The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History 0826362060, 9780826362063

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Tracing the Battle for History • Carolyne R. Larson
1 The Conquest of the Desert: The Official Story • Carolyne R. Larson
2 “Occupy Every Road and Prepare for Combat”: Mapuche and Tehuelche Leaders Face the War in Patagonia • Julio Vezub and Mark Healey
3 Environment and the Conquest of the Desert, 1876–1885 • Rob Christensen
4 Live Indians in the Museum: Connecting Evolutionary Anthropology with the Conquest of the Desert • Ricardo D. Salvatore
5 Beyond the “Desert”: Indigenous Genocide as a Structuring Event in Northern Patagonia • Walter Delrioand Pilar Pérez
6 Redefining Borders: The Desert in Argentine Literature • Jennie I. Daniels
7 The Long Conquista del Desiertoand the Making of Military Government Indigenous Policy, 1976–1983 • David M. K. Sheinin
8 Senses of Painful Experience: Memory of the Mapuche People in Violent Times • Ana Ramos
9 Mapping Mapuche Territory: Reimagining the Conquest of the Desert • Sarah D. Warren
Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

The Conquest of the Desert

Diálogos Series ·

Kris Lane, Series Editor

Understanding Latin America demands dialogue, deep exploration, and frank discussion of key topics. Founded by Lyman L. Johnson in 1992 and edited since 2013 by Kris Lane, the Diálogos Series focuses on innovative scholarship in Latin American history and related fields. The series, the most successful of its type, includes specialist works accessible to a wide readership and a variety of thematic titles, all ideally suited for classroom adoption by university and college teachers. Also available in the Diálogos Series: From the Galleons to the Highlands: Slave Trade Routes in the Spanish Americas edited by Alex Borucki, David Eltis, and David Wheat A Troubled Marriage: Indigenous Elites of the Colonial Americas by Sean F. McEnroe Staging Frontiers: The Making of Modern Popular Culture in Argentina and Uruguay by William Garrett Acree Jr. A Woman, a Man, a Nation: Mariquita Sánchez, Juan Manuel de Rosas, and the Beginnings of Argentina by Jeffrey M. Shumway The Origins of Macho: Men and Masculinity in Colonial Mexico by Sonya Lipsett-Rivera Mexico in the Time of Cholera by Donald Fithian Stevens Tides of Revolution: Information, Insurgencies, and the Crisis of Colonial Rule in Venezuela by Cristina Soriano Mexico City, 1808: Power, Sovereignty, and Silver in an Age of War and Revolution by John Tutino Murder in Mérida, 1792 by Mark W. Lentz Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire by Sarah E. Owens For additional titles in the Diálogos Series, please visit unmpress.com.

edited by Carolyne R. Larson

THE CONQUEST OF THE DESERT Argentina ’ s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History University of New Mexico Press ·Albuquerque

© 2020 by University of New Mexico Press All rights reserved. Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-8263-6206-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8263-6207-0 (paper) ISBN 978-0-8263-6208-7 (e-book) Library of Congress Control Number: 2020945493 Cover phoTogrAph: Courtesy of the Museo Etnográfico Juan B. Ambrosetti, Universidad de Buenos Aires, photographic archives. Used with permission. DesigneD by Mindy Basinger Hill

FOR SAM

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations  xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Tracing the Battle for History Carolyne R. Larson 1 one The Conquest of the Desert: The Official Story Carolyne R. Larson 17 two “Occupy Every Road and Prepare for Combat”: Mapuche and Tehuelche Leaders Face the War in Patagonia Julio Vezub and Mark Healey 43

three Environment and the Conquest of the Desert, 1876–1885 Rob Christensen 71 four Live Indians in the Museum: Connecting Evolutionary Anthropology with the Conquest of the Desert Ricardo D. Salvatore 97 five Beyond the “Desert”: Indigenous Genocide as a Structuring Event in Northern Patagonia Walter Delrio and Pilar Pérez 122

six Redefining Borders: The Desert in Argentine Literature Jennie I. Daniels 146 seven The Long Conquista del Desierto and the Making of Military Government Indigenous Policy, 1976–1983 David M. K. Sheinin 171

eight Senses of Painful Experience: Memory of the Mapuche People in Violent Times Ana Ramos 197 nine Mapping Mapuche Territory: Reimagining the Conquest of the Desert Sarah D. Warren 219

Bibliography  239 Contributors  265 Index  267

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1 Statue of Julio Roca in Centro Cívico Plaza, San Carlos de Bariloche 2 Figure 2 The pampas and Patagonia 3 Figure 3 Conquest of the Desert, 1879 campaigns 25 Figure 4 Argentine campaigns of conquest in Patagonia: the war below the Río Negro (1881–1884) 51 Figure 5 “Tame Indians of Linares,” Chichinales 58

Figure 6 Longko Millaman and his family, Ñorquín 65 Figure 7 Pulmarí Valley, Neuquén, 2014 67 Figure 8 Monthly average precipitation in millimeters, smoothed to yearly increments 74 Figure 9 Masthead of Azkintuwe 223 Figure 10 “Territorio Mapuche Ocupado” 227 Figure 11 Map of Wallmapu 230

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Creating this book has been deeply gratifying, thanks to the terrific scholars who have contributed to it. My thanks to them for collegial relationships old and new, for tolerating my editorial herding with good humor, and for sending me fascinating work to read. It has been a profound privilege to work with these outstanding scholars, who have given so generously of their time and expertise to create what we hope will be a truly useful book on a vital subject. I am deeply grateful to Kris Lane, Clark Whitehorn, Sonia Dickey, Norman Ware, and the entire editorial team at the University of New Mexico Press, who saw value in our project and gave it a home. Kris, Clark, and Sonia championed the book throughout the publication process and gave invaluable feedback that made it a stronger book. I am also indebted to two extraordinary classes of undergraduate students, at the University of Wyoming and St. Norbert College, who read chapter drafts and offered written feedback to the authors. My sincerest thanks to Shelby Alcorn, Colin Bursik, Stuart Cameron, Michael Cannon, Will Couture, Ian Crouse, Jackson Deterding, Makayla Garnica, Harrison Grunert, Lexi Hageman, Alex Havener, Thomas Heywood, Ben Hickman, Bianca Infante de la Cruz, Kim Ippolito, Alia Jackson, Dante Jadin, Ross Johnson, Jackson Kochevar, Kendal Mager, Kevin Pedersen, Trey Powers, Christal Rohan, Jeremy Rosnow, Erica Sall, Lily Salzer, Andrew Schuster, Kevin Steuck, Stephanie Stull, Stephanie Tuttle, and Steve Yeager. Finally, a profound thanks to all the colleagues, friends, and family who have supported everyone involved in this project by reading drafts, talking through ideas, or offering a caring ear. For my part, I am especially grateful for the support and friendship of colleagues at the University of Wyoming and St. Norbert College. Few people could claim to be so lucky in their colleagues, not once but twice.

xiii

The Conquest of the Desert

INTRODUCTION

Tracing the Battle for History Carolyne R. Larson

In Centro Cívico Plaza of San Carlos de Bariloche stands an equestrian monument celebrating Julio A. Roca’s role as the commander of the Conquest of the Desert (La Conquista del Desierto, 1878–1885), a series of military campaigns launched by Argentine forces to drive indigenous peoples from the pampas and Patagonia.1 Many in Argentina today see the conquest as bringing civilization to a barbaric landscape and remember Roca as a national hero. But this monument also tells a different story, one that belies the smooth triumphalism of Roca’s heroics. Bariloche is located in historically Mapuche territory on the Andean slopes of the present-day province of Río Negro, and Mapuche people still inhabit the region, in rural and urban communities. Roca’s monument is regularly spray-painted with slogans such as “Roca = genocide,”  “The Mapuche People Live,”  “Assassin,”  “Oppressor,” and “Marichi Wew,” a Mapuche phrase meaning “ten times the victors” (fig. 1). The monument is also frequently splashed in red paint, symbolizing the blood of indigenous peoples spilled during the conquest, and Mapuche activists stage regular protests around the monument.2 The monument, rather than an unproblematized celebration of Roca’s military campaigns, has instead become a palimpsest of fiercely disputed claims to history and identity. Although the “official story” of the conquest describes a bold and triumphant campaign for the Argentine nation-state, indigenous and other voices tenaciously reject that story, often through “unofficial” means. For example, on October 12, 2012, protestors from a workers’ cooperative in Bariloche demanded the statue’s removal, attaching two tethers to the statue and sawing at its legs before the police intervened. Protestors argued that “many 1

Figure 1  Statue of Julio Roca in Centro Cívico Plaza, San Carlos de Bariloche. Robert Cutts, December 2006, Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/panr/4412106930, accessed August 28, 2018. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode.

of our members in the Cooperative are of Mapuche origin and the statue’s presence is offensive because this man killed their ancestors.”3 Mapuche activists’ and anonymous graffitists’ insistence that “the Mapuche People Live,” alongside their forceful denunciations of the Argentine military’s violence against indigenous peoples, all suggest the Conquest of the Desert’s powerful historical legacies and ongoing relevance in Argentina today.4 This book delves into the contentious events of the conquest and their many meanings in Argentina’s past and present, seeking to unpack the issues of nation, violence, memory, colonialism, and indigeneity entangled within them. In particular, this book highlights indigenous and other counternarratives that challenge the official stories about the conquest. These official narratives have underpinned long-standing practices of violence, exclusion, and dispossession against indigenous peoples as well as shaping mainstream national identities. This book examines the historical trajectory of these narratives from the nineteenth century through to the twenty-first, ultimately demonstrating the conquest’s ongoing legacies in present-day struggles for indigenous rights 2 · Lar s on

throughout Argentina and beyond. While the official military campaigns of the conquest may have ended in the nineteenth century, their consequences have persisted and adapted to new historical moments or cultural contexts. The battle for history continues today.

The Pampas Borderlands: Historical Context The Conquest of the Desert marked a violent breaking point in long-standing tensions along a flexible borderland that existed between indigenous communities and Spanish, and later Argentine, settlements (fig. 2). The longer history of human inhabitation in this region shaped the moment in which the conquest campaigns took place and helps to explain why events unfolded the way they did. The conquest was not an aberrant event but rather a legible piece of larger historical arcs that preceded and followed the campaigns themselves. This section offers this context, especially for readers new to this subject, in order to frame the chapters in this book. Indigenous peoples settled in the pampas and Patagonia around twelve thousand years ago.5 By the time of first contact with European peoples in the

Figure 2  The pampas and Patagonia. Map by the author. I n t roduct i on · 3 

sixteenth century, the region was home to a diverse array of largely seminomadic indigenous societies. While scholars still differ somewhat in their identification of the indigenous groups living in the pampas and Patagonia before the nineteenth century, it is nonetheless possible to provide a list of names by which indigenous groups called themselves or were known by European travelers. These names include (but are not limited to) Tehuelche, Rankulche (often westernized as Ranquel), Pampas, Puelches, Pehuenches, and Mapuche (sometimes also called Araucano). Many indigenous groups in this region moved seasonally, relocating between winter and summer hunting grounds, pasturelands, foraging sites, and water sources. These indigenous cultures developed social and economic systems around hunting native species like the guanaco (related to llamas and alpacas), the ñandu (a rhea), and the capybara (a mara). The arrival of Europeans introduced cattle and horses to the region; these livestock species thrived in the pampas, growing into enormous herds that late colonial travelers to the region described as stretching to the horizon like moving forests or tumultuous oceans. Indigenous peoples of the pampas and Patagonia embraced horses and cattle during the colonial period as abundant sources of food, hides, and transportation. Groups like the Tehuelche, in particular, became expert equestrians and formidable cavalry fighters, both feared and admired by Western observers. As Raúl José Mandrini has written, it was not until the Spanish arrived in the region in the sixteenth century and carved out their own territorial holdings that the lands “remaining in the hands of the aboriginal societies or indigenous peoples” were envisioned as a “frontier.”6 In other words, Spanish imperial logics created the frontier, in order to separate a Spanish “us” from an indigenous “them.” Moreover, Spanish chroniclers and later Argentine writers had notorious difficulty in distinguishing between different indigenous cultural groups to the south, disagreeing with one another over whether different groups existed and what to call them.7 As a result, a powerful picture emerged by the nineteenth century and persevered at least into the later twentieth century, as Mónica Quijada astutely noted, of “the indigenous [peoples] of the Pampa and Patagonia as ‘barbarians’ and ‘savages,’ closely associated with the oversimplifying image of ‘nomads’ and a general vision that traditionally has homogenized the differences within the indigenous population.”8 This historically constructed imprecision of externally applied identity has had important consequences for indigenous peoples in Argentina, both leading up to the 4 · Lars on

Conquest of the Desert as well as in its aftermath, undermining indigenous communities’ claims to cultural recognition and respect, land rights, and community autonomy.9 Widely varying estimates suggest that anywhere between twenty thousand and more than forty thousand indigenous people occupied the territory south of the Argentine settlement frontier in 1870.10 Indigenous politics were most typically organized by decentralized community groups (cacicazgos) led by caciques, leaders chosen by their communities according to a combination of leadership qualities and hereditary connection with former caciques. Cacicaz­ gos varied tremendously in size, from a handful to tens of thousands of men, women, and children. The Argentine state often considered only the largest of these units cacicazgos, calling the smaller units tolderías in reference to the hide and pole tent–like toldos so often described by European and creole (people who identify as being of European descent born in the Americas) travelers to indigenous communities before the conquest. During the nineteenth century, ties between many cacicazgos in the pampas and Patagonia strengthened through trade, political alliance, military support, and family connections, resulting in the emergence of powerful yet flexible confederations (see Julio Vezub and Mark Healey’s chapter in this volume). Colonial Spanish officials maintained relatively stable and even amicable relations with many cacicazgos of the pampas, and after independence in the 1810s, the new Argentine government sought to follow suit. So long as southward territorial expansion remained a low priority in comparison with issues such as internal political instability, international conflict, and economic stagnation, Argentine state makers favored relatively stable coexistence with indigenous peoples to the south. Bonaerense caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas played an important part in shaping this dynamic in the 1830s, as he shifted Buenos Aires’s provincial economy away from the urban, mercantile systems that connected Buenos Aires back to its colonial roots, and toward the countryside and especially cattle herding, as well as the production of hides, salted beef, and tallow. Exports of these commodities doubled under Rosas’s administration.11 But this land-based economic growth also spurred intensifying violence over territory. Rosas launched a military campaign into the southern borderlands in 1833, opening a corridor along the coast to the Río Negro. As Argentine military officer and writer Álvaro Barros described the campaign decades later, “the pampas were overrun. The campaign was bloody. According to the letters I n t roduct i on · 5 

of Antonio Reyes 7,000 Indians died. [Adolfo] Saldías raised the figure to 10,000.”12 Seeking to protect the growing ranching industry, Rosas established a network of treaties with indigenous groups in Buenos Aires province that obliged the government to pay annual tributes in exchange for military allegiance. As Tulio Halperín Donghi has argued, this system theoretically transformed groups of indios amigos (treaty-bound or “friendly” indigenous peoples) into “a barrier against the incursions of the only nominally pacified semisedentary populations of the rest of the Pampas.”13 Rosas granted plots of newly conquered lands to his military officers, many of whom in turn sold their holdings to wealthy cattle-ranching families, helping to solidify elite power in the province and weakening the foothold of middle-class homesteaders. By the 1850s, this small but powerful elite had consolidated enormous land wealth in the pampas; Rosas himself owned eight hundred thousand acres, on which grazed half a million head of cattle.14 Nineteenth-century Argentine state representatives continued this pattern after Rosas’s fall from power in 1852, forging treaties with individual caciques that arranged for mutual promises of peace and tribute goods, as well as trade agreements. These treaties often proved increasingly fragile as the century progressed, largely due to increasing Argentine demands on pampas lands and cattle herds, as well as indigenous responses in defense of their lands and resources.15 In the decades immediately preceding the conquest, prominent caciques throughout the pampas and Patagonia—such as Namuncurá, Pincén, Mariano Rosas, Calfucurá, Valentín Saygüeque, Feliciano Purrán, Reuquecurá, Epumer, Baigorrita, and Juan Ñancucheo—banded their fighting forces together in times of crisis, commanding thousands of warriors for their communities’ mutual protection and military agendas. Well into the nineteenth century, the pampas borderlands were typified by indigenous-creole interactions and exchanges that did not suggest unquestioned creole expansion into indigenous territory. In fact, indigenous forces pushed the Argentine state’s military frontier line north toward Buenos Aires more than once during the nineteenth century. Throughout this long period, the borderland lay relatively close to Buenos Aires, often situated near the Río Salado, which flowed into the Río de la Plata estuary just over one hundred miles south of the city. Over the course of three centuries, a complex and flexible borderland society emerged between Spanish or Argentine settlements to the north and various 6 · Lars on

indigenous communities to the south, forging shifting networks of trade, social exchange, and peace agreements punctuated by outbursts of violence. Despite the Argentine state’s repeated construction of various lines of forts in order to delineate and defend their southern frontier, this borderland was not a clean line between homogeneous populations of indigenous peoples to the south and Argentines to the north. The pampas’s and Patagonia’s wide array of heterogeneous indigenous communities, operating independently and in shifting relationship to one another, engaged with equally heterogeneous and divided groups to the north that changed in shape and size as the nineteenth century progressed. For example, in addition to the emerging cattle elite of the nineteenth century, the pampas also supported scattered populations of ranch workers, tenant farmers, peones, and peasants who worked landowners’ estates without much realistic hope of acquiring their own lands, especially as the century progressed. Small-scale merchants, artisans, and operators of pulperías (general stores and social gathering places) also gathered in the small urban centers dotted across the pampas, typically appearing along larger wagon trails and the growing railroad lines. European immigrants also entered pampas society; immigrant groups gained popular reputations among their new Argentine neighbors in specific trades—Irishmen as excellent shepherds, Italians as rivermen, Englishmen as perspicacious merchants—and also established agricultural colonias in the open pampas.16 Gauchos (largely mestizo frontiersmen perhaps most easily, if imperfectly, compared with North American cowboys) dominated contemporary lore and popular imaginings about the pampas, variously revered and reviled by urban Argentines as rugged individualists or as lawless barbarians (see Jennie Daniels’s chapter in this volume).17 During the second half of the nineteenth century, innovations in meat processing and shipping, as well as improvements in wool production, sent export rates soaring for the agricultural and ranching sectors that most coveted pampas lands. During the 1850s, for instance, wool exports averaged 6,000 tons per year; by the 1860s, Argentina exported 50,000 tons of wool each year; and before 1890, annual exports averaged 120,000 tons, or twenty times the amount shipped forty years earlier.18 Argentine cattle ranchers strove during the 1860s and 1870s to cultivate a breed of unique Argentine stock that would be acceptable to European palates, and to find ways to deliver their product successfully to European markets. Meanwhile, the Argentine Congress drafted legislation in response to livestock and agricultural producers’ demands for I n t roduct i on · 7 

more land. Law 215, passed in 1867, provided federal funding to support Argentine occupation of all territory south to the Río Negro. Such an advance, however, was unrealistic at the time, as Argentina was already committed to the War of the Triple Alliance in the north; although the law was passed, it was not enforced. Three years later, Law 385 earmarked 2 million pesos for the execution of Law 215; this, too, was shelved after its passage.19 Law 752 of 1875 reiterated the content of Laws 215 and 385, and more specifically provided for the “reservation of lands on which to place those tribes that surrendered themselves and fought against those that resisted, until they should be driven back beyond the Río Negro.”20 As the 1860s and 1870s progressed, then, economic pressures to expand Argentine territory southward joined with congressional efforts to create a legal foundation for such expansion. Close ties between Argentina’s ranching and agricultural elites and the state smoothed the path for such strategies, as did nineteenth-century liberal beliefs that political stability and economic growth went hand in hand. The Argentine military also attempted to respond to growing economic and political pressures in the south by fortifying the frontier, but state makers and military leaders perennially disagreed over how best to do this, and where the necessary resources should come from. The Argentine state attempted to garrison its frontier-line forts with regular soldiers but struggled to sufficiently pay and supply its troops; tales of hardship and low morale in these frontier battalions appeared frequently in the popular press and in Argentine literature, thwarting efforts to recruit soldiers throughout the mid-nineteenth century. Such tales would later bolster traditional narratives of the conquest, painting Argentine military conscripts as heroic martyrs to the nation. During the 1870s, the imperative strands of economic expansion, technological advance, political unification, and military pride that had been slowly developing throughout the nineteenth century wound with growing swiftness around the perceived problem of the southern frontier. Nicolás Avellaneda, president of the republic (1874–1880), strongly believed that foreign investment was crucial to national economic progress, and his interest in creating an Argentina conducive to European investment made him a natural advocate of settlement expansion along the southern frontier. As Avellaneda’s administration took shape, creole ranches and settlements pushed insistently southward, and the Argentine military escalated its attacks against indigenous peoples who (allegedly or actually) violated signed treaties or raided Argentine 8 · Lars on

frontier settlements. Indigenous communities of the pampas often experienced the 1860s–1870s (and understand these decades today) as years of increasing Argentine military incursion, seemingly random acts of violence against indigenous peoples, wanton destruction of livestock, and community disruption. Indigenous memories of these years are often marked by ill omens and warnings from ancestors and natural forces, all foretelling the coming disaster often described as “the sad times.”21 Many indigenous communities responded to intensifying Argentine military pressure by mounting more frequent and larger raids or malones against Argentine settlements. One raid in 1876 “penetrated within 60 leagues of Buenos Aires, departing afterward with a reported 300,000 cattle and 500 white captives.”22 In this context, the first successful shipment of chilled beef from Buenos Aires to Europe in 1877 opened entirely new and dazzlingly lucrative possibilities in transatlantic demand for Argentine beef, and the collective gaze of Argentine elites, especially in Buenos Aires Province, swiveled southward. To Argentine state makers, landed elites, investors, and liberal intellectuals, it seemed clear that something had to be done. The official campaigns of the conquest began the following year. Official, if dubious, figures for the conquest claimed that the Argentine army and navy captured or killed over 2,500 warriors. State figures also indicated that more than 10,000 women and children were “placed under state supervision,” which often meant relocation to Buenos Aires or other cities, where families were separated and both adults and children distributed among the city’s elite as domestic servants. State records also showed that over 1,000 men, women, and children were taken as captives to Choele Choel, and unrecorded numbers were incarcerated in other prisons or camps (often compellingly described as concentration camps) including Valcheta, Martín García, and Retiro.23 Adult men were often forcibly conscripted into military service in the same Argentine army and navy that had expelled them from their own territories. Still others were compulsorily relocated to other parts of Argentina, forced to work in quasi-slavery conditions as agricultural laborers.24 These figures are by no means complete or reliable, not least because, as Argentine scholars have amply demonstrated, the Argentine state did not fully record the physical and symbolic violence enacted against indigenous peoples during and after the conquest campaigns.25 Nor do these figures encapsulate the myriad fates faced by displaced indigenous peoples after the conquest. Some found temporary refuge to the south and west, in Patagonia and the Andean I n t roduct i on · 9 

cordillera. Still others were compulsorily relocated to state-created colonias, where it was hoped they would become westernized agriculturalists and shed their indigenous identities. Some were able to return to the pampas and Patagonia, where they established new communities on public or state-granted lands. These communities were often composed of the survivors of several different indigenous groups, posing further challenges to cultural persistence. For nearly one and a half centuries, the Conquest of the Desert (1878–1885) has marked Argentina’s historical passage between eras. National history has often appeared to be naturally divided along the pivotal axis of 1880, the year in which Julio A. Roca was elected to the Argentine presidency. Argentine national histories covering the period before the conquest are most often written in terms of social divisions, economic stagnation, and political conflict and violence. Afterward, by contrast, Argentina is said to have entered a “golden age” of social progress, economic growth, and national unity. The Conquest of the Desert facilitated this abrupt national turnaround, according to contemporaries, by eradicating the indigenous peoples of the southern pampas and northern Patagonia, thereby “solving” Argentina’s long-standing “Indian Problem” and facilitating the rise of a “white Argentina.”26 After the conquest, the Argentine state built a narrative in which indigenous peoples had disappeared, and any who endured were remnants of a doomed race, destined to vanish in the face of civilization’s advance. This narrative of inevitable indigenous disappearance, portrayed as a natural and even universal phenomenon, relegated indigenous peoples and their cultures to the national past. Such ideas translated into state policies that undermined indigenous claims to land and other economic resources, political status, and cultural rights, and also “invisibilized” indigenous peoples, marginalizing them from the national mainstream politically, economically, and culturally.27 Traditional indigenous lifeways were fractured, broken by military conquest or slowly weakened through contact with, and often coercion by, creole Argentine economic systems, political exclusion, and social controls.28 Despite the lasting legacy of such practices, the conquest did not eliminate indigenous peoples from the pampas or Patagonia. Indigenous communities exist throughout Argentina and campaign continuously for the recovery of their identities and legal rights as First Peoples.29 Indigenous communities in the pampas and Patagonia have struggled for land rights, cultural recognition, political autonomy and inclusion, and peace in the nearly century and a half 10 · Lar s on

since the Conquest of the Desert, but have often found such goals to be elusive, obstructed by the profound legacies that the conquest left in its wake.30 These legacies have included discrimination, erasure, dispossession, and state-sponsored violence (see especially the chapters by Warren, Ramos, and Delrio and Pérez in this volume). The Conquest of the Desert continues to shape how many Argentines understand their nation’s past and present, and, although the official campaigns ended generations ago, contemporary events in Argentina, like the ongoing protests surrounding Roca’s monument in Bariloche, make clear that the conquest is anything but a neutral, distant, or “closed” issue.31

The Battle for History The chapters in this book offer a kaleidoscopic array of approaches to the Conquest of the Desert, from climatological science to literary analysis, in an effort to highlight multiple and often conflicting ideas about the conquest and its meanings. Within that diversity, however, three unifying focuses draw these chapters back together: indigenous peoples and nation-state formation, borderlands and settler colonialism, and interdisciplinary dialogue. First, each chapter engages with scholarship across disciplinary boundaries that troubles the nature of nation-state formation through the lenses of indigenous perspectives and indigenous-state relations. Several chapters in this book explore nation-states’ efforts to control and understand racial difference and indigeneity in particular,32 while other chapters challenge the limits of such analysis by asking how indigenous peoples have operated outside the bounds of Western-conceived notions including territory, state, identity, and memory to change the nature of discussions about national inclusion, sovereignty, jurisprudence, and indigenous rights.33 In the first vein, Carolyne Larson analyzes the creation of the traditional narratives that imagined the Conquest of the Desert as a pivotal event in nation-state building and justified the erasure of indigenous voices from that national community after the 1880s. Julio Vezub and Mark Healey examine indigenous leadership and political-military strategies during the campaigns of the conquest, with an emphasis on bringing greater attention to the agency of indigenous leaders in the conflict. Chapters by Ana Ramos, and by Walter Delrio and Pilar Pérez, interrogate the conceptual limits of the nation-state, or the “state-nation-territory matrix,” as well as the various forms of long-term violence experienced by indigenous peoples of the pampas and I n t roduct i on · 11 

Patagonia as a result of national incorporation. Several chapters (notably those by Jennie Daniels, Ricardo Salvatore, and David Sheinin) also highlight the often problematic power of national feelings and narratives about the conquest that have cast indigenous peoples as outside of the nation-state and that have used the conquest as a historical rationale for eradicating perceived threats to the nation, indigenous and otherwise. Daniels explores representations of the pampas and Patagonia in Argentine literature, arguing that the “desert” emerged as a liminal space in the national imagination and can reveal the central logics of Argentine nation-state formation and identity. Sheinin’s chapter examines the centennial celebration of the conquest in 1979, during the military dictatorship that controlled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, highlighting the eerie parallels drawn by pro-junta authors between the Conquest of the Desert and the military dictatorship and noting the long-term consequences of the conquest in late twentieth-century state policy. Contributors to this book also foreground voices and historical variables of the conquest that have been marginalized by homogenizing nation-state building processes and institutions. Ramos focuses on Mapuche nütram—spoken memories of loss, violence, and survival—that defy the silencing of indigenous voices and suffering that has typified traditional narratives of the conquest. Rob Christensen and Sarah Warren offer thought-provokingly complementary analyses of physical landscapes in their chapters; Christensen presents climate and the environment as an often ignored variable in the events of the conquest, while Warren analyzes Mapuche nation-building projects in the twenty-first century with an emphasis on education, cartography, and memories of the past that have been written onto the land. Taken together, the chapters in this book prompt a reconsideration of nation-state formation in Argentina, understandings of which have been implicitly founded upon the timeline of indigenous erasure resulting from the Conquest of the Desert.34 Second, this book adds meaningfully to scholarship on frontiers, borderlands, and settler colonialism that examines imperialism and its attending violences globally.35 The nature of the boundaries between indigenous and creole spaces—physical, visual, social, or symbolic—figures prominently in all of the chapters in this book, and contributors offer new insight into this important question for Argentina, the Americas, and elsewhere. Recent Argentine scholars have fruitfully identified the southern frontier as a “living” and “internal” frontier. These studies draw attention to the changing and adaptive nature of 12 · Lar s on

borders between indigenous and nonindigenous spaces, and to the often interwoven nature of these frontier spaces, not simply as a contiguous line in the “desert” but as spaces and ideas that become associated with indigeneity, and therefore with alterity.36 In this volume, Christensen calls attention to environmental and climatic factors that changed markedly during the 1870s and 1880s, shaping the events of the conquest in ways that much existing scholarship has overlooked. Salvatore examines what might be called an “internal frontier” space in the Museo de La Plata, and the alternate blurring and hardening of boundaries between indigenous and nonindigenous spaces. Warren analyzes Mapuche representations of territory and homeland in the present, underscoring the meaningful fluidity of boundaries, place-names, and belonging for indigenous peoples in the twenty-first century. Delrio and Pérez make an important contribution to the ongoing debate among Argentine scholars over how to narrate the conquest, and particularly over the applicability of genocide as a framework to understand the events and results of the campaigns. In every chapter, contributors interrogate the nature of frontiers and the outcomes of settler colonialism in the pampas and Patagonia, making this book a vibrant polylogue for readers interested in these critical questions. Third, in bringing together scholars in various areas of anthropology, history, sociology, and literature studies, and working in Argentina, Canada, and the United States, this book offers an important contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship. When read together, the chapters clearly convey the importance of cross-discipline work as an approach to the conquest, as well as other situations involving indigenous-state relations and genocide. Readers interested in indigenous voices and rights in the Americas will find particularly useful material and careful analysis in the chapters by Sheinin, Delrio and Pérez, Ramos, Salvatore, and Warren. These chapters draw on methodologies from a variety of fields to access indigenous agency in written, oral, and visual sources and to explore a range of important questions dealing with indigenous experience, memory, resistance, persistence, and legal rights. The chapters by Vezub and Healey, Ramos, and Delrio and Pérez likewise add important and interdisciplinary insight into studies on genocide, violence, and silencing by critically reading an array of sources from state records to cultural memory in order to interrogate omissions and contradictions. These cross-genre methodologies work to expose the questions left unanswered in state records, as well as to contrast traditional accounts against often silenced indigenous experiences I n t roduct i on · 13 

of violence and dislocation. Daniels, Larson, and Sheinin contribute to scholarship on cultural studies, national narratives, and identity; their chapters apply historical and literary methods to trace the changing meanings of the conquest in Argentina’s national imaginary over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These chapters also cast light on the heavy hegemonic weight of the conquest’s traditional narratives in their creation, in their absorption into Argentine literature and cultural norms, and in their frighteningly facile application to other perceived threats to the state generations later. The Conquest of the Desert has occupied a pivotal and contentious place in Argentine identity, politics, and history for nearly 150 years. Indeed, it seems hardly an exaggeration to say that one cannot understand Argentina without it. Moreover, the conquest connects meaningfully with global experiences of settler colonialism, borderlands conflict, nation building, and violence against indigenous peoples as well as contemporary questions about indigenous rights and communities within (and beyond) the frameworks of the nation-state. Much important work remains to be done in understanding the Conquest of the Desert as a historical process and an ongoing issue in Argentina, as well as its comparative value to understanding the experiences of indigenous peoples in places like Chile, the United States, Canada, and beyond the Americas in the past and present. If this book facilitates new discussions about the vital importance of the Conquest of the Desert to indigenous rights and struggles over the nature of the past in Argentina, and to cross-border, interdisciplinary studies of the crucial themes explored here, then it will have served its purpose.

