Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina

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 scholarcommons@usf.edu.
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 Rı́o 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 Pérez
CONICET and Universidad de Rı́o 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. On the one hand, the extinction of Indigenous peoples is vaguely
dated to a period from the Spanish conquest to the military campaigns known as
the ‘‘conquest of the desert’’; on the other hand, such extinction is simultaneously
interpreted as a ‘‘natural’’ process in universal history. Argentine state policies
were thus naturalized. It is frequently assumed that this set of natural processes
might have left only individual ‘‘descendants,’’ in place of political entities. There-
fore, modern Argentine society would be the outcome of a European ‘‘melting pot’’
in which the Indigenous component is absent. We postulate that physical elimi-
nation, concentration practices, deportation, enslavement, identity cleansing of
children, and cultural destruction constitute mechanisms of homogenization that
add up to conceptualizing policies toward Indigenous peoples in Argentina as
genocide. Ethnic politics following the military campaigns were based on the
assumption of the near-‘‘extinction’’ of those peoples. Federal and provincial
governments constructed their policies on the basis of considering Indigenous
peoples as ‘‘survivors,’’ ‘‘the final remains of an ending culture,’’ ‘‘the few left,’’
and so on, omitting to name the causes of that supposed extinction. Our focus in
this article is on current cultural policies that announce intercultural, plurality,
and diversity goals while at the same time aiming to limit the margins of Indian
political autonomy. We propose that this genocidal project is linked inextricably to
the constitution and organization of the Argentine national state.
Key words: genocide, Argentina, Indigenous peoples, state policies, conquest of the
desert
Walter Delrio, Diana Lenton, Marcelo Musante, Mariano Nagy, Alexis Papazian, and Pilar
Pérez, ‘‘Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina: Past, Present, and Consequences of
(August 2010): 138–159. 6 2010 Genocide Studies and Prevention. doi:10.3138/gsp.5.2.138

Argentinean State Policies Toward Native Peoples.’’ Genocide Studies and Prevention 5, 2
Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina
For a long time the historiographical and anthropological narrative in Argentina con-
tributed to state a double assumption that is nowadays strongly grounded in citizens’
common sense. On the one hand, the extinction of Indigenous peoples over a period
of time is vaguely dated from the Spanish conquest (mid-sixteenth century) to
the military campaigns known as ‘‘Conquest of the Desert’’ (1878–1885). On the
other hand, such extinction is simultaneously interpreted as a ‘‘natural’’ process in
universal history, considering civilization’s forward movement over ‘‘less civilized’’
societies. Argentine state policies were thus naturalized. It is frequently assumed
that this set of natural processes might have left only single ‘‘descendants,’’ in place
of political entities. Therefore, modern Argentine society is said to be the outcome of
a European ‘‘melting pot,’’ in which the Indigenous component is absent.
The political and cultural homogeneity of the country constituted a political goal
for the governing class in the nineteenth century. Although Indigenous peoples were
not the only focus, the policies implemented with respect to them are paradigmatic
and exhibit this trend categorically. In Part 1 below we analyze the military campaigns
of 1878–1885, which ended with Indigenous political autonomy, postulating that
physical elimination, concentration practices, deportation, enslavement, identity
cleansing of children, and cultural destruction constitute mechanisms that add up
to conceptualizing this political process as genocide.
The ethnic politics produced by the military occupation were based on the
assumption—widely spread in citizens’ ‘‘common sense’’ through Argentina’s educa-
tional policies—of the near-‘‘extinction’’ of Indigenous peoples. As will be developed
in Part 2 below, both federal and provincial governments constructed their policies
from a conceptualization of Indigenous peoples as ‘‘a few survivors,’’ ‘‘the final remains
of an ending culture,’’ and so on. On the one hand, this omitted naming the causes of
this supposed extinction. On the other hand, these policies of invisibilization enabled
various forms of repression such as land expropriations, potential forced labor, and,
at the same time, massacres like those at Napalpı́ (1924) and La Bomba (1947).
An analysis of the constitution of a now public arena of debate on Indigenous
genocide is addressed in Part 3. In this debate, the Indigenous peoples’ agency chal-
lenges the limits of recognition and re-emergence by making visible the genocidal
social practices of the past and their symbolic realization through time. Furthermore,
these groups denounce not only the original intent of extermination but also the
mechanisms of enslavement and expropriation that followed military subjection.
The focus is on current cultural policies that announce intercultural, pluralist,
and diversity-related goals while at the same time aiming to limit the margins of
Indigenous political autonomy.
The genocidal project is inextricably linked to the constitution and organization
of the Argentinean national state and to its expansion of land jurisdiction over Indige-
nous territory by the late nineteenth century. In fact, the military campaigns of
occupation on the southern frontier (Pampa and Patagonia, 1878–1885) and on the
northern one (Chaco, 1884–1917)1 were executed with certain continuity of criteria,
agencies, and actors. In addition, the realization of these campaigns boosted the
political careers of persons and groups and eventually shaped the state’s organiza-
tion. In this way, later Argentineans inherited a state and a society built upon an
elimination objective that was aimed, in particular, against the cultural ‘‘Other,’’
and as a result the survivors of this genocidal project could be incorporated as a
labor force.
139
Genocide Studies and Prevention 5:2 August 2010
1. Argentina’s Indigenous Policies as Genocide

The collective research project on which the authors of this article have been
working 2 aims to rebuild the historical process of subjugation and incorporation of
Indigenous peoples into the Argentine state. Entangled in the same public debate
that we discuss in Part 3, we were pushed to acknowledge the existence of an
original intent of elimination that has enabled further normalization policies aimed
at the Indigenous peoples of Argentina. This led us to frame the description of the
process within a conceptual field that enables us to define it as a genocidal project.
Therefore, we decided to read the process through the definition of genocide pro-
claimed in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide (UNCG) of 1948.3
According to the UNCG, ‘‘genocide’’ means
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.4
The sections that follow analyze various facts—and their genocide intent—in the
process of the ‘‘Conquest of the Desert’’ as a recurrent pattern in Argentine state
policies toward Indigenous peoples between 1878 and 1885.
(a) Killing Members of the Group

‘‘Not a single Indian crosses the Pampas where many tribes used to live.’’ 5 With
these words General Julio A. Roca, by then president of Argentina, highlighted
genocide as one of his administration’s achievements. As on other occasions, the
republic’s policies toward Indigenous peoples showed a violent and exterminatory
side, related to the aim of emptying strategic territories and replacing the Native
population with a European one. Although the national heroes of the War of
Independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century had referred to Indigenous
peoples as ‘‘brothers’’ or ‘‘fellow citizens,’’ these feelings of unity and empathy began
to turn, by the late nineteenth century, into expressions of condemnation for their
genealogical imperfection and effective policies of land expropriation. Some of the
most important theorists of the republic expressed their desire to eliminate the
Native population. The ‘‘Conquest of the Desert’’ (Pampa and Patagonia, 1878–
1885) and ‘‘Campaigns to the Green Desert’’ (Chaco, 1884–1917) extended through
time as a permanent state of war of varying intensity. During these campaigns, the
killing of Indigenous people on the ‘‘battlefield’’ or their extermination was a con-
stant possibility as a consequence of the ‘‘state of exception’’ 6 that enabled the armed
forces to execute prisoners and families in the name of the ‘‘rights of civilization.’’ 7
We will go over some cases below.
An example is the slaughter known as ‘‘Pozo del Cuadril.’’ In November 1878, in
a frontier expansion encouraged by the cattle breeders of the Pampa area, a group
belonging to the Ranquel people approached the city of Villa Mercedes, with which
they had early social and economic bonds. This group approached to collect their
‘‘rations,’’ the outcome of a peace treaty signed with the federal government three
months earlier. These ‘‘rations’’ were the compensation negotiated with the state
140
for the reduction in sheep-herding, hunting, and agricultural land for the tribes.
Nonetheless, Colonel Rudecindo Roca, military commander of Rio Cuarto (near Villa
Mercedes), betrayed and attacked them, taking many of them prisoner. At least sixty
male prisoners were shot dead in a barnyard; the women and children were sent to
Tucumán as forced laborers. This incident was reported and debated in the press,
especially in El Pueblo Libre (Córdoba) and La Nación (Buenos Aires), whose editors
qualified it as a ‘‘crime against humanity.’’ 8 La Nación emphasized that this was not
an isolated event and that impunity for such crimes could become a normal and
extended practice during the coming military campaigns. La Nación then predicted
that victims would not be only the Indigenous warriors but also elders, women, and
children.
La Nación’s warnings anticipated facts that have been retold within Indigenous
narratives across communities in Pampa and Patagonia since the campaigns began.
The late Catalina Antilef, a Futahuao resident of Chubut province, remembered her
grandmother’s life experiences:
Oh, how should I tell you . . . My granny used to say that they escaped from the war,
poor thing, she used to cry, she used to mourn when she remembered . . . they were
taken to a place where they killed them all, they were from different places, [and]
those who escaped came here. May God keep us from living that again.9
Such killings, described through collective memory, have frequently appeared
in official records as the outcome of ordinary combat. An example is the ‘‘battle
of Apeleg,’’ which in fact consisted of a sudden and outrageous attack against an
Indigenous camp at sunrise. On February 1883, Commander Nicolás Palacios
attacked Chief Inacayal’s camp; only two soldiers were killed on the battlefield,10
while more than 100 Indigenous people, among them women and children, were
murdered. The survivors were first marched more than 1,200 km and concentrated
in Valcheta, then later deported to Buenos Aires.
(b) Causing Serious Bodily or Mental Harm to Members of the Group

