for indigenous peoples to population.
    [Show full text]
  • Urban Ethnicity in Santiago De Chile Mapuche Migration and Urban Space
    Urban Ethnicity in Santiago de Chile Mapuche Migration and Urban Space vorgelegt von Walter Alejandro Imilan Ojeda Von der Fakultät VI - Planen Bauen Umwelt der Technischen Universität Berlin zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften Dr.-Ing. genehmigte Dissertation Promotionsausschuss: Vorsitzender: Prof. Dr. -Ing. Johannes Cramer Berichter: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Herrle Berichter: Prof. Dr. phil. Jürgen Golte Tag der wissenschaftlichen Aussprache: 18.12.2008 Berlin 2009 D 83 Acknowledgements This work is the result of a long process that I could not have gone through without the support of many people and institutions. Friends and colleagues in Santiago, Europe and Berlin encouraged me in the beginning and throughout the entire process. A complete account would be endless, but I must specifically thank the Programme Alßan, which provided me with financial means through a scholarship (Alßan Scholarship Nº E04D045096CL). I owe special gratitude to Prof. Dr. Peter Herrle at the Habitat-Unit of Technische Universität Berlin, who believed in my research project and supported me in the last five years. I am really thankful also to my second adviser, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Golte at the Lateinamerika-Institut (LAI) of the Freie Universität Berlin, who enthusiastically accepted to support me and to evaluate my work. I also owe thanks to the protagonists of this work, the people who shared their stories with me. I want especially to thank to Ana Millaleo, Paul Paillafil, Manuel Lincovil, Jano Weichafe, Jeannette Cuiquiño, Angelina Huainopan, María Nahuelhuel, Omar Carrera, Marcela Lincovil, Andrés Millaleo, Soledad Tinao, Eugenio Paillalef, Eusebio Huechuñir, Julio Llancavil, Juan Huenuvil, Rosario Huenuvil, Ambrosio Ranimán, Mauricio Ñanco, the members of Wechekeche ñi Trawün, Lelfünche and CONAPAN.
    [Show full text]
  • Aspects of Social Justice Ally Work in Chilean Historical Fiction: the Case of the Pacification of Araucanía
    Aspects of Social Justice Ally Work in Chilean Historical Fiction: The Case of the Pacification of Araucanía Katherine Karr-Cornejo Whitworth University Abstract Majority-culture writers often depict cultures different from their own, but approaching cultures to which an author does not belong can be challenging. How might we read dominant-culture portrayals of marginalized cultures that tell stories of injustice? In this paper I utilize the frame of identity development in social justice allies in order to understand the narratives dominant-culture authors use in fiction to reflect sympathetic views of indigenous justice claims. In order to do so, I study three historical novels set in Araucanía during the second half of the nineteenth century, considering historiographical orientation, representation of cultural difference, and understanding of sovereignty:Casas en el agua (1997) by Guido Eytel, Vientos de silencio (1999) by J.J. Faundes, and El lento silbido de los sables (2010) by Patricio Manns. I will show that fiction, even in validating indigenous justice claims, does not overcome past narratives of dominance. Representations can deceive us. The Mapuche warriors of Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem La Araucana are safely in the past, and their cultural difference poses no threat to present-day nor- mative Chilean culture. However, that normative culture glorifies these fictional representations on the one hand and deprecates Mapuche communities today on the other. How did that hap- pen? Various Mapuche groups resisted Spanish colonization for centuries, restricting European expansion in today’s southern Chile. After Chilean independence from Spain in the early nine- teenth century, the conflict continued.