Notes 1. Ley 947, Registro Nacional 1878, 57–58. 2. For example, see “Kultrunazo al monumento de Roca en Bariloche,” Agencia Digital de Noticias, https://www.adnrionegro.com.ar/2017/10/kultrunazo-al-monu mento-de-roca-en-bariloche/, accessed July 8, 2019; “El monumento de la polémica sin fin,” Río Negro, https://www.rionegro.com.ar/el-monumento-de-la-polemica -sin-fin-XB2560660/, accessed July 8, 2019; and “Despintaron los pañuelos del monumento a Roca,” Anbariloche.com, https://www.anbariloche.com.ar/noticias/2017 /03/25/57781-despintaron-los-panuelos-del-monumento-a-roca, accessed July 8, 2019. 3. “Miembros de una cooperative intentaron derribar la estatua Roca en Bariloche,” La Capital, https://www.lacapital.com.ar/informacion-gral/miembros

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-una-cooperativa-intentaron-derribar-la-estatua-roca-bariloche-n366769.html, accessed July 8, 2019. 4. For more on monuments and memory, see Jiménez Frei, “Shaping and Contesting the Past”; Obert, “Architectural Space in Windhoek, Namibia”; and Messenger, “Europeanizing the Spanish Civil War,” 49–62. 5. Briz i Godino et al., “Hunter-Gatherer Mobility.” 6. Mandrini, Vivir entre dos mundos, 9. 7. Estanislao Zeballos, for instance, in 1878 accused Francisco P. Moreno (one of Argentina’s best-known anthropologists at the time) of wrongly believing that Pampas and Araucanians were separate indigenous groups, whereas Zeballos wrote that they were “exactly the same thing” (“la misísima cosa”). Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil leguas, 321. 8. Quijada, introduction to Funcionarios, diplomáticos, guerreros, 11. 9. External mechanisms of control have had deleterious consequences for indigenous sovereignty throughout the Americas. For example, see Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks; Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive; Rappaport, The Politics of Memory; and Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus. 10. See, for example, Mases, Estado y cuestión indígena, 12; and Jones, “Conflict and Adaptation in the Argentine Pampas,” 167. 11. Rock, Argentina, 1516–1987, 107. 12. Barros, Fronteras y territorios federales, 23. 13. Halperin Donghi, “The Buenos Aires Landed Class,” 47. 14. Rock, Argentina, 1516–1987, 108. 15. For more on individual treaties, see Levaggi, Paz en la frontera; and Viñas, Indios, ejército y frontera. 16.Scobie, Revolution on the Pampas, 27–54. 17.Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier. 18.Lewis, The History of Argentina, 59. 19.Jones, “Conflict and Adaptation in the Argentine Pampas,” 160. 20. Arce, La campaña del desierto, 74. 21. Delrio and Ramos, “Genocidio como categoría analítica,” 3. 22. Rock, Argentina, 1516–1987, 154. 23. Jones, “Conflict and Adaptation in the Argentine Pampas,” 191. See also Lazzari, “Aboriginal Recognition, Freedom, and Phantoms,” 63; Nagy and Papazián, “El campo de concentración de Martín García”; and Bustos-Videla, “The 1879 Conquest of the Argentine ‘Desert,’” 36–57. 24. See Guy, Argentine Sugar Politics; Rutledge, Cambio agrario e integración; and Bonaudo, Sonzogni, and Klatt, “To Populate and to Discipline.” 25. See Nagy and Papazián. “El campo de concentración de Martín García”; and Pérez, “Historia y silencio.” 26.See Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide,” 64.

I n t roduct i on · 15 

27. See Bueno, The Pursuit of Ruins; Conn, History’s Shadow; de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos; and Earle, Return of the Native. 28. Lazzari, “Aboriginal Recognition, Freedom, and Phantoms”; Nagy and Papazián, “El campo de concentración de Martín García”; Pérez, “Historia y silencio”; Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide”; Delrio and Ramos, “Genocidio como categoría analítica”; and Gordillo, Landscapes of Devils. 29. Endere, “The Reburial Issue in Argentina”; Lazzari, “Aboriginal Recognition, Freedom, and Phantoms”; Curtoni, Lazzari, and Lazzari, “Middle of Nowhere”; Mallon, Decolonizing Native Histories; and Becker, Indians and Leftists. 30. Delrio et al., “Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina”; Briones and Delrio, “The ‘Conquest of the Desert’ as a Trope”; Delrio and Ramos, “Genocidio como categoría analítica”; Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide”; Nagy and Papazián, “El campo de concentración de Martín García”; and Pérez, “Historia y silencio.” 31. See esp. Lenton, “Próceres genocidias.” 32. See Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt, Race and Nation in Latin America; Alberto and Elena, Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina; de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos; Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala; and Larson, Trials of Nation Making. 33. See Mallon, Decolonizing Native Histories; Rappaport, The Politics of Memory; Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; and Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood. 34. See Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide.” 35. Select examples of this vibrant literature include Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology; Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness; and Roque, Headhunting and Colonialism. 36. See Delrio, Memorias de expropiación, 19; Gordillo, “The Savage outside of White Argentina,” 241–67; Levaggi, Paz en la frontera, 18; Mandrini, Vivir entre dos mundos, 10–11; and Briones and Delrio, “The ‘Conquest of the Desert’ as a Trope,” 60.

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ONE

The Conquest of the Desert The Official Story Carolyne R. Larson Introduction During the winter of 1879, the first full-scale offensives of the Conquest of the Desert spread across the pampas. The Argentine military sought to establish lasting control over the terrain by killing and capturing indigenous people, confiscating or destroying their herds of cattle and horses, building new forts, and mapping the region’s natural springs, pasturelands, and passable overland routes. On July 9,1 Division Commander Colonel Eduardo Racedo issued a general message to all the soldiers under his command, hailing them for their role in bringing the conquest to fruition: The frontier populations erupt today in their patriotic joy, and from every home rises a hymn of gratitude for you all, who have ensured their honor, their lives, and their wealth. These people, today prosperous and happy, yesterday felt extremities of horror from the strident howl of the savage.2 Military leaders including Racedo claimed in no uncertain terms that the Conquest of the Desert had saved Argentines from a variety of looming dangers including political disgrace, economic stagnation, and physical peril. This chapter explores the “official story” (historia oficial)3 of the Conquest of the Desert, presenting the military, state, and popular press sources that chiefly crafted the conquest’s central narratives of national urgency, peaceful conquest, indigenous 17

disappearance, and triumphant civilization. These narratives shaped contemporary responses to the conquest and also steered its legacy in Argentine society and memory for generations to come. This chapter draws on primary documents created by authors associated with the Argentine military and state during the Conquest of the Desert. Military dispatches, orders, telegrams, government debates, speeches, and laws provide firsthand accounts of the events of the conquest and how it was perceived by those who participated in it. The perspectives of military and state sources—which are, overwhelmingly, the most detailed and most widely available sources for a discussion about the campaigns—require careful critical reading as well as profound questioning and comparison with other voices (see other chapters, this volume). This chapter explores how these sources constructed national narratives partly because this is important historical work and partly in order to set a useful backdrop for the other chapters in this book. Telling the official story of the Conquest of the Desert can be a counterproductive (not to say ethically ambiguous) exercise in many contexts, as several authors in this volume compellingly argue. This book devotes a chapter to these narratives not in order to promote them but rather to examine their origins and purposes. In other words, this chapter seeks to understand why Argentine military officers, soldiers, politicians, government ministers, and scientists chose to act in the ways they did, and the means they found to explain those actions to themselves and to others. Understanding how and why some Argentines participated in the acts of the conquest and created its foundational narratives also allows for more thorough critical analysis of the imperatives and silences within those narratives when compared to other sources and experiences of the conquest, notably those of indigenous peoples. Moreover, examining this traditional story through the historical scholarship that helped to promulgate it illustrates the lasting power of this version of the story. Exploring alternatives to this, or any, traditional narrative calls first for an understanding of those narratives; in this way, this chapter becomes essential for understanding how and why the conquest has shaped Argentine history and culture.

Proposing the Conquest of the Desert On December 29, 1877, Argentine minister of war Adolfo Alsina died. Alsina had adopted a gradualist approach to the southern frontier, seeking to expand 18 · Lar s on

Argentina’s territory by means of measured advancement and continual refortification along a gradually advancing frontier. Alsina’s proposal for a six-hundredmile-long defensive trench typified this slow and cautious approach, focusing on the excavation of a three-meter-wide trench with defensive ramparts and thorny brush. The trench project was never completed, however; Alsina’s death interrupted its construction barely a year after work began. Alsina had also approved a series of small-scale military incursions against various indigenous peoples of the pampas in response to intensifying malones (raids) against frontier settlements. These punitive raids had a cumulative impact on indigenous populations that would later directly facilitate the conquest, but Alsina treated them as independent and freestanding responses to situational needs, not as part of a broader offensive strategy. Five days after Alsina’s death, President Nicolás Avellaneda appointed a new minister of war, a thirty-four-year-old military officer from Tucumán named Julio A. Roca.4 Roca dismissed Alsina’s gradualist approach to frontier expansion as a wrongheaded strategy; even before Alsina’s death and his own appointment as minister, Roca had written: What foolishness the ditch of Alsina! And Avellaneda is letting him do it. That is what happens to a people weak and in infancy; to attack their enemies with walls. . . . It is necessary to make Alsina and the President understand that it is by destroying the anthill that the ants are finished with, not waiting to hunt them one by one when they leave their nests.5 In place of Alsina’s “foolish” defensive posture, Roca proposed a definitive military offensive against all the indigenous peoples of the pampas, in order to establish a new frontier line at the Río Negro and to remove all indigenous people from the pampas north of that line. Due to illness, Roca was unable to effectively take office until June 1878; when he recovered, however, he moved immediately to put his new plan into practice. In July 1878, Roca ordered his frontier commanders to begin the work of clearing the pampas. Rather than launching a single expedition, Roca sent a series of preliminary forces southward in order to “break the spirit of the Indians.”6 As many as twenty-six separate expeditions swept through the territory between the military frontier and the Río Negro, killing more than a thousand indigenous people and relocating or expelling many thousands T h e Con que st of t h e De s e rt · 19 

more. By midsummer, Roca’s divisions reported back astonishing success; by the end of December 1878, the caciques Catriel, Pincén, and Epumer had all been captured by the army, and Namuncurá had been forced to retreat south of the Río Colorado.7 By the next month, the military reported a total of 5,077 indigenous people killed or captured, compared to a scant 13 deaths and 5 wounded reported on the Argentine side. Encouraged by the campaign’s initial success, the Argentine government organized the public sale of bonds to finance further expeditions.8 Historians have often described this phase of the campaign as a preliminary effort to weaken indigenous people’s defensive capabilities, particularly through a series of “inverted raids” in which Argentine military parties attacked indigenous communities, killing warriors, taking captives, and stealing or destroying cattle and horse herds. These raids were designed to destroy indigenous herds of horses and cattle, crucial sources of transportation and sustenance for pampean indigenous communities. Roca also ordered his military commanders to offer peace to cooperative indigenous people, who would voluntarily surrender their weapons to the military and submit themselves to the authority of the state. These pacified people would be forced to live in places designated by the government and would be allotted herds of cattle, sheep, and horses. This peace, however, was extended at the end of a rifle, figuratively and often literally. Roca believed that the threat of force would motivate otherwise recalcitrant indigenous people to comply. “For those blackguards,” Roca wrote of this strategy, “bread in one hand, a club in the other.”9 With “inverted raids” already in operation along the frontier, Roca appealed to Congress for funding to support a full-scale conquest on August 4, 1878, and he was soon followed by President Avellaneda, who spoke to Congress on August 14 in support of the plan. Avellaneda cited existing Argentine legislation that called for the expulsion of indigenous peoples from the pampas, suggesting that the present project was not a new or radical notion but rather a fulfillment of long-expressed national desires.10 Roca had evidently convinced Avellaneda that his own approach to the frontier was preferable to Alsina’s; Avellaneda argued to Congress, in terms strongly reminiscent of Roca’s earlier private musings: The old system of successive occupations . . . has shown itself to be ineffective in protecting the life and fortunes of the inhabitants of the 20 · Lar s on

constantly threatened frontier settlements. It is necessary to abandon it once and for all, and to pass directly to seeking out the Indian in his lair, either to subjugate him or expel him, confronting him at once not with a trench dug in the earth by the hand of man, but [rather] with the great and insuperable barrier of the Río Negro, deep and navigable in its entire length from the ocean to the Andes. Avellaneda exhorted Congress to national boldness, arguing that Argentines could only satisfy their own sense of “propriety, as a virile people” through “the conquest, sooner rather than later, by reason or by force, of a handful of savages that destroy our principal wealth and impede us from definitively occupying, in the name of the law, of progress and of our own security, the richest and most fertile territories of the Republic.” Moreover, Avellaneda reminded members of Congress that “public opinion prompts us to begin the work” (“poner manos a la obra”), a forceful argument indeed for elected government representatives.11 Avellaneda also offered economic motivations for the conquest campaign. The existing military frontier, he explained, extended over 1,500 miles and was guarded by approximately 6,600 soldiers. The annual cost of uniforms, equipment, horses, rations, and payroll exceeded 2.3 million pesos annually.12 This represented an extraordinary expenditure for the national government and provided only a weak defense against indigenous raids. This was due in part to the geographic nature of the frontier line; stretching across open pampas, it was difficult to defend with a small number of soldiers and forts, and indigenous raiding parties frequently slipped across the line between garrisons. The Río Negro, by contrast, was a natural frontier line that would be much easier and less costly to defend. The river had few fords between the Andes and the Atlantic, and the Argentine military could feasibly defend the entire length of the river with only three military installations. This would reduce the number of necessary soldiers from 6,600 to 2,000 and reduce military spending along the frontier from 2.3 million to 600,000 pesos annually.13 In order to facilitate this project, Avellaneda requested that Congress commit a one-time expenditure of 1.6 million pesos. The funds would be recuperated by a public sale of interest-bearing government bonds, to be repaid in parcels of conquered land. Four thousand bonds were issued, at a cost of 400 pesos each, to be redeemed in holdings of ten thousand hectares as the military progressively cleared and mapped territory.14 T h e Con que st of t h e De se rt · 21 

Roca’s plan did not meet with universal approval. Former presidents Domingo F. Sarmiento and Bartolomé Mitre, both serving on congressional committees to examine Roca’s proposal before it appeared before full congressional chambers, questioned the campaign’s viability. Sarmiento and Mitre argued that Roca drastically underestimated the resources and time that such an undertaking would require. Other critics of the plan balked at the campaign’s expense, arguing that although Argentina was then enjoying relative economic prosperity, the Nation does not have the resources to undertake the vast enterprise, the difficult and obscure military operation of bringing the Frontier to the Río Negro, after ejecting the Indians who occupy those deserts.15 Objections to the proposal were largely practical and economic. Some, notably by Congressman Aristobulo Del Valle, spoke out against military action against the indigenous peoples of the southern frontier as not merely inexpedient but also unjustified.16 However, voices like Del Valle’s were in the minority, and questions about the rightness of “ejecting” indigenous people from their territories were largely absent in debates over the project. Despite these various objections, Congress approved Roca’s military project and the funding model proposed to support it, ultimately passing Law 947 on October 5, 1878, sanctioning the endeavor in its entirety. The vast majority of the law’s text addressed financial protocols for the government bonds, and not the military campaign itself or the indigenous people who would be its targets. The law mentions indigenous people only twice: once in the first article, which fleetingly references the “barbarous Indians” (“indios”) who had “previously” controlled the pampas; and second in Article 19, which authorizes the national government to set aside lands for creating agricultural colonies and separate parcels of land for subjugated indigenous peoples.17

Military Campaigns (1878–1885) Roca’s fundamental strategy was to turn indigenous settlement patterns, military tactics, and local knowledge, which had been so effective until the 1870s, to the advantage of the Argentine military. At the moment of the conquest, Argentine frontier settlements and indigenous communities of the pampas shared important social and economic traits that translated into shared 22 · Lar s on

military vulnerabilities. Both communities were economically dependent on large, often free-ranging herds of horses, cattle, and sheep. Indigenous tolderías (encampments) took time to assemble and disassemble, making them nearly as vulnerable to unexpected cavalry raids as were Argentine frontier settlements. Both kinds of communities, when faced with a sudden raid, had the choice to stand and fight or to flee, preserving human life but leaving their herds and other possessions at the mercy of the invaders. The key advantage enjoyed by indigenous maloneros was their knowledge of the pampas. Whereas Argentines possessed very little official knowledge of the landscape south of their own military frontier, the indigenous peoples of the pampas had lived in this landscape for generations and thoroughly understood the territory and its resources.18 An indigenous malón party in retreat with stolen herds knew where to find potable water and pastures on the pampas; most Argentine raiders did not. Thus, indigenous warriors were often more enriched by their raids than were their Argentine counterparts. Similarly, indigenous people fleeing an Argentine raid would likely know if places existed nearby to which they could effectively retreat; many Argentine frontier settlers would not. Thus, indigenous people sometimes were able to flee in safety from Argentine raids. Before the Conquest of the Desert, in other words, indigenous people’s knowledge of the pampas—locations of potable spring water, rich pasturelands, passable overland routes, salt flats, river crossings, and so on—was a considerable advantage over the Argentine military, which helped to offset Argentine military superiority in numbers and technology. Roca sought to destroy all such advantages. First, he assigned scientists to accompany all conquest military excursions, to create maps of the pampas and make studies of pampean climate, soil composition, waterways, salt flats, and other resources. As he wrote to Colonel Conrado E. Villegas on October 3 1878, “it is good to carry a map of the frontier, so that you may advance while marking the territories that you cover in your march; it is also suitable to . . . note the quality of the soil and water.”19 Armed with this knowledge, the Argentine military sought to match indigenous people’s ability to move confidently across the pampas. The military also identified places like freshwater springs as ideal locations for new fortifications, thus denying indigenous people access to them. Second, Roca’s commanders targeted indigenous herds, especially in the preliminary campaigns, as central objectives for acquisition or destruction. The Argentine military understood herd destruction as a successful outcome, T h e Con que st of t h e De s e rt · 23 

because the primary goal of these efforts was not to expropriate riches but to destroy indigenous people’s ability to offer successful cavalry resistance. Along with this rationale, intentionally or otherwise, in destroying and stealing these herds the military also obliterated many indigenous communities’ means of survival. The official Conquest of the Desert campaigns, launched during 1878–1879, were conducted by five divisions, moving southward from different points along the frontier with missions coordinated to establish complete control over the pampas north of the Río Negro (fig. 3). The First Division, under the command of Colonel Villegas, moved southward from Buenos Aires through the eastern pampas, advancing toward the Río Negro with a final goal of controlling the island of Choele Choel. Roca himself accompanied this division in fall 1879. The Second Division, under the command of Colonel Nicolás Levalle, moved southward from Carhué through the central pampas in search of the indigenous cacique Pincén. The Third Division moved southward from Fort Sarmiento, under the command of Colonel Eduardo Racedo, attacking the Ranqueles, who lived between Fort Sarmiento and Poitagué. The Fourth Division, led by Lieutenant Colonel Napoleón Uriburu, took charge of the Andean cordillera, moving southward from Mendoza to the Río Neuquén to close off the mountain passes that indigenous people might use to escape into the Andes and across into Chile. The Fifth Division, also operating in the central pampas, was commanded by Colonel Hilario Lagos and advanced from Trenque Lauquen to Salinas Grandes and Traru Lauquen, seeking in particular to capture or kill the indigenous cacique Namuncurá. Military historians have focused biographic and even hagiographic attention on Roca’s five hand-picked commanders, describing them as a fraternal group of young men with much in common. All were roughly the same age as Roca, between thirty-five and forty years of age. All were career military officers, and all had served in frontier posts, learning, in the words of one military historian, “to fight Indians.”20 As Roca sent these five commanders southward to “clear” the pampas, they were in particular search of the five most powerful indigenous caciques resisting the state’s advance: Catriel, Pincén, Namuncurá, Epumer, and Baigorrita, each with a reputation for ferocity and treachery in the Argentine popular press, and each in command of formidable fighting forces. In many ways, the military narratives of the conquest focused on this small handful of figures as a cohering cast of characters opposing civilization 24 · Lars on

Figure 3  Conquest of the Desert, 1879 campaigns. Map created by the author, adapted from Carlos Martínez Sarasola, Nuestros paisanos los indios, 281.

against barbarism, good against evil. Chief among the stylized figures of this narrative was Roca himself. Historians of the Conquest of the Desert have traditionally attributed to Roca a singular and heroic role, suggesting that it was Roca’s individual actions (with purely supplemental support from others) that made the conquest possible. For instance, Richard Perry argues that “Roca alone seemed to realize that the Indians were on the verge of complete collapse.”21 This, however, does not accord with historical sources. Certainly President Avellaneda knew that the indigenous populations of the pampas had been attacked repeatedly during the 1870s and that their population and military power were in decline; Adolfo Alsina knew also, as did many in the military.22 Popular opinion, however, remained fixated on the figure of the indigenous malonero, representing the constantly looming threat of indigenous invasion; such figures were prominent in popular press reportage of malones along the frontier, captive narratives, poetry, novels, and political rhetoric (see Jennie Daniels’s chapter in this volume).23 Roca took advantage of this information dissonance, setting himself in place as a national savior and resolver of a seemingly insolvable problem. Historians have suggested that this was a deliberately political maneuver on Roca’s part; that Roca understood that framing himself as the leader of such a campaign could catapult him to national political power.24 T h e Con que st of t h e De s e rt · 25 

Despite military and government confidence in the success of the campaign, however, in early 1879 the campaign did not enjoy unanimous support. Thomas O. Osborn, US minister to Argentina, reported to the US secretary of state on March 14, 1879, that the Press and public opinion are much divided in regard to the practicability as well as the expediency of the expedition. Those who are opposed to the expedition claim that the Treasury is in an impoverished condition and that there is no call for an extension of territory, that the present frontiers are safe, and will be for years to come, and that the Expedition is a wild, reckless scheme, solely undertaken to help Genl. Roca to the Presidency.25 However, the supporters of Roca’s “scheme” outweighed its detractors, and in April 1879 the second phase of the campaign began. The second wave of the conquest replaced targeted raids and temporary advances with the systematic, multipronged advance of the five divisions, with the aim of permanently removing all indigenous peoples from the region.26 Roca deployed the five divisions from their various positions beginning on April 16; Roca himself accompanied the First Division, whose mission was to secure control of Choele Choel. By this time, the pampas were already largely devoid of indigenous populations in resistance, and although Roca and his supporters in the government and popular press described his advance with the First Division as a major military undertaking, by the time Roca left Buenos Aires with the division, the “conquest” was largely symbolic. On April 16, Roca and an expeditionary force boarded a train in Buenos Aires, bound for the end of the rail line in Azul, Buenos Aires Province. By April 21, Roca and the First Division had arrived in Carhué, where a week was spent organizing the division for its advance to the Río Negro. On April 29, the division departed Carhué and joined with other divisionary forces at Puán and Fort Argentino. All of this activity took place behind the existing frontier line; it was not until May 5 that the First Division and Roca crossed beyond the frontier, heading for Rincón Grande on the Río Colorado. On May 10, the division arrived at the Río Colorado, which the troops crossed on May 13 at Paso Alsina. On May 15, the division departed for Sierra Choique Mahuida, then turned south toward the Río Negro and Choele Choel. The division arrived on the banks of the 26 · Lars on

Río Negro after nightfall on May 24 and the following morning held a sunrise ceremony to celebrate the event. Roca’s arrival at Choele Choel on May 25, the day that the Argentine republic celebrated national independence, was no accident; he was entirely aware of the symbolic power that this date would lend to his achievement. Nor was this plan a secret; US Minister Osborn was aware of Roca’s intention as early as March 14.27 However, this traditional timeline conceals the troubles that plagued the expedition as well as the lengths to which Roca was willing to go in order to keep his date with destiny. At the very start of the expedition, a problem with food supplies threatened the division with starvation as they advanced beyond the frontier line. As was common practice, the military had arranged for a civilian contractor to deliver herds of cattle and mares to support the division during the march, but the herds never arrived. Roca waited for several days, hoping that the herds would appear, but he ultimately decided to march without them. At the Río Colorado, Roca had to make a decision: the division could maintain its position and wait for resupply, or it could advance and risk starvation. Roca ordered the division to advance, determined to keep his May 25 deadline.28 He sent a messenger to the governor of Patagonia, Colonel Álvaro Barros, to request that two to three hundred head of cattle be sent northward to meet his troops at the Río Negro; he also ordered a few soldiers out to find as many head of cattle as they could and bring them to Choele Choel. Roca’s expedition also faced navigational problems. During the preliminary phase of the campaigns in 1878, Colonel Lorenzo Vintter had been unable to find a passable overland route to Choele Choel. Captain José S. Daza, deployed ahead of Roca’s forces to Puán in autumn 1879 for the express purpose of establishing the route, also failed to find it even as Roca’s forces advanced behind him. On May 23, Daza sent word to Roca that he could not find the route, leaving the division effectively trapped on the pampas lacking sufficient supplies to either wander blindly forward or return to the frontier line. Colonel Manuel José Olascoaga, later one of the most famous chroniclers of the conquest, finally managed to triangulate a route from two separate maps, rescuing the expedition and allowing Roca to make his May 25 goal.29 Olascoaga described his feelings on the occasion: “[T]his day [May 25] . . . inaugurates the dominion of civilization here where barbarism has reigned for three centuries.”30 Within days of their arrival at the river, the First Division was building corrals and T h e Con que st of t h e De s e rt · 27 

sleeping quarters, and planting fields, establishing permanent occupation of the island.31 The image of Roca’s triumphant advance became a hallmark of creole national identity during the late nineteenth century, silencing discussion of the difficulties and missteps of the campaign as well as the multiple preparatory campaigns that preceded his march and the subsequent campaigns of the early 1880s, which did much of the actual “conquering.” In marching to the Río Negro, acting out the part of civilization’s champion, Roca effectively created that identity as a tangible possibility for creole Argentines. Roca wrote that “great problems . . . will be resolved by the occupation of the Río Negro, which alone will justify the forces that the Republic will exert searching for security against the barbarians of the desert.”32 Indigenous peoples had come to represent an almost universal irritant to the Argentine people and the destiny they had come to imagine for themselves;33 their removal would answer many of the challenges facing the still emerging Argentine state. With this gesture, as the Argentine press announced, the “Indian difficulty is settled. . . . The savages are played out.”34 After the August 1879 death of Ranquel cacique Baigorrita, all the major pampean caciques in resistance were subdued, and the conquest campaign was declared successfully ended, with the new frontier line at the Río Negro and the Río Neuquén. The military actions of the conquest did not end in May 1879, however. Once the new frontier was consolidated, Argentine military leaders turned their attention once again southward, beyond the Río Negro to Patagonia. Initially, the state, believing the indigenous peoples of the Andean cordillera to be more “civilized” than their pampean counterparts, stated its intention to establish peaceful relations with the most prominent Patagonian caciques.35 The peace did not last, however. As military historians have noted, the Argentine military’s swift about-face was due in large part to their growing awareness of Patagonia’s natural resources, and a correlating conviction that this land belonged by rights to the Argentine republic.36 In addition, it became increasingly evident by the early 1880s that “Roca’s campaign had not entirely eliminated the Indians” of the pampas, and that significant fighting forces had not surrendered but fled southward to allied cacicazgos (politically autonomous communities) in the cordillera.37 A rash of malones launched from the south in 1881 and 1882, under the leadership of powerful caciques in resistance such as Saygüeque and Namuncurá, spurred another wave of Argentine military 28 · Lar s on

action to “pacify” Patagonia. This “third phase” of the conquest culminated in January 1885 with the final defeat of Saygüeque; Argentine historians, then and now, mostly agree that this moment signaled the end of the formal military conquest, although state efforts to “subdue,” “incorporate,” and “assimilate” indigenous peoples were only beginning (see the chapters by Ramos, Warren, and Delrio and Pérez in this volume).