When the military campaigns in Pampa and Patagonia ended (by 1885), all the
Indigenous survivors were concentrated under military control. Regardless of whether
they had surrendered spontaneously or continued fighting against the army, after
their defeat they were enclosed and deprived of access to their former resources.
For adult men, the army was their first destination and probably their last. They
were known as ‘‘Indigenous auxiliary troops’’ or ‘‘squadrons of Indian friends.’’
Although these divisions had existed since the colonial period, they grew notoriously
during the 1880s, when desertion by criollo11 soldiers increased.
In various communities of Pampa and Patagonia, narratives of the ‘‘grand-
parents’ times’’ talk about material and non-material losses (possessions, persons,
sacred places, peace, etc.) as well as about displacements toward specific places
such as Retiro, Valcheta, and Choele Choel. Some of these places are also mentioned
by other sources, such as the memoirs of Salesian priests, the diaries of the region’s
new inhabitants, and military reports. People were concentrated, for example,
at Castro Fort12 by February 1884, at Chichinales13 beginning in 1885, and at
Valcheta14 —all in what is now the province of Rı́o Negro.15 There were also, accord-
ing to Father Milanesio, more than 20,000 Indians concentrated near the Andes, in
the current province of Neuquen.16
141
The way the prisoners were treated, and especially the dismembering of families,
was a subject of scandal in those days. At the National Congress in 1884, Senator
Aristóbulo del Valle stated,
We have taken families from the savages, we have brought them to this center of
civilization, where every right seems to be guaranteed, and yet we have not respected
for these families any of the rights that belong, not only to civilized men, but to
humanity: we have enslaved the men, prostituted the women, we have torn the
children away from their mothers, we have sent old men to work as slaves anywhere.
In a word, we have turned our backs and broken all the laws that govern the moral
actions of men.
Del Valle denounced the fact that every new campaign turned women and children
into the spoils of war, and he accused the public opinion of complicity.17
At the same time, the press periodically reminded the public of the miserable
living conditions of the subjugated. A Buenos Aires newspaper described their
disgraceful journey:
Here come the Indian prisoners with their families, most of whom were marched here
or carried on carts. The desperation, the crying does not stop, children are taken away
from their mothers because they are given away as presents in their presence, despite
the cries, the screams and the begging that, with their arms aiming at the sky, these
Indian women shout. In that human scenery, the Indian men cover their faces, some
look down hopelessly, the mother holds her child against her breast, the Indian father
steps in front, in despair to protect his family from the progress of civilization.18
One concentration camp frequently mentioned by the survivors’ descendents
is Martı́n Garcı́a Island, which at least since 1872 was used for the gathering and
distribution of Indigenous prisoners. This island, located in the middle of the River
Plate, was used as a prison (not only for Indigenous people) until the mid-twentieth
century. According to information from official files, it was in 1879 that the major
influx of Indigenous prisoners arrived.19
The elevated death rate, as well as a variety of illnesses suffered by the Natives
who were deported to the island, account for physical and mental harm as well
as degrading living conditions. It is important to underline that these prisoners
were transferred to the island not as criminals—as many other prisoners were—but
as ‘‘Indigenous people.’’ It was their social condition, and not any individual reason,
that led to their imprisonment.
The deportees were, in many cases, families. Once on the island, they were
separated and catalogued according to their sex, age, working capacity, and military
competence.20
Parish records are an invaluable source in studying Martı́n Garcı́a Island
because they include the personal identities of those who were concentrated there
or sent to their final destination. For example, from the baptismal records we can
deduce that more than 800 Indigenous persons were baptized on the island between
January and November 1879. Most of them came from Pampa and Patagonia, and
others from Chaco.21 Most of the baptisms were performed in articulo mortis (at
the point of death). The death records show that at least 234 Indigenous prisoners
died of smallpox in less than five months. In October 1878, the island’s doctor
warned the authorities about the condition of 148 newcomers:
142
undoubtedly they come already infected . . . heavy work would only weaken them . . .
they are weak because they are underfed, the sadness that they carry, the moral
despondency, they feel the loss of the desert . . . and besides the illnesses spreading,
all of this suggests that they will be inoperative at work.22
The concentration, deportation, and redistribution policies were partly a response
to the increasing requests for laborers by provincial elites. In the province of
Tucumán, the excessive exploitation of the enslaved workforce, composed of Indians
captured in the Pampas and Chaco, merited the intervention of a government
bureaucrat in charge of the defense ‘‘of the poor and minors.’’ 23 The provincial his-
torical archives hold the record of the inspection of only one sugar refinery, El
Colmenar.24 This inspection documented that Engineer Colombres suggested that
he did not know the statutory contract and therefore he did not pay the workers or
give them food or dress them properly; that through the translators the inspector
learned that most of the Indigenous workers had run away,25 especially the men;
that smallpox had killed the rest; that some workers were ill during the inspection;
and that women had been beaten up, and at least one of them had died as a result.
The inspector observes that the Indian women were dressed ‘‘in the outfit they wore
in their huts.’’ Not only had the businessman failed to fulfill his duty, the inspector’s
report also suggests that the forced redistribution of Indians was failing to cover its
vaunted ‘‘civilizatory’’ aim26 (see section (c) below).
This episode suggests at least three things. First, there existed a certain, though
erratic, governmental will to regulate and inspect the Indian prisoners’ working
conditions. Second, the lack of official communication of the regulations implied the
naturalization of slave treatment. Third, although the inspectors announced further
inspections, these were not carried out; nor was there any official response to these
reports.27
(c) Deliberately Inflicting on the Group Conditions of Life Calculated to

Bring About Its Physical Destruction in Whole or in Part
The deportations created conditions of exile and overcrowding in hostile and unknown
territory, under newly imposed practices and unsanitary conditions that put deportees
at high risk of death from infectious disease. Thus, in addition to practices that
severely harmed the physical and mental integrity of the Natives, relocation and
concentration also condemned them to probable physical destruction.
Simultaneously, the Indigenous concentration camps of the late nineteenth
century aimed to discipline and ‘‘prepare’’ those who were supposed to become part
of ‘‘civilization,’’ as well as to send an effective message of totalitarian discipline to
society as a whole.28 The conception of the Indigenous population as worthy of con-
demnation to forced labor followed from their being driven into a state of exception
derived from the genocidal plan. This process drew a line between the Indigenous
population and the immigrant population, who did not share the same status. The
exceptionality of the Natives may even be understood as a disciplinary practice for
the immigrants. Nonetheless, our hypothesis is that the inhuman exploitation condi-
tions, the trauma of war and expropriation, defeat, exile, the division of families, and
the loss of social and cultural referents caused a much larger number of deaths than
the war itself.
On 29 October 1885, the newspaper La Razón asked, ‘‘How many of the Indians
distributed are left in the sugar refineries? Almost none . . . Long and sad stories
143
were told in reference to the Indians that stood among us, until the disappearance of
all of them has finished their mourning.’’ 29
Finally, the population that remained in Pampa and Patagonia after the military
campaigns of 1878–1885 suffered continual instability with respect to access to the
land. The communities that persisted after the campaigns were spatially scattered
and surrounded by growing privatized spaces (see Part 2 below). The ban on access
to land, combined, up to the present day, with the Indigenous populations’ condition
as non-qualified rural laborers, ensured the unlimited enrichment of ranchers and
landowners.
(d) Imposing Measures Intended to Prevent Births within the Group