    [Show full text]
  • Extractivism and Sacrifice Zones in Argentine Patagonia
    Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Anthropology Department Honors Papers Anthropology Department 2020 The Altar of National Prosperity: Extractivism and Sacrifice onesZ in Argentine Patagonia Jonathan Gomez-Pereira Connecticut College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/anthrohp Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Gomez-Pereira, Jonathan, "The Altar of National Prosperity: Extractivism and Sacrifice onesZ in Argentine Patagonia" (2020). Anthropology Department Honors Papers. 18. https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/anthrohp/18 This Honors Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology Department at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Department Honors Papers by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. The Altar of National Prosperity: Extractivism and Sacrifice Zones in Argentine Patagonia Jonathan Gomez-Pereira 2020 Honors Thesis Presented to the Department of Anthropology Connecticut College New London, CT Thesis Advisor: Professor Catherine Benoît, Department of Anthropology ​ First Reader: Professor Leo Garofalo, Department of History ​ Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………..……………………..……………..……....3 Abstract………………….……………………………………………………………………...…5 Introduction………………………..…………..…………………………………………………..6
    [Show full text]
  • Coloniality and Anglican Missions in Argentine Patagonia in the Nineteenth Century
    humanities Article Lux et Tenebris? Coloniality and Anglican Missions in Argentine Patagonia in the Nineteenth Century Hugo Córdova Quero Department of Theology, Starr King School for the Ministry, Oakland, CA 94623, USA; [email protected] Abstract: Within the modern capitalist World-System, Missionary work was mostly developed through the connubiality with colonial powers. The missionary work of the Anglican Church is no exception. This article centers on the missionary enterprise carried out in Argentine Patagonia in the nineteenth century. Missionaries’ reports carefully narrated that venture. However, the language and the notions underlying the missionary work’s narration reveal the dominion of colonial ideologies that imbued how religious agents constructed alterity. Connecting the missionaries’ worldview with the political context and expansion of the British Empire allows us to unfold the complex intersections of religious, ethnic, racial, and geopolitical discourses that traverse the lives of indigenous peoples in South America. Keywords: Anglican missions; Argentine Patagonia; British Empire; Missionary reports 1. Introduction “Thus, we lived from week to week, seeking according to the grace given to us to be useful in opening the eyes of these poor people to see and follow the light of God’s truth, and to love and serve their God and Saviour”. Citation: Córdova Quero, Hugo. Thomas Bridges (Kirby 1871, pp. 140–41; emphasis mine) 2021. Lux et Tenebris? Coloniality With those words, the Anglican missionary Rev. Thomas Bridges concluded his report and Anglican Missions in Argentine to the South American Missionary Society (SAMS) for 1871 (Kirby 1871, pp. 137–41). His Patagonia in the Nineteenth Century. report was part of the work carried out by the missionaries in South America, who covered Humanities 10: 36.
    [Show full text]
  • Indigenismo and Mapuche Politics in Chile, 1920-1960
    Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE May 2018 To Plow a Lonely Furrow: Indigenismo and Mapuche Politics in Chile, 1920-1960 Henry John Stegeman Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Stegeman, Henry John, "To Plow a Lonely Furrow: Indigenismo and Mapuche Politics in Chile, 1920-1960" (2018). Dissertations - ALL. 878. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/878 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This study examines Mapuche political organization in Chile from 1920-1960 through the lens of transnational indigenismo. In that period, politicians, academics and social reformers across the Americas were questioning how to incorporate indigenous populations into modern national states. While many historical accounts of similar phenomena in other countries have drawn categorical distinctions between indigenismo (as a movement led by white elites) and indigenous activism (led by Indians themselves), this work places the two phenomena side-by-side to explore connections between them. That approach shows that collaboration, periodic conflict and strategic alliance making were important components of indigenous politics in Chile. It also brings indigenous agency to the fore, and in doing so challenges historical interpretations of indigenismo that have characterized it as a paternalistic mechanism of the neocolonial state. It joins a growing body of scholarship that recognizes indigenismo as an important influence on and precursor to identity-based indigenous social movements that emerged in the late-twentieth century.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Warrior Spirit: From Invasion to Fusion Music in the Mapuche Territory of Southern Chile Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xg8s85n Author Rekedal, Jacob Eric Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Warrior Spirit: From Invasion to Fusion Music in the Mapuche Territory of Southern Chile A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music by Jacob Eric Rekedal March 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Jonathan Ritter, Chairperson Dr. Deborah Wong Dr. René T.A. Lysloff Dr. Juliet McMullin Dr. Thomas C. Patterson Copyright by Jacob Eric Rekedal 2015 The Dissertation of Jacob Eric Rekedal is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Foremost, I thank God for the opportunity to do this kind of work. This dissertation bears my name, but it also bears the imprint of many generous individuals and several supporting institutions that made the project possible. A Humanities Graduate Student Research Grant from the University of California, Riverside financed a brief pilot research trip to southern Chile during 2008, as I finished my graduate coursework and prepared my dissertation proposal. From late 2009 until late 2010, I lived in Temuco and conducted fieldwork with a grant from the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program. Between March and December of 2011, I continued my fieldwork with a Fulbright IIE grant, including considerable local support from Fulbright’s staff in Chile. When I first arrived in Temuco for a two-week stay during September of 2008, Johanna Pérez of the non-profit organization Fundación Chol-Chol picked me up at the bus station, gave me a tour of the city and a home-cooked meal, and introduced me to the world of Mapuche artesanía.