Narratives of Conquest In the myriad documents that capture mainstream Argentine attitudes about the conquest at the time it was happening, writers largely demonstrated a shared commitment to a handful of narratives that cast the conquest as an imperative, peaceful, humanitarian, romantic, and victorious event that showed the Argentine nation at its best. Framing these narratives in their formation at the moment of the conquest allows us to trace their influence in the decades and centuries that followed. First, Argentine military officers and statesmen frequently underscored the imperative nature of the conquest as a means of resolving the immediate and intolerable problems posed by uncontrolled indigenous peoples in the pampas. As Olascoaga wrote in his 1880 account, “the sufferings of this country because of the Indian [indio]38 question, the state to which it had been brought by the complications united by this case of insecurity, of losses and of general discontent, could not be greater.” The indigenous threat to national security and prosperity appeared in documents like Olascoaga’s as untenable and insupportable; time and again, authors of military, state, and popular press accounts emphasized that the time had come to resolve these problems for the good of the nation. Olascoaga expanded on the problem: The fundamental and primary cause of the general uneasiness was without a doubt internal insecurity. We lived enclosed within the middle of our territory, whose immediate frontiers were battered by innumerable hordes of barbarians who absorbed millions of pesos’ worth of cattle each year, detained the development of frontier populations by assassination, theft and arson; they made the life of a frontier soldier an eternal martyrdom, almost pointless due to continual efforts and sacrifices without lasting result; and still we paid a considerable annual T h e Con que st of t h e De se rt · 29 

tribute in money and kind to various tribes, whose friendship we succeeded in buying only temporarily.39 Argentine writer, politician, and naturalist Estanislao Zeballos couched the problem in less pragmatic, more darkly violent terms: These Indians live by theft and make War against the Christian with cruelty and implacable hatred, as if it would satisfy a horrible vengeance sworn by their ancestors against the injustice with which they were treated. Their invasions of our lands leave traces stained in blood and marked by fire and plunder; and in their own toldos the disgraced prisoners or cautivos are made to suffer horrible and indescribable tortures. Despite his swift allusion to the “injustice” suffered by indigenous people, Zeballos’s evident focus was on indigenous savagery and the cruelties inflicted upon “Christian” communities along the frontier.40 Writers like Olascoaga and Zeballos, whose works have been reprinted as Argentine literary classics repeatedly throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, built a narrative of indigenous savagery that posed a direct threat to the nation, and therefore stood in urgent need of resolution. This narrative of conquest made it clear to national and international audiences that the Argentine nation was acting in its own defense, in a situation of urgent need that could not be resolved in any other way. A second narrative, which paired at times uncomfortably with the first, was the notion of a “peaceful” conquest. It was the military’s official platform in 1878 that they sought not to destroy the indigenous peoples of the pampas but to improve them; violence and killing were to be avoided, unless it became inevitable. This pacific military mantra was repeated in twentieth-century military historiography, much of which reaffirmed that “government policy towards the Indians, as stated by the Minister of War and as reflected in the actions of commanders in the field, was to capture them if at all possible rather than to kill them, and to use no more force than was necessary. Commanders were careful to justify their actions when reporting Indians killed in battle, usually with the comment that the latter had been armed and had offered resistance.” The goal of the conquest, such scholarship has argued, “was not the destruction of the Indians themselves, but rather their nomadic way of life. And even their 30 · Lar s on

dislodgment from the pampas was but a secondary and alternative objective. The primary objective was to induce them to submit to national authority and to occupy definite, fixed places on the pampas as a permanent, stable and wealth-producing segment of the national population.”41 Official records of the conquest studiously avoided direct discussion of indigenous casualties and violence against indigenous people wherever possible. Roca, Avellaneda, journalists, scientists, military commanders in the field, and others used words such as “clear,” “subjugate,” “subdue,” “finish with,” “evict,” or “dislodge” to discuss military actions against indigenous people on the pampas, marginalizing or even erasing the violence of the campaign and focusing their accounts instead on territorial and resource gains. Indeed, proponents of the conquest often framed their primary goal in terms of territory, and placed indigenous expulsion in a secondary, supplementary position. It seemed clear to many Argentine state makers, military officers, cattle barons, and others that the pampas belonged by rights to the Argentine republic, and indigenous peoples’ insistence on continuing to live there in their “barbaric” state and to resist absorption into the “civilized” nation-state seemed obdurate and unnatural, indicative of their savagery. It was indigenous peoples’ intractable behavior, this narrative logic concluded, that forced the Argentine military to subdue them, in order to achieve their central and patriotic goal of territorial expansion. Avellaneda argued: The occupation of the Río Negro does not offer, in itself, any difficulties; but before bringing it to fruition it is necessary to dislodge the Indians [indios] of the desert whose nature it is to conquer, in order to leave not a single enemy at the rearguard, subduing them by persuasion or force, or casting them south of that barrier; this is the principle difficulty.42 And yet, despite this elaborate rhetorical positioning, indigenous people did die during the conquest, in disputed and often unrecorded numbers. The primary sources themselves reveal that violence against indigenous people was intense, commonplace, and not concerning to military leaders. In January 1879, for instance, Colonel Vintter submitted a field report to Roca in which he reported that one of his subordinates, Captain Lasciar, had killed a number of indigenous people. “It was impossible to avoid it,” Vintter wrote, “because they resisted.”43 T h e Con que st of t h e De se rt · 31 

Roca’s response did not mention these deaths, nor any possible questions about Lasciar’s violation of this purportedly central precept of the campaign. Instead, Roca wrote that “the result of Captain Lasciar’s expedition is complete and satisfactory. . . . You can communicate to him that the President awards him the epaulets of Sergeant Major for his brilliant action.”44 Narratives of “peaceful” conquest were also belied in military field reports and correspondence expressing the desire to terrorize, attack, and punish indigenous people. Roca himself routinely contradicted this notion in correspondence with his subordinates. He wrote to Comandante García in November 1878 that he wanted, “before the heat [of summer] closes in, to make a good strike against the Indians and bring terror to them as far away as possible.”45 Three days later, Roca wrote again to García: “It is necessary to give this cacique [Namuncurá], who until now has not seen our troops up close, a good beating [un buen golpe].”46 In December of the same year, Roca celebrated an attack against Namuncurá’s forces, saying, “[I]t is the first time that Namuncurá feels, as he deserves, the weight of our forces. . . . It was high time.”47 Military journals and reports are full of such notations, reporting everyday camp happenings in which officers tallied indigenous captives dying from smallpox and other diseases, injuries sustained in battle and at the hands of their captors in camp, exposure to the cold, starvation, malnutrition, and other causes. Most of these reports are matter-of-fact, conveying the sense that these deaths were everyday occurrences that did not elicit particular interest or investigation. On July 4, 1879, Colonel Eduardo Racedo’s camp journal read: The officers of Battalion 3 requested of me some small Indians [indios] from among the prisoners, in order to serve them; I ordered that they be sent. Two Indians [indios] died today. The Division Corps was asked by the O.G. for a detailed account of the number of horses and mules in its service. To the intense, dry cold of the past days, is now added a light and continual rain.48 This entry is fairly representative of Racedo’s and other officers’ camp journals and correspondence; Argentine military officers noted indigenous deaths in 32 · Lars on

camp as one of many quotidian events, typically without emotion and often with less detail or apparent interest than their comments on the weather. In other words, while pacification remained a critical element of Argentine state narratives about the conquest, actual events and records simply do not support such an interpretation. A third narrative cast the conquest as a humanitarian endeavor to “rescue” the indigenous peoples of the pampas. This narrative ran in two main directions, the first depicting some indigenous peoples as foreign, “Chilean” groups and aiming to rescue the true “Argentine” indigenous peoples from this invasion. As early as the mid-nineteenth century, Argentine intellectuals and politicians were speaking forcibly of the large-scale “invasion” of the pampas by “foreign” indigenous groups who were victimizing “Argentine” indigenous peoples and corrupting their culture. This narrative was called “Araucanization,” after groups of indigenous peoples called Araucanians. Typically, Araucanians were most closely correlated with the Mapuche, whose autochthonous territories extend across the southern Andes into both Chile and Argentina. Mapuche incursion, connected in Argentine state makers’ minds with the insidious threat of Chilean advance into Patagonia, became a central reason cited for the conquest itself, as a rescue mission to save genuinely “Argentine” indigenous peoples from these interlopers. As anthropologist Axel Lazzari has argued, theories of Araucanization “regarded the Pampa Indians as the ‘original’ inhabitants of the plains where Araucanians ‘had penetrated’ after leaving ‘Araucanía,’ their home on the Spanish and eventually Chilean frontier.”49 Thus, the Araucanization narrative undertook the useful political work of crafting a connotatively laden tale in which “indios chilenos” had crossed over into Argentine territory, displacing and culturally corrupting the groups of “indios argentinos” they encountered, settling permanently in the pampas, taking control of the pampas’s herds of cattle and horses, and forging their own networks of military alliance. In this narrative, the conquered “indios argentinos” had all but succumbed to the power of the aggressive—and foreign—Mapuches. By coding dominant indigenous groups in the pampas and Patagonia as foreign or Chilean, the Argentine state created a political opening for legitimate warfare against a hostile, invading force while also allowing the Argentine state to act as defender or champion of the fallen “Argentine Indian.” The second thread of this narrative underscored the suffering of indigenous people on the open pampas and the Argentine military’s role in rescuing them. T h e Con que st of t h e De se rt · 33 

Military officers’ reports and camp journals recorded indigenous suffering at the time of the conquest, building a picture of impoverished and helpless indigenous people in need of rescue. As one source graphically described: Families were found that had subsisted on herbs and on cowhides that had to be buried in the ground to soften them to eat. Many died of hunger in their toldos or along the road to the refuges in the cordillera. Children with thin legs and bloated bellies were commonplace.50 Olascoaga recorded that the indigenous prisoners taken by the military “were usually nude, or poorly clothed at best, although in the final campaign the weather was intensely cold on the pampas as well as in the cordillera.”51 Colonel Vintter wrote similarly in November 1878 that the tribe of Catriel “arrived completely nude and nothing sufficed to satisfy their hunger.”52 Racedo recalled: The wailing of the small Indians coming from the prisoners’ quarters [depósito] was desolating. Their complete nakedness made them feel the harshness of the season with all its horrible intensity. All the chiefs and officers of the Division had been left with only the clothing [that was] strictly indispensable, giving the rest to alleviate their miseries, but these meager provisions could not suffice to cover their necessities and those wretches were completely frozen.53 Military narratives describing the state of indigenous prisoners at the moment of their capture painted a nearly universal portrait of widespread misery and need. Indigenous people’s suffering in this moment was exacerbated dramatically by an outbreak of smallpox in the military camps, where indigenous prisoners were segregated in temporary detention centers. The epidemic spread rapidly among the prisoners; one military historian notes that “of 592 captured by the Third Division in the final campaign, some 153 died of smallpox and other illnesses.”54 On May 20, 1879, Racedo recorded that “two soldiers of the 10th Battalion and six of the Indian prisoners died today in the infirmary, attacked by this horrible sickness. The chaplain gave priority to baptizing the Indian minors, in order to avoid them dying without this sign of Christian redemption.”55 (For more on the role of disease during the conquest, see Christensen’s chapter in this volume.) The central narrative underlying all these records of indigenous suffering during the conquest cast the military in a humanitarian 34 · Lars on

role, rescuing indigenous people from the misery that they were already experiencing. In other words, military records did not reveal any sense of responsibility for the sufferings of their indigenous prisoners; rather, problems like poverty, starvation, and illness were seen as nebulously originating with indigenous people themselves. Traditional historiography has perpetuated this notion, as in the words of one such historian: “[T]he sufferings that the Indians endured before their submission to the government forces was incredible, for to a people who no longer had the resources to master it, the pampas proved a hostile environment that reduced them to abject misery.”56 The military’s role in ensuring that indigenous people “no longer had” those resources remains carefully unspoken. Indeed, military observers often reflected with great satisfaction on the positive change that surrender would mean for indigenous people. Olascoaga offered an especially romantic vision of their happy fate: Buenos Aires and other cities of the Republic . . . saw the arrival by the hundreds of Indian [indios] prisoners. . . . To see those crowds of Indians [indios] of all ages and sexes entering the cities humbly and judiciously; distributed among the families, the institutions of education and industry, installed immediately in civilized life, was the most satisfying and moralizing spectacle that could offer itself to a civilized people; the patent transformation of barbarism into civilization; the visible moment of dignifying humanity; the palpable deed of converting the element of destruction into an element of progress. Who would not delight to see a seed germinating in their presence, raising its shoot, its flower blossoming and its fruit appearing?57 The incorporation of indigenous prisoners into Argentine society was thus imagined in terms both peaceful and voluntary, bringing these prisoners into “civilized life.” A fourth narrative valorized the actions of the Argentine military and cast the army, in particular, in heavily romantic terms. One key tactic in building this narrative, borrowed from tales of privation among soldiers serving in Argentine frontier posts earlier in the nineteenth century (see Daniels’s chapter in this volume), painted a picture of the intense suffering of Argentine soldiers. Military journals, correspondence, and accounts in the popular press complained of dust, insects, rain, heat, cold, sleep deprivation, bad food, bad T h e Con que st of t h e De s e rt · 35 

roads, and a variety of other ills that tested the mettle of the army.58 Racedo wrote in April 1879 that “the hardships and privations reach[ed] the unlikeliest level,” noting routinely the miseries of his men. On April 11, “the sun was abrasive, the heat very strong, and as the campaign tents had not yet arrived all the Corps found themselves completely in the open.” Three days later, “the weather continued rainy and the heat was increasingly insupportable. . . . The mosquitoes continued bothering us dreadfully.” Two months later, Racedo’s complaints shifted with the weather—“the weather continues to be cold and windy,” he wrote on June 23, followed the next day by “the wind continues strong and cold”59 (see Christensen’s chapter in this volume). Many of these complaints of physical discomfort resonate at a basic, human level. Some also reveal the specific mentality of their authors. In May 1879, while encamped at Choele Choel after Roca’s symbolic advance to that shore, Olascoaga reflected on the diet of the First Division: It is important to understand the extent to which horsemeat is rendered repugnant and odious, for those unaccustomed to eating it, living in an encampment where all or the majority eat it. Even the smoke of the fires where it is grilled is insupportable. The particular smell that it gives off contaminates the entire camp. . . . Mate, coffee, made on the same fire where a horse roast is grilling, acquire the same smell and taste. Then there is the moral suffering of witnessing the butchering of those animals that one is unaccustomed to seeing killed and because they are such intimate companions of man, one views them almost as fellow men.60 Olascoaga’s sensitive moral feelings about the death of these horses is perhaps particularly striking, given that indigenous people were being held captive in these same military camps suffering sickness, despair, and death, without such empathetic commentary. Military and state writers also cast soldiers’ suffering as proof of their manliness and dedication to the nation. As Racedo wrote in April 1879: “[T]he heat, the cold, hunger, sleep deprivation, it is necessary to resign oneself to suffering everything, everything when one wishes to achieve a triumph over the savages.” In the same journal entry, Racedo insisted that “the Argentine soldier does not have his equal in the world.”61 Stories abounded of soldiers’ bravery and sacrifice for the nation; even officers’ wives, some of whom accompanied 36 · Lars on

the expedition, became part of this narrative.62 In one case, a corporal’s wife gave birth to a son on the open pampas, during the First Division’s advance to Choele Choel. Manuel Prado’s military narrative, La Guerra al Malón, published in 1907, describes the event: [W]ith words of encouragement and valor by the doctor, the woman was lifted on a horse, since there was nothing else there [by which to move her], and sustained by two soldiers who walked alongside the mount, she continued on to the place where the division was encamped. Immediately mother and son were bathed in the temperate waters of the [Río] Colorado; and, on the next day, when the column once more began its march, we caught a glimpse of her, pale but serene and resigned to the saddle, singing the arroró [lullaby] to her baby to the rhythm of the stride of her sumpter.63 The birth of a son on the campaign trail, and the almost incredible fortitude of this unnamed woman, here became bathed in patriotic pride and symbolic of national fortitude. Military leaders paired pride in the resilience of their men with an often spoken certainty in their own inevitable victory. Roca praised his commanders and their subordinates in lavish terms, building military morale and shoring up the celebratory tone of the campaign, even in its early stages. On September 29, 1878, he wrote to Comandante París: “I am disposed to compensate all action against the Indians [indios] that shows intelligence, activity and courage.”64 The next month, he congratulated Comandante García on “the good success of your excursion. It is necessary to repeat it from time to time, to break the spirit of the Indian [indio] and to keep alive fear and terror among them. Then, instead of thinking to invade us, they will only think of fleeing, seeking their salvation in the thickness of the forests.” Military correspondence and camp journals described the campaign in strikingly consistent terms, describing their actions as variously “a splendid triumph over the savages,” “a splendid triumph over the Indians [indios],” and a “splendid expedition,” exhorting one another that “the glory will belong to all” and that “at our current pace, we will soon have cleared the pampa.”65 The popular press expressed similar optimism about the campaign; on January 8, 1879, the Standard or River Plate News announced the capture of cacique Epumer, reporting that “this news is looked on as the close of the Indian question.” Four days later, the same newspaper declared: T h e Con que st of t h e De se rt · 37 

It is now generally admitted that the Indian difficulty is settled; that the savages are played out; and that there are no more Indians on the frontier to invade us, nor caciques in the Pampas to be conquered.66 Roca gave a direct nod to public opinion two months earlier, after the capture of the cacique Pincén, writing to the officer responsible that “the capture of Pincen, the most feared cacique of the Pampa, has caused a great sensation in this place [Buenos Aires]. You have well established your reputation and I am proud for you.”67 Celebrations of the Argentine military’s overwhelming success also fed into a fifth narrative, the disappearance of indigenous peoples from the pampas and from the nation. The language used in military and state descriptions of the conquest imprinted a chronological narrative onto this project. While indigenous peoples figured prominently in descriptions of the pampas before 1880, Argentine narrators clearly envisioned a postconquest pampas entirely without indigenous peoples, with the vaguely referenced exception of those who would voluntarily submit themselves for “civilizing” as agricultural colonists, soldiers, and members of other productive professions. Laying the foundation for this largely sanitized and idealized vision of a progressive national future was a narrative of indigenous erasure; indigenous peoples had existed, and now they were gone.68 As early as 1878, military and state documents were celebrating the removal of indigenous peoples from the pampas, not as an active fighting force but in their entirety. Racedo reported to Roca in September 1878 that “we have completed our mission not leaving a single Indian [indio] on foot in the vast and rich Ranquel territory, yesterday the seat of powerful tribes.” Roca similarly wrote in November that “there does not now remain a single Indian of this tribe that is not subjugated.” In December, Colonel Levalle reported to Roca: The power of Namuncurá is destroyed. . . . In the territory that formed what he called his patrimony and that is now dominated by national forces from Salinas Grandes to Chadi-Leuvú, there remains not a single toldería and only isolated fugitives wander in it, disconnected from any link with their cacique.69 These few examples offer a representative glimpse into the vision shared by Argentine military leaders and state makers: a pampas and nation-state without indigenous peoples. 38 · Lars on

Conclusion By the early 1880s, Argentine state makers, military leaders, and the popular press had concretized a rhetoric of indigenous disappearance and of celebration of indigenous peoples’ “incorporation” into the national body, no longer as indigenous peoples but as indistinguishable Argentines. The disappearance of indigenous peoples, along with the “Indian Problem,” went hand in hand with a final traditional narrative of the conquest, in which the conquest became a catalyst for civilization, a necessary action in the interest of national progress, and the dawn of a white Argentina. In his 1880 celebratory account of the conquest, Colonel Olascoaga listed the “results” of the campaign: • The definitive pacification of the deserts to the south of the Republic. • The furnishing of 20,000 leagues of rich territory for the use of civilization. • The submission and regeneration of the savage peoples. • The liberty of hundreds of captives. • The end of the civil war with the Indians [indios], of the useless sacrifices of the Army, and of the insecurity of the frontier populations. • The longed-for end of the clandestine and ruinous speculation that periodically moved across the cordillera an important part of our pastoral wealth. • The savings of enormous sums, extracted from the public Treasury, to pay tributes and other unproductive concessions, with the object of acquiring the friendship of the barbarians. • The complete revealing of the topographical mysteries of the desert, and the taking of possession of all its unknown riches. • The occupation of the rich Andean region, natural future seat of the populations that must bring civilized life and security to all the Southern Continent. • The establishment of the military line at the Río Negro, which is not only a vast strategic occupation that affirms absolutely our internal security against the Indians [indios], but also the base and source of all the populating progressive initiatives, which should soon bear fruit for national growth. T h e Con que st of t h e De s e rt · 39 

• The designation, for the first time, of the territories pertaining to the Nation, which have been disputed among five provinces. • The placement of [Argentina] in most advantageous fitness in the eventuality of foreign war.70 As the chapters in this volume illustrate, these ideas about progress, civilization, prosperity, and natural possession marked Argentine understandings of the conquest throughout the twentieth century, and they continue in the twenty-first.

Notes 1. July 9 is a national holiday in Argentina, commemorating the country’s declaration of independence in 1816. Also, note that Argentina’s seasons belong to the Southern Hemisphere, calendrically reversed from those in the Northern Hemisphere. 2. Racedo, La conquista del desierto, 151. 3. I use this phrase here with an eye to literature about Argentina’s military dictatorship (1976–1983), perhaps most famously the feature film by the same title (dir. Luis Puenzo, 1985 US release). For more on this period of Argentine history, see David Sheinin’s chapter in this volume. 4. Berry, “The Conquest of the Desert,” 132. 5. Quoted in Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 141. 6. Roca to García, October 11, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 104. 7. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 164. 8. Ibid., 170, 172; Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 55–62; and Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil leguas, 322–24. 9. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 143, 155, 145. 10. Avellaneda’s full address appears in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 81–89. 11. Ibid., 81, 83. 12. Ibid., 81–89. See also Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 132–34. 13. Ibid. 14. Law 947, October 5, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 90–93. See Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 132–34; and Berry, “The Conquest of the Desert,” 136. 15. See Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 138–39. 16. Del Valle’s dissent is discussed elsewhere, in Lenton et al., “Argentina’s Constituent Genocide”; Delrio et al., “Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina”; and Lenton, “De centauros a protegidos.” 17. Law 947, October 5, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 90–93. See Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 132–34; and Berry, “The Conquest of the Desert,” 136. 18. Briones and Lanata, Contemporary Perspectives on the Native Peoples.

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19. Roca to Villegas, October 3, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 102. 20. Berry, “The Conquest of the Desert,” 139. See also Perry, “The Argentine Frontier”; Walther, La Conquista del Desierto, 3rd ed.; and Bidondo et al., Epopeya del desierto. 21. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 139. 22. Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 81–89. 23. Some of this rhetoric endures today; see Gordillo, “The Savage outside of White Argentina.” 24. Berry, “The Conquest of the Desert,” 134–35. 25. Thomas O. Osborn to Secretary of State, March 14, 1879, Despatches from United States Ministers to Argentina, 1817–1906. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1952. 26. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 175–78. 27. Thomas O. Osborn to Secretary of State, March 14, 1879, Despatches from United States Ministers to Argentina, 1817–1906. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, 1952. 28. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 185–86. 29. Berry, “The Conquest of the Desert,” 148–49. 30. Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 220. 31. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 190. 32. Introductory letter, Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil leguas, 24. 33. Briones and Delrio, “The ‘Conquest of the Desert’ as a Trope.” 34. Rock, State Building and Political Movements, 94. 35. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 190. 36. Ibid., 167, 196–99. 37. Berry, “The Conquest of the Desert,” 154. 38. In this chapter I note in brackets the use of the word indio in original Spanishlanguage sources in order to explain my use of the translation “Indian” in a text that otherwise uses “indigenous peoples,” “First Nations peoples,” and other phrases more in keeping with present-day sensibilities out of respect for indigenous communities. 39. Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 50. 40. Zeballos, La conquista de quince mil leguas, 325. 41. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 144, 200. 42. Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 88, emphasis mine. 43. Vintter to Roca, January 20, 1879, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 140. 44. Roca to Vintter, January 20, 1879, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 140. 45. Roca to García, November 13, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 117. 46. Roca to García, November 16, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 117. 47. Roca to Levalle, December 27, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 133–34. 48. Racedo, La conquista del desierto, 149. 49. Lazzari, “Aboriginal Recognition, Freedom, and Phantoms,” 62. T h e Con que st of t h e De se rt · 41 

50. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 200. 51. Ibid., 200–201. 52. Vintter to Inspector and Comandante General de Armas, November 26, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 126. 53. Racedo, La conquista del desierto, 121. 54. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 201. 55. Racedo, La conquista del desierto, 51. Racedo’s journals mention smallpox throughout. See, for instance, pages 44, 51, 122–23, 149, 150, and 152–53. 56. Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 200. 57. Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 53–54. 58. See, for example, Rudecino Roca to Inspector General de Armas, November 26, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 123–24; Rudecino Roca to Roca, November 25, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 125; Roca to Levalle, December 27, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 133–34; and Racedo, La conquista del desierto, 12, 14, 17, 20, 121, 148, 149. 59. Racedo, La conquista del desierto, 14, 12, 20, 121. 60. Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 225–26. 61. Racedo, La conquista del desierto, 14, 13. 62. Ibid., 12. 63. Prado, La guerra al malón, 219–20. 64. Roca to París, September 29, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 101. 65. Roca to García, October 11, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 104; Rudecino Roca to Roca, November 4, 1878, in Olascoaga, 111; Rudecino Roca to Roca, November 5, 1878, in Olascoaga, 112; Racedo to Roca, November 5, 1878, in Olascoaga, 112–13; Roca to Freire, January 1, 1879, in Olascoaga, 134; and Roca to Villegas, November 11, 1878, in Olascoaga, 116. 66. Standard or River Plate News, January 8 and 12, 1879; cited in Perry, “The Argentine Frontier,” 166. 67. Roca to Villegas, November 11, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 115. 68. See Quijada, “La ciudadanización del ‘indio bárbaro’”; Delrio, “De ‘salvajes’ a ‘indios nacionales’”; and Delrio, Memorias de expropiación. 69. Racedo to Roca, September 20, 1878, in Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 100–101; Roca to Racedo, November 25, 1878, in Olascoaga, 122; and Levalle to Roca, December 22, 1878, in Olascoaga, 130–31. 70. Olascoaga, Estudio topográfico, 49–50.