Policies aimed at limiting reproduction within Indigenous groups are evident
through several practices. Although some groups within the Catholic Church actively
resisted the division of families, the military agency encouraged the separation of
men, women, and children as a moral and tactical means of dissuasion and repres-
sion. Thus, the army’s first action following the imprisonment of Indigenous groups
was to classify and separate the captured persons. Sometimes, some of those persons
met again at their destinations, but most never heard of one another again.
Even accepting that gender-based separation was a disciplinary measure, it is
important to contextualize the governing generation within the trend of political
thought at the end of the century toward social Darwinism and eugenics. There are
numerous testimonies on this matter. In previous decades, Charles Darwin had
mentioned, in his memoir of his trip through Pampa and Patagonia, that the soldiers
of Governor Rosas would rather kill young Indian women because ‘‘they have many
children.’’ 30 National congressman Manuel Cabral provoked a scandal in 1900 when
he stated that ‘‘we should take people to mix the Indigenous people and bring to
an end the primitive race . . . what we want is to suppress savage peoples from one
generation to the next.’’ 31
Cabral’s formula leads us to a related subject: forced or induced marriage and its
outcome of mixed races.32 Thanks to widespread imagery of white women captured
by the Indians, the kidnapping of Indigenous women as trophies of war was con-
cealed or justified as a necessity of war. Alfredo Ebelot, a famous engineer, expressed
his disappointment in the lack of military professionalism demonstrated by the fact
that Indigenous women and children ‘‘accompanied’’ ‘‘White’’ soldiers. Their presence
distanced the National Army from the ideal of a ‘‘civilizatory’’ (European) army.33
Other witnesses, such as Commander Prado, disguised the rape of women as a
legitimate choice:
After [the battle] Colonel Villegas told us: ‘‘This is the way I like it. You have behaved
as soldiers of the 3rd [Company]. As a reward, you will have 48 hours of rest, and
each one of you will receive a horse from the ones taken from the Indians. And
regarding the Indian women, see which one wants to live with you.’’ None of them
refused.34
Suffering division from family and community was a common destiny for those
young men who were compelled to join the army or the navy during their reproduc-
tive years. To mention one example, in June 1879 General Roca, the minister of war,
gave the order to ‘‘separate 150 Indians from the [Martı́n Garcı́a] Island to join the
navy . . . you should choose them young and healthy and therefore they should be
checked on by a doctor.’’ 35
144
(e) Forcibly Transferring Children of the Group to Another Group

‘‘She used to tell me everything, she cried, then she started again, my grandmother . . .
she was a girl when they took her. The first to come were those who took the children
away.’’ (Catalina Antilef, Futahuao, Chubut)36
The forced transfer of Indigenous children to different sectors of Argentinean society
has been a constant, from the military campaigns, as a massive practice with respect
to prisoners, until recently, in a far more dispersed but regular fashion.
By the late nineteenth century, there was a great demand for young women and
children to work in domestic service for high-society families in Buenos Aires and
other cities. For example, the army’s General Inspection and Command received
and delivered to Martı́n Garcı́a Island numerous requests, such as ‘‘an Indigenous
family with one woman and two children, a boy and a girl, to be destined to Mister
Correctional Judge, Dr. Borres.’’ 37 Similarly, the island’s chief, Donato Alvarez,
placed three orders from President Avellaneda: ‘‘send three women between ten and
twelve and a boy about the same age’’; ‘‘from the Indians in deposit, eight girls and a
boy, the strongest, should be sent. All these creatures . . . healthy and strong,’’ as
well as a female Indian ‘‘about twenty years old with a young male child.’’ 38
Claudia Salomı́n Tarquini points out that in 1891, a priest destined for La
Pampa noticed the fear that the Natives felt when they were asked to summon
their families. Some years before, such gatherings had been the opportunity to take
children away from their parents. When the Franciscan priests reached General
Acha in La Pampa, they asked Linconao Cabral to assemble his people to baptize
them:
He tried to do it, but he faced some difficulties; those who had to baptize their
children feared that the godparents would take them away as it had happened in
Sarmiento, years before, taken the children away, which had been a real barbarity.
[A few days after] . . . we saw Major Linconao at the head of the Indians, at least 150
of them. It was deeply moving to see so many Indians, the same that years before had
been everybody’s terror, presenting themselves humble and peacefully, after they
were sure that they would not have their beloved children taken away . . .39
The kidnapping of children was a regular military practice, aimed at weakening
the enemy’s strategies. In 1878, La Nación described a tragic event when Colonel
Olascoaga, ‘‘after taking some [Indian] children, let the Indians kill 30 national
guards . . . abandoning them to the Indians’ outrage and revenge for finding them-
selves without their women and children.’’ 40 This practice also served to fulfill
the aristocratic pretensions of a large sector of civil society who put pressure on the
military to get servants—a practice that, among certain social sectors, persists
today.
Above all, however, it must be emphasized that the appropriation of children was
justified as being for their own good, to take them away from savagery and favor
their incorporation into the civilized world. Yet incorporation into ‘‘civilization’’
would not be enough to erase the stigma of having been born as Indigenous people.
In this sense, being an Indian child constituted an indelible mark that not only
could not be overthrown, whatever one’s efforts, but also determined, in many cases,
a person’s final, inhuman destiny. Patricia Arenas and Jorge Pinedo reconstruct the
story of a young female member of the Ache people, Damiana.41 In 1896, when she
was two, her parents’ murderers took her and baptized her; at the age of four,
she was handed over to work as a servant while she was studied by Dr. Lehmann-
145
Nitsche, head of the Museum of La Plata. Because of her rebellious attitude, she was
pathologized, criminalized, and sent to a madhouse. After she died of tuberculosis at
the age of fourteen, her body was dissected, skinned, and divided in flasks and boxes,
which were distributed between the museums of La Plata and Berlin.42
When groups and families were dismembered, individuals were assigned a
‘‘Christian’’ name, either by the Church or by the administrations of concentration
camps. For example, the baptism records of Tucumán’s parishes are full of Pampa
children who were baptized between 1878 and 1879; while the names of the children
are not mentioned, nor their parents’, nor their places of origin, the names of their
new ‘‘godparents’’ are. Despite a meticulous search, none of these records allowed
the researchers to reconstruct a single lost identity.43
Nowadays, a common topic in the Argentine press and in public opinion is the
famine, extreme misery, and premature death in Indigenous communities, especially
those in the north of the country. Argentine citizens agree that life for these people
is extremely and unfairly tough. In general, it is concluded that those Indigenous
groups that have not already disappeared will do so soon. However, it is less usual
for the social drama be related to territorial expropriation and the social and cultural
disintegration imposed on these peoples by the nation-state.
There is a double process of invisibilization at work, acting on both the history of
those who have been the victims of genocide and the history of the nation-state as
perpetrator.
2. State Policies: Invisibility and Massacres over the