    [Show full text]
  • Memoria Americana CUADERNOS DE ETNOHISTORIA 12
    Memoria Americana CUADERNOS DE ETNOHISTORIA 12 Universidad de Buenos Aires Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas Buenos Aires 2004 FACULTAD DE FILOSOFIA Y LETRAS UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES Decano Dr. Félix Schuster Vicedecano Dr. Hugo Trinchero Secretario Académico Lic. Carlos Cullen Soriano Secretaria de Investigación Lic. Cecilia Hidalgo Secretaria de Posgrado Lic. Elvira Narvaja de Arnoux Secretario de Supervisión Administrativa Lic. Claudio Guevara Secretaria de Transferencia y Desarrollo Lic. Silvia Llomovatte Secretaria de Extensión Universitaria y Bienestar Estudiantil Prof. Renée Girardi Secretario de Relaciones Institucionales Lic. Jorge Gugliotta Prosecretario de Publicaciones Lic. Jorge Panesi Coordinadora Editorial Julia Zullo Consejo Editor Alcira Bonilla - Américo Cristófalo - Susana Romanos Miryam Feldfeber - Laura Limberti - Gonzalo Blanco – Marta Gamarra de Bóbbola Composición de originales y diseño de tapa Beatriz Bellelli e-mail: [email protected] © Facultad de Filosofía y Letras - UBA - 2004 Puán 480 Buenos Aires República Argentina MEMORIA AMERICANA CUADERNOS DE ETNOHISTORIA Número 12 Directora Editores Científicos Ana María Lorandi Lía Quarleri y Guillermo Wilde Comité Editorial Nidia Areces (Universidad Nacional de Rosario/CONICET); José Luis Martínez (Uni- versidad de Chile); Alejandra Siffredi (Universidad de Buenos Aires/CONICET); Li- dia R. Nacuzzi (Universidad de Buenos Aires/CONICET); Cora V. Bunster (Universi- dad de Buenos Aires); Roxana Boixadós (Universidad de Buenos
    [Show full text]
  • UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Frontier Justice: State, Law, and Society in Patagonia, 1880-1940 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pz70011 Author Cikota, Javier Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Frontier Justice: State, Law, and Society in Patagonia, 1880-1940 By Javier Cikota A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Margaret Chowning, Co-Chair Professor Mark A. Healey, Co-Chair Professor Brian DeLay Professor Laura Enríquez Summer 2017 Abstract Frontier Justice: State, Law, and Society in Patagonia, 1880-1940 by Javier Cikota Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Margaret Chowning, Co-Chair Professor Mark A. Healey, Co-Chair This dissertation examines the establishment of state institutions, the role of state agents, and the emergence of a self-conscious, municipally-based civil society in northern Patagonia in the six decades after it was conquered and incorporated into Argentina. In Patagonia, the Argentine government embarked on an ambitious project of forging a society from above, by creating new state institutions and encouraging new settlement. But these ambitions soon ran aground thanks to limited funding and political gridlock. What emerged instead was a ramshackle combination of authoritarian central administration with significant local autonomy that I call the “skeletal state.” Underfunded police officers, an overworked judiciary, and aloof governors made up the state presence in the frontier, with courts playing a central role as guarantors of social order.
