Dr. David Keeling University Distinguished Professor of Geography Department of Geography and Geology Western Kentucky University Bowling Green, KY 42101
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Dr. David Keeling University Distinguished Professor of Geography Department of Geography and Geology Western Kentucky University Bowling Green, KY 42101 Chapter 4 in Herb, G., Kaplan D. (eds.) Scaling Identities: Nationalism and Territoriality. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield (October 2017 publication). Sociocultural and Territorial Aspects of Argentine Identity National and individual identities in Latin America have been shaped by myriad external and internal forces dating back to, and even before, the European conquest of the region. Even the term Latin, introduced by the French in the nineteenth century, fails to recognize the cultural complexity of the region and presumes a more homogenous set of national identities than those that actually exist. Contemporary Mexicans are profoundly different from Chileans, for example, and Colombians are light years away from Argentines in how they see themselves domestically and externally, despite similar influences of a Spanish colonial system, extractive economies, and nineteenth-century Bolivarian notions of territorial nationalism and political independence. Argentina stands out in Latin America as a fascinating case study of identity, nationalism, and cultural complexity for many reasons. Its particular geo-historical cultural experience sets it apart from other Latin American countries, and Argentines often are portrayed stereotypically as the most difficult and complex society in the region, seen as arrogant, pushy, obsessed with territorial nationalism, and somehow quite different from others in the hemisphere. Argentina is a fascinating and provocative example of how, in many respects, the territorial aspects of national identity (Yo soy Argentino) remain in conflict with, and perhaps have superseded, the social-cultural aspects of identity (Argentinidad). A key question posed in this chapter, therefore, is this: How has national identity been rationalized by the Argentine political and economic elite to support a stereotyped and self-glorified perspective on their heritage? The origins of Argentina’s contemporary geopolitical, economic, and cultural identities are indeed complex, fascinating, and contradictory. A well-known, tongue-in-cheek explanation for Argentina’s heritage is that, while modern Mexicans descended from the Aztecs and Peruvians descended from the Inca, Argentines descended from the boats! In the early twentieth 1 century, a popular observation oft-repeated in the clubs and salons of Europe was “Oh to be as rich as an Argentine,” reflecting a socioeconomic status at the time that set Argentines apart from all others in Latin America. Even the names appended to the coastal territory explored by Europeans in the early sixteenth century were more aspirational than reality—the Río de la Plata (Silver River) and Argentina (from the Latin argentum and a Spanish adjective meaning silvery)—and this observation holds true even today. In the early years of the twenty-first century, Argentina’s national identity and ambition continue to seem more aspirational and contradictory than intrinsic to and integrative of the political-territorial state, as suggested by the realities of its historical development. From colony to independent territory, through attempts to exterminate indigenous cultures and the Europeanizing of its socioeconomic vision in the nineteenth century, and through internal wars, ideological battles, economic collapses, and myriad other challenges in the twentieth century, Argentina continues to struggle with defining its own internal identity and its wider place in regional and global systems. An additional element is the issue of scale related to the evolution of Argentine territorial and national identity. The external boundaries of the modern political state do not align with the historical economic and political identities that existed at myriad regional and local scales. Within Argentina, today’s regional and local identities do not always align unambiguously with the centralized, homogenous conception of the state’s national identity. Moreover, as Brenner (1999, 69) argues, the forces of economic globalization have “decentered the national scale of social relations and intensified the importance of both sub- and supra-national scales of territorial organization.” Witness Argentina’s current efforts to exert more influence within and beyond its borders through internal regional restructuring, global trade alliances, irredentist arguments, and a reinvigorated belief in the superiority of its national identity. Identity (Argentinidad) is a collective cultural phenomenon that is inextricably intertwined with place, scale, politics, and geo-historical experiences (Herb and Kaplan 1999; Smith 1991). As such, this chapter aims to shed light on the development and consolidation of Argentina’s territorial identity, its contradictions, and its meanings by unwrapping the myriad spatial and temporal layers that have shaped contemporary society. It aims to position attachment to territory, historical experiences, and social values at the heart of how Argentine identity is understood at different scales in an increasingly globalized milieu. 2 Creating an Argentine Territory Prior to the nineteenth century, Argentina as a territorially constructed political state did not exist. Its territorial structure and identity emerged and coalesced from a series of geo- historical events that shaped the wider region in profound ways. An enduring myth in any analysis of territorial identity in Latin America, and Argentina specifically, is the notion of terra nullius (empty land) to justify colonial settlements and the conquest of indigenous societies (Wright 1992). The official history of national territorial identity frequently begins with the arrival of Europeans, with extant indigenous identities simply erased by the colonizers and reconfigured by the Spanish through writings in various Codices. For example, many pre- Columbian Codices, which recorded the cultural history of indigenous societies prior to European conquest, were burned by Spanish missionaries because of their “pagan” content. When the Spanish marched down the Andes to enter what is today northwestern Argentina, or sailed up the Río de la Plata to the environs of modern-day Buenos Aires or south along the Patagonian coast, they encountered indigenous peoples like the Diaguita, Querandí, Charrúa, Tehuelche, and other groups, each with their own sociopolitical identities, spaces, and value systems. Although Andean groups as far south as modern-day Santiago, Chile, had been subsumed into the Incan empire for decades, other societies in the Southern Cone were structured spatially by resources, relationships with neighboring groups, and local environmental conditions. When the Spanish arrived in northwest Argentina from Cuzco in the mid-sixteenth century after subduing the Incan Empire, they established settlements in Santiago del Estero (1553), Tucumán (1565), Salta (1582), and Jujuy (1593). An enduring myth of the early conquistadores is that they were motivated by gold, God, and glory, but the reality in early Argentina proved quite different. As few extractable, wealth-generating resources were easily or quickly found within the boundaries of what became modern Argentina, land ownership to enhance personal status proved to be the dominant strategy of settlers during the Spanish colonial period. Before settlement of the northwest, the Spanish Crown had aimed to establish a viable port at the end of the long sea routes from Europe across the Atlantic to consolidate territorial control in the face of competition from Portugal and England. In 1516, Juan Diaz de Solis scouted a likely site along the banks of the Plata but he was killed by the Charrúa people. The first settlement of Buenos Aires, established by Pedro de Mendoza in 1536, succumbed to 3 indigenous attacks and was abandoned in 1542. A permanent settlement finally appeared on the Río de la Plata shoreline in 1580 after an expedition arrived from Paraguay, and it became the foundation for modern Buenos Aires. Over the next two centuries, relative isolation (the empire’s backwater), the rise of smuggling, and a growing level of local defiance against the Spanish Crown shaped political and economic identities, encouraged a growing notion of self- reliance, and eventually forced the Crown to restructure the region’s territorial administration by creating the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776, governed from Buenos Aires. The colonial administrators realized that the Crown’s American empire had profoundly different social and economic geographies, that local and regional identities had a clear scalar component, and that a homogenous view of colonial identities and relationships just did not work. However, the selection of Buenos Aires as the new Viceroyalty capital further exacerbated growing differences between the region’s interior and coast that would have long-lasting consequences for the territorial identity and political integrity of Argentina over the coming decades and beyond. Figure 4a – The Territory of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, 1776. 4 The Argentine wars of independence between 1810 and 1816 revealed conflicting ideas about what was, or should be, the territorial scale of a newly independent political state. Territories that were part of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (figure 4a), such as modern- day Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia, along with significant territory identified as controlled by indigenous