Twentieth Century
Genocide is completed and complemented at the same time by the hegemonic denial
of diversity. Argentine indigenous policies—the hostile as well as the disciplinary—
have been grounded on the idea of Aboriginal extinction.
Nowadays, although there have been important steps forward in the field of
human rights, influenced by the recent judgment of the perpetrators of the last mili-
tary dictatorship, the state still denies the existence of genocide and the existence
of crimes against humanity with respect to Indigenous peoples. In particular, in the
legal process initiated as a result of the Napalpı́ massacre of 1924, the state refuses
to acknowledge the Qom people as a specific ethnic group, thus precluding the possi-
bility of recognizing genocide—rolling back advances made on this terrain by civil
organizations that support human rights. Moreover, the state’s answer to the Qom’s
attorneys suggests that the possibility of treating the massacre as a crime against
humanity has also been excluded. At the same time, the government promotes edu-
cation programs to encourage inter-cultural and bilingual education and tolerance.44
This paradox is the result of the symbolic violence that began parallel to the con-
stitution of the national state and its campaigns of military occupation in the late
nineteenth century. Most of the initiatives in ‘‘favor’’ of ‘‘our Indigenous cultures’’
are built on the idea of physical extinction, turning these cultures into an addition
of folklorized elements. Thus, when Indigenous peoples manifest a will to conduct
their own destiny, repression is the norm.
In Part 1 we summarized some cases to sustain our thesis that the policies
toward Indigenous peoples supported by the Argentine state during its process of
consolidation constitute genocide. In addition, the Argentine elites legitimated these
policies in such a way that the subjugation of the Natives and the consolidation of
territorial sovereignty were not open to discussion. In this fashion, the descriptions,
146
topics, and ideas of Natives created in that context have persisted in the Argentine
imaginary, even among those who criticize the historical process of subjugation. In
this section, therefore, we will analyze the mechanism that enabled a vast majority
of the population to incorporate these concepts and descriptions as part of an irrevo-
cable ‘‘common sense.’’
Through the concept of symbolic realization, the analysis can also be extended to
the discourse sphere, that is, to ways of talking about this process.45 This enables
us to (1) shed light on the historic and actual consequences of a genocidal policy, (2)
deconstruct the historical process as part of a ‘‘natural’’ evolution and progress of the
Argentine national state, and (3) document how the success of the symbolic realiza-
tion in the Argentinean case allows the continuity of concrete and material policies to
the detriment of Indigenous populations (e.g., eviction of communities, expropriation
of ancestral lands, legal resolutions that deny the (pre-)existence of the Indigenous
communities) by state and private actors.
One of the key elements of the symbolic realization was, and still is, the educa-
tion system—consolidated in 1884 by Law 1420.46 Despite changes in plans and
methodologies over more than 120 years, the system still constructs an image of
Argentina as a white and European nation.
In 2006, when the Nucleos de Aprendizaje Prioritario, or NAP (the basic learning
elements and programs that every national primary and secondary school must pro-
vide) were renewed, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology launched
as a main priority the need to encourage awareness of cultural diversity ‘‘with an
inter-cultural point of view that privileges words and space for Indigenous knowledge,
values, and cultural production.’’ 47 However, a quick analysis of the NAP shows that
the Indigenous peoples are confined to the past. In ‘‘Societies Through Time,’’
the chapter that approaches the historical process of the Spanish conquest, the pos-
sibility of studying Indigenous peoples across time is mentioned only in a footnote.
When NAP documents refer to the nineteenth century, they deal with national orga-
nization and the economic system but make no reference to Indigenous peoples. In
this way, the NAP reproduces the idea that Indigenous peoples belong to the past
or are long extinct. In other words, the NAP does not seem to have modified the
idea that the Indigenous peoples are the ‘‘ancient Argentineans,’’ displaced first by
a colonial society and then by the massive arrival of European immigrants by the
late nineteenth century, and have nothing to do with present times.
The education system, then, has provided a narrative of the Indigenous peoples
as if they belonged to a chronological pre-history and so did their relation with the
state. The narrative shows not a genocidal process but a ‘‘natural’’ development
of history in which the immigrants ‘‘naturally’’ replace this ‘‘prehistoric’’ population.
In this sense, there is a second mechanism of symbolic realization: the myth of
an immigrant /white nation. The main topic in this narrative Argentinean history is
the immigrant experience and the social and economic changes, and even crises, that
relate to the immigrant:
Between the final years of the [eighteen-]seventies and the beginning of the eighties,
the occupation of the ‘‘desert’’ became a fact, Buenos Aires was federalized, European
immigration was encouraged . . . the limited population of our country by the late
nineteenth century was a limit to economic growth, as it could not provide a sufficient
workforce. The arrival of immigrants sorted out this problem.48
There is not a single mention of the Indigenous inhabitants, a social subject that has
disappeared from the textbooks forever. The Indigenous population is either expelled
147
or exterminated. The capitalist development of Argentina becomes the great narra-

tive, the ‘‘official history,’’ and the destiny of the Natives is set aside. Neither their
role as forced laborers nor as part of the army is exposed. This is where the func-
tional topics of extermination and assimilation are grounded.
On the one hand, the extermination of almost every Native is reproduced even in
the discourse of those sectors that consider the ‘‘Conquest of the Desert’’ as genocide;
this is also part of the discourse of those who believe that nowadays there are no
Indigenous peoples in Argentina. On the other hand, the idea of assimilation—that
is, understanding the Natives as peasants, soldiers, national citizens—isolates the
process by which the Natives are drawn to this situation.
Part of the mechanism of symbolic realization is the categorization of some
Indigenous peoples—precisely those who retain the best levels of physical and
cultural vitality and reproduction rates—as essentially ‘‘foreigners.’’ An example is
the Mapuche people, who have historically dwelled on both sides of the Andes, today
divided between Chile and Argentina. The perception of the Mapuche people as
foreigners was a product of the political discourse of the nineteenth century and
was used to legitimate the military campaigns.49 The same assertion of foreignness
is used today to deny land rights to Indigenous people in Patagonia: since the ‘‘true
Indians’’ of Patagonia are ‘‘known’’ to be extinct, Indigenous claimants are assumed
to be either liars or foreigners, which means they have no right to these lands.
While the official education system has succeeded in cementing the idea of
Indigenous peoples’ being relegated to the past, to extinction, or to a folklorized
essence, the images accompanying this process have reaffirmed these arguments.
For example, after the military campaigns of the nineteenth century, a painting
was commissioned from Juan Manuel Blanes, an Uruguayan artist, to celebrate
the heroic event. This painting eventually became the image that springs to any
Argentine citizen’s mind in connection with the ‘‘Conquest of the Desert.’’ In every
successive reproduction of the painting, even that on the 100-peso bill, the image
has been cropped further, leaving the army in the center and deliberately excluding
the Indigenous people.
These mechanisms of invisibilization, together with a discourse of national homo-
geneity, had different effects on survivors of the genocide. For those who managed to
establish a collective strategy—for instance, regrouping around a chief who had
some capacity to deal with the state to request lands—a condition of maintaining
that collective was the adoption of the dominant culture and language.50 For those
who did not get any land from the state, the process of invisibilization was assumed
as a strategy—especially from one generation to the next—to avoid discrimination.
This process, both imposed and assumed, became worst when land began to be
expropriated and fenced. The advance of private property across the twentieth
century caused a migratory flux from the fields toward the cities. Along this trajec-
tory the Indigenous population swelled the marginal populations of urban areas,
experiencing a new fragmentation and deepening the concealment of their identity.
We must wonder, then, whether every state practice toward the Indigenous
population may be considered genocidal, or whether many practices now operating
on the subaltern are grounded in genocidal practices, in the context of modernity.
In the case of Indigenous peoples, there exists a series of material mechanisms that
cannot be considered specifically genocidal but are nonetheless a product of the rela-
tions in place from the genocide onward. That is, some of the practices performed by
the state, the ways in which it has institutionalized its relations with the Natives,
148
and, at the same time, the manner in which the latter struggle with, deal with, or
make demands against the state’s hegemonic practices, are all a product of genocide.
The genocide outlines the social spaces that may be occupied by Argentinean society
as a whole.51
Therefore, we cannot conceive of the Argentine state without the Indigenous
genocide, and vice versa. And we can analyze neither the Argentine state’s policy
toward Indigenous communities nor current Indigenous peoples’ agency without
bearing these origins in mind. In this sense, throughout the twentieth century, even
though a policy of ‘‘Indigenous assimilation’’ as part of the citizenry was announced,
state policies continued to perceive Indigenous peoples as inferior, as an internal
Other—once again anchored to the assumptions of extinction and assimilation. The
state tried to discipline a population that, being already marked with exile and
(material and symbolic) violence, was ever turning into a potential threat. In fact,
a double threat: as a real threat, should they react against the successive attacks
(fueled by the imaginary of the savage), and also as a threat to the evidence of an
alleged homogeneous nation.
In this sense, it is important to stress two forms of violence in the twentieth
century: massacres and land expropriations.
In 1924, during the presidency of Marcelo T. de Alvear (a leader of the UCR
party), an Indigenous protest was suppressed by the police of the Chaco National
Territory, resulting in the murder of more than 500 Toba and Mocovi people. The
killing took place on the lands of Napalpı́, a reserve for Indigenous families that
was considered a model. This reserve had been founded by the federal state thirteen
years before, with the aim of incorporating the Natives into the capitalist production
system as workers.52
The overcrowded, unhealthy, and exploitive conditions—working ‘‘from sunrise
to sunset,’’ as a survivor’s daughter expresses it53 —as well as the prohibition
imposed by the provincial governor, Fernando Centeno, forbidding the Indigenous
people to travel to the neighboring provinces of Salta and Jujuy in search of
better jobs, the 15 percent discount on crops harvested by Natives, and the constant
police persecution, generated a protest movement among the communities of the
reserve. In response, the local54 and national press referred to the possibility of
malones—raids—and to the existence of Indigenous murderers and ‘‘fanatical reli-
gious leaders.’’ At the same time, the landowners and local businessmen put pressure
on Governor Centeno to bring the conflict to an end.
On 19 July, at 9:00 a.m., 130 policemen and an airplane from the Chaco Airclub
fired from land and air on the Indigenous people who gathered in Napalpı́’s
central square; the survivors were hunted down during the days that followed. The
leaders’ corpses were displayed in a public square in the nearby town of Quitilipi;
the rest of the dead, estimated at over 500, were burned, then buried in common
graves.
In October 1947, during the government of Juan D. Perón, another event took
place that has been silenced through generations and only recently returned to
daylight, since a federal judge is now investigating it under the legal rubric of
genocide. At that time, massive layoffs in the sugar refineries of the Argentinean
northwest resulted in famine among the communities of the Chaco region. Since
their lands had been expropriated, the chaquense communities sold their labor to
the sugarcane harvest. In Las Lomitas, in the west of the province of Formosa,
thousands of Indigenous people gathered around a charismatic priest / healer and a
149
traditional chief. Although the meeting was peaceful—the Pilagá people only prayed
and foraged for food—the Argentinean criollos’ paranoia dictated that the dispersion
and the silencing of the Pilagá became a state affair. The federal government sent
the gendarmerie, who shot and bombarded the demonstrators, chasing the survivors
through the jungle for more a month and causing the death of a significant propor-
tion of the Pilagá people—estimates of the numbers range from 800 to 2,000 dead.55
After the brutal repression suffered by the Pilagá in Las Lomitas, the gendar-
merie imprisoned some of the survivors who were trying to escape to Paraguay and
transferred them to a state colony in Formosa called Francisco Muñiz. There they
were forced to cut wood for the state-owned sawmill and to sow rice, receiving no
rewards from the harvest. Their living conditions were miserable, and, in addition,
the children were separated from their families and sent to a religious institution.56
After several years the state sent a doctor to inspect the Muñiz colony; he certified
that the colony’s worst problem was famine.57
These are just two cases of physical violence by military/police personnel against
Indigenous peoples. Today, the narratives of similar cases is repeated across inter-
ethnic frontiers. In every case, however, discovering the facts is arduous, as pain and
fear nurture the silence, even now, of the survivors of genocide, their descendants,
and the witnesses.
The three types of expropriation that are mentioned below acknowledge the
continuity and diversity of expulsion mechanisms accomplished by individuals—
merchants and businessmen—and large land companies. These agents took advan-
tage of the legal vulnerability in which most Indigenous families were living and
extended their fences over their fields. In numerous cases, state bureaucrats respon-
sible for protecting Indigenous families have allied with individuals to evict those
families from their lands, as in the present case of the Mariano Epulef community
in Rı́o Negro.58
Such actions have worsened during recent years. In the province of Chaco, expro-
priation by private enterprises has modified property maps; according to the pro-
vincial statistics, 3,500,000 hectares of public land in 1994 became 650,000 hectares
by December 2007. It is important to underline the fact that the Indigenous com-
munities have no property deeds and, in most cases, live on the few public hectares
that are left.
A second mechanism of expropriation are evictions promoted by the state under
the banner of ‘‘inconvenience,’’ as for example in the so-called Boquete Nahuelpan,
in the province of Chubut, in 1937. In this case, a community to whom the state
had granted lands in 1908 was evicted in favor of more influential members of
society, who allegedly had better farming skills. The Indigenous people were, in this
case, labeled ‘‘Chilean Indians’’ and were accused of continuing to lead a life of
‘‘savagery.’’ 59
But such evictions are also produced as an outcome of the duality of the state.
Such was the case of the Toba (Qom) colony of La Primavera in Formosa. During
the 1980s, the province granted 5,000 hectares to the Qom, but the federal govern-
ment continued to distribute public land to private owners—including lands within
the colony. Many Indigenous members of the colony were evicted from their lands.
The third mechanism is related to the quality and quantity of the lands that
are eventually conceded to Indigenous communities. Their low productivity imposes
limits on the people’s means of production as well as on their own reproduction and
continuity in the land.
150
The lands given to Indigenous peoples have geographical and political limits
defined by the state that do not respect the productive and cultural needs of the
communities—for instance, places for hunting, fishing, and gathering food, or sacred
places. In general, they are low-priced lands that nonetheless can be expropriated
according to the needs of the market. In fact, the new monoculture economy, based
on small workforce needs and extensive soil exploitation, is once again moving the
agricultural frontier. Simultaneously, there is a growing number of relocations and
evictions of Indigenous communities that yet does not seem to scandalize Argentina’s
citizens.
3. The Concept of Genocide and the Questioning of the