    [Show full text]
  • Colonial Encounters at the Margins: the Welsh/Tehuelche in Patagonia “
    “Colonial Encounters at the Margins: the Welsh/Tehuelche in Patagonia “ Panel: Conceptualising IR from the Margins: Historically, Geographically and Beyond FLACSO/ISA Conference, Buenos Aires,23-25 July, 2014. Lucy Taylor, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. [email protected] Please do not cite without prior permission This paper reflects some initial thoughts on on-going research into the relationship between the Welsh and Indigenous Peoples in Patagonia. The aim is to explore the ambiguities of that relationship and to reveal fresh evidence and insight into indigenous experiences of settler colonialism in what is an unusual case. The people now called Mapuche and Tehuelche had always lived in the region and practiced a nomadic, hunting life-style. The arrival of the Spanish brought horses which became central to their life-ways, economy and spiritual life. The Tehuelche had always traded with other Indigenous groups but now expanded this network to include settlers in northern Patagonia, later developing strong trading ties with the Welsh to the south (Bernal and Sanchez Proaño, 2007). Throughout, the Tehuelche retained control of vast expanses of land, from the sea shore, across the dry pampas, through fertile river valleys and into the mountains of the Andes. Unlike indigenous Nations to the north, on the eve of the Welsh arrival their autonomy was largely untroubled, their language and cultural life was unchallenged and they had no need to consider armed struggle in resistance to the encroaching realities of colonialism, capitalism and modernity (Gavirati, 2012; Williams, 2011). Argentina became independent of Spain in 1820 but it was not until the 1860s that the now powerful Argentine state focused all its attention on taking control over the vast territories still ruled by Indigenous peoples.
    [Show full text]
  • Argentina Riled by Case of Missing Activist Andrã©S Gaudãn
    University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository NotiSur Latin America Digital Beat (LADB) 10-13-2017 Argentina Riled by Case of Missing Activist Andrés GaudÃn Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/notisur Recommended Citation GaudÃn, Andrés. "Argentina Riled by Case of Missing Activist." (2017). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/notisur/14558 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Latin America Digital Beat (LADB) at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in NotiSur by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LADB Article Id: 80439 ISSN: 1060-4189 Argentina Riled by Case of Missing Activist by Andrés Gaudín Category/Department: Argentina Published: 2017-10-13 Since Aug. 1, Argentina has been reliving the most appalling drama in its recent history: the forced disappearance of people, a practice so systematized under the civil-military dictatorship of 1976-1983 that upwards of 30,000 went missing. This time around, there is just a single case, a young artisan named Santiago Maldonado, but the response by today’s democratic state resembles the practices four decades ago of the worst regime in the country’s 200 years of independence (NotiSur, Sept. 16, 2016). Maldonado disappeared on a cold winter’s day in the Patagonian province of Chubut (1,900 km southeast of the capital Buenos Aires), where members of a Mapuche indigenous community in Cushamen organized a highway blockade to demand the release of Facundo Jones Huala, their lonko (political and spiritual chief).
    [Show full text]
  • Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina: Past, Present, and Consequences of Argentinean State Policies Toward Native Peoples
    Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal Volume 5 Issue 2 Article 3 August 2010 Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina: Past, Present, and Consequences of Argentinean State Policies toward Native Peoples Walter Delrio Diana Lenton Marcelo Musante Marino Nagy Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp Recommended Citation Delrio, Walter; Lenton, Diana; Musante, Marcelo; and Nagy, Marino (2010) "Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina: Past, Present, and Consequences of Argentinean State Policies toward Native Peoples," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 5: Iss. 2: Article 3. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol5/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Access Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina: Past, Present, and Consequences of Argentinean State Policies toward Native Peoples Acknowledgements additional authors Alexis Papazian and Pilar Pérez This article is available in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol5/iss2/3 Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina: Past, Present, and Consequences of Argentinean State Policies toward Native Peoples Walter Delrio CONICET and Universidad de Rı´o Negro Diana Lenton CONICET and Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires Marcelo Musante Universidad John Kennedy and Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires Mariano Nagy Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires Alexis Papazian CONICET and Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires Pilar Pe´rez CONICET and Universidad de Rı´o Negro For a long time the historiographical and anthropological narrative in Argentina contributed to a double assumption that is nowadays strongly grounded in citizens’ common sense.
    [Show full text]