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TWO

“Occupy Every Road and Prepare for Combat” Mapuche and Tehuelche Leaders Face the War in Patagonia Julio Vezub and Mark Healey

In 1880, Argentine explorer and naturalist Francisco P. Moreno found himself a captive observer at a council of caciques in Patagonia, in the Indigenous Government of Las Manzanas. Sensing the coming threat from the Argentine and Chilean states, indigenous leaders had come together to take a defiant stance. A gathering of hundreds of warriors on horseback agreed to “occupy every road along the frontier and prepare ourselves for combat.” But Moreno soon escaped captivity with the connivance of some of these same indigenous leaders, and when Argentine forces attacked within the year, the unified front proclaimed at the meeting fell apart.1 How should we read this indigenous declaration? We might choose irony, as Moreno partly intended, invoking the quotation to signal its irrelevance, contrasting its rhetorical strength with the swift success of Argentine arms. Yet even if that superficially fits the course of military conflict, it offers an impoverished understanding of the conflict’s deeper dynamics and longer-term consequences. Or we might take the statement at face value as a measure of Mapuche-Tehuelche resolve. After all, this resolve had been very effective in the four prior decades of raiding, fighting, and negotiating by which indigenous leaders had 43

defended their autonomy, secured resources, and become key interlocutors for the weak and often divided Chilean and Argentine nation-states. But the loose confederation that had worked so well soon proved insufficient. Faced with the brutal advance of the Argentine state, indigenous groups responded in varied ways: some joined the state, by choice or under compulsion, while others confronted it directly, and many strategically withdrew. But all indigenous groups moved ever further away from the bold talk of holding the frontier. The terms of conflict were changing dramatically, in this reading, and the once effective Mapuche and Tehuelche tactics and language now proved outdated. This chapter will take a different approach. Drawing on the correspondence of indigenous leaders, military reports, and other primary sources from the conflict, we trace the history and aftermath of Argentine military campaigns in Patagonia from the perspective of Mapuche and Tehuelche caciques. We show that the framework of tactics and vocabulary evoked by the quotation remained significant during and even after the conquest. The warrior ethos that had defined Mapuche-Tehuelche leadership for generations did not become irrelevant, but decisively shaped how indigenous leaders understood and responded to the military campaign. Even if unified resistance proved a chimera, local resistance—and local complicity—deeply shaped the course of the conquest and the terms of survival afterward. The point is not to deny the brutal overall shift in power but rather to better understand the local alliances, defeats, and understandings that made it possible and, to a greater extent than historians have often appreciated, enabled indigenous actors to evade or endure murderous violence. To reach this understanding, we need to move beyond flat accounts of a unified conquest by state forces and examine more closely the social history of this conflict, composed of multiple overlapping struggles that played out differently according to region and indigenous polity. To understand the strategies of the major caciques or longkos, and their alliances and negotiations with national states, we draw on indigenous correspondence and military reports from the period, supplemented by later ethnographic testimonies. These allow us to draw closer to the protagonists’ point of view and draw contrasts with canonical accounts. Our central claim is that indigenous leaders were far more effective than previous scholars have recognized in coordinating actions, protecting their people, and negotiating terms of subordination to the newly powerful national state. Limiting our understanding of the Conquest of the Desert to a series of 44 · V e z ub a n d H e a ley

expeditions as narrated in the reports of the Ministry of War and the Navy elevates a stylized idea of victory over a real exploration of its complexities. We propose instead to highlight the conquest’s uneven regional and social dimensions. This chapter is organized into three sections and a conclusion. We begin with a brief overview of the campaigns, the army that carried them out, and the open and hidden brutality that accompanied them. We then turn to exploring the viewpoints and strategies of indigenous leaders, as expressed in their correspondence during the conquest. Building on this evidence, we then examine the different ways the conflict and persecution have been remembered in later records, community testimony, and ethnographic accounts. We close with a reassessment of the canonical endpoint of the conquest, the supposed surrender of Saygüeque on January 1, 1885, and its long aftermath.

The War below the Río Negro While we aim to move beyond accounts of the conquest centered on the simple sequence of campaigns, that is still where we must begin. First came the advance of five separate columns to the Río Negro under Julio Roca in 1878–1879, the campaign that has come to stand for the conquest as a whole, as Carolyne Larson highlights in chapter 1 of this volume. After Roca defeated the revolt of Buenos Aires Province and became president in 1880, the campaigns to the south resumed in 1881. There were three major expeditions into Patagonia below the Río Negro. In March and April 1881, three columns advanced rapidly to Nahuel Huapi Lake, attacking indigenous groups and then withdrawing, leaving behind some forward operation posts. Between December 1882 and April 1883, Colonel Conrado Villegas led a campaign into the Andes foothills in Neuquén and Río Negro. From November 1883 to March 1884, Lieutenant Colonel Lino Oris de Roa ranged across the Río Negro into southwestern Chubut in pursuit of the last resisting indigenous groups. The endpoint for these campaigns, the symbolic moment of final conquest, was the supposed surrender of Saygüeque on January 1, 1885. Alongside these major campaigns were a range of minor attacks, raids, and massacres, often little reflected in the formal record but crucial to understanding the larger dynamics of the conquest. Moreover, after 1885, violent expansion continued in the following decade south of Chubut into Santa Cruz and the island of Tierra del Fuego, “ Occ upy Ev e ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 45 

led by rancher paramilitary forces and religious missions, with the military now playing a secondary role. Just as important as the visible advance of the Argentine state were the feints, defeats, negotiations, counterstrikes, and retreats of indigenous groups. Harder to capture on a map or in a simplified sequence of campaigns, they were nonetheless crucial to the course of the conquest. The state had never faced unified resistance from indigenous groups but rather entanglement in a complex and shifting web of alliances. That web was made after Juan Manuel de Rosas led the “First Conquest of the Desert” in 1833. In a brief and bloody campaign, Rosas’s forces attacked Mapuches, Pampas, and Tehuelches and marched beyond the Río Colorado, reaching as far as the middle Río Negro. The troops withdrew immediately afterward, since the main objective was to open up the southern frontier to cattle raising. Rosas left in place a political arrangement with longkos that secured the frontier by balancing military threats with lucrative pacts. By regularly distributing cattle, goods, and cash to indigenous leaders, Rosas kept the peace, even as the combined actions of ranchers and military outposts continued to slowly push the frontier further south.2 The liberal governments that replaced Rosas after 1852 maintained this status quo, which included the formation of battalions of “Indian auxiliaries” as enforcers, until President Nicolás Avellaneda and his minister of war and the navy, Julio Roca, broke these arrangements in the 1870s. Paradoxically, the system of rule Rosas designed enabled longkos to accumulate economic and political power, aided by the militarization of familial ties, which made every uncle a “great cacique” and every nephew a “captain,” all of them notionally subordinated to the Argentine commanders at frontier forts. This uneasy peace had so strengthened longkos that even when Avellaneda and Roca broke it in the 1870s, they did so only partially, attacking the indigenous groups nearest Buenos Aires while maintaining alliances with those farther away. Thus the Argentine state advanced brutally in the 1870s in the central pampas against Calfucurá, Namuncurá, and the Ranqueles but remained allied with Valentín Saygüeque, who was then at the height of his powers in Neuquén and Río Negro, leading a confederation of Tehuelche and Mapuche caciques. Only in 1879, as Roca saw his lieutenants triumph over other indigenous groups and as he prepared for the 1880 presidential election, did he turn on Saygüeque. Yet even in breaking with some indigenous allies,

46 · V e zub a n d H e a ley

Roca would continue to rely on others as well as on indigenous knowledge and combat strategies. What indigenous forces faced Roca when he invaded Patagonia in 1879? Once the leaders in the pampas had been defeated, the major groups of warriors able to offer resistance were the Pehuenches of the center and north of Neuquén, led by Purrán and Queupú among others. Immediately to the south was Reuquecurá, with whom his nephew Namuncurá had found refuge after retreating from the pampas. Below them in southern Neuquén, Río Negro, and Chubut was the confederation of Mapuches, Pampas, and Tehuelches led by Saygüeque, Guircaleufo, Ñancucheo, Nahuelpan, Curruhuinca, Inacayal, and Foyel. It is difficult to specify the exact number of warriors under each leader, since sources are contradictory and exaggerated and the pressure of the Argentine advance constantly remade alliances. But if each Mapuche notable led roughly one hundred warriors, there were approximately a thousand warriors in northern Patagonia when Roca’s forces invaded. This might seem low, especially considering the limited coordination and increasingly intense conflicts between groups. But it was nothing to scoff at, as these caciques remained part of an extensive network of mobility and solidarity, however battered, that stretched across the Andes into Araucanía3 and further south to Tehuelche territory. Against these one thousand fighters, the Argentine army fielded 1,690 soldiers in the 1881 expedition to Nahuel Huapi and 2,022 in the 1882–1883 campaign.4 The composition of the Argentine army itself reveals the importance of mixture and alliance in the supposedly unilateral Conquest of the Desert. The invading columns were led by veterans hardened by the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay (1864–1870) and the smothering of Federalist revolts across the Argentine provinces in the 1860s and 1870s. Several leaders were Uruguayans, like Colonel Conrado Villegas, especially effective because of their combat experience and lack of local ties. The leadership also included scientists and military engineers, figures like Manuel Olascoaga from Mendoza and others from Europe. The bulk of the line soldiers, what Domingo Faustino Sarmiento called “the armies of military colonists,” were veterans of the national army or provincial militias drawn from the same social groups they were fighting against.5 Their ranks included rural folk from the Argentine pampas, the “gauchos” or “creoles.”

“ Occ u py Eve ry Road a n d Pre pa re for Combat ” · 47 

They also included indigenous people enlisted by choice or by force: Mapuches, Ranqueles, Pampas, and Tehuelches from the pampas or from nearby creole settlements in Patagonia like Bahía Blanca and Carmen de Patagones. Traditional accounts recognized this mixture but emphasized the separation between groups. Recent scholarship has shown that there was less social distance than imagined, and has illuminated the many kinds of borrowings, relationships, and mixtures between groups. The Argentine military would not have taken the pampas and Patagonia without the political, practical, cognitive, and cultural mediation of “friendly Indians.” Military reports try to downplay the importance of these indigenous soldiers by classifying them as “auxiliaries.” Official documents can minimize their role, but they cannot silence it. However unsettling, shifty, or suspicious these “trackers” were, they remained the best source of intelligence and fought on the front line in the bloodiest battles.6 They knew the territory and knew indigenous tactics. They also knew war diplomacy, the protocols and tactics that governed conflict and shaped possible agreements. Military officers are eloquent in their reports that the campaign would be impossible without indigenous soldiers. As one officer wrote from the front lines in late 1882: I am making use and with great effect of the knowledge in these areas of the cacique Huincaleo and his people, both as trackers and as builders of defensive works. The behavior of this cacique and his Indians greatly helps facilitate the speed with which I execute various operations, whether by taking military actions against the enemy or by helping to alleviate the burden that falls so heavily on my troops of watching cattle and horses during the day. Relationships are being formed between our soldiers and these Indians, who seem like comrades in arms like the Indian auxiliaries of Choele-Choel and, for me, this augurs much good for the future and another guarantee for the security of these prisoners.7 The “Indian auxiliaries” made up roughly 15 percent of troops, counting only those formally recognized as indigenous.8 If one considers the possibility of passing and the concealing effect of Spanish-language surnames, they were likely many more. Indigenous troops joined the ranks as prisoners or as “presentados” who sensed the shifting balance of forces and presented themselves 48 · V e zub a n d H e a ley

to fight under the Argentine flag. Some had a longer trajectory as colonial troops, like the “tame Indians of Linares,” the 12 officers and 114 soldiers who were the largest component of the garrison at Carmen de Patagones fighting under the command of Miguel Linares, Saygüeque’s nephew.9 The geography of the conquest also underscores how much it was shaped by indigenous actors. Consider the map of the Argentine campaign in Patagonia. At first glance, one sees the outline of the “official story” (see chapter 1 by Larson in this volume), celebratory and canonical, which portrayed a modern war machine crossing the empty desert to annex the territory for good. But a closer reading of that same cartography, when combined with historical sources, brings out the details, detours, and tasks left undone. The columns did not advance across empty space but followed the course of major rivers, aiming to secure resources, especially water and grass, to enable further advances. The ultimate goal was to bring the indigenous population and resources under state control and into the labor capitalist market. Military columns thus followed the roads, riverbeds, and mountain passes that linked indigenous populations and connected them with the Atlantic coast and with Chile. Consider also how the army advanced: these were not steady advances, Napoleonic armies slowly crossing the empty steppe. Instead, they were lightning strikes in the summer and early fall. The initial goal was to break indigenous strength, not seize all territory. After the initial strikes, there remained the task of mopping up, pursuing the remaining population across the steppe or up into the mountains. Part of this was done by the later major expeditions, especially in 1882–1883 and 1883–1884, which explains their longer duration. But it continued for years, as the army maneuvered to consolidate control, close mountain passes, block indigenous movement, and capture and remove populations. Here, too, the map of military outposts can be overlaid on the prior map of indigenous settlement. This bond between military actions and the sociopolitical landscape reveals how powerfully the national advance depended on alliances and connivances with the social universe it was attacking. If it had been a “desert,” none of that would have been necessary, and the Argentine settlements could have been placed anywhere, or simply in proximity to natural resources. This suggests that the indigenous population was crucial, as objective and as participant. Although military documentation obscures it, the military advanced based on the information and resources provided by prior “ Occ upy Ev e ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 49 

social networks. Without information or trackers, the five hundred men of the Third Brigade in the 1881 campaign could hardly have hunted down families and captured prisoners by marching eight hundred kilometers from the lower Río Negro to Nahuel Huapi Lake in only eighteen days over a path almost entirely lacking drinkable water. This was an asymmetrical war with few large battles. Mapuches used guerrilla tactics, frustrating military officers who wished that they would join battle directly. Mapuches led Argentine troops off on extensive maneuvers designed to exhaust their horses. They ambushed advance patrols or the rear guard. They warned of the army’s approach with smoke signals. Military reports deplore that the enemy never launched a proper cavalry charge. Instead, Mapuches would make an intimidating demonstration of force from the hills above Argentine forces, then withdraw. These actions provided cover, enabling survivors to retreat with families, cattle, and goods south across the Río Limay or west across the Andes. The military reports hint that Mapuches and Tehuelches were very effective at waging a defensive war to limit mortality. There is palpable disappointment in military reports when expeditions found the abandoned tents of escaped indigenous groups. This was a war of raids rather than of large battles or even massacres. The destruction of homes, the forced movement of people, and the pacts subduing caciques and undoing their structures of rule were the major acts of the war of occupation, the most effective and most deadly. But the lightning raids were key, a tactic that Roca’s army had learned from the indigenous malón—and which indigenous leaders denounced as a malón huinca (white man’s raid). Forts were established where the indigenous population had been concentrated—in irrigated valleys, at crossroads, near river fords, at the openings of mountain passes. From these forts, the army launched attacks whose actions were rarely documented but whose effects were recalled in indigenous memory for generations. The forts were the center of what Enrique Mases has called the “system of distribution and allocation” of indigenous men, women, and children who were captured, gathered, and then dispatched north to ranches, barracks, workshops, sugar plantations, religious missions, wealthy homes, and ships.10 The ministerial reports are circumspect about the pursuit, massacre, and capture of indigenous populations in Patagonia, offering partial and contradictory counts, which conceal the true number of victims under the category 50 · V e zub a n d H e a l ey

Figure 4  Argentine campaigns of conquest in Patagonia: the war below the Río Negro (1881–1884). Map by Lucas Bandieri and Julio Vezub. Based on Juan Mario Raone, Fortines del desierto; and Juan Carlos Walther, La Conquista del Desierto.

of “surrendered and captured Indians.” But what they do record reflects how soldiers viewed the fight: resources secured, treasures captured, destruction caused along the way. To judge from the ministerial reports, the 1882–1883 Neuquén campaign led by Colonel Villegas was one of the deadliest, with 364 indigenous warriors killed in combat against a loss of only 4 officers and 38 soldiers. Villegas reported 1,721 captured indigenous people—warriors, elders, women, and children. But these numbers are slippery; as Villegas later announced, “without any fear of exaggeration, more than three thousand people have disappeared from the captured terrain.”11 This gap is not just a matter of sloppy statistics. It also suggests a tension between the official desire to conceal crimes and the gleeful enthusiasm of commanders for trumpeting headcounts. The official report on the 1879 campaigns above the Río Negro claimed three “ Occ u py Eve ry Road a n d Pr e pa r e for Combat ” · 51 

or four times more killings and captures than were recorded for campaigns in lower Patagonia: 1,313 indigenous warriors killed and 1,271 captured, 10,539 indigenous “chusma” captured (elderly, women, and children), 1,049 Indians “reduced,” and 480 captives rescued.12 Scholars tend to take military reports as faithful records, when in truth many brutal actions were omitted because the documentation had been hidden or eliminated. These hidden campaigns might be narrower in their geographic scope but deeper in their impact, as other documents and later testimonies insinuate. This hidden war makes the Mapuche perspective all the more interesting. The campaigns under Avellaneda and Roca were undoubtedly more intense and brutal than those before. But they were hardly the end of the “conquest,” as repressive actions by military and police continued through the early twentieth century. Some scholars argue that the transition from war to “policing the desert” in Chubut lasted until the 1930s.13 This long struggle was due to the state’s institutional weakness, to be sure, but it was also due to the strength of Mapuche and Tehuelche sociopolitical configurations, which enabled several indigenous leaders to renegotiate effectively with the new authorities.

The View of the Longkos In the years just before the conquest, the Mapuche and Tehuelche considered themselves the true rulers of Patagonia, clever negotiators whom colonizers had not overcome. From their perspective, the state’s payments of cattle, goods, and wages—and granting of military ranks—were the price the huinca government paid to recognize the caciques’ military success. This reading symbolically reversed what now might seem like the longer-term process of the advance of the frontier and the subordination of indigenous subjects. The long life of these pacts was paradoxical, as it undermined the autonomy of the caciques even as it fortified their power—until the Argentine state-in-formation grew strong enough to turn on them. This hegemonic system designed by Rosas, and its adaptations, reinforced the warrior ethos of the Mapuches: a set of practices, discourses, and self-understandings that the longkos weichafe (warrior chiefs) had shared with the gauchos and criollos since independence. This warrior ethos is key for understanding the pacts with huinca authorities.14 Caciques explained their diplomacy and the alternation between war and 52 · V e z ub a n d H e a l ey

peace in historical terms, as the continuation of a single line of conduct they had inherited directly from their ancestors. This legitimated their willingness to fight, defensively or offensively, and also their willingness to negotiate in the face of every threat. Consider how the cousins Llanquitruz and Saygüeque remembered their fathers, who were brothers. When signing a treaty with Buenos Aires in 1856, Llanquitruz explained it by insisting: “My late father was a warrior.” Saygüeque wrote in another letter: “My late father Chocori taught me that in peace and tranquility the number of inhabitants grew,” as he tried to dissuade others from attacking Roca’s men in 1879.15 As these sources suggest, correspondence is a key avenue into understanding how Mapuche and Tehuelche leaders experienced war. Longkos had sent their children to be educated in the Catholic missions in Araucanía since the eighteenth century.16 This contributed to colonial policies of discipline, consensus, and hegemony. The gradual mastery of literacy by Mapuche elites was reinforced by the presence of lettered intermediaries—scribes and secretaries— who formed bureaucratic cohorts around indigenous leaders, some permanent and others temporary, coming together around the expeditions to or from creole Spanish enclaves. Chieftains like Calfucurá or Saygüeque kept hundreds of letters they received from political leaders, ranchers, and merchants in Argentina and Chile. Found scattered in national and regional archives across both countries, many of these letters have been translated in recent years.17 In Saygüeque’s case, some 124 documents have been located, primarily from 1860 to 1881, seized by Argentine troops during their March 1881 attack.18 This extensive archive is only a small sampling of Mapuche correspondence of those years, which we know indirectly from other sources. This epistolary traffic increased significantly from the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to the increasing complexity of frontier relations. The major themes of these letters were political and commercial relations. In the 1870s, as tensions rose, the modes of epistolary sociability in these letters shifted. The secretaries of chieftains become war correspondents, providing firsthand accounts of conflicts and negotiations, threats from army leaders, mediations from religious missions, losses suffered and prisoners taken, military intelligence from indigenous and creole sources, and the dilemmas of leaders in crisis before the advance of the state. These letters linked indigenous and creole sociopolitical networks across a vast territorial reach. To offer one 1870s example, the cacique Reuquecurá “ Occ upy Eve ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 53 

in the Andes was a thousand kilometers from his brother Calfucurá and his nephew Namuncurá in Salinas Grandes in southern Buenos Aires Province. Mail brought Mapuche and Tehuelche leaders news from the war in Paraguay; from the War of the Pacific between Chile, Bolivia, and Peru; of the liberal factional struggles in Buenos Aires; of tensions between Argentina and Chile; and of the equipping of the Argentine army with Remington rifles. Information also sometimes arrived via newspapers; during his 1870 visit to the Ranquel Indians, Colonel Lucio Mansilla learned about the pending arrival of the railroad in Ranquel lands when Chief Mariano Rosas showed him an issue of a Buenos Aires newspaper announcing the development.19 Because control of the circulation of information, people, and goods was paramount, Mapuches found it especially alarming for settlers to be opening new roads with government help and threatening to reach mountain passes long under indigenous control. The letters make clear the breakdown of earlier alliances. They also highlight how this process was driven by actions taken at frontier posts. In August 1879, for example, Colonel Villegas wrote from Choele Choel to “Governor of Las Manzanas Chief Don Valentín Saygüeque” with a combination of semifriendly entreaties and outright threats. Warning of his coming expedition, Villegas wrote that “there are no difficulties we do not know how to overcome and we have many men and horses to go where we please.” Treating Saygüeque as his “true friend,” Villegas asked that he help persuade caciques closer to the frontier to withdraw and convince cacique Purrán to welcome the column led by Colonel Rufino Ortega. It was important, Villegas wrote, that “those people move along because at the hour when we move to make war on them we will not give it a second thought and will defeat and destroy them, even if they are joined by all the Indians of Chile.”20 At first, the longkos saw Roca’s 1879 attack across the frontier as a continuation of the less systematic efforts of the past, such as military attempts to manipulate the succession of authority in 1863 when Saygüeque’s cousin Manquelao died, or the threatened advance of troops on Choele Choel in 1869 ordered by President Domingo Sarmiento. For Saygüeque and others, the new events of 1879 were more of the same—attacks on the kinship ties they used to guide their political actions. Writing to the garrison commander in Carmen de Patagones in 1880, Saygüeque lamented the 1869 killings of more than fifty

54 · V e z ub a n d H e a ley

“people from the best families” as the start of the new wave of attacks. Yet he also emphasized his willingness to forbear taking vengeance and subordinate himself to the state’s logic.21 Even this late, letters were still a channel for war diplomacy. In their pages, the major longkos debated the rising threat to their political and territorial autonomy, the radical change it brought to their relationships with the Argentine and Chilean states, and their growing sense that it meant war. That was how Manuel Namuncurá put it on March 1, 1880, detailing his political work to build a united front that might have the support of Chilean authorities, since “today the Argentines are at war with the chiefs of the cordillera . . . they say because they aim to again advance down the southern cordillera where Namuncurá, Reuquecurá, and Saygüeque are.”22 Namuncurá’s letters express his sense of disaster, the demands of those under attack, the conflicts between lineages encouraged by the Argentine authorities, and the stream of provocations from army leaders to justify attacks on those who were no longer their allies. At this moment, Francisco P. Moreno was traveling through the area as an explorer, scientist, and spy. He had been there before as a guest but now returned to the tents along the Río Caleufú in Neuquén as a prisoner. The caciques ultimately allowed him to escape, hoping that this gesture would lead the commander at Choele Choel to release the sixty-eight indigenous warriors and three leaders imprisoned there for a year. Before escaping, Moreno witnessed the indigenous war council and the resolution to occupy all the roads near the frontier and prepare for combat. Years later, he recalled that as these ceremonies never lacked their ridiculous side, there was a resolution that since it was necessary to increase the number of troops, every father should give his daughter in “matrimony” to whoever asked, be they rich or poor. If such a wise measure had any result, it would only have added more children to the recently surrendered crowd.23 Beyond Moreno’s sarcasm, the anecdote reveals the desperation of the moment. The crisis had thrown internal hierarchies of prestige into question. Over previous generations, growing entanglement with the state had sharpened social differences among Mapuches because of unequal access to cattle and goods earned by raids, trade, or pacts. The resolution Moreno mocked expressed the exhaustion of leaders’ capacity to paper over these differences. Leaders hoped

“ Occ u py Eve ry Road a n d Pr e pa r e for Combat ” · 55 

to prevent defeat by returning to an idealized past by challenging the concentration of wealth, softening marriage norms, and insisting again on kinship as the source of social legitimacy. Meanwhile, around the same time in 1880, Saygüeque received letters from Roca and his subordinates Conrado Villegas and Álvaro Barros confirming him in the office he had created for himself, “Principal Governor of all the indigenous inhabitants of these deserts which were left to me as inheritance by my late father.” Saygüeque wrote that Argentine leaders had “driven all the tribes from the Pampas, occupying all the settlements and tolderías” to the Río Neuquén. He understood that Argentine leaders had persecuted the longkos Namuncurá, Reuquecurá, and Queupú for the “different absurdities and crimes” they had committed. Saygüeque aimed to reshape the region. Once the other leaders had been duly punished, Saygüeque proposed that they be placed under his authority, much as in 1878 Catriel’s people had been punished, then placed under the control of another Mapuche-Tehuelche, his nephew Miguel Linares, the commander of the “tame Indians” at the garrison in Carmen de Patagones. Saygüeque held that the Argentine president was fully within his rights to carry out “his project against all the barbarians . . . because they were not his legitimate creole descendants in the pampas now occupied by the Christian huincas.” But while he discounted these other Mapuches in the north, Saygüeque begged that Argentine troops respect his lands in the south, halting their march at the Río Neuquén and pardoning those who fled before the troops to take shelter with their kin in the cordillera. The letter reveals Saygüeque’s ambivalent position: he refers to Argentines with Mapuche terms like “huinca” (foreign invader), signaling the illegitimate nature of the occupation, but also stresses the rootlessness of Mapuches who had been living on the pampas, calling them “barbarians.”24 Saygüeque’s letters show him avoiding direct confrontation and reveal the limitations of his defensive strategy. In a contradictory way, he attempted war diplomacy. He turned down the invitations of Namuncurá and Reuquecurá to form a unified front and instead tried to come to terms with the Argentine state. While accepting attacks on other longkos, at least rhetorically, he aimed to revive his own earlier agreements with Argentine authorities in the hope of strengthening his influence over other longkos. The Argentine government tactically accepted Saygüeque’s role as mediator, only to cast him aside once the military’s destructive power was great enough. 56 · V e z ub a n d H e a l ey

However useful the alliance with Saygüeque had been, it contradicted the liberal positivism of politicians like Julio Roca and Álvaro Barros, who saw no place for caciques in the future republic. In any case, by 1880, the government already had the allegiance of other Mapuches who were less ambitious and more submissive to state order. In September 1879, Saygüeque wrote to his nephew Linares, one of the Mapuches serving under the Argentine flag, and the new governor of Patagonia, Álvaro Barros, to criticize their torture of the men he had sent to parlay. It would have been enough to explain that “there were no more rations to give,” Saygüeque wrote, insisting that he was willing to do without the official provision of cattle he and his ancestors had received since Rosas was in power. He could feed himself with “the wild carnivorous animals wandering on my lands” and dress himself with “the weavings of my women without ever desiring the work of my neighbor.” His letter highlighted two traditional sources of Mapuche and Tehuelche wealth while renouncing another—the practice of malones—which had been key to his power until the 1850s. His letter asked only for the freedom of his delegation and his right to continue trading with Carmen de Patagones. He requested safe passage for a representative to renegotiate terms with Buenos Aires. Insinuating that he had the resources to depart for “another republic,” meaning Chile, he threatened to lead a group of 1,700 armed men to Choele Choel to confront Colonel Villegas. This was an implausible number, considering that Moreno and another Argentine visitor had counted at most 500 warriors in his ranks. Once more insisting that Barros and Linares free the seventy-one captured men of “the most important families,” Saygüeque recognized despite himself the severity of the blow, while offering an indication of how much his own people insisted that he push back.25 Addressing Mapuche leaders as “dear compatriots,” Barros wrote a letter in December 1879 setting out the new political terms. There were to be no more cattle rations, no more subsidies, and no more commercial trade circuits under Mapuche control. Indigenous communities would be uprooted, reduced, and resettled. Old rights would be erased and new rights created. In theory, indigenous people would have the same rights as immigrants, who were granted land, tools, oxen, cattle, and support for a year. To receive these new benefits required obeying the laws and accepting the protection of the government. Once all current Mapuche wealth had been expropriated, Barros cynically suggested, indigenous subjects could get wealthy just like creole and “ Occ upy Ev e ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 57 

Figure 5  “Tame Indians of Linares,” Chichinales. Photograph by Antonio Pozzo. In María Inés Rodríguez Aguilar and Julio Vezub, Patrimonios visuales patagónicos.