State–Society Relationship
Despite the fact that in the past the academic and juridical communities strongly
rejected considering the use of the term ‘‘genocide’’ to refer to Argentine policies
toward Indigenous peoples, we can now observe that its use, still full of prejudices,
has become widespread. On the one hand, this is the outcome of a leading tendency
in international agreements, forums, and documents to condemn the exploitation
and subordination suffered by Indigenous peoples in the present. On the other
hand, in the local/national arena, it is part of the critical revision of the relationship
between state and society that began with the democratic era after the last dictator-
ship, and results particularly from the struggle of human-rights organizations and
Indigenous activists to legitimate Native demands as part of the human-rights
agenda. However, there is still a significant gap between acknowledgement and
‘‘visibility,’’ on the one hand, and, on the other, the profound historical revision that
would bring up for debate the historical processes that produced the conditions of
possibility for a ‘‘marginal citizenship’’ to exist.
Since the socio-economic situation of the Indigenous peoples has been brought to
light, the duty to do something about it has been discussed by different agencies and
political projects. The idea of society’s ‘‘moral duty’’ to the Indigenous population
constitutes a debatable ground in which the use of the term ‘‘genocide’’ has central
importance. The term enables us to think about the idea of ‘‘reparations’’ and, in
connection with this, about the questions ‘‘who?’’ ‘‘what?’’ and ‘‘what for?’’
The arena in which these discussions take place is constituted, first, by the
questioning of the historiographic narrative inscribed in the daily geography of
Argentina’s citizens (the naming of streets, cities, squares, and statues that celebrate
battles, national heroes, and governors associated either with authoritarian regimes
or with the oligarchic power constituted by 1880). The ‘‘Official history’’ is identified
as the matrix of validation of the crimes against humanity perpetrated during
the last dictatorship (1976–1983). The debate on this recent history has fuelled the
discussion of the term ‘‘genocide.’’ In addition, discussion of the historical research
behind that ‘‘official history’’ led to some other social practices’ being named geno-
cidal, among them the subjugation and forced incorporation of Native populations
into the nation-state. The debate on monuments and street naming—especially as a
consequence of the writer Osvaldo Bayer’s public campaign—aims to shed light on
the different disciplinary mechanisms imposed on the subaltern classes, many of
which originated in the same regime that undertook the Conquest of the Desert.
Thus, in this matrix, immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and working class are part of
the same group of ‘‘victims’’ of the oligarchic capitalist order.60
151
Second, emerging from some teachers’ unions and associations, there is an

important reaction against the NAP—mentioned in Part 2—and its exclusion of
Native peoples’ history from the national history. In this way, these teachers are
trying to make visible what it is still absent from the books they have to work with
at school.
Third, there have been specific initiatives of solidarity with Indigenous peoples,
such as the legal actions taken against the state by groups of lawyers on the cases
of the massacres at Napalpı́ (1924) and La Bomba (1947). The Napalpı́ Massacre, in
particular, has achieved the status of an ‘‘epitomizing event’’;61 that is, it has become
part of a public discussion as the concretion of genocide itself. The risk is, then, that
in this case, as well as in the debate surrounding the Roca statues, the debate could
potentially close down to an understanding that Napalpı́ is ‘‘the’’ genocide and that
Roca is ‘‘the’’ perpetrator of genocide. Such an outcome would put at risk the main
learning that these massacres bring to the present: that they should be inscribed
in a major context of nation-building where genocide has been reproduced in history
regardless of the political parties in charge of the administration. As an example, the
massacres of Napalpı́ and La Bomba were executed during ‘‘popular’’ and democratic
regimes led by different political parties.62
Fourth, within academia there is discussion of the applicability of the concept of
genocide. On the one hand, this is the outcome of in-depth research on the historical
processes that led to the constitution of the national state, and especially of its dis-
ciplinary mechanisms, which disproved the argument that there had been no specific
state policy with respect to the Indigenous population. On the other hand, there has
been an increase in theoretical and methodological debates that enable us to reflect
on the concept of genocide in different contexts and periods. Finally, there has been
an important process of revision with respect to academic practice, institutional
history, and the constitution of academic disciplines. In particular, the handling of
‘‘anthropological collections’’ has been questioned,63 as has the unauthorized field-
work carried out by archeologists and anthropologists in Indigenous communities
and the omission of Indigenous history as a subject of study by historians.
Finally, and most importantly, certain inner sectors of Indigenous peoples have,
in the last decade, found in the concept of genocide a representative manner of
making demands on the state and society. The majority of Indigenous claims and
politics have in common a questioning of the historical process of subjugation,
because their demands are not delimited within a present conflict but are the accu-
mulation of successive conflicts in their relations with the state.64
To date, a social and discursive movement has been working toward the installa-
tion of the concept of genocide and the need to revise the hegemonic historiography;
at the same time, it has generated a backlash from a set of different actors, however
coincident in their arguments. Denial—those who minimize or neglect the social
practices described in Part 1—argue the extemporaneousness of the concept of
genocide, or of concentration camps or of crimes against humanity, and label the
supporters of this ‘‘other’’ history unscientific and proof-less or supportive of ‘‘dark’’
interests or agents (Marxist-Leninists, terrorists, foreigners, romantics, traitors, politi-
cal agitators, and so on).
Thus, different sectors have reacted to the possibility of accepting the idea of
genocide. Although ready to accept that there have been ‘‘some mistakes’’ in the
past, they consider that throughout history there have been plenty of such excesses
and that no particular social group should present itself as having more right
152
to change what is now a ‘‘collective patrimony.’’ Thus, proposals to widen our

knowledge of our national history are refused in order to sustain a local/national
identity.
Finally, as part of this reaction, the concept of genocide has also been incorporated
within projects of political integration. In this way, the state—federal or provincial—
through its different agencies and offices, has begun to incorporate the use of the
term. The state becomes then self-referent as defender of the victims of genocide
while emptying the identity of the perpetrator. Indigenous peoples, according to
this position, may have been victims of genocide, but the current state bears no
responsibility.
From Genocide to Reparation

The concept of genocide has embedded not only the acknowledgment and the accep-
tance of a multicultural country but also the idea of ‘‘reparation,’’ in both material
and symbolic terms. This brings on another discussion about how to understand
this ‘‘reparation,’’ because what seems to be the answer to the problem for some
actors means the continuity of the ‘‘genocide’’ for others.
To date, politicians’ projects, whether national or provincial, have tried to
contain the margins of this possible reparation (using various terms). On the one
hand, some sustain the idea of a total extermination and consequently depoliticize
the process and the demands. They incorporate the idea of genocide to argue that
there are no Indigenous persons left, only mixed-bloods and descendants; therefore
‘‘material reparation’’ is impracticable and, in any case, ‘‘unfair’’ and ‘‘arbitrary.’’
On the other hand, and in consonance with international changes in discourse,
the acknowledgment through the constitutional reform of 1994 of the Natives as
‘‘Indigenous peoples’’ (pre-existing the formation of the state) has been a first sym-
bolic reparation, intended to show how modern and respectful the national society
has become. Nonetheless, this ‘‘restitution’’ has collided with the demands of
Indigenous activists, who visualize culturally diverse collective subjects with their
own voices and agendas and assert that there has not yet been a real restitution
that answers their own needs and interests.
This is the basis on which debates and differences are disputed among public
agencies, NGOs, and Indigenous organizations. In particular, both public agencies
and NGOs begin with the idea of a ‘‘common solution’’ for Indigenous peoples
throughout the country, bearing in mind a ‘‘common interest.’’ The Indigenous
organizations, on the other hand, argue that it is not possible to come to a solu-
tion within the same state logic of ‘‘making the differences homogeneous,’’ because
the diverse historical processes by which the various peoples have been led to
a homogeneous status of marginal and subaltern citizenship must be taken into
consideration.
In other words, the problem consists of establishing who defines what and, espe-
cially, what for. Regardless of the terms we choose to describe the process ( genocide,
respect, reparation, etc.), what is really at stake is the what for. At least, many
Indigenous organizations maintain that the what for still bears the same aim: to
facilitate and optimize the mechanisms of domination and expropriation that, under
the so-called community of interests, settle the ethnic and class asymmetry into a
determined social order.
153
Reparation as Restitution of Citizenship

The acknowledgment of multiculturalism and the openness toward diversity in
the last two decades have built and established social places of detention where
individuals set, through active practices, bonds and senses of belonging.65 At the
same time, they have found limits in the official policies that try to determine their
welfare. Today, the concept of genocide is the subject of discussion, although as yet it
is strongly resisted as a concept of historical description. In this way, for example,
when the National Institute Against Discrimination (INADI) reacted against various
expressions of negationism, it passed on a law project to condemn expressions of
denial or minimization of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the genocide
by Argentina’s last dictatorship but did not even mention the Indigenous genocide.66
At the same time, during a school inauguration in Santa Victoria Este—a loca-
tion in northwest Argentina with a vast Indigenous population—President Cristina
Fernández said, ‘‘I ask forgiveness of the Indigenous peoples for the underhand
discrimination hidden behind our state’s inaction,’’ 67 and named the place the
‘‘backyard of the country’s backyard.’’ The government ceremony was intended to
bring closer to a regular citizenship people who have been apparently forgotten
by the nation-state in its welfare gifts. However, active state practices that have
damaged them for over a century were not mentioned.
Reparation, conceived as ‘‘reparation from marginal citizenship,’’ lies far from an
acknowledgment of autonomy and of double citizenship. Its aim is, again, to ‘‘give
back the condition of equals,’’ rendering inner differences invisible in order to make
visible the citizen’s equality—that is, fixing ‘‘one’’ damaged social body. This is the
context in which, since 1983, Indigenous rights have become part of the accusations
against state violence. However, each time the idea of a separate—or, at least,
a more complex and juxtaposed—social body is proposed, similar reactions and
mechanisms of denial arise, pushing to reinstate a homogeneous, hegemonic, and
discrete model of citizenship.
4. Final Words
The debate around the concept of genocide relating to Argentina’s Indigenous policy
has enabled a new arena for debate, where new questions arise. It allows us to think
about whether new changes in the relationships of subalternity can be researched
and to question what has changed or has continued in the structure of power, and
in its material and symbolic conditions, around the construction of policies and prac-
tices promoted ‘‘by’’ and ‘‘for’’ Indigenous peoples.
Motivated by these questions, however, it is important to acknowledge what this
process has caused. First, something has begun to change, in that the idea that
the Indians’—now ‘‘Indigenous peoples’ ’’—extinction has ceased to be a hegemonic
assertion. At least there is a necessity to explain what has actually happened. It
may be interpreted either as genocide or through different theoretical answers (e.g.,
the idea of assimilation and mixing), but now in a context in which the faces of real
Indigenous persons have gained presence in the political and public arena. In other
words, ‘‘General Roca’s defenders’’ must now face the fact that there are Indigenous
witnesses and professionals who will contradict their defense.
Second, when using the term ‘‘genocide,’’ there is still the challenge of inscribing
it in a wider process related to the construction of a certain social order. That
is, there is a tendency to replace the term ‘‘massacre’’ or ‘‘excess’’ with the term
‘‘genocide’’ in reference to events of the past, detaching it from its consequences
154
in the present as an already-overcome historical period. But if we understand