European immigrants did. Anyone who refused these conditions would be left unprotected, unable to survive on hunting or weaving, and forced to “live from theft . . . chased down, punished, and captured.”26 Longkos understood that these rules meant the complete breakdown of their way of life. The new dictums destroyed the seasonal dynamics and circuits of migration and trade that had allowed them to combine hunting, cattle raising, and the use of resources like salt or the pehuén pine cones used to make flour (see Christensen’s chapter in this volume). Another cacique wrote on May 26, 1880, that the government’s offer aimed to “damage and enslave us.” The news from Chile and Argentina led him to conclude that the government and its agents, even Mapuches like Miguel Linares and his brother Mariano, hungered for their subjugation “as for the tastiest meat.”27 While the author of this last letter is unknown because part of the document was lost, the header states that it came from “the Undersigned Cacique of the Manzanas,” a formula used by several of Saygüeque’s lieutenants, and it was written to 58 · V e zub a n d H e a l ey

Mariano Linares. A few years earlier, Saygüeque had horrified explorer Francisco Moreno by remarking: “[I]t has been many years since I dampened my hand in [huinca] blood, I haven’t tasted caritun huinca” since a malón in 1855. Moreno clarified that “caritun” meant raw flesh, “a figure of Indian rhetoric they use when they’ve carried out a massacre of Christians.”28 If it was Mapuches who were now “the tastiest meat,” that suggested the force of the cannibalistic metaphor and how dire the threat had become. In his letters, Saygüeque insisted to Roca’s officers that his people had been on the northern pampas since the eighteenth century, and “when the Christians or Spaniards fought until they were covered in blood, some had remained free by divine Providence, and we are the offspring of those ancestors.”29 But while Saygüeque recounted history in his letters to justify his territorial rights to Patagonia, fruit of five generations of gradual retreat from the pampas, he remained ambivalent toward other Mapuche leaders. When Manuel Namuncurá wrote in December 1879 requesting horses “because of the losses among our people,” he evaded their invitations to unify resistance. Manuel Namuncurá protested that “until now I haven’t had any answer from you, Uncle, what is your thinking, what do you think?” Namuncurá asked that he send “his response in words but not on paper,” that is, through trusted messengers. He invited Saygüeque to join the “work,” meaning the political activity and military mobilization of caciques on both sides of the Andes, recognizing Saygüeque’s influence over longkos farther south like Foyel and Inacayal.30 Namuncurá pointed out that the Buenos Aires press was reporting the death of General Ignacio Rivas, who had defeated his father Calfucurá at San Carlos (1872), the greatest battle against Mapuches on the northern pampas. The correspondence ends in February 1881, shortly before Villegas’s troops seized the archive during an attack. The last missives are desperate requests for the return of captured kin and justifications for ignoring Argentine invitations to parlay out of the well-founded fear of being captured. The last letter to Saygüeque from Bernardo Namuncurá foresaw the violence that was coming. Writing in his own hand on January 5, 1881, Namuncurá anticipated the attack on the Indigenous Government of Las Manzanas, highlighting the Argentine intention of conquering “all of the Indian Nation” east of the cordillera. He expressed the forms of Mapuche global identity that were important for these longkos, such as Juan de Dios Neculmán, a cacique “ Occ upy Ev e ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 59 

on the other side of the Andes, who insisted that “we not make ourselves captives of the Christians” and celebrated that Saygüeque “had remembered and seen the future in us” and had “raised his head to speak to the Supreme Government in Buenos Aires in defense of our people and do a great work in favor of our race.”31 To underscore the danger, Namuncurá transcribed a letter from “two gentlemen” of Chile, who were not identified and may have been agents of the Chilean army, warning that the people of Saygüeque and his brother-in-law Ñancucheo would face attacks from the Argentine military in January and February 1881. Namuncurá urged that they keep the warning a secret and only share it with trusted caciques, since “this news had come to him on the wind.”32 Only the final offensive would make Saygüeque abandon his attempts to make deals. At last joining his relatives Calfucurá, Namuncurá, and Reuquecurá— the lineage of the stone, because “curá” means stone—Saygüeque belatedly and fruitlessly attacked the fort at the confluence of the Neuquén and Limay Rivers in January 1882, the only real counterattack he mounted during the campaign. Saygüeque was not to blame for failing to articulate a common response. The gradual way in which the Argentine state fanned conflicts and broke prior agreements made it difficult; Mapuche and Tehuelche political structures made it nearly impossible. That is made clear in Reuquecurá’s explanation to Colonel Villegas of the difficulty of bringing other caciques to negotiations: I am going to bring together all my people as I am going to make a council of all the Pehuenche caciques (from the north), because I know they are half alone, to make them see everything that you tell me to tell them in your note, because those chiefs belong to another leader, Purrán, Guaquillan and Guechen, Zuñiga and Queupú, who are the chiefs who are in revolt.33 Despite taking a common oath “for none to surrender and to fight to the death, obliged to give mutual support among the tribes,” the chiefs grouped under Saygüeque offered only partial and divided resistance.34 Facing a determined enemy who had driven them seven hundred kilometers south of their territory and would soon drive them farther still, they tried to negotiate the best possible terms for peace. Resistance was limited, with no major battles, and broke down as successive caciques turned themselves over, becoming trackers or spotters for the army. The soft confederation that had proven so 60 · V e zub a n d H e a l ey

effective at resisting the attacks of Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1833 fell apart before a more powerful enemy two generations later. In the following years, the army continued its repressive task in Chubut via raids that combined military and paramilitary forces. Yet as late as the 1890s, much of Patagonia remained outside the firm control of the state. Government officials had to combine brutal punitive raids with ongoing negotiations and agreements. This underscores the capacity and endurance of indigenous resistance, as well as the remaking and adaptation of indigenous leadership to the new context. Saygüeque and the caciques loyal to him fled south, where the 1883–1884 expedition chased them down. After a series of skirmishes, and thanks to the mediation of indigenous “auxiliaries,” Saygüeque agreed to “present himself ” to Argentine authorities at his birthplace in Neuquén, where soldiers had already built a fort. After a year-long march of over seven hundred kilometers with his followers, he surrendered at the fort in Junín de los Andes on January 1, 1885, according to the official account, and was taken to Buenos Aires as an important prisoner, received in person by President Julio Roca. This long process of negotiation, the intermediary role played by “friendly Indians” who were also Saygüeque’s relatives, and the degree to which Saygüeque maintained his authority over his people all make it doubtful that this was the complete “surrender” that Argentine officials boasted about, or that it was seen as such by longkos. Many of Saygüeque’s relatives were captured and distributed across Argentine territory, but other survivors returned with him shortly afterward to the concentration camp at Chichinales, where they remained under military supervision until 1888. Once they were released, they began another long march to the south in the hope of gaining a concession of land in southeastern Chubut. A “colony of aborígenes” of fifty square leagues was granted to Saygüeque by national law in 1899, thanks to the lobbying of his friend, the ever ambivalent Francisco P. Moreno, who is quoted at the beginning of this chapter.

Resistance in Memory and Narrative Besides correspondence, Mapuches left other written evidence of the experience of war, such as a manuscript that arrived in 1899 at the home of linguist Rodolfo Lenz in Santiago, Chile. Unsigned and without a return address, “ Occ u py Eve ry Road a n d Pre pa re for Combat ” · 61 

the text can be attributed on other evidence to Ignacio Cañiumir, who must have written it sometime after 1885. When it was published a century later, editors called it an “imaginary parliament” because its genre recalled the ritual of trawün, or Mapuche council or parliament. Even if the specific meeting proved difficult to identify, the war situation the document describes and the references to longkos, locations, and events underscore its historical relevance. Marisa Malvestitti, translator and editor of the text, hypothesizes that it combines memories of several parliaments carried out on both sides of the cordillera around 1881 and presents the viewpoints of the caciques, even if there are no details tying it to any one meeting in particular. Cañiumir writes in Mapuzungun, the Mapuche language, about a five-year “war” (aukan) in Puelmapu and Ngulumapu (the “Country of the East” and “Country of the West,” what are now Argentina and Chile). He narrates the “foreign attacks” or huinca malón, the captivity afterward on Martín García Island near Buenos Aires, the flight into Araucanía of caciques like Purrán, the defensive strategies, the mutual aid, and the brutal choices of those who negotiated with the authorities, without making it easy to distinguish between those who fought, those who fled, and those who came to terms.35 The key point is that trying to narrate these events in the terms actors used at the time, with talk of war and malones and huincas, makes it difficult to disentangle political phenomena from strictly military ones. Historians of the Mapuche world have distinguished among the different ways of specifying armed conflict in the sources: tautulún or revenge, malón or the seizing of cattle and captives, aukan or uprising, and weichan or war to defend territory or block the advance of the frontier.36 These are the terms Mapuches used with fin de siècle ethnographers to describe the invasion by Chilean and Argentine nation-states, which endure to the present as a way of reckoning with legacies of territorial conflict, memories of crimes and dispossessions, and autonomous or nationalist demands in Wallmapu on both sides of the Andes. These are words like kona and weichafe, used to describe “soldiers” or “warriors.” These are the same terms used in nütram (see Ramos’s chapter in this volume), a genre of oral narratives told over campfires and rounds of mate from generation to generation, which recount the stories of characters like the nawel or tigre, or the “Foot of Stone,” the totem of cacique Namuncurá (Namuncará means “foot of stone” in nütram), which led families fleeing the concentration camps in Buenos Aires back to the land Namuncurá had received in Neuquén.37 62 · V e zub a n d H e a l ey

These were the terms used by cacique Damacio Caitruz, born in 1908, when he was interviewed in 1966 by filmmaker Jorge Prelorán for his documentary Araucanos de Ruca Choroy.38 When Damacio spoke, he described Argentine forces in the old way, as “Spaniards,” as the elderly still describe people from the big cities. He spoke of the war of the 1870s and 1880s, beginning with the military attacks on his mother’s people on the pampas. He went on to describe the role of his grandfather Queupú in leading resistance and keeping his mother safe, as they fled several times into Patagonia and crossed over into Chile before finally settling in Neuquén years later: And there came the Spaniards killing and capturing, because that’s what my mother told me. She was born in Azul [on the pampas in Buenos Aires Province] and she has told me the whole history of those times, when they chased out all the indigenous peoples, the old ones. . . . The Spaniards, they arrived in the middle of the night, the huinca malón, they destroyed everything, they killed, they shot, they ended the indigenous people, the Spaniards ended them, and captured them, but many Spaniards also died. That is what my mother told me. . . . So the cacique generals started to flee, to shoot back at the Spaniards, so that is where my grandfather was, cacique Queupú, a man short but powerful, and the cacique brought many people, and they kept fleeing, and they reached this side of the Río Colorado and they were there five years. . . . They were very sad, she said, they told the truth. And they ran from there when the Spanish arrived, once again, and they made it to the village of Las Lajas [in Neuquén]. They were there for a long time, years, and the Spanish advanced. They took captives and the caciques all fled. And then at last they arrived, at the last minute, at the lake here by Sainocó [in Neuquén], where there is a crossing, and they even went over into Chile, fleeing, and that’s how my mother saved her life and was not captured, she doesn’t know how many years she was in Chile. When everything was at peace, they went back to their place in Argentina, and my father married my mother and they stayed here on the border. But there was no more worry, no danger, everyone knew how to say [to the authorities], “Yes, Yes Sir, No Sir,” they were all tame. And they came to Neuquén to live in Ruca Choroy until their last days, and there they are buried. “ Occ upy Ev e ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 63 

These memories are repeated in other chronicles of deportations and forced migration, like the case of Félix Manquel, an elder who in the 1980s recalled the stories of his father, about how the “Spaniards” or huinca slashed the tendons of the prisoners overcome by exhaustion, leaving them to die by the road, or castrated them like animals. But he also remembered the defense offered by Namuncurá’s men, who attacked the “Spaniards” with rocks and slings from above because they had no other weapons.39 The complex interplay between negotiation and war can also be seen in the memories of Francisca Traipe, wife of Sergio Nahuelpan, whose grandfather Francisco was one of Saygüeque’s key lieutenants: In the days of the army expedition, they took Francisco Nahuelpan prisoner near Neuquén, they needed 17 soldiers to take him, because he was a very strong man. . . . After surrendering he threw himself to the ground so they would kill him, but the army captain said not to kill him because he was a valiant man and would be useful to them to speak with the caciques. And so they say he went ahead of the army, guiding them. He spoke in a good way with the caciques, to avoid confrontations. Francisca’s husband, Sergio, continued: We owe everything to my grandfather Francisco Nahuelpan, because thanks to him we have this place; he was the one who fought against the army until they took him prisoner, then negotiated and reached an agreement, and in exchange they handed over this land to continue living with his people.40 The words of this couple show the impossible choice faced by longkos during Argentina’s war of conquest, as armed resistance gave way to collaboration. Argentine officers held longkos in high regard for their valor, their combat abilities, and their skills in enticing other indigenous leaders to “present themselves” or switch sides. In the warrior ethos of the frontier, political alliance and opposition were not fixed positions but rather interchangeable ones. As already discussed, from the Mapuche point of view, this was not a matter of surrender, of defeat, but rather of choosing another, equally valid option for defending their territory and renegotiating earlier pacts with the national state. Of course, this meant accepting new terms of subordination 64 · V e zub a n d H e a ley

and impoverishment, compelled by massacres and the reduction to servitude of whole families. Concessions of land as a “military reward” for their services as trackers, however barren or distant from their traditional territories, explain why Mapuches and Tehuelches later valued their ancestors’ ability to maintain their prestige as local notables. This combination of a warrior ethos, an openness to negotiation, and legitimate leadership is present in the message from Purrán, one of the main resistance leaders, to Colonel Rufino Ortega, who was invading Neuquén from Mendoza. I have gathered 2,000 fighting men so they won’t bother me and another 3,000 in territories of the south who defend interests and lives. You, Mr. Ortega, make us proposals of friendship, but you should send your boss because I consider myself to be at home and you are an outside intruder. Tell Isaac Torres that he should come in the company of some head officer and with complete confidence since he knows very well we are friends of long standing and want friendship and peace. If you prove yourself a gentleman, we will write back in the same terms, and if you are generous, we also will be.41

Figure 6. Longko Millaman and his family, Ñorquín. In Carlos Encina and Edgardo Moreno, Vistas fotográficas del territorio nacional del Limay y Neuquén, 1883. “ Occ upy Ev e ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 65 

Purrán’s speech clearly presents defensive war as a means to achieve peace. Defensive war was thus a continuity with the past: the older agreements with Argentine and Chilean authorities, the role of mediators, the gentlemen’s agreements, the revival of coexistence pacts and autonomous status for the frontier caciques. This warrior ethos characterized many of the great men of this generation, for instance Manuel Kollio Kotar, a friend of Namuncurá who “was mostly weichafe [warrior]” and “more than anything else was interested in wechan,” or military enterprises.42 This warrior ethos of the caciques was valued by the victors, who used them to construct a new sovereign order. Military reports show Lieutenant Colonel Lino Oris de Roa at points disoriented and dependent on his indigenous allies as he set out to defeat and capture those remaining in the interior of Río Negro and Chubut. These reports detail indigenous communities carefully organized for protection, communicating via signal fires, watchmen, and messengers; gathered in tents like military encampments with ample supplies of horses and close knowledge of the terrain; and commanded by respected leaders who offered heroic defenses. Honored in the initial reports, as shown for example by the recognition of Saygüeque as “Governor,” these caciques would lose their “merit” precisely when Argentine authorities managed to displace them as intermediaries and remove them from commanding their people. This was just what is depicted in the “history of what was done with Saygüeque when he reached the land of the Christians” after coming to terms with Oris de Roa. This history was written by Nahuelpi, a young Mapuche who had been drafted as a soldier and who met the cacique during his trip in captivity back to Buenos Aires. As Nahuelpi put it: Saygüeque came to present himself. This time when Saygüeque presented himself they received him properly. They gave him supplies for his people, rations of mate, sugar, and tobacco. After some time them took him to Chichinales. Then they took his people away to make them soldiers. Then Saygüeque no longer had merit. Those who were not soldiers deserted, headed back to their own lands.43

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Figure 7. Pulmarí Valley, Neuquén, 2014. Photograph by Julio Vezub.

Conclusion The euphemistic language of “expeditions” used by classic accounts aimed to sanitize and simplify a colonial war of expansion, removing all of its social and political complexity. Based on the correspondence of indigenous leaders, community memories, and other primary sources, this chapter has developed a different account of the history of Argentine military campaigns in Patagonia that stresses the perspectives of the caciques themselves. By taking the perspectives and experiences of caciques seriously, we come to a different understanding of the political and military dynamics at the heart of the conflict. As we have shown, both the decision to fight to the last or the decision to negotiate or collaborate with invaders should be understood based on the decades of frontier experience of the longkos. But this understanding should also take into account the decades of experience of the Argentine commanders, who knew well that Mapuche political structures did not present a united front and Mapuche leaders did not share the same goals. The long-standing uneasy peace inherited from Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852 helped produce the “ Occ upy Ev e ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 67 

indigenous militarization that ultimately produced resistance, but it also established enduring mechanisms for indigenous groups to ally themselves with the Argentine state and to provide indigenous soldiers for the ranks of the Argentine army. Either way, the warrior ethos is key for understanding both pacts with huinca authorities and war against them. The sources reveal caciques writing to each other about their “work,” which encompassed both political activity and military mobilization. Caciques explained their diplomacy and the alternation between war and peace in historical terms, as the continuation of a single line of conduct they had inherited directly from their ancestors. That is why present-day Mapuche activists can find reason in even complicated trajectories like that of Saygüeque to celebrate the tactical intelligence and heroism of the caciques. To be sure, the unity of purpose proclaimed before Francisco Moreno in the meeting described at the beginning of this chapter proved a chimera, and caciques were unable to agree on shared choices or a unified strategy of defense. Resistance was limited and broke down as successive caciques turned themselves over, becoming trackers or soldiers or spotters for the army. Yet even so, indigenous leaders proved far more effective than generally recognized in coordinating retreat, mitigating massacres, protecting families, re-creating their social structures, and negotiating new conditions of subordination to the national state in this war of brutal attacks but no major battles. This was so much the case that the comment of Conrado Villegas, one of Roca’s most famous lieutenants, that there was no longer a single Indian left galloping across the desert, was nothing more than a wish. It was a propaganda slogan intended to defend a victory that was never complete, as this exploration of the perspectives of caciques underscores.

Notes 1. Moreno, Reminiscencias de Francisco P. Moreno, 153. 2. Ratto, “Una experiencia fronteriza exitosa.” 3. Araucanía is the area below the Bío River on the western side of the Andes, which would be fully conquered by the Chilean state in these same years. 4. Villegas, “Espedicion al Gran Lago Nahuel-Huapí,” 52, 181, 264; and Ministerio de Guerra y Marina, Campaña al sur de la Patagonia, 37, 51. 5. Sarmiento, “Argirópolis o la capital,” 94–96. 6. On “savage mediators” or ethnic soldiers, see Richard, “El malestar del mediador salvaje.”

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7. R. Suárez, 3ª Brigada, Chenqueniyeo, Río Negro, December 23, 1882, in Ministerio de Guerra y Marina, Campaña al sur de la Patagonia, 371, also 57, 145–49. 8. Official reports count indigenous troops as 10 to 20 percent of total forces, depending on the campaign. Ministerio de Guerra y Marina, Campaña al sur de la Patagonia. 9. Miguel Linares had led the Battalion of Indian Auxiliaries at Carmen de Patagones since 1867 and went from being a key intermediary to leading the attack on his own relatives. Vezub, Valentín Saygüeque y la “Gobernación Indígena.” 10. Mases, Estado y cuestión indígena. 11. Informe de Conrado Villegas al Inspector y Comandante General de Armas, Joaquín Viejobueno, Carmen de Patagones, May 5, 1883. Ministerio de Guerra y Marina, Campaña al sur de la Patagonia, 15. 12. Ministerio de Guerra y Marina, Memoria del Departamento de Guerra y Marina, iv. 13. Sourrouille, “Nahuelpán, Colonia 16 de Octubre y Argentine Southern Land Co.” 14. Rabinovich, “La gloria, esa plaga.” 15. José María Bulnes Llanquitruz to Comandante de Carmen de Patagones Benito Villar, May 31, 1856, Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), X.19.4.5; and Valentín Saygüeque to Sargento Mayor Miguel Linares, Río Caleufú, July 7, 1879, AGN VII, legajo 723. 16. Boccara, Guerre et ethnogenèse Mapuche. 17. Tamagnini, Cartas de frontera; Pavez Ojeda, Cartas mapuche; Durán, Namuncurá y Zeballos; Vezub, “Mapuche-Tehuelche Spanish Writing”; and Lobos, Juan Calfucurá: Correspondencia. 18. This archival collection includes an original copy of Saygüeque’s 1863 treaty with the Argentine republic, found in “Angel Justiniano Carranza,” AGN, legajo 723, along with the papers of Saygüeque’s principal enemy, Conrado Villegas. 19. Mansilla, Una excursión a los indios ranqueles, 1:262–64. 20. AGN VII, legajo 723, f. 10. 21. Letter to Gobernador de la Patagonia Álvaro Barros, October 23, 1880, AGN VII, legajo 155. 22. AGN VII, legajo 723, f. 403. 23. Moreno, Reminiscencias de Francisco P. Moreno, 153. 24. Valentín Saygüeque to Gobernador de la Patagonia Álvaro Barros, September 27, 1879, AGN VII, legajo 156. 25. AGN VII, legajo 723, fs. 419, 427–30. 26. AGN VII, legajo 723, fs. 387–89. 27. AGN VII, legajo 723, fs. 435–36. 28. The malón in question was an attack on San Antonio in 1855, where only 2 soldiers of a garrison of 126 were left alive, shortly before the Mapuches signed another peace treaty with Buenos Aires. Moreno, Viaje a la Patagonia Austral, 117–18. “ Occ upy Eve ry Road a n d Pr e pa re for Combat ” · 69 

29. Letter to Conrado Villegas, August 5, 1879, AGN VII, 723, fs. 202–5. 30. Letters of December 15, 1879, and March 1, 1880, AGN VII, legajo 723, fs. 391, 403. 31. AGN VII, legajo 723, f. 392. 32. AGN VII, legajo 723, f. 450. 33. AGN VII, legajo 723, f. 15. 34. Oris de Roa, “Columna expedicionaria al interior de la Patagonia,” 78. 35. Malvestitti, introduction to El parlamento imaginario, 21. 36. Villar and Jiménez, “La tempestad de la guerra.” 37. Golluscio, El pueblo Mapuche, 173–201 and Lorena Cañuqueo, quoted in Ramos, Los pliegues del linaje, 100. 38. An original copy of the film is held by the Human Studies Film Archive at the Smithsonian Institution, and excerpts can be found on the Smithsonian’s official channel and elsewhere on YouTube; see https://anthropology.si.edu/accessing anthropology/preloran/index.html. 39. Perea, . . . y Félix Manquel dijo . . ., 7–19. 40. Museo de Culturas Originarias Patagónicas de Nahuelpan. Quoted in Sourrouille, “Nahuelpán, Colonia 16 de Octubre y Argentine Southern Land Co.,” 126. 41. “Documento indígena,” El Constitucional (Mendoza), January 10, 1880; quoted in Laría, “Actitud del indio antes y después de realizarse la expedición,” ii. Isaac Torres was another Mapuche mediator in service to Argentine officers who had a military degree himself. 42. Guevara, Las últimas familias i costumbres araucanas, 183. 43. Malvestitti, Mongeleluchi Zungu, 142.

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THREE

Environment and the Conquest of the Desert, 1876–1885 Rob Christensen Introduction The Conquista del Desierto, or Conquest of the Desert, marked the end of indigenous sovereignty in Pampas-Patagonia. The system of confederacies forged over the preceding century was dismantled as new forms of political power emanating from the nation-state took their place. But there is a radical disjuncture between portrayals of indigenous people at the height of their power only a decade prior and those that fill the voluminous documentation surrounding the desert campaign. How could a civilization that successfully resisted first the Spanish and later the Argentine armies that had invaded their lands to subdue them on many previous occasions be so easily swept aside?1 In this chapter, I argue that the national army’s victory was shaped by the confluence of many forces outside creole leaders’ control, many of which they were unaware of. Technological superiority was a factor, but it did less to ensure their victory than did a crippling smallpox epidemic that disproportionately affected indigenous people. Extreme weather resulting from the most intense El Niño of the century also contributed to famine. Further undermining its political stability and economic prosperity, this anomalous weather perfectly exposed the vulnerabilities of the indigenous sociopolitical order. Thus, the desert campaign was fought by a disorganized, hungry, sick fraction of the total of indigenous warriors, against an enemy with newly acquired superior technology in extreme weather conditions that tended to favor them. This confluence of forces was how the national army’s victory was made to look so effortless. 71

Military history often focuses on specific tactics and operations carried out on the battlefield: prudent decisions made by wise commanders, the bravery of soldiers, poor supply lines—in short, human actions. This chapter looks instead to explain how environmental factors shaped the story of the Conquest of the Desert, arguing that they restricted the choices human actors had and gave unintended consequences to others. This chapter is organized into four sections. The first details the climate systems affecting Pampas-Patagonia, the second explains the structural vulnerabilities of indigenous society, and the third delves into the ways that the disease environment—smallpox in particular—exploited the changes in human behavior that resulted from extreme weather and war during this period. The fourth considers how weather, disease, and war combined to facilitate the outbreak of diseases, restrict economic activities, destabilize polities, and hinder movement for indigenous people in ways that gave creoles a military advantage and made the conquest even more costly for indigenous people.

Climate in Pampas-Patagonia The Pampas and Patagonia each had their own distinct ecosystems differentiated primarily by the different amounts of precipitation that each received. At the heart of the differential is the fact that these regions lie at the intersection of two weather systems: the dry lands of Patagonia dominated by the Pacific system, and the wetter Pampas influenced by weather patterns in the Atlantic Ocean and the continental South American Summer Monsoon (SASM). In Patagonia, the intense winds blowing over the Andes Mountains create a pronounced rain shadow, making the area one of the driest in South America. While “Patagonia” often refers to the entire region south of the Río Colorado, I use it here to denote the northern section, which was of greatest concern to contemporary Argentines and which hosted the Northern Patagonian Confederacy, comprising roughly the territories of the modern provinces of Río Negro and Neuquén. The grasslands of the Pampas receive considerably more rain, primarily during the peak December–February months of the SASM but also through fairly regular wintertime low-pressure systems that move in from the Atlantic.2 The effect of these two phenomena is to make precipitation in the Pampas a seasonal affair. Rainfall is typically greatest in the eastern section of the region (the pampa húmeda) and decreases moving westward (the pampa 72 · C h ri st e n s e n

seca) until reaching the more arid Cuyo region. Because the availability of water is the main constraint on the production of primary biomass in the arid steppe, temperature is less important than water for the growth of forage, making the region particularly vulnerable to drought.3 The Conquest of the Desert coincided with one of the most intense El Niño events of the century, initiating catastrophic famine in diverse places around the globe and bringing on a difficult drought in Pampas-Patagonia. Although contemporaries did not have a clear understanding of the causes of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, scientists today understand them much better. In general terms, ENSO events involve a weakening (El Niño) or strengthening (La Niña) of the normal patterns of circulation in the waters of the Pacific Ocean and in the air above it. Under normal conditions, the circulation of cool water from deep in the ocean cools the western coast of South America. Under El Niño conditions, the trade winds and ocean currents that drive this circulation are significantly weaker, increasing convection (and therefore precipitation) as well as temperatures on the west coast of South America. Stronger than normal circulation produces La Niña conditions, bringing drier and cooler weather. These events tend to last between nine months and two years, but normal weather conditions may be disrupted for longer as the effects of the weather anomaly ripple through the interconnected atmospheric and oceanic systems around the globe.4 Although the factors controlling ENSO are still not completely understood, many of its effects are clearer. Atmospheric scientists generally agree that drier weather over Argentine Patagonia follows a year after the onset of an El Niño.5 An increase in moisture transported in from the tropics brings higher summer precipitation in northwestern Argentina and the Pampas despite a general weakening of the SASM. Even more significant increases come from an increase in moisture arriving from outside the tropics, making for notably wetter winters and springs in the same areas. El Niño, therefore, regularly reduces rainfall over Argentine Patagonia while greatly increasing it in the eastern Pampas. Measurements taken at weather stations in Pampas-Patagonia suggest that the 1877 El Niño brought precisely the weather that current models and proxy data would predict.6 Data from the weather station at Bahía Blanca, Argentina (at the southeastern end of the Pampas), shows far above average precipitation and twenty-two-year maxima for summer temperature during the years E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 73 

Yearly Precipitation Averages, Bahía Blanca, 1860–1881

Figure 8. Monthly average precipitation in millimeters, smoothed to yearly increments. Note that 1876–1877 are the wettest years in the sample. See Caronti, “Temperature and Precipitation Measurements in Bahía Blanca.”

following the 1877 El Niño.7 By June 1878, the El Niño was in its demise, and dry weather followed.8 Dry conditions continued for some time, and the Welsh colony in central Patagonia reported a complete lack of precipitation for twelve consecutive months prior to the harvests of both 1881 and 1883.9 These conditions combined to disrupt indigenous societies precisely when they were forced to confront what was perhaps the most serious existential threat they had ever faced.

Indigenous Society in Pampas-Patagonia Indigenous societies throughout the region underwent an incredible revolution over the two centuries preceding the conquest. The societies of nomadic huntergatherers that had previously occupied the region became dramatically more complex in their political and economic activities, building trade networks that stretched from Buenos Aires across the Andes to Valdivia in Chile and down to the Straits of Magellan. The societies that emerged from this revolution were especially structurally vulnerable to economic depressions and total war, which doubly disadvantaged them when a weather-induced economic downturn coincided with the Conquest of the Desert. 74 · C h r i st e n s e n

Their basic social unit was the toldería, a grouping of tents (toldos) comprising about ten families of about ten people each.10 Each toldería was led by a male chieftain who organized relations with other tolderías. Hierarchies among the most powerful leaders developed, transforming from loosely related groups in the late eighteenth century into a set of powerful confederacies by the early nineteenth century.11 Confederacies were not monolithic by any stretch of the imagination and consisted of groups of tolderías ruled by caciques with varying levels of power over other groups, each holding overlapping loyalties and obligations. Powerful caciques held lower capitanejos’ allegiance by distributing booty and creating kinship bonds—a pattern not uncommon among nomadic societies around the world.12 These confederacies can be grouped into two principal sets: the Pampas Confederacy, focused around the leadership of the Curá dynasty, controlled the vast grasslands of the southern Pampas stretching out west to the Andes. The Northern Patagonian Confederacy, led principally by Saygüeque and Llanquitruz, controlled the fertile Andean foothills of modern Neuquén Province along the Río Negro to Carmen de Patagones. Politics were organized around social bonds at the level of the toldería and beyond to guarantee stability, and although the region was distorted by economic and social upheaval, kinship and reciprocity crossed ethnic boundaries and usually managed to prevent large-scale intra-indigenous conflict.13 Pampas-Patagonia was a place without a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, but where overwhelming force was used sporadically to impose political norms.14 Caciques could negotiate treaties with the Argentines, but that did not mean they could always prevent their warriors from riding out to a raid on their own accord. Thus, hierarchical political power was tenuous, and the power of caciques anything but monolithic. The indigenous economy of Pampas-Patagonia was based around a variety of subsistence activities including traditional hunting and gathering, but also the extensive cultivation of maize and melons, weaving, livestock raising, and commerce. Mostly this interaction involved trading cattle raised by indigenous people or taken in malones (as raids on estancias in the Pampas were called) for goods that could not be produced locally, like sugar and yerba mate. Raids often also included taking creole captives to be ransomed back by relatives or to act as cultural intermediaries. Most notable of all, however, was the trans-Andean trade with Chile. The early eighteenth century saw Mapuches from Chile venture to the eastern side of the Andes. These Mapuches integrated themselves E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 75 

into the indigenous societies of the Pampas, in many cases becoming their chiefs and making their own language (Mapuzungun) the dominant language of commerce. They also acquired an intimate knowledge of safe routes through the often perilous deserts and mountains between the Pampas and markets and kin in Chile. Geography, a common language, and newly formed but no less powerful bonds of kinship facilitated what is thought to have been an enormous volume of exchange. This trade, primarily consisting of cattle driven from the Pampas to Chile, even drove the partial monetization of PampasPatagonia.15 Such diversification made the indigenous economy resilient to many kinds of stresses, but dependent on access to markets. By the end of the colonial period, Spanish authorities had decided it was easier to buy off indigenous communities than to endure constant raiding. A regular supply of raciones, or tribute goods, flowed from Buenos Aires to Pampas-Patagonia beginning in the 1780s up until the 1870s, decreasing but not eliminating the malones that they were intended to stamp out. Tribute payments comprised both prestige and subsistence goods including flour, tobacco, mares (for consumption), sugar, and aguardiente. As a testament to their effectiveness, a hiatus in ración deliveries during the years immediately following Argentine independence saw a marked increase in malones, which again abated only after the renewal of shipments.16 These payments were not without consequences for the indigenous: the ultimate result of the raciones and commerce that defined the indigenous economy by the 1870s was dependence on manufactured goods for many aspects of day-to-day life, and on the distribution of goods acquired through raciones and malones for group cohesion. The interruption of either flow had the potential to undermine the political and economic stability of indigenous society, but the ración system helped supplement a comfortable standard of living for many indigenous people during the century that it functioned. Besides impressing travelers with the wealth of their toldos, indigenous communities even had enough surplus to give aid to starving creoles at Carmen de Patagones and in the Welsh colony repeatedly during the century before the Conquest of the Desert.17 Over that century, peace (if not a total absence of violence) in Pampas-Patagonia helped bring a measure of prosperity to its burgeoning indigenous society.

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Disease Of all the many factors contributing to indigenous people’s vulnerabilities to war on the eve of the desert campaign, disease was likely the most significant. The impact of an ongoing epidemic was exacerbated by many of these other factors, and disease certainly made them worse as well. For example, extreme weather can significantly impact disease incidence and prevalence. Most historians stress that extreme weather negatively impacts human health in part by enhancing preexisting disease burdens.18 Like war, extreme weather also often prompts changes in human behavior that facilitate the transmission of disease, such as migration, malnourishment, changes in living arrangements, and disruptions to medical practices. During and after the desert campaign, extreme weather and war augmented disease-related mortality among the indigenous people of Pampas-Patagonia by facilitating an epidemic of viruela that severely weakened indigenous combatants before and during the conflict and indigenous civilians and prisoners in its aftermath. Earlier historians noted that viruela was present during the conflict but failed to appreciate the depth and breadth of the epidemic’s impact.19 Furthermore, they failed to provide sufficient proof that the epidemic was caused by the pathogen Variola major (smallpox), for which I provide a retrospective diagnosis. In total, the differential impact of viruela on indigenous people gave an incredible advantage to creole forces and made life in prisoner camps much, much worse. Three themes characterize the indigenous people of Pampas-Patagonia’s vulnerabilities to major outbreaks of disease during the 1870s. First, the increased interconnectivity of the Southern Cone brought on by the consolidation of the confederacies made the transmission of diseases easier and increased an epidemic’s infective footprint. Second, a subsistence crisis squeezed indigenous food production enough to decrease their bodies’ ability to fight infection. Third, the conditions of mobile warfare and later of prisoner camps brought indigenous communities into situations where they were more susceptible to be exposed to disease, and where their malnutrition was further exacerbated. Indigenous population losses of the catastrophic proportions reported for many parts of the Americas after contact with Europeans do not appear to have taken place in Pampas-Patagonia before the Conquest of the Desert, and there

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is little evidence that Eurasian diseases seriously affected the region before the late eighteenth century.20 But as the level of interconnectivity within indigenous society and with creole society increased during the mid-nineteenth century, so too did the threat of epidemic disease. Reports of epidemics during this period are increasingly available, although indigenous people’s reactions suggest that the epidemic of the 1870s was the worst they had ever experienced. Outbreaks of smallpox among the indigenous groups of Araucanía and Pampas-Patagonia show that by the 1790s all were familiar enough with the disease to have stock responses to an outbreak.21 The limited research that has been done in these early outbreaks suggests, however, that the scale of these epidemics made them categorically different from those that appeared nearly a century later. They appear somewhat culturally foreign to these groups and did not leave the memory of a significant loss of population. Creoles were more than familiar with smallpox by the eighteenth century; they even practiced several forms of prevention of the disease. The most effective of these was the vaccine. After its discovery by Edward Jenner in 1796, the smallpox vaccine was introduced to Spanish America in 1803 as part of a royal expedition. It replaced the earlier practice of variolization, which entailed exposing an open wound to scabs from a person who already had the disease. Although variolation conferred immunity, the patient also became contagious with the disease as well as developing the potential to contract it.22 The vaccine had neither of these drawbacks. The expedition reached Buenos Aires and established a commission to produce material for and administer vaccines in 1810, although the practice was mostly confined to a tiny proportion of urbanites until the late nineteenth century, with the notable exception of a broader campaign during the Juan Manuel de Rosas administration. The first recorded epidemics of viruela among indigenous people also date to this time, specifically linking people trading in Buenos Aires to outbreaks among the indigenous communities of the Pampas. The commercial revolution in Buenos Aires and among the indigenous of Pampas-Patagonia had the effect of making people in both locations more prone to epidemic disease, as increasing commerce and the slave trade especially made Buenos Aires a much more “diseased” city after 1780. It seems that viruela did not become endemic to the city until then.23 Notably, creoles kept indigenous people who had been exposed to viruela in the city quarantined to try to prevent the spread of the disease outside it. These quarantines were themselves often a death sentence, 78 · C h r i st e n s e n

but they show that creoles were not at this point engaged in any kind of “biological warfare” of the sort that has been reported elsewhere.24 Indigenous people had some understanding of how viruela was transmitted by at least 1793, including the effectiveness of quarantines. It is possible that they learned some of this knowledge from the Mapuche of Chile, where the disease had become established much earlier. Sick individuals were isolated from the rest of the group in a separate dwelling and were brought food, remedies, and fuel by those who were not sick at extended intervals. On some occasions, they were abandoned.25 These practices were successful at mitigating the effects of the disease and slowing its infection of people in Pampas-Patagonia. Nonetheless, what was likely the first wide-scale outbreak of viruela occurred in 1794. The continued reshuffling of indigenous politics and society at the time was likely caused in part by the introduction of the disease. As detailed above, reports of famine among indigenous people during the years preceding the Conquest of the Desert abound. Creole military and medical officers indicated that indigenous camps were overrun with disease even before crucial military engagements. José Penna details an 1878 epidemic that “has not just decimated, but has devastated entire tribes of indios,” leaving the Pampas depopulated and tolderías open to attack.26 In the estimation of Third Army division commander Eduardo Racedo, the indigenous people “fear viruela more than an invasion of Christians.”27 That 1878 epidemic either recurred or persevered long enough to seriously weaken many tolderías during the military conflict of 1879. Over the century preceding the 1870s, these indigenous people had greatly increased their contact with Chilean Mapuches, who were at least periodically exposed to the disease at the same time that the livestock trade made contact between various bands of indigenous people (not to mention creoles) more frequent. Thus, the possibility of exposure to disease increased at the same time that the conditions for transmission were made more favorable. A famine was then immediately followed by war, which ended with many indigenous people confined to prisoner camps. That huge numbers of indigenous people fell ill seems almost overdetermined by this nexus of events. But how did the disease work? Although typically translated as “smallpox,” historically, “viruela” in the 1870s was a generic word for rash-causing diseases that could take a wide variety of forms not necessarily implying smallpox.28 As Andrew Cunningham has E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 79 

observed, the prospect of historians identifying a disease from before the laboratory revolution by the terminology used to describe it is somewhat problematic. The epistemological shift in how diseases became known that occurred with the laboratory revolution has forced modern historians to decipher what a diagnosis of “viruela” actually meant for the disease’s contemporaries, and it cannot be taken for granted that such a diagnosis would mean the same thing today.29 This particular epidemic of viruela occurred at the cusp of the laboratory revolution in Argentina, although exposure to it was uneven. Intellectuals in the capital were often immersed in the scientific literature of the North Atlantic and would have thought about disease in terms of pathogenic causes. Most people and many doctors, however, would have operated in the mindset of previous years, linking disease to internal imbalances in an individual. The term “viruela,” then, must be considered in contemporary documents as either implying its modern meaning of Variola major and the resulting disease of smallpox, or else as a more general rash-causing disease.30 Our best source on the epidemic is the campaign journal of Eduardo Racedo. His account gives unusually precise details on the symptoms, duration, and treatment of the disease. While his observations take place slightly after the decisive defeat of the indigenous group he observes, they can nonetheless be used to work backward from and make a diagnosis. Racedo describes the symptoms as follows: aches and a fever were the first manifestations, followed later by a visible rash. Children appear to have been disproportionately affected by the disease, both in rates of exposure and mortality. Twenty-four percent of those who fell ill died. Although Racedo enforced quarantines and attempted vaccination on both those already exposed and those attending them, that sick people were not quarantined until after they were contagious made these measures less effective (and less useful for making a retrospective diagnosis). Racedo also acknowledged that the living conditions of the prisoners made the sickness worse. The worst part of the epidemic as observed by Racedo was during the height of winter in 1878, when the prisoners’ poor clothing and state of malnutrition would have been acutely felt. And despite being a strict military man, Racedo was moved to include statements of empathy for his prisoners on account of their exposure.31 Most significant for Racedo was maintaining the health of his soldiers. To that end, many were vaccinated to prevent them from catching the sickness. In this effort they were unsuccessful, as many soldiers afterward took ill, were 80 · C h ri st e n s e n

quarantined, and died. Notably, their quarantine conditions seem to have been much better than those of the indigenous. Racedo mentions that several sick soldiers were kept in his private quarters, which were surely a far cry better than the quarantine tent the indigenous were housed in.32 Racedo’s description of symptoms do not match neatly with the symptoms of any one modern disease. Some possibilities can be discounted. The viruela in his camp was clearly not the plague, as neither is there evidence to suggest its presence in the region nor do its symptoms overlap in a significant way. A more likely culprit is measles. Perhaps the deadliest disease to naïve populations, an epidemic of measles could be expected to kill as much as 40 percent of a population without any resistance to it.33 Measles symptoms include a runny nose, high fever, low rash, and a cough. The disease typically subsides after a few days. While the rash matches well with Racedo’s descriptions (which do not specify between the flat rash of measles and the raised rash of smallpox but which do avoid the common Spanish term for the disease, sarampión), measles’ symptoms subside much more quickly than those described by Racedo. The first patient was admitted to quarantine on May 10, but none were notably recovering until June 8, suggesting that the average time in quarantine was a few weeks. Additionally, mortality was 24 percent—a figure uncharacteristically low for measles, especially among immunologically compromised populations. Furthermore, the gastrointestinal complications commonly associated with measles are nowhere mentioned in Racedo’s report. The extremely high virulence of measles (75–90 percent of individuals sharing a household with an infected person would themselves be infected) would also suggest that the epidemic described by Racedo should have exhibited higher virulence, if it were indeed measles.34 It is impossible to completely rule out measles, but the epidemiology of the disease makes it an unlikely candidate. Smallpox is the most likely pathogen of the 1870s epidemic of viruela. Because of its level of virulence (each infected person infects between 3.5 and 6 others), and because it is spread by aerial droplets, its epidemiology aligns with the observed epidemiology of the viruela.35 Although mortality rates varied considerably between the strains in circulation at the time, it could be expected that as few as 3 percent or as many as 50 percent of those infected could die from it.36 Smallpox typically causes a substantial rash two to four days after a patient begins exhibiting initial symptoms, eventually developing a high fever and aches. All scabs fall off by four weeks after initial symptoms, if the patient E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 81 

recovers.37 Four weeks matches up well with the observed time to recover and be released from quarantine in Racedo’s account. Smallpox generally has a higher mortality in adults than in children, as is the case for many other types of pox. This constitutes the most substantial discrepancy between the typical behavior of smallpox and Racedo’s description of viruela, but it can be explained by conditions in the camps. The system of quarantine adopted for indigenous people cared for the sick very well, perhaps better than the system of quarantine adopted for creoles. But with all indigenous people suffering from malnutrition and exposure to the cold, adults were much less able to care for sick children. The only adults with access to sick children in fact were the creole guards, who were often unable to communicate with them. Considering that food, fuel, and blankets were in short supply, it is to be expected that mortality rates would be much higher than they had been during previous outbreaks. It also stands to reason that disruptions to protocols for caring for the sick disproportionately affected children, who were least able to care for themselves. So it is possible that this observation on child mortality, while appearing to suggest a different disease, actually was more indicative of the treatment regime than the disease itself. One other possibility not heretofore considered is that multiple diseases were involved. No pathogens exist in a vacuum; comorbidities are a reality. It would be very difficult to prove or disprove either way, but the possibility merits mention because such poor living conditions would have favored influenza, cholera, and other diseases as much as they facilitated viruela. But that Variola major was present seems almost certain, and with a solid retrospective diagnosis we can infer some of its effects on the combat of 1879–1881.

The Conquest of the Desert in Action Although there had been many campaigns against indigenous peoples in Argentina over the centuries of colonization, none compared in scale to that launched in 1878. Indigenous political and social structures, always intertwined, were more vulnerable to the shocks that came with extreme weather and the outbreak of war than perhaps at any other point in their history. Weather and war combined to facilitate the outbreak of disease, restrict economic activities, destabilize polities, and hinder movement for indigenous people in ways that gave creoles a military advantage and made the conquest even more costly for 82 · C h ri st e n s e n

indigenous people. As the analysis below will show, these campaigns unfolded almost as faits accomplis. The documentary record of the conflict is remarkable in its florid descriptions of the weather, plant and animal life, and the minutiae of supplying the divisions. What are remarkably absent are descriptions of combat itself—more often recounted by the number of prisoners captured in the aftermath than by details of the fighting, which seems almost an afterthought. The Conquest of the Desert was won by logistics, and logistics depended on extreme weather patterns, which the creoles did not understand. It also depended on occupying territory, particularly the key ecological hotspots on which indigenous people depended, which by itself provided almost sufficient advantage for the creoles to win at this historical moment. Setting aside arguments about the inherent superiority of Christian civilization over indigenous paganism made by contemporary war hawks, the traditional explanation given for the overwhelming superiority of creole troops during the Conquest of the Desert is their use of the Remington repeater rifle. Combat between creoles and indigenous Pampas-Patagonians was for most of its history done with technological parity, more or less. Early firearms were generally less effective than the lances and bolas deployed by indigenous people, and creoles for the most part adopted these same weapons with the addition of sabers. A carbine and pistol often accompanied these, but the difficulty of reloading them meant they were used less often.38 It goes without saying that in Pampas-Patagonia, combat, like almost everything else, was done primarily on horseback. The Remington repeater for the first time gave creole troops a definitive edge over their indigenous foes in their weaponry, but it did not hand creoles victory on its own. Effective weapon though the Remington was, indigenous warriors were too skilled to be undone by this one piece of technology. Consider the following example: in an 1877 engagement with the Second Cavalry Battalion, led by Conrado Villegas and armed with Remingtons, the cacique Pincén demonstrated that he was able to adapt his tactics to compensate for the Remington’s strengths. After beginning with the traditional cavalry charges of Pampas warfare and finding the creole troops holding steady while he took losses, Pincén withdrew his forces in a feint. He then lured Villegas out to the side of his lines with just four bodyguards and almost succeeded in encircling him. Realizing the trap, Villegas took heel and was pursued energetically. His biographer recounts that he came out alive only due to the timely arrival of E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 83 

the Third Cavalry Battalion, though suffering seventeen lance wounds in his back from the pursuit.39 Pincén and his lanzas had a reputation among the creole army for being craftier than many of their contemporaries, but this story shows that they were not helpless victims of the Remington. More factors had to come into play. By the 1870s, the national government had decided that the indigenous population of Pampas-Patagonia had to be subdued and began devising a strategy to do so, making treaties with some caciques along the way to buy time until the moment was right. That moment came in 1878, and although there was considerable violence before and after, the period 1878–1879 was the most critical and decisive phase of the conflict. Those years also saw the most dire effects of the 1877 El Niño. The reduced precipitation resulting from the El Niño in Pampas-Patagonia affected the course of the war by making forage scarcer for livestock, with two consequences: first, finding sufficient forage for war horses became more difficult, and indigenous warriors had to either move slowly or expose their horses to malnourishment, leaving them less effective in combat. Second, reduced forage meant that the horses and cattle indigenous pastoralists raised for trade and consumption yielded less meat and reproduced less frequently. The effects of this less favorable climate had certainly been felt previously, but the war exacerbated them. The shortfall was experienced even more profoundly because the government stopped its deliveries of raciones during the war. Raciones do not seem to have constituted a primary source of food for any indigenous groups, but they were by no means insignificant. Raciones in fact became necessary as the indigenous population expanded beyond what their subsistence practices could sustain during adverse environmental conditions, and their disappearance left indigenous people without enough food. Extreme weather and warfare went hand in hand to bring the indigenous population to what even their opponents acknowledged as heartbreaking poverty.40 At the beginning of the most decisive phase of conflict, some indigenous groups were already in dire straits. In the pursuit of the cacique Catriel in 1877, the French engineer Alfredo Ebelot documented that when the army patrol he was accompanying ambushed a group of indigenous warriors at Arroyo Azul (in the heart of the Pampas), they found them dying of starvation and eating the leather of their tents to try to survive.41 Although hunting and gathering remained integral parts of indigenous subsistence, these activities appear to 84 · C h ri st e n s e n

have been insufficient on their own to sustain this indigenous group while they were engaged in war. If the Pampas held such difficulty for Catriel, the even sparser environmental conditions of northern Patagonia must have been even more arduous for indigenous people to cope with. Traveling along the Río Negro between 1873 and 1876, Francisco Moreno reported that the land was essentially infertile between Manzanas and Carmen de Patagones outside of the river valley. His narrative is peppered throughout with the perspective of a land speculator, theorizing about the value of lumber or the productivity of apple orchards on then indigenous lands. If Moreno was unable to see much use for broad stretches of northern Patagonia under normal conditions, the region was surely pushed beyond its limit in a severe drought.42 The El Niño also affected the landscape of Pampas-Patagonia by increasing precipitation in the mountains. Even though local precipitation was scarce, El Niño conditions brought higher levels in the Río Negro and Río Colorado due to extra snow and rain in the Andes, where the rivers originate. Higher rivers meant more dangerous crossings.43 Herding cattle across rivers was difficult under the best of circumstances, and quite a task indeed with the river running three meters higher than usual. As Woodbine Parrish observed in 1839: Being at all times greatly encumbered with their women, children, and cattle, and having no notion of anything like a raft or canoe to facilitate the passage of the rivers they have to cross, they [indigenous people] are obliged to resort to those points where they are fordable, and afterwards to follow such routes as will lead them by places affording sufficient pasture for the daily maintenance of their horses and cattle. Now, in their descent from the Cordillera, their only pass across the great River Neuquen is just above its junction with the Negro, the course of which they are forced afterwards to follow as far as the Choleechel, from the impracticability of the country to the north of it, and the scarcity of fresh water for their animals.44 Indigenous people had to rely on moving their cattle alongside them or hunting on the move, both of which were critical weaknesses for an army in transit, made more difficult under El Niño conditions. Furthermore, river corridors provided the normal east-west routes for indigenous people’s movement. E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 85 

Much of the best forage grew in narrow stretches on the riverbanks, and these were inundated by the floods. Severe weather in mountain passes also impeded the escape of indigenous people from the Argentine army. Despite their overwhelming victory on the battlefield, the army was unable to prevent substantial numbers of indigenous people from escaping into the plains and foothills. It is impossible to know how many people escaped capture during the initial campaign of the Río Negro, but those who did would have found taking refuge in the toldos of their Araucanian kin a very appealing option. Of the few historical contingencies that favored them, indigenous Pampas-Patagonians fleeing to Chile during the Conquest of the Desert would have found it a more hospitable place than during most of the years before or after. The Chilean government was at the time occupied fighting a war against Peru and Bolivia, and the Mapuche there remained in a state of relative peace and independence, although that was not to last long. Many individuals attempted to flee to Chile through the mountain passes, principally through the pass at Carirriñé, in Neuquén, and at Llaima in Mendoza.45 Naturally, the extreme weather, which prevented commercial travel for nearly half of 1878, would have made the journey more difficult.46 Crossing over to Chile, as most Manzaneros did after their 1883 defeat, was a less feasible option for the Ranqueles, Salineros, and other Pampas-based indigenous groups who were the primary target of the 1878 campaign. The El Niño system drove above-average snowfall in the Andes during each of the winters from 1877 to 1880 and the mountain passes were blocked off for longer than normal, which cut off escape routes and negatively impacted transAndean trade. Documentation of extreme weather in the Andes is more abundant for the winter of 1877–1878 than for 1878–1879 because of the disruptions to trade caused by the war, but observations of El Niño weather elsewhere in the region suggest that the same adverse conditions documented in the winter of 1877–1878 were probably echoed in the following year. One of the main passes, at 33°S, closed two months early, in March 1878, and continued to interfere with trade until midsummer of that year. Flooding and heavy snowfall from El Niño weather peaked during winter and spring, when food was hardest to come by. It is likely no coincidence that the 1878 campaign forced refugees to flee during exactly these difficult months; that conditions were even more difficult than in normal years was just an unfortunate outcome for these refugees. But at the very least, the caciques Namuncurá, 86 · C h r i st e n s e n