that the social practices carried out against the Indigenous population that we
have described here—concentration camps, the separation of families, deportations,
killings, massacres, forced labor, redistribution of children, material expropriations,
and so on—constituted a genocide, we should also shed light on the fact that these
events were not denounced before and ask why they are still so extremely difficult
for Argentinean society to accept.
The imposed social order has evidently been ‘‘successful,’’ and therefore the
‘‘consequences’’ of the genocide have become constitutive of the society in which we
live. Thus, we need to ask ourselves what has changed, and what has not, in the
historiography and in its questioning of the foundations of the state.
Finally, and as long as we are both scholars and also part of civil society, we
would like to open the question around the changes that could have been produced
in the struggle to control hegemony of representations and self-representations.
Have the criteria for authority changed? Is there any openness toward ‘‘new public
voices’’? Who can cast the first word?
Notes
1. The former of these campaigns is known officially and popularly as ‘‘the Conquest of the
Desert,’’ and it epitomizes this process from the point of view of the average citizen.
Thus, many of our examples will be taken from this campaign, although it was neither
the first nor the last such military operation.
2. The project is titled ‘‘Memories and Files of the Genocide: Subjugation and Incorporation
of Indigenous Peoples to the Nation-State’’ and is supported by the University of Buenos
Aires. This project is part of the Red de Investigadores sobre Genocidio en la Polı́tica
Indı́gena Argentina.
3. Walter Delrio, Diana Lenton, Marcelo Musante, Mariano Nagy, Alexis Papazian, and
Gerardo Raschcovsky, ‘‘Reflexiones sobre la dinámica genocida en la relación del Estado
argentino con los pueblos originarios’’ (Paper presented at Segundo Encuentro Inter-
nacional Análisis de las Prácticas Sociales Genocidas, Buenos Aires, November 2007).
4. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December
1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 277, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/genocide.htm (accessed 15 June
2010), art. 2.
5. Julio A. Roca, presidential speech before the Legislative Assembly, 6 May 1884 (National
Congress, daily report on sessions). Unless otherwise noted, all translations into English
are our own.
6. Giorgio Agamben, Estado de Excepción. Homo sacer II, trans. Antonio Gimeno Cuspinera
(Valencia: Pre-Textos Editorial, 2003).
7. Diana Lenton, ‘‘De centauros a protegidos. La construcción del sujeto de la polı́tica indi-
genista Argentina desde los debates parlamentarios (1880–1970)’’ (PhD diss., Univer-
sidad de Buenos Aires, 2005).
8. In Spanish, ‘‘crimen de lesa humanidad.’’ La Nación 16–17 November 1878; see Lenton,
‘‘De centauros a protegidos.’’
9. Interview by Ana Ramos and Walter Delrio, February 2006, translated by the authors.
10. A description of these events is narrated in Luis Jorge Fontana, Viaje de Exploración en
la Patagonia Austral (Buenos Aires: Talleres de la Tribuna Nacional, 1886).
11. Mixed-blood, Creole, or European descendants born in America.
12. At least 300 persons from the Sacamata and Pichaleo tribes were concentrated in this
place. José Garofoli, Datos Biográficos and Excursiones del P. Milanesio, Archivo Salesiano
Inspectorı́a de Buenos Aires (Salesian central archive of Buenos Aires) [ASIBA], Indı́genas
201.2, 74.
155
13. By 1886 more than 1,000 persons were concentrated when the Salesians Cagliero,
Remotti, and Panaro visited the Ñancuche and Sayhueque tribes’ prisoners in this loca-
tion. Garofoli, Datos Biográficos, 169; ASIBA, Indı́genas C.201.4, doc. 60.
14. Valcheta is one of the most significant cases, both because of the number of people
concentrated and because of the numerous references related to it through the mapuche-
tehuelche narratives in Patagonia. Valcheta is named as a place of concentration, torture,
and death. John Daniel Evans, a Welsh settler, mentioned it as a concentration center.
Clery A. Evans, John Daniel Evans, El Molinero: Una historia entre galeses y la Colonia
16 de Octubre (Trevelin: Impresiones Lahuan, 1994), 92–93.
15. Pilar Pérez, ‘‘Represión y resistencia: una aproximación a los campos de concentración en
el territorio patagónico a fines del siglo XIX’’ (Paper presented at II Encuentro Inter-
nacional Análisis de las Prácticas Sociales Genocidas, Universidad Tres de Febrero,
Buenos Aires, 2007).
16. Pedro Giacomini, Misiones de la Patagonia, ASIBA, 99.
17. National Congress, Daily Report on Sessions, 19 August 1884 [in Spanish].
18. El Nacional, 21 January 1879.
19. These conclusions are drawn from an analysis of various sources found in the Archivo
General de la Armada (army general archives) [AGA], the Archivo de la Arquidiócesis de
Buenos Aires (the archives of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires) [ABAA], and the Archivo
General de la Nación (national general archives) [NGA]; see Mariano Nagy and Alexis
Papazian, ‘‘De la Isla como Campo. Prácticas de disciplinamiento indı́gena en la Isla
Martı́n Garcı́a hacia fines s. XIX’’ (Paper presented at XII Jornadas Interescuelas-
Departamentos de Historia, Universidad del Comahue, Bariloche. 2009).
20. AGA, boxes 15272–15287.
21. ABAA, Books 1–3 of Baptism Acts and Book 1 of Death Acts, Martı́n Garcı́a’s Chapel,
January–May 1879; AGA, boxes 15277, 15278, and 15280.
22. AGA, box 15278, Savino O’Donnell, Surgeon of the Island, 12 October 1878. The doctor’s
warnings were given one month before a deadly outbreak of smallpox.
23. Who also assumed responsibility for Indigenous people after the presidential decree of
3 May 1899. Lenton, ‘‘De centauros a protegidos.’’
24. Enrique Hugo Mases, Estado y cuestión indı́gena. El destino final de los indios sometidos
en el fin del territorio (1878–1910) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo libros/Entrepasados, 2002);
Eduardo Rosenzvaig, Historia Social de Tucumán y del azúcar, vol. 2: El Ingenio (San
Miguel de Tucumán: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, 1986); Diana Lenton and Jorge
Sosa, ‘‘La expatriación de los pampas y su incorporación forzada en la sociedad tucumana
de finales del siglo XIX’’ (Paper presented at Jornadas de Estudios Indı́genas y Coloniales,
Universidad de Jujuy, San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina, November 2009).
25. The press reported sporadic escapes from the sugar plantations. For example, the news-
paper El Argentino reported that ‘‘almost every Indian has run away’’ from El Colmenar;
some days later, the same newspaper stated that ‘‘we should be aware of the Indians
if they are kept in hunger.’’ El Argentino, 28 January 1879; Lenton and Sosa, ‘‘La
expatriación de los pampas.’’
26. Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Tucumán (AHT), Letter from Francisco del Corro
and Evaristo Barrenechea to the Minister of Government, 10 February 1879.
27. Lenton and Sosa, ‘‘La expatriación de los pampas.’’
28. Walter Delrio, Memorias de expropiación. Sometimiento e incorporación indı́gena en la
Patagonia (1872–1943) (Bernal: Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2005);
Lenton, ‘‘De centauros a protegidos.’’
29. Lenton and Sosa, ‘‘La expatriación de los pampas.’’ The policy of dismembering families
and using forced labor continued into the twentieth century, legitimated by motives of
‘‘national interest’’ as well as by the defense of ‘‘civilized society.’’ Among the first
examples is the overexploitation of the Kolla farmers in northwestern Argentina. Up
to the middle of the twentieth century, the Kolla had their land expropriated and
were compelled to undergo a process of proletarianization in the sugar refineries where
156
Patagonian families had previously been. This practice was justified as ‘‘the only way to
support a national industry in difficult regions.’’
30. Charles Darwin, Un naturalista en el Plata (1845), trans. Constantino Piquer (Buenos
Aires: CEAL, 1978), 64.
31. National Congress, Daily Report on Sessions, 1 April 1900.
32. Lenton, ‘‘De centauros a protegidos.’’
33. Alfredo Ebelot, La pampa. Costumbres argentinas (1890; reprint, Buenos Aires: Ed.
Nueva Dimensión Argentina, 2001).
34. Manuel Prado, La guerra al malón (1907; reprint, Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1960), 95.
35. AGA, box 15279, 6 March 1879.
36. Interview by Ana Ramos and Walter Delrio, February 2006.
37. AGA, box 15279, 14 February 1879.
38. AGA, box 15279, 27 March 1879.
39. Chronicle of the mission of Fathers Herrera and Quaranta, General Acha, June 1891,
quoted in Claudia Salomón Tarquini, Indigenas y paisanos en la pampa. Subalterniza-
ción, ciclos migratorios, integración urbana (1870–1976) (PhD diss., Universidad Nacional
del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, 2008).
40. La Nación, 17 November 1878.
41. Patricia Arenas and Jorge Pinedo, ‘‘Damiana vuelve a los suyos,’’ Página 12, 20 Novem-
ber 2005, http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/radar/9-2639-2005-11-24.html
(accessed 3 February 2010).
42. Miguel Añon Suarez, Patricio Harrison, and Fernando Pepe, Identificación y restitución:
Colecciones de restos humanos en el Museo de La Plata (La Plata: Editorial GUIAS,
2008).
43. Lenton and Sosa, ‘‘La expatriación de los pampas.’’
44. See Walter Delrio and Diana Lenton, ‘‘ Qué, para quiénes y según quiénes? Repara-
?
ciones, restituciones y negaciones del genocidio en la polı́tica indı́gena del estado argen-
tino’’ (Paper presented at Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 2009 Congress, Rio
de Janeiro, 11–14 June 2009).
45. Daniel Feierstein, Seis estudios sobre genocidio. Análisis de las relaciones sociales:
otredad, exclusión, exterminio (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 2000). The term ‘‘symbolic
realization’’ refers to the rebuilding of a genocidal experience as if it were not such an
experience. Thus, not only does it ‘‘close the possibility of returning to the existing
social relations before the genocide’’ (ibid., 24), it also inhibits and renders suspect any
Indigenous agency, and considers the performances of that agency illegitimate and even
fictitious, under the hegemonic discourse that sustains the lack of Native peoples in
Argentina.
46. National Law No. 1420 on Common Education, 1884, http://www.bnm.me.gov.ar/giga1/
normas/5421.pdf (accessed 23 June 2010). This legislation was the result of a pedagogical
congress held in 1882.
47. Núcleos de Aprendizajes Prioritarios (NAP) EGB / Nivel Medio (Buenos Aires: Ministerio
de Educación, 2006).
48. History UBA 2004 (entrance course for secondary schools), 11.
49. Axel Lazzari and Diana Lenton, ‘‘Araucanization, Nation: A Century Inscribing Indians
in the Pampas,’’ in Contemporary Perspectives on the Native Peoples of Pampa: Bergin
Garvey Series in Anthropology, ed. Claudia Briones and J.L. Lanata, 33–46 (Westport,
CT: Greenwood, 2002).
50. Delrio, Memorias de expropiación.
51. Lawrence Grossberg, ‘‘Power and Daily Life,’’ in We gotta get out of this place. Popular
conservatism and postmodern culture, by Lawrence Grossberg, 89–111 (New York:
Routledge, 1992); Lawrence Grossberg, ‘‘Entre consenso y hegemonı́a: Notas sobre la
forma hegemónica de la polı́tica moderna,’’ Tabula Rasa 2 (2004): 49–57.
52. See Nicolás Iñigo Carrera, La violencia como potencia económica: Chaco 1870–1940
(Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de America Latina, 1988); Edgardo Cordeu and Alejandra
157
Siffredi, De la algarroba al algodón: movimientos milenaristas del Chaco Argentino