Reumay, Reuquecurá, and Ñancucheo managed to make the crossing and take refuge among Araucanian kin during the early years of the campaign.47 Summer brought no relief to the difficulties of trans-Andean travel. Between the tolderías of the Pampas and Araucanía lie difficult stretches of steppe that experienced drought during the 1877–1878 El Niño. A well-maintained system of trails linked these tolderías with each other and with Andean passes to Chile. They often were the only feasible routes for navigating the long stretches of grassland that lacked surface water even in years of normal precipitation. Eduardo Racedo and Colonel Lucio V. Mansilla both observed corrals and resting places built at either end of difficult stretches for indigenous people and their livestock to recoup their strength. That caciques invested labor in infrastructure improvements generally uncommon in their domains demonstrates the vulnerability and importance of these paraderos.48 Because the main food source for indigenous warriors was livestock on the hoof and because of the integral role of the horse in indigenous warfare, finding sufficient fodder and substantial quantities of water on the move were part and parcel of waging war. Decreased rainfall meant even less forage for livestock and possibly the loss of water sources, making cattle drives and military movement much more difficult during this critical juncture. The Argentine army was keenly aware that indigenous people relied on the key ecological niches of the paraderos to survive and planned their attacks around capturing them. Choele Choel, the verdant island in the Río Negro that Julio Roca planned to make his field headquarters, was the most impor­ tant of all.49 The trip from the País de las Manzanas in the Andean foothills to Carmen de Patagones, near the sea, was extremely difficult without having a chance to recuperate at Choele Choel. The Manzaneros’ power was built on their ability to utilize this route to connect with their northern Tehuelche allies and creoles in Patagones. In perhaps the best-informed perspective on pre– desert campaign Patagonia, George Musters emphasized that his Tehuelche guides followed the river valleys when possible but made careful precautions when crossing dry stretches (travesías) that strayed from watercourses, resting at predetermined paraderos on either side.50 The same held true farther north: Choele Choel was only one of what were possibly hundreds of paraderos on the routes spanning the pampa seca, making up a network allowing indigenous people to travel safely with their families and herds through unforgiving territory. Creoles understood well that cutting even a few nodes from this network E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 87 

would cause great problems for indigenous subsistence and travel, which was why they occupied these nodes. Indeed, the role of these ecological hotspots was apparent enough that creoles had tried to occupy Choele Choel on at least three previous occasions during the century preceding the desert campaign. On each of these occasions, they had been forced into retreat. Besides Choele Choel, creoles left behind detachments in many other paraderos they passed through in an attempt to provide a foundation for settling the frontier, which also functioned to garrison the paraderos. In practice, cutting even a few nodes from the network of paraderos amounted to a scorched-earth campaign, leaving indigenous groups without the ability to sustain themselves through the war. Although they were newcomers to the territory, creoles also had to make use of the travesías and paraderos for their own transport and to provide fodder for their hundreds of head of livestock, and they were amply informed of these locations by indigenous allies. The traditional story of the desert campaign tends to marginalize or even omit the role of indigenous auxiliaries in the national army, but their local knowledge and numerical presence made them a crucial part of the campaign. Racedo makes frequent mention of their presence in his column; they composed around 18 percent of his total forces.51 Besides being able warriors themselves, these auxiliaries knew the travesías and were paid a premium for their services as guides. Without them, the creoles would likely have had a good deal of trouble navigating Pampas-Patagonia and may have found themselves in difficulties similar to those faced by their opponents. Higher rivers also hindered the national army in 1879, but to a significantly lesser degree. As the scientific attaché to Roca’s column later wrote, crossing the Negro was the most treacherous part of their journey. The column required more than a day to float and swim across the swollen river, nearly frustrating Roca’s intention of arriving at Choele Choel on Argentina’s independence day.52 José Daza reported that his column had to build rafts to cross the Río Colorado and also had difficulty dealing with the rising Negro.53 The Negro was high enough already during normal years to require horses to swim in order to cross at the island of Choele Choel, but the rising river caused both horses and people to drown in their attempts to cross it.54 Nevertheless, the specific timing of the flooding and the river’s enhanced navigability for gunboats distinctly advantaged the creoles. El Niño–driven flooding peaked in May and June, which proved to be a crucial period for the conflict.55 Notably, 88 · C h ri st e n s e n

May through July is normally the period of the river’s lowest flow. Most Argentine divisions entered the field in April, when the rivers were still running low, allowing the First Division to capture and fortify Choele Choel before late May and the subsequent El Niño–driven rise of river levels. Daza reported that this rise was as high as two meters during early June 1879, prompting comparisons to the biblical great flood.56 Unlike during previous attempts to occupy Choele Choel, this time the creole army encountered no resistance.57 Whether the fact that creoles were allowed to take possession of the island without being challenged by indigenous warriors was because the indigenous defenders were overwhelmed by the attacks or because diseases and starvation had left the defenders too weak to mount a counterattack, any assault on this stronghold would have faced much greater difficulty with the river running higher for the simple reason of the increased difficulty of making the crossing. Choele Choel provided the creoles with a stronghold from which they could base their supply lines, allowing them to operate oceangoing supply ships on much of the rest of the river, which under normal conditions was too shallow. After noting the rising river levels, Daza’s column called for a naval vessel to explore the river and take soundings. Daza noted that, with the assistance of a guide familiar with the normal banks of the river (to avoid getting snagged in the trees that grew there), the exceptionally high water levels allowed ships from the “high seas” (alta mar) to safely reach Choele Choel.58 This call was initially answered by the corvette Uruguay, but several gunboats were later deployed to cruise the river as well. Importantly, the effectiveness of the Argentine navy only increased with the rising river levels, intensifying the asymmetrical consequences of this weather event.59 Control of the Río Negro also gave the creoles control of the most reliable source of forage, food, and water in northern Patagonia. For indigenous people, losing access to the river was more than an issue of transportation; it was also yet another threat to their food supply. After famine, what mattered most of all was disease, although the two went hand in hand. As discussed above, a lack of documentation prevents historians from ever knowing the true scale of the outbreak before 1879. The documentation begins with Baigorrita’s band, who were experiencing a smallpox outbreak when they were attacked by General Racedo’s troops. Racedo’s memoir recounts nothing of a coordinated resistance, and the battles consisted of creole patrols chasing down and capturing a handful of lanzas at a time. They found E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 89 

abandoned tolderías and occasional scattered groups of women and children in a wretched state, which seems unsurprising given the subsistence crisis and the state of the epidemic of which he was to soon become aware. One of the most poignant descriptions of Baigorrita’s group comes from Lieutenant Colonel Don Sócrates de Anaya, who led a group of soldiers on reconnaissance away from the main column. Entering an abandoned toldo at Saquelqué, he describes the abandoned corrals and the stubble of the fields frozen over in the cold austral winter. Settling in to camp for the night, a group of soldiers sent to collect firewood was ambushed by indigenous people still apparently living in the toldo. The soldiers suffered no losses but killed eight indios and took more captive. Describing these survivors, he writes: “The prisoners are in the highest state of poverty, completely naked and without any more food than roots and old skins that they gather from abandoned toldos. They said that they know of no other indios in this place, and they live completely isolated. They are skinny, emaciated, and hungry, by the look of them, and because they devour the meat they are given almost raw.”60 The indios’ statement about being isolated probably has some truth to it. If they were infected with the viruela, it may be that these individuals were left behind by larger groups. Such a practice was reported among indigenous people to prevent viruela from spreading further among their group.61 The various crises may also have caused fractures within Baigorrita’s band, as was not uncommon during difficult times. Whatever the case, nothing in Racedo’s account suggests that they were in any state to wage war, and they were more likely fighting simply for survival before the campaign began. Given the level of interconnectedness between these indigenous groups and that they were documented to have been exchanging messages in the weeks before this encounter, it is highly likely that Baigorrita was not the only cacique experiencing an outbreak of viruela in his camp. Although Racedo was the only memoirist to include much detail about viruela among the indigenous people he captured, he was also the only one to include significant detail about indigenous prisoners at all. One other report of viruela exists predating the desert campaign, placing long-deceased victims of viruela at Currú Mahuida, about halfway between the Río Negro and the precampaign frontier, at the time the army first arrived.62 Definitive evidence is lacking, but the scale of the outbreak that followed and the epidemiology of the disease suggest that a widespread epidemic almost certainly predated the military conflict. 90 · C h ri st e n s e n

The desert campaign disrupted the treatment options indigenous people had developed to cope with viruela and facilitated the epidemic’s expansion. Those who survived the initial combat were confined to concentration camps, where they were poorly fed, clothed, and sheltered. Mortality was high among prisoners, some from disease and others from simple exposure. Children were reported to suffer disproportionately high mortality. And although Racedo and his medical staff instituted quarantines, smallpox can infect new hosts before an existing host begins exhibiting symptoms. Attempts to vaccinate the prisoners also failed to stop the spread of the disease, although efforts to vaccinate urban Argentines during that time were equally ineffective.63 Despite Racedo’s best efforts to quarantine his troops, viruela spread among them as well. He noted that they were much better equipped to survive the disease than the prisoners were, and still they died in droves.64 Malnourishment from the ongoing subsistence crisis and poorer shelter from the cold explains why indigenous people were more susceptible than creole soldiers. After being captured in 1879, indigenous prisoners stayed for months or even years in camps before they were relocated. Finishing the war took priority over figuring out what to do with the conquered people, and it would be well into the 1890s before the camps were fully dissolved. Smallpox continued to circulate throughout the camps for the duration of their existence. In the early days, some indigenous people were relocated to new colonies along the Río Negro, while others were sent to a naval prison on the island of Martín García in the Río de la Plata estuary. Mortality continued to be high both for those in transit and for those on the island, where the prison’s chief of surgery, Sabino O’Donnell, attempted to quarantine the infected but without apparent success.65 The continuing viruela epidemic killed more than 20 percent of the prisoners there.66 Later, the bulk of prisoners were subject to what was termed the “sistema de distribución,” wherein families were dissolved and individuals sent to work as domestic help in the houses of wealthy urbanites.67 In an ironic twist, smallpox seems to have accompanied the new labor and spread to the city of Buenos Aires, where it developed into a separate epidemic.68 Many others were sent to work on the sugarcane, cotton, and yerba mate fields of Argentina’s north, where disease followed them as well. The camps and prisons were traumatic experiences for indigenous people, who remember them in their collective memory as the bookend at the end of a good era and the beginning of their current suffering.69 For all the suffering they must have endured E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 91 

before their capture, it seems likely that more indigenous people died from the squalid camp conditions and smallpox than from combat. The limited military engagements that define the desert campaign simply do not seem capable of matching the scale of death that occurred in the camps.

Conclusion In an essay commemorating the centennial of the conquest in 1980, historian Horacio Hernández writes: “It has been said that the ‘Remington’ was the true cause of victory; it is certain that it consolidated the final conquest, but the Republic was made by the sabers of the grenadiers and the lances of the hardworking soldiers that fought the majority of times, with an unequaled poverty, and carrying deep the feeling of duty that every good patriot has.”70 While certainly the creoles’ rifles gave them an advantage, and undoubtedly they fought bravely, I argue that extreme weather and disease actually deserve a good deal of credit for the creoles’ victory. Similarly, many hygienists of the late nineteenth century explained the indigenous susceptibility to diseases as evidence of their weakness and inferiority to creoles, but I have shown how their susceptibility was the product of contingent social and biological processes.71 This chapter has outlined how the lopsided creole victory of the conquest was exacerbated by environmental factors. The Argentine government planned the Conquest of the Desert without regard to the environment but was greatly aided by the asymmetrical effects of one of the most intense ENSO events of the past five hundred years and an epidemic of smallpox. Indeed, the Argentine army’s plans can be more rationally plotted along a timeline with the end of their own civil wars and the War of the Triple Alliance than with respect to any environmental factors. Argentine legislators had made plans for war against the indigenous inhabitants of their southern frontier many years before the definitive action of 1878 took place, and the war was no radical departure from previous rhetoric about indigenous people. That these environmental factors were unintentional makes them no less a part of the story of the conquista. If giving agency to the environment appears to deny it to indigenous people, it is only because their agency was so restricted by forces beyond their control. Indigenous people made efforts to resist the conquest, but the combination of weather and disease made the creole troops’ technological superiority too much to overcome. Notably, indigenous people themselves do not seem to have ascribed their fortune 92 · C h ri st e n s e n

to these environmental factors either. An indigenous man named Nahuelpi, for example, escaped from the Argentine army and safely fled to the toldo of a relative. He attributed his luck to Ngünechen, a Mapuche deity.72 This chapter has also emphasized differential vulnerability. As Dagomar Degroot has argued, “stories of societal resilience and adaptation should also play a bigger role in environmental histories of climate change.”73 In this case, it was the opposite—structural vulnerability—that helped bring the indigenous polities to defeat during 1878–1885. As El Niño weather extremes disturbed the landscape, creating floods strong enough to wash away bridges, the indigenous economy and transportation infrastructure were greatly impeded. Because these indigenous polities depended on exploiting particular ecological niches like the one at Choele Choel, simply occupying strategic points in indigenous territory was almost enough on its own to break the power of the already stressed indigenous confederacies. Despite all these intervening factors, indigenous resistance continued until 1885 as small bands of indigenous warriors led guerrilla campaigns in the foothills and mountains, but once their home territories were lost, it was essentially just a matter of time before they had to surrender. The once powerful confederacies were broken, and their former members struggled to survive on the margins of their former territories and in disease-ridden prisoner camps.

Notes 1. I want to thank those who helped me develop and refine this project: Tim Newfield, Dagomar Degroot, Erick Langer, my classmates in Georgetown’s historical epidemiology and climate history courses, and the participants of the Georgetown Environmental History Workshop. Funding was provided by the History Department at Georgetown University and from the Georgetown Institute for Global History. Matthias Vuille graciously offered comments on atmospheric science, and Makaila Christensen greatly improved the prose. Any remaining faults are my own. 2. Schäbitz, “Estudios polínicos del Cuaternario.” 3. Morales et al., “Reviewing Human-Environment Interactions.” 4. See Gergis, Sunburnt Country, 24–28. 5. This conclusion holds true across a variety of methodological approaches. For evidence based on historical documents, see Prieto, “ENSO Signals in South America.” For a study based on paleoclimate proxies, see Lamy et al., “Holocene Changes.” For an instrumental study, see Garreaud et al., “Present-Day South American Climate.” E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 93 

6. For a state-of-the-art treatment of how this El Niño event played out on a global scale, see Singh et al., “Climate and the Global Famine of 1876–78.” The historical interpretation of the weather explained therein requires refining, however. 7. Caronti, “Temperature and Precipitation Measurements in Bahía Blanca.” 8. Aceituno et al., “The 1877–1878 El Niño Episode,” 409. 9. These droughts may be unrelated to the 1877 ENSO, but they reflect a similar hardship for indigenous people. Williams, The Welsh in Patagonia, 43, 81. 10. This number appears broadly stable throughout Pampas-Patagonia. See Alioto, “Las yeguas y las chacras de Calfucurá,” 205. 11. See Davies Lenoble, “Filling the Desert.” 12. See Mandrini, “Desarollo de una sociedad indígena pastoral.” 13. See also White, The Middle Ground. 14. Guy and Sheridan, “On Frontiers.” 15. See Bello, Nampülkafe: El viaje de los Mapuches, 65–68. On monetization, see Alioto, “Las yeguas y las chacras de Calfucurá,” 207. 16. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages, 269–70. 17. Nacuzzi, Identidades impuestas, 223–26. On raciones, see Ratto, “Barajar y dar de nuevo.” 18. See, for example, Parker, Global Crisis; White, The Climate of Rebellion; and Querejazu Calvo, Guano, salitre, sangre. 19. See, for example, Brailovsky and Foguelman, Memoria verde, 152, 169–70; and Scunio, Del Río IV al Lime Leuvú, 74. 20. See Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics”; Archer, “Colonialism and Other Afflictions”; and Jones, “Virgin Soils Revisited.” 21. Jiménez and Alioto, “Enfermedad y daño”; and Jiménez and Alioto, “Relaciones peligrosas.” 22. Ramírez Martín, “El legado de la real expedición filantrópica.” 23. Jiménez and Alioto, “Políticas de confinamiento e impacto de la viruela”; and Alden and Miller, “Unwanted Cargoes.” 24. Mayor, “The Nessus Shirt in the New World.” 25. Jiménez and Alioto, “Políticas de confinamiento e impacto de la viruela”; and Jiménez and Alioto, “Enfermedad y daño.” 26. José Penna, La historia del viruela en América del Sud, in Hernández, “Medicos, soldados e indios,” 418. 27. Hernández, “Medicos, soldados e indios,” 419. 28. Ramírez Luengo, “Un aporte a la historia.” 29. Cunningham, “Transforming Plague.” 30. Note that Variola minor had not emerged and could not have been involved in this outbreak. See Li et al., “On the Origin of Smallpox.” 31. Racedo, Memoria militar, 103. These numbers are based on Racedo’s count in his journal, although their provenance and precision are unclear. The statistics are from Jiménez and Alioto, “Políticas de confinamiento e impacto de la viruela.”

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32. Racedo, Memoria militar, 106. 33. Although the modern case fatality rate of measles in developing countries is between 3 and 34 percent, it has historically been much higher. Perry and Halsey, “The Clinical Significance of Measles”; and Shanks et al., “Measles Epidemics of Variable Lethality.” 34. Perry and Halsey, “The Clinical Significance of Measles.” On differentiating measles and smallpox, see Newfield, “Human-Bovine Plagues in the Early Middle Ages,” 17–25. 35. This R0 is from Gani and Leach, “Transmission Potential of Smallpox,” 748– 49. Other estimates differ only slightly. 36. See Duggan et al., “17th Century Variola Virus”; and Riley, “Smallpox and American Indians Revisited.” 37. Center for Disease Control, “Smallpox: Signs and Symptoms,” at https:// www.cdc.gov/smallpox/symptoms/index.html. 38. Rodríguez, Reseña histórica del ejército argentino, 35–36. 39. Scunio, Del Río IV al Lime Leuvú, 130–34. 40. Bonatti and Valdez, Una guerra infame, 80–81. 41. Ibid. 42. Moreno, Obras de Francisco Moreno, 16, 34–36. 43. See Bello, Nampülkafe: El viaje de los Mapuches, 98, 116; and Moreno, Obras de Francisco Moreno, 17. 44. Parrish, Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, 78–79. 45. Delrio, Memorias de expropriación, 63–64. 46. Bonatti and Valdez, Una guerra infame, 167–68; and Aceituno et al., “The 1877–1878 El Niño Episode,” 410. 47. Bello, Nampülkafe: El viaje de los Mapuches, 251–54. 48. Fagioli, “Las travesías en el norte y oeste,” 169–70. 49. A similar reliance ecology is observable on the North American Great Plains. West, The Contested Plains. 50. See, for example, Musters, At Home with the Patagonians, 275–80. 51. Racedo, Memoria militar, 9–10. 52. Dr. Pablo Lorentz to the minister of hacienda, Dr. Victorino de la Plaza, Choele Choel, May 31, 1879; reprinted in Doering and Lorentz, La Conquista del Desierto, 141–50. 53. Daza, Episodios militares, 201–3; see also Manuel J. Olascoaga, “Estudio topográfico de la pampa y Río Negro,” in Torre, El otro desierto de la Nación Argentina. 54. Estanislao Zeballos, “La conquista de quince mil leguas,” in Torre, El otro desierto de la Nación Argentina, 108. In the same volume, see also Manuel J. Olascoaga, “Estudio topográfico de la pampa y Río Negro,” 300. 55. Note that this flooding is out of phase for normal weather patterns in Pampas-Patagonia; Prieto, “ENSO Signals in South America,” 39–54. E n v i ron m e n t a n d t h e Con que st of the De se rt · 95 

56. Daza, Episodios militares, 211. 57. Estanislao Zeballos, “La conquista de quince mil leguas,” in Torre, El otro desierto de la Nación Argentina, 96–108. 58. Daza, Episodios militares, 211–12. 59. Capdevila, “La Corbeta Uruguay,” 259–68. 60. Racedo, Memoria militar, 66. 61. Jiménez and Alioto. “Políticas de confinamiento e impacto de la viruela,” 128. 62. Fagioli, “Las travesías en el norte y oeste,” 169–70. 63. Di Liscia, “Marcados en la piel.” 64. Racedo, Memoria militar, 103. 65. Di Liscia, “Viruela, vacunación e indígenas,” 51–52. 66. Jiménez and Alioto, “Políticas de confinamiento e impacto de la viruela”; and Bonatti and Valdez, Una guerra infame, 153–56. 67. Mases, Estado y cuestión indígena. 68. Di Liscia, “Viruela, vacunación e indígenas,” 53. 69. Delrio, Memorias de expropiación. 70. Hernández, “Medicos, soldados e indios,” 416. 71. Di Liscia, “Viruela, vacunación e indígenas.” 72. “Autobiografia de Nahuelpi IV: Historia (de una pelea),” in Lehmann-Nitsche, Historia y conocimiento oral mapuche, 325–26. 73. Degroot, The Frigid Golden Age, 304.

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FOUR

Live Indians in the Museum Connecting Evolutionary Anthropology with the Conquest of the Desert Ricardo D. Salvatore El fallecimiento de cuatro indígenas adultos en el establecimiento, ha proporcionado al Museo cuatro cerebros que tienen gran valor científico por ser los únicos de esta raza que se conservan en colecciones, y cuatro esqueletos auténticos. . . . Estas piezas pueden considerarse como únicas en todo sentido, y su importancia aumenta si se tiene en cuenta que pertenecen a individuos de una raza que se extingue rápidamente y que podrá llamarse perdida antes de muy pocos años. Francisco P. Moreno · 1888 The death of four adult Indians in the establishment has provided the Museum with four brains that have great scientific value, because they are the only ones of this race preserved in [contemporary] collections, and four authentic skeletons. . . . These pieces could be considered unique in every sense, and their importance increases if we take into account that they belong to individuals from a race that is rapidly extinguishing and that could be called lost in a few years.

This is the story of Inacayal and Foyel, two Indian caciques1 from the eastern slopes of the Andes who were captured during the Conquest of the Desert and later transferred to the Museum of La Plata, a natural sciences museum. Once there, they were put to work as museum assistants. Foyel was able to 97

return to his native land, but Inacayal died in the museum, and his remains (cranium, skeleton, scalp, and death mask) were placed on permanent exhibit. The unusual presence of live Indians in a museum has brought about an intense debate among historians, anthropologists, and museum authorities, particularly since the first restitution of Inacayal’s remains in 1994. In this chapter I want to revisit this peculiar story to reflect upon the complicities between collectors, scientists, and military men in building the material bases for evolutionary anthropology and archaeology in Argentina. These new sciences, with their supporting “evidence” in the museum, attempted to sustain a fictional narrative of the origins of the Argentine nation and contributed to the erasure of recently defeated Native peoples from history. The vanquished of the Conquest of the Desert, dead or alive, entered into the Museum of La Plata to become evidence of an ancient past, ready to be shown to students or to be used by researchers in archaeology and anthropology.

Inacayal before Captivity Modesto Inacayal was born in the 1830s. His father was Huincahual. Most of his life, he lived to the east of Nahuel Huapi Lake, near the mouth of Limay River. His toldos were composed of thirty families, most of them agriculturalists raising wheat, maize, barley, beans, sweet potatoes, and other crops. Inacayal was a mixture of Chula-Laken and Güna Künen (Fernández 2008). The little we know about him comes from impressions left by various explorers who visited this territory, among them Guillermo Cox, George Musters, and Francisco Moreno. Since the late 1850s, Inacayal seems to have traveled to the southwestern area of Buenos Aires to maintain friendly relations with Pampa chiefs and conduct trade. In March 1859, Calfucurá, the great lord of the Salinas Grandes Confederation, wrote about a visit by Inacayal: It is very pleasant for me to be before Inacayal’s presence, who has come from the banks of the great lake Nahuel Huapi and [who], agile and lightweight like the huemul [deer] from the ravines, has descended the slopes and the infinite rivers and the wide deserts of the South, to come and pray with us before the bright face of the omnipotent Mg-enechen [divinity presiding over the Nguillatun]. (Martínez Sarasola 2012, 119)

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Inacayal was to participate in a spiritual ritual (the Nguillatun or Kamaruko) to which various other caciques (Pampa, Araucano, and Tehuelche) were invited. Calfucurá celebrated the brotherhood of indigenous chiefs with the metaphor of a regeneration in nature. It was as if “all those big and small trees and bushes and plants and grass and beautiful flowers and animals and birds from the Cordillera and the distant prairies” had been born, had grown, and now suddenly grouped together in the poor lands of Chilihui to give Calfucurá the “supreme satisfaction of having all our land under my paternal sight.” His poetic rhetoric served a purpose: to underscore the importance of a wide-ranging tribal alliance in order to defend Indian lands from the “perfidious huincá (white man)” (Martínez Sarasola 2012, 119). While temporarily allied with the Argentine Confederation at Paraná, Calfucurá was at war with the province of Buenos Aires. This positioned Inacayal as a potential enemy to the Buenos Aires government. Unfortunately, not much is known about this chief until 1863, when he was visited by explorer Guillermo Cox. At the time, Inacayal lived near the Chaleufú River, east of the Great Lakes area in today’s Neuquén province. He was an influential man who enjoyed great political influence in his toldería, but he was not the cacique principal since his father Huincahual was still alive (Cox 1863, 140). Cox’s impression of Inacayal was quite favorable: “I liked Inacayal since the first moment, he has a frank and open attitude, an intelligent face, and knows a little Spanish, his body is chubby yet well-proportioned” (1863, 148). The visitor and the hosts exchanged gifts, then participated in a three-day drinking orgy. Finally, Inacayal accompanied Cox to visit other caciques in the south. The next foreign visitor, Lieutenant Colonel George Musters, barely mentioned Inacayal. He left, however, some impression of Foyel. Musters visited Patagonia in 1869; departing from Punta Arenas, he traveled to the Limay River. North of the river resided Inacayal’s tribe, and south of the river lived Foyel’s people. Of the latter, Musters wrote: “This Foyel was an extremely intelligent man: he told me that he wished to be friends with the Christians, also that he was endeavoring to get families of Valdivian Indians to come and cultivate the land near the Rio Limay” (1871, 73). In his view, the tribes of Foyel and Quintuhual belonged to the Manzanero Indians, whose main chief was Cheoeque. These Indians were short in stature, possessed cattle and sheep, preferred to stay in a single place, and were better dressed than the Tehuelches

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who accompanied Musters from Santa Cruz. They hunted guanaco and caught and tamed wild cattle in the cordillera. Inacayal’s tribe at this point was not on good terms with Foyel and Cheoeque; in fact, Musters recounts a small skirmish between these groups. Musters apparently did not talk with the cacique; he was sent to speak with an interpreter, who told him the story of explorer Cox, his wreckage on the river, and the refuge Inacayal gave him (Musters 1871, 73). Once at the center of Las Manzanas, he met the cacique Cheoeque and learned how these tribes normally bartered apples, piñones (pine nuts), and flour for knives, bolas (a throwing weapon made of stones and leather cords), and mantles (1871, 74). In 1873, Foyel joined the indios amigos.2 The cacique signed a treaty with the government representative in Carmen de Patagones, Lieutenant Colonel Liborio Bernal, specifying mutual advantages and obligations. Both parties could trade with each other without risking their security; Foyel was to assist the government in a future expedition up the Colorado River; the military would be able to establish fortifications along the road; and Foyel had to provide information about the movement of indios enemigos and mobilize his forces to combat them. For their contribution to defend the frontier, Foyel, his capitanejos, and his warriors would receive salaries and food rations. To finalize the agreement, the usual gifts were provided: mares, sugar, tobacco, paper, yerba,3 and military uniforms (Vezub 2012b). The peace between Foyel and the commander of the southern frontier did not last long, for in 1875 a great malón put in doubt all prior agreements.4 This treaty coincided with Inacayal’s participation in Francisco Moreno’s expedition up the Colorado River. In 1874, Inacayal visited Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1868–1874) in Buenos Aires in order to negotiate for provisions. Sarmiento put him in contact with Moreno, who was at the time planning an exploratory expedition to the mouth of the Limay River. Inacayal promised Moreno recommendations to other caciques, and Indian guides and escorts for the trip. Inacayal’s contacts with other caciques such as Linares and Saygüeque were crucial for the success of Moreno’s expedition. Moreno’s next trip, to the region of the Great Lakes and to Chubut (1879), coincided with a moment of extreme tension between the military and the Araucano tribes (the launching of the Conquest of the Desert campaign). Inacayal, his son Utrac, Foyel, and the mestizos Gabino and Hernández protected Moreno from imminent death. Later, the explorer was taken prisoner 100 · Salvator e

by Saygüeque and was able to escape, provoking a revolt among some Indian factions (Farro 2008, 77–78, 92–93).