(Buenos Aires: Juárez Editor, 1971); Hugo Trinchero, Los Dominios del Demonio. Civili-
zación y Barbarie en las Fronteras de la Nación. El Chaco Central (Buenos Aires:
EUDEBA, 2000).
53. Juan Chico and Mario Fernández, Napa’lpı́, la voz de la sangre (Resistencia: Sub-
secretarı́a de Cultura de la Provincia del Chaco, 2008).
54. La Voz del Chaco, 19 May 1924: ‘‘Press release by the Chief of Police: in the Napalpı́
reservation, about 500 Indians have gathered; they have not yet committed any crime
but slaughtering neighbors’ animals. They are in a hostile mood; they do not want to
listen to the messengers sent to deal with them. They threaten those Indians that work
and have not joined them. We have heard that there are about eighty Indians armed
with Winchester arms and some others with similar weapons. The rest carry knives and
lances. Their attitude makes us assume that they have wider goals, which we try to
avoid. Therefore we have asked the government for backup, because we believe that
they will back off if they face a stronger force. These Indians have been fueled by one
called Machado who names himself as a God.’’
55. The Pilagá escape across the jungle assumed tragic proportions when families had to
abandon the wounded, sick, or weak who could not keep on running, thus increasing the
death toll. One witness reported that for many days they had to walk bent over because
the bushes in that area are so low, and that it was difficult to silence children who cried,
until they reached the timberline area and could once again run upright. The cruel per-
secution led families to be involuntarily dismembered, and, as many today regret, they
could not even bury their dead. Valeria Mapelman (dir.), Octubre Pilagá [documentary
film] (Buenos Aires: DVCam, 2010).
56. Survivor testimonies indicate that these children ‘‘never appeared’’ and that ‘‘nobody
knows what became of them.’’ Mapelman, ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Lorena Cañuqueo, Laura Kropff, and Pilar Pérez, ‘‘ Un ‘‘ulmenche’’ en el territorio pata-
?
gónico del siglo XX? el caso de Mariano Epulef ’’ (Paper presented at 3ras Jornadas de
Historia de la Patagonia, Universidad del Comahue, Bariloche, November 2008).
59. Walter Delrio, ‘‘Mecanismos de tribalización en la Patagonia. Desde la gran crisis al
primer gobierno peronista,’’ Memoria Americana. Cuadernos de Etnohistoria 13 (2006):
209–42; Claudia Briones and Diana Lenton, ‘‘Debates parlamentarios y nación: la con-
strucción discursiva de la inclusión/exclusión de los indı́genas,’’ Actas de las III Jornadas
de Lingüı́stica Aborigen (1997): 303–18.
60. Following this idea, there is a proposal to remove General Roca’s monument on the main
avenue of Buenos Aires and to replace it with a monument in memory of a Native woman
and an immigrant one, both considered victims of Roca’s repressive administration.
61. G. Landsman and S. Ciborski, ‘‘Representation and Politics: Contesting Histories of the
Iroquois,’’ Cultural Anthropology 7 (1992): 425–47, quoted in Claudia Briones, La alteri-
dad en el cuarto mundo. Una construcción antropológica de la diferencia (Buenos Aires:
Ediciones del Sol, 1998), 108.
62. Indeed, the federal government has argued against considering these two events as geno-
cidal because they occurred during when elected governments were in power, and such
governments are supposed to look after the welfare of their citizens. For further informa-
tion see Red de Investigadores en Genocidio y Polı́tica Indı́gena, Napalpı́ y Rincón
Bomba: debates sobre el genocidio de los Pueblos Originarios y los lı́mites de la Justicia
(Buenos Aires: GEG, DVD Multimedia, 2008).
63. See Añon Suarez et al., Identificación y restitución, on the collections of the Museum of
La Plata. On the influence of national paradigms over alleged academic objectivity see
Delrio, Memorias de expropiación; Lazzari and Lenton, Araucanization, Nation.
64. Diana Lenton, ‘‘El ‘aporte antropológico’ en un caso de evaluación de ‘daño cultural,’’
(Paper presented at the VI Congreso Red Latinoamericana de Antropologı́a Jurı́dica,
Bogotá, November 2008); Marcelo Musante, ‘‘La construcción del territorio chaqueño
158
como parte de un proceso genocida,’’ La revista del CCC 5/6 (2009),

http://www.centrocultural.coop/revista/articulo/111/ (accessed 21 September 2009).
65. Grossberg, ‘‘Power and Daily Life.’’
66. ‘‘This agency works to penalize those who deny, defend or trivialize the Holocaust,
the Armenian Genocide, and state terrorism applied by the military dictatorship that
devastated our country. . . . With respect to the dynamics that the debate itself will have,
criminologists, constitutional experts, human-rights professors, human-rights organiza-
tions, and the community organizations involved (Armenian and Jewish) are expected to
take part in it.’’ Tomás Forster, ‘‘El INADI presenta un borrador para punir la negación
del holocausto,’’ Página 12, 1 March 2009.
67. Cları́n, 3 March 2009.
159

Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International

Volume 5 Issue 2 Article 3

Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina: Past, Present, and

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp

This article is available in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal:

(August 2010): 138–159. 6 2010 Genocide Studies and Prevention. doi:10.3138/gsp.5.2.138

1. Argentina’s Indigenous Policies as Genocide

(a) Killing Members of the Group

(b) Causing Serious Bodily or Mental Harm to Members of the Group

(c) Deliberately Inflicting on the Group Conditions of Life Calculated to

(d) Imposing Measures Intended to Prevent Births within the Group

(e) Forcibly Transferring Children of the Group to Another Group

2. State Policies: Invisibility and Massacres over the

or exterminated. The capitalist development of Argentina becomes the great narra-

3. The Concept of Genocide and the Questioning of the

Second, emerging from some teachers’ unions and associations, there is an

to change what is now a ‘‘collective patrimony.’’ Thus, proposals to widen our

From Genocide to Reparation

Reparation as Restitution of Citizenship

in the present as an already-overcome historical period. But if we understand

Siffredi, De la algarroba al algodón: movimientos milenaristas del Chaco Argentino

como parte de un proceso genocida,’’ La revista del CCC 5/6 (2009),

You might also like