The Conquest of the Desert The Conquest of the Desert had two stages: the first in 1878–1881, when the frontier was pushed toward the Colorado River, and the second during 1882– 1885, when the army pushed the line further south into Chubut and into the Great Lakes area to the west. In 1881, the military reached the toldos5 of Inacayal in the neighborhood of Nahuel Huapi Lake. Colonel Conrado Villegas had Inacayal and his caciquillos and capitanejos (both terms signifying lower-ranking leaders in indigenous communities) taken into custody, but after a long talk with him—during which the colonel advised the cacique to obey Argentine laws and government—he decided to set them free, considering the “meek nature” of the chief and his people. Later on, Colonel Villegas received intelligence that Inacayal had cooperated with Ñancucheo, “the most recalcitrant and indomitable Indian among those who inhabit the Cordillera.” He concluded then that Inacayal was as “disloyal and false” as all Indians; consequently, he decided to persecute and exterminate the rebel chief (Viejobueno 1883, 19–20). In November 1882, Colonel Villegas gave instructions to this effect to the Third Division of the army under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Nicolás H. Palacios. He explained that since the Indians had escaped to Chubut or taken refuge in the cordillera, the campaign should change: from then on, they would pursue a “continuous and active war” with small detachments, attacking here and there until they cleared all the territory surrounding Nahuel Huapi Lake (Viejobueno 1883, 31). The chiefs who had requested peace treaties from the government (among them Reuquecurá, Namuncurá, and Reumay) would be “treated with the humanity due to civilized nations.” Others, such as Saygüeque and Inacayal, would be attacked until they surrendered. Two sections of the instructions were marked as reservado (confidential). One of them stated that Inacayal, having broken the compromise made in 1881, was now a target for attack. As for Saygüeque, the confidential instructions ordered good baqueanos (Native guides or pathfinders) and a strong squad to chase him to his hiding place and “fall upon him” (Viejobueno 1883, 34–35). Regarding Foyel and other caciques who would likely seek “reconciliation,” the squadrons had orders to “force them into submission” (Viejobueno 1883, 38–40). L i ve I n d i a n s i n t h e M us eu m · 101 

The attack against Inacayal’s tribe took place on February 23, 1883, at a place called Apulé or Apeleg, in the province of Chubut.6 Surrounded by a large group of Indian warriors, Captain Adolfo Drury with a small party defended the post until reinforcements arrived three hours later. Inacayal’s forces were defeated, leaving eighty dead; many members of the chusma (nonwarriors, chiefly women and children) were captured. Yet the cacique escaped and continued fighting. On October 18, 1884, he faced his final defeat at the battle of Genua, in what Colonel Villegas considered the last of the resistance of the Patagonian Indians. Despite this defeat, Saygüeque kept wandering for some months until he surrendered to Colonel Vicente Lasciar at Fort Junín on January 1, 1885. It is clear, then, that after 1881 Inacayal and Foyel actively resisted the Argentine military and refused to submit to Argentine laws and government. High-ranking authorities within the army considered these two caciques to be rebels and targeted them for punitive expeditions. Considered allies of Saygüeque—one of the most intractable and stubborn chiefs, whose capture the army had ordered by late 1882—Inacayal and Foyel would likewise be chased until their final arrest and submission. Previously, Inacayal had argued that he had assisted scientific travelers in the region. In 1882–1884, this argument no longer carried weight. The army was committed to eliminating or capturing all the great caciques from the Great Lakes area. The time for negotiation was over.7

The Capture of Inacayal and Foyel There are various accounts of Inacayal’s and Foyel’s capture by the Argentine army. One of them states that military operations in the neighborhood of Nahuel Huapi Lake forced Inacayal to move south to the valley of Tecka, Chubut. When the army approached the region, both caciques presented themselves to Colonel Lasciar at Fort Junín (580 kilometers to the north, in present-day Neuquén Province) to reaffirm their peaceful intentions. Lasciar took them prisoner and sent them to Carmen de Patagones, where they were put onto a navy ship that took them to Buenos Aires. In this rendition, the battles of Apulé and Genua are omitted, perhaps to tone down the belligerent attitude of the two caciques (e.g., Fernández 2008; Endere 2011). In a variant of this account, the caciques were surprised by Lieutenant Insay’s sudden attack, and, without ever going to Fort Junín in the north, they were forced to walk from 102 · Salvator e

central Chubut all the way to the coast, where the ship Villarino was waiting for them (Vallejos 2012). A quite different story emerges from Milcíades Alejo Vignati (1942). Due to the murder of three settlers from Colonia Rawson, the war minister ordered General Lorenzo Vintter to set up a military detachment to protect the Welsh settlers. Colonel Lasciar established a detachment of fifty men at Corral Charmata near Gaiman. This military post dramatically reduced the movement of Indian groups traveling east toward the settlers’ colonies. Inacayal and Foyel tried to attack this post with eighty warriors, but, being detected, they claimed that they had come to offer their submission to the Argentine army. The caciques then asked for temporary permission to return to their toldos. Lasciar allowed Foyel to return to Tecka with half of the warriors, under the close surveillance of Lieutenant Insay; Inacayal was detained at Corral Charmata with the rest of the warriors. As Foyel failed to return, the army attacked his toldería “in a rapid, energetic, and daring” maneuver (October 18, 1883), defeating the Indians at Pampa de Genua. Foyel lost thirty-nine warriors, and the rest disbanded (Vignati 1942, 18–20). A somewhat different version emerges from Walter Delrio’s account. In this version, in September 1884, Inacayal, Foyel, Chiquichano, and a small number of warriors presented themselves to Colonel Lasciar in order to negotiate their surrender. A month later, Lieutenant Insay informed Vintter that he had attacked the forces of Inacayal and Foyel at Genua because they had refused to submit voluntarily (Delrio 2005, 73–74). In this version, too, the caciques demonstrated their willingness to surrender but were drawn into battle by a decision of a low-ranking officer. All versions agree on one thing: the arrest of Inacayal and Foyel occurred immediately after the battle of Genua on October 18, 1884. Saygüeque remained at large until January 1, 1885. As we can see, there are at least two quite different accounts of the capture of Inacayal and Foyel. In the first, the caciques presented themselves at Fort Junín (580 kilometers north of Tecka). In the second, they presented themselves at Corral Charmata (434 kilometers east of Tecka), and then one of the chiefs returned to his toldos. The former story recounts a real battle in which the Indians were defeated; the latter indicates that Lasciar arrested the caciques at Fort Junín without giving them the opportunity to fight, implying that the Indian chiefs were cheated by the Argentine officers. Vignati claims that there was no deception. L i ve I n d i a n s i n t h e M us eu m · 103 

The second narrative—more detailed and precise—is corroborated by Miguel Ángel de Marco (2010). After the surrender of Manuel Namuncurá in March 1884, the military assumed that other chiefs would follow suit. In August of that year, Vintter took charge of the operation to capture Inacayal and Saygüeque, who had taken refuge in the valley of Senguer and had sent warriors to raid the Welsh colonies in search of food. After the army deployed a detachment to protect the Welsh colonies, Inacayal again tried to attack this post and was forced to surrender. While a prisoner, Inacayal threatened Colonel Lasciar, and in response a military party attacked his toldos. Major Vidal, encamped in Nahuel Huapi, went after the joint forces of Inacayal, Trojol, and Saygüeque and defeated them at the battle of Genua. After some delays, Saygüeque surrendered to the Argentine army at Fort Junín, on January 1, 1885 (De Marco 2010, 535–36). Oral tradition asserts that, on their arrival at La Boca, the families of captured Indians were separated, and some of the children were distributed as servants among upper-class families. Inacayal, Foyel, and their families were sent to Tigre, where they remained for approximately eighteen months in prison, until Francisco Moreno, the director of the Museum of La Plata, requested that the government release them into his custody. The government granted Moreno’s request, and the prisoners arrived at the museum in the early months of 1886.8

Life and Death in the Museum In 1886, Francisco Moreno requested that Inacayal, Foyel, and their families be transferred to the building of the museum, based on the poor and humiliating condition of their imprisonment. As Mónica Quijada has argued, Moreno’s reasons were not purely humanitarian; he expected that these live Patagonian Indians would provide much information to the sciences of physical and cultural anthropology, namely anthropometric measurements, stories, customs, and know-how in their handicrafts (Quijada 2014).9 As we shall see, Inacayal proved uncooperative, and only the women contributed stories and information on customs to the anthropologist and his technicians. Some scholars have claimed that Saygüeque was also a compulsory guest of the museum. This is an erroneous inference, derived in most cases from surviving photographs, most taken by the army squadron at Tigre. In actuality, only 104 · Salvatore

Inacayal, Foyel, and their families endured captivity in the museum. Saygüeque was apparently never imprisoned. He came to Buenos Aires to negotiate his people’s future and stayed about forty days in the city, during which time he had a chance to speak with Julio A. Roca, Archbishop Federico León Aneiros, and the minister of war, General Benjamin Victorica. He did not spend any time at the prison of Martín García or the Museum of La Plata.10 How many indigenous people were transferred to the museum? Including Inacayal’s and Foyel’s relatives and friends, there were in total fifteen persons.11 To name only the main group: Inacayal and his wife (no name is given), Foyel and his wife (name unknown), Margarita (Foyel’s daughter), and Inacayal’s daughter, a young woman by the name of Sákak or Lolora (Ametrano 2015). In addition, we find a young Fueguino man named Maish Kensis and an older Fueguino woman named Eulltyalma (who was also called Tafa). Four of them died in the museum within three years of their arrival: Inacayal, his wife, Eulltyalma, and Margarita. Foyel was later allowed to return to his land and was still alive when Moreno visited him in 1898. The young Fueguino, Maish Kensis, also died in the museum, years later in 1894. The causes of their deaths are not clear; it was said that some died from the effects of infectious disease, others due to advanced age (Casamiquela 1998). While they were alive, the Indian women worked in the museum, showing visitors their weaving techniques and skills. Margarita and Eulltyalma were forced to weave on a loom (Vallejos 2012, 155). The caciques refused to work. And the children were likely in the care of their mothers; not much is known about them. The main characters (Inacayal, Foyel, Margarita, and Maish) were also photographed by the technicians of the museum’s photographic laboratory, and their measurements taken. We do not know if the captives resisted either procedure.12 We know that Moreno in his 1879 trip to Nahuel Huapi took anthropometric measurements of a group of twenty-nine individuals whom he characterized as Tehuelches, Araucanians, and Pampas, complaining that others did not want to endure the procedure (Farro 2008, 99). In 1886–1887, Dutch anthropologist Herman ten Kate tried to photograph a group of Araucanians who were employed in the armed forces (military, navy, and police). Moreno had taken them from Buenos Aires to La Plata to take their measurements and photographs. As they were familiar with the Bertillon method13 used by the police, they thought that Ten Kate was taking them for criminals and refused to be photographed (Farro 2008, 293). Quite likely, the captive L i v e I n d i a n s i n t h e M us e u m · 105 

Indians did not have the option of refusing. Or, as Carolyne Larson put it: “At least in this moment, the captives’ agency and individuality were overruled by a scientific vision of them as racially representative specimens, to be measured and possessed” (2015a, 43). We do not know whether the captive Indians were allowed to go out and take walks in the park or to the city center.14 We know that the women carried their woven products to the markets to sell them. One of the captives enjoyed an unusual degree of freedom: Maish Kensis, the Fueguino. As he was trained as an assistant in all sorts of work, he also was called to accompany the technicians (Émile Beaufils, Juan Ivovich, and Frederick Berry) when they traveled to Santa Cruz on a collecting expedition (Farro 2008, 185). After indigenous captives died, the museum technicians separated the flesh from the bones and prepared the skeletons to be exhibited in showcases. Already trained as a preparador (embalmer’s assistant), Maish helped to prepare the skeletons of his former companions for exhibition (Farro 2008, 156). In addition, museum technicians produced plaster death masks, separated the scalps, and then extracted and preserved the brains of the well-known captives for further study (Pepe, Harrison, and Añón Suárez 2008). So, they became indigenous specimens to be exhibited on a permanent basis. But before that, their crania were measured in various ways, and their brains were studied with the collaboration of chemists in the capital city.

Inacayal: Silence, Sadness, and Rage In 1906, at the end of his tenure as chief of the anthropology section of the museum, Ten Kate wrote a scientific report based upon anthropometric measurements of live Indians and psychological characterizations of those who had died in the museum. Since he did not get to know Inacayal or Foyel, Ten Kate relied on the descriptions left by Émile Beaufils, an employee of the museum who interacted daily with the Araucano chiefs and their families (Ten Kate 1906). First, Beaufils established a differentiation between the men and the women: men were reserved and noncommunicative, while women were more talkative, responding to the questions of museum experts and the public. Men did not work at all, spending their days smoking or drinking mate, while women wove different garments (ponchos, fajas, etc.). The men talked only when drunk, yet on these occasions it was better to leave them alone, for they could react badly 106 · Salvatore

and even violently. If the women were communicative, why did ethnographers fail to annotate what they said? Mainly because, in Beaufils’s opinion, their stories could not be corroborated, and their responses varied from one day to the next. They were not reliable (Ten Kate 1906; Larson 2015a, 43). Three features of Inacayal’s character were captured in Beaufils’s description: silence, sadness, and rage. The cacique remained silent most of the time; his refusal to speak was interpreted by Ten Kate as “apathy.” In spite of all the efforts made by Mr. Moreno in obtaining some benefit for the Museum of the three Indians as well as from other indigenous captives, everything was useless. Neither the kindness nor the attentions they were surrounded by, not even the lure of remuneration, were able to overcome their apathy. (Ten Kate 1906, 40) Sometimes, Inacayal would show a fit of rage. Then he would call the Argentines “gringos” and sum up all his accumulated resentment in such exclamations as: “I am Chief, son of this land, you White thieves . . . killed my brothers, stole my horses and the land where I was born, later [turned] a prisoner. . . . I am a miserable [creature].” From then on, according to Beaufils, Inacayal’s eyes reflected a great sadness (Ten Kate 1906, 41). Every so often, the chief would call together his family and friends (men, women, and children). They would all gather around him and sing a “gloomy song” for about an hour. When asked what was the song about—what were they complaining about—Inacayal would say that the memory of his native land made him sad (Ten Kate 1906, 41). Both Foyel and Inacayal avoided all type of imposed work; this was their way of showing pride. They also refused to communicate, so much so that it was difficult to get from them any precise information (Ten Kate 1906, 40). Beaufils interpreted this silence as resistance to white domination. He in fact extended this conclusion to all imprisoned Indian peoples. The Indian has never accepted, and will never accept willingly, the domination of the white man. He has capitulated by force, yet his will has not receded on the inside. He will never forgive his Tyrant for stealing his freedom. (Ten Kate 1906, 38) In fact, all witnesses acknowledged that Inacayal never wanted to become “Argentine.” He died a member of the Güna Künen nation, proud of his ancestors. L i ve I n d i a n s i n t h e M us eu m · 107 

Foyel, on the other hand, made a deal with the government, as a result of which he was able to return to his land (Chubut) and obtain some land grants. In exchange, he declared himself an Argentine. Saygüeque behaved in similar fashion. So, when Moreno returned to the region in 1898, Foyel and Saygüeque had already initiated their acculturation process and talked of themselves as Argentines. They had also both initiated legal claims for their lands, already under attack from greedy speculators (Quijada 2014).

What Visitors Saw and What They Failed to See Although the “live Indians” were not secluded from the sight of visitors, very few visitors reported having seen them. And among those who saw them, the evidence they provided is ambiguous. While some reports mentioned the Indians’ activities at the museum, as described above, none of these activities can be corroborated by museum goers. Visitors did not record any conversations by Indians; nobody remembered them speaking. Beaufils’s report about Inacayal’s complaints is the only record of any indigenous prisoners at the museum voicing an opinion. Irina Podgorny and María Margaret Lopes reproduce an anonymous report claiming that Moreno had gathered a whole tribe of indigenous people in the anthropology section of the museum. The women spun and the men performed small tasks: Las mujeres hilan y los hombres se ocupan en trabajos del establecimiento, costeando con exceso su manutención. Entre ellos está Foyel, una testa coronada del desierto, que parece poco avenido con su nueva vida en aquellos claustros, a juzgar por las contestaciones que dio a nuestras preguntas. The women spin and the men work at different tasks within the establishment, paying [with this] for their own subsistence. Among them is Foyel, a crowned head of the desert, who seems ill matched with his new life in those cloisters, judging by the answers he gave to our questions. (2008, 226) As we shall see, the women not only spun; they also wove mantas and ponchos that they sold in local markets. According to this source, Foyel appears to have 108 · Salvator e

complained about his life in captivity, but nothing more can be inferred from this short report. Next, Podgorny and Lopes present a letter by Argentine naturalist Florentino Ameghino, in which the naturalist complains that male Indians would not work, even if tempted by good rations and tobacco. “No pude conseguir nada de ellos” (I was unable to get any information from them), wrote Ameghino (Podgorny and Lopes 2008, 226). Yet we cannot conclude from this that the refusal to work was the general attitude of “museum Indians.” Other visitors considered them quite industrious and dedicated workers (Drago [1888] 1921), or simply “guards” who welcomed visitors and protected the museum pieces (Ferdinando Resasco, quoted in Barcia 1982). Visitors provided comments on the museum, on its organization and displays, but made only passing references to the existence of captive Indians. Ferdinando Resasco, who visited the museum in 1891, saw “red skins” guarding the entrance of the museum. That “wandering barbarians” constituted the custodians of this modern museum was paradoxical to him. “Wandering vagrants in other times, domesticated by the most energetic methods, decimated, like trained wild beasts, now serve to guard the sanctuary of science against the attacks and the vandalism of persons who dubbed themselves civilized” (Barcia 1982, 188).15 Other visitors simply didn’t see the captive Indians. Henry Augustus Ward, a US naturalist and geologist who had worked with Louis Agassiz at Harvard, was quite impressed by Moreno’s museum and collections. He thought the fossil collection (particularly of large mammals from the Cenozoic era) was comparable to the collection of the Peabody Museum at Harvard, to that of Saint-Germain in Paris, and to those at museums in London and Copenhagen. About the anthropology section, he had less to say: The Argentine man, modern and prehistorical, is here represented by not less than eighty assembled skeletons and a thousand crania. Stone implements, such as axes, clubs, lances, arrows, “bolas,” etc., reach one hundred thousand approximately. (Barcia 1982, 181) But he did not see or did not care to comment about the presence of live Indians. In October 1885, P. M. Corbetto visited the museum before the collection was moved to a new building. He commented: “There are seven hundred crania belonging to disappeared races. Those that Moreno brought from Patagonia present the curious particularity of being notably similar among themselves, L i ve I n d i a n s i n t h e M us eu m · 109 

to the point that they seem to have been cast in the same mold” (Barcia 1982, 81). He also admired the standing skeletons and the two mummies he saw on exhibit. Yet he said nothing about Indian captives or museum guards.16 Corbetto returned a year later—when Moreno had moved the collections to the new building—and again failed to see Inacayal, Foyel, or their families (Barcia 1982, 82, 90–91). Another visitor to the museum was the Catalan jurist, writer, and economist Federico Rahola y Tremols (who visited around 1903). He was surprised to find recently vanquished people properly classified and grouped in the showcases of the museum. And he was even more surprised that Argentine scientists were studying these “recently conquered” Natives as if “they were part of a prehistoric race” (Vallejos 2012, 156). Rahola y Tremols’s surprise—a reaction that anticipates a different sensibility toward indigenous peoples—presents the question that we shall address at the end of this chapter: the question of the complementarity between military and scientific conquest. In the late 1880s, criminologist Luis María Drago visited the Museum of La Plata. He wanted to cross-examine, through direct observation, Cesare Lombroso’s theories about atavism, which present the “savage” and the “barbarian” as unchanging archetypes of the human race. Drago instead sought a variety of predispositions and behaviors among so-called barbarians. He favored the thesis of the adaptability of indigenous peoples to modern life. He found in the museum what he sought: indigenous people had gentle manners, and exhibited habits of work and a clear, adaptive intelligence. He mentioned in passing that the national army had brought to the capital a great number of Indian prisoners from the recent campaigns (1878–1885), many of whom had been distributed among upper-class families in Buenos Aires and now worked as domestic servants. By all appearances, these Indian prisoners had adapted well to Argentine civilization. They had shown an “open intelligence” and seemed to respond well to economic stimuli (Drago [1888] 1921, 96). To support this claim, Drago referred to reports published by military chiefs and explorers to the region as well as his “own experience.” He may be referring here to the evidence he gathered at the museum, but it is also likely that he knew upper-class families who had acquired Indians for domestic service. After discussing indigenous peoples in the north and south of the republic—Tobas and Chiriguanos in the north, and Fueguinos in the south—Drago 110 · Salvatore

wrote: “In the Museum of La Plata live a dozen of them, recently brought from their wigans” ([1888] 1921, 97). We assume that he is referring to the indigenous peoples he found at the museum, a mixture of Güna Künen, Manzaneros, Pampas, and Fueguinos. About them, he said: “They are good-natured and kind and demonstrate excellent aptitudes for the new life they have been destined to” ([1888] 1921, 97). Apparently, Drago did not talk to the Indian prisoners, only observed them working: It is intriguing to contemplate, as we have done with our own eyes, those rude sons of the desert, with their tanned complexion, with their strong black hair, and their grotesque facial features, dressed in civilization’s clothes, adjusting the welding of a fossil bone, or preparing to embalm a bird, in between the stained-glass windows, the jars, and the fragile collections. ([1888] 1921, 97) Drago saw men working in the halls of the museum, performing quite delicate tasks related to the preservation and display of the collections. (Very likely, caciques Inacayal and Foyel were not among these male workers.) To Drago, this successful experiment in acculturation proved that there were multiple paths to evolution and that, under the influence of a new social environment, an indigenous group could speed up its civilizational apprenticeship.

The Disposition of Crania and Skeletons in the Museum Before the new Museum of La Plata opened to the public in 1888, its director had amassed an impressive collection of bones and crania of indigenous peoples, perhaps the best collection of this type in South America. Moreno had purchased existing collections (crania collected by Carlos Spegazzini in Chaco, as well as those collected by Samuel Lafone Quevedo in Catamarca) and had also accepted several important donations (the most notable perhaps being that of Estanislao Zeballos in 1889). In addition, Moreno trained six naturalists who later conducted expeditions in search of bones and crania; one group went to Chubut, another to Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego (Farro 2008, 262–64). By 1890, the museum possessed a collection of 138 skeletons (113 of them on exhibition) and about 1,500 crania. Except for smaller samples of crania from Europe and the Canary Islands, most of these pieces at the museum represented the indigenous antiquity of South America (Farro 2008, 268). L i v e I n d i a n s i n t h e M us e u m · 111 

The idea was to represent the evolution of humanity in the Americas through samples of crania, standing skeletons, facial death masks, and various utensils and burial materials. The skeletons were shown in tall vitrinas (wooden and glass showcases), while the crania were placed in low vitrinas or on shelves. Here is how Máximo Ezequiel Farro describes the physical disposition of the exhibits: Concerning the disposition of the collections of crania and skeletons in the exhibition hall, Moreno organized a series of lateral showcases pressed against the walls, in a showcase placed in the middle—twostoried showcases, composed of individual vitrinas with glass on both sides, containing two skeletons each—in four tall cabinets placed on the corners, and in series of low showcases placed in a transversal fashion to the central showcase. (2008, 268) The general arrangement of the exhibit was modeled after the most modern European museums. After the failure of his 1879 expedition, Moreno traveled to Europe to observe modern museums of natural history. The design of the La Plata museum included a large elliptical hall in which the visitor would circulate through different stages of evolution. On the second story were a fine arts hall, stone objects, the library, and the director’s offices. The museum was intended to serve two types of visitors: the general public (including students), and researchers. The former could visit the museum during weekends and holidays, while the latter could visit anytime, provided the director had granted them permission (Podgorny 2009, chap. 8). While spared from graphs and tables with anthropometric measurements, the general public was exposed to comparisons among crania, showing differences in size and shape. In addition to the crania, skeletons, and other artifacts, the visitor could see watercolors and drawings of landscapes, animals, and indigenous peoples, some photographs obtained by the museum staff, and a series of busts representing different racial types or ethnic groups. Hanging from the walls of the museum were huge photographs of the captive Indians (Inacayal, Foyel, Margarita, and Maish) and oil paintings by Luis de Servy (Farro 2008, 271). The museum attained international recognition for its paleontology collection. The skeletal remains of big animals extracted from Patagonia and the pampas attracted the attention of the general public and of expert scientists. 112 · Salvator e

The Megatherium, the Glyptodon, and other extinct mammals made evident to the visitor that there was some connection between the animal life represented at the museum and the antiquity of the skeletons and crania. To Moreno and Ameghino, animal fossils and human remains were crucial evidence for their theories about the South American origins of humanity, a challenging notion that attracted the attention and criticism of European and North American scientists (Podgorny 2009).

Why Were Live Indians in a Museum? Scholars have found that the organization of objects at the Museum of La Plata was guided by evolutionary theory, then a hegemonic mode of interpretation. It was the task of the museum to show, in didactic fashion, the different stages of humanity’s evolution, and, for that purpose, the polarity between civilization and barbarism was unavoidable (Farro 2008; Podgorny 2009; González Pérez 2012). Many would agree that Moreno’s evolutionary vision was in line with the imperatives of the time: sovereignty over the national territory, the delimiting of state borders, and the fictional association of Native peoples with the origins of the Argentine nation (Fernández Bravo 2016; Larson 2015a; Podgorny and Lopes 2008). Contemporary historians and anthropologists have associated museum collections with internal colonialism, to the extent that the accumulation of crania, skeletons, and indigenous artifacts came from the pillage of indigenous cemeteries. In the case of the Museum of La Plata, the association with the Conquest of the Desert campaign was direct: the museum collection had expanded enormously with objects collected during and after the battles. Yet the question remains: aside from the bones, crania, textiles, and ceramics, was it necessary to reduce Indians to captivity and have them exposed in the museum? Scholars have argued that live Indian exhibits were common in the United States and other South American nations at that time. Yet not many Indians remained imprisoned in museums for relatively long periods of time. One is reminded of one exception: the presence of Ishi at the University of California’s Museum of Anthropology, then located in San Francisco— but there were not many other examples. The question was not about professional ethics—that is, how a certain generation of physical anthropologists treated with such emotional distance the bodies of live Indians in museums.17 The question was rather: What was the ultimate objective of evolutionary L i ve I n d i a n s i n t h e M us eu m · 113 

anthropology? Was it to locate certain people within the evolutionary ladder, or to make them disappear from history? Francisco P. Moreno, the director of the Museum of La Plata, pleaded that humanitarian reasons moved him to relocate Indian families from the army garrison at Tigre to the museum. These live Indians could render valuable services to anthropology if the captives informed researchers about their customs, beliefs, and stories (Quijada 2014). For physical anthropologists, the skeletons and crania in the museum’s collections provided crucial anthropometric measurements and, in this regard, were more useful than live Indians. Yet, as we have suggested, technicians and scientists at the museum failed to obtain sufficient information about tribal histories, leadership, languages, Indian relations with spirits and animals, and agricultural techniques. Either because the captive hosts were uncooperative—as was the case with Inacayal—or because the scientists were not deeply interested in indigenous culture, the museum staff failed to record these crucial elements of comparative ethnography. Moreno and other scientists who visited the museum and studied the collections had other objectives in mind: measuring Indian mental development and locating “him” within the evolutionary ladder. We find here a certain detachment that is difficult to explain, insofar as archaeology and folklore studies were already interested in Indian culture at that time. Beyond their detachment from indigenous culture, collectors and amateur archaeologists expressed their desire for Indian tribes to “disappear” from history. This was the case with Estanislao Zeballos. He had collected skeletons and crania in the early years of the Conquest of the Desert (around 1879). Using the equipment, mules, and assistance of the army, Zeballos managed to collect hundreds of crania and an assortment of bones. Proud of his archaeological harvest, he had no qualms about “confessing” that he had desecrated Indian cemeteries in search of the “pure Araucano race.” Dirigiome [un guía] a visitar los cementerios indígenas, de los cuales obtuve importantes colecciones de cráneos araucanos, debido a la buena voluntad del capitán Arriola, segundo jefe de Guaminí. . . . Estas reliquias indígenas tienen tanto más valor para el antropólogo, cuanto es evidente que el tipo puro de la raza araucana se perdía en nuestro país por el cruzamiento de los blancos, que por delitos comunes o militares, ganaban los toldos del bárbaro, y con numerosísimos cautivos arrebata114 · Salvator e

dos por el indio en los cultivados campos. . . . Cincuenta cráneos extraídos de los cementerios araucanos de Guaminí y que están agregados a mi Museo, fueron cuidadosamente elegidos, y son tipos cuyas formas acusan plenamente la pureza primitiva que buscaba. [A guide] led me to visit Indian cemeteries, from which I obtained important collections of Araucano crania, thanks to the goodwill of Captain Arriola, second chief of Guaminí. . . . These Indian relics have greater value to the anthropologist, as it is evident that the pure type of the Araucano race is waning in our country due to cross-breeding with the whites who, due to common or military felonies, reach the barbarians’ toldos, and [due] to the very numerous captives taken by the Indian in the cultivated fields. . . . Fifty crania dug up from the Araucano cemeteries of Guaminí, which are consigned to my museum, were carefully selected, and they are types whose form fully indicates the primitive purity I was seeking. (Zeballos 1880, 152) Here we find another similarity with Francisco Moreno. Zeballos’s obsession with finding the “pure type” of Araucano meant also that he was seeking the most primitive type of crania and skeletons. To Zeballos and many contemporaries, recently dead Indians showed signs of cross-breeding with whites and creoles. Christian captives, military deserters, and political refugees in Indian tolderías had made the task of the skull collector more difficult. This search for purity was related to an interest in finding the oldest type of American humans. To achieve this, scientists had to compare new and old crania and infer some regularities about the long-term evolution of humans in Patagonia. Immediately following the above description, Zeballos wrote the infamous phrase in which he condemned to whole “Indian race” to disappearance. —Mi querido teniente, contesté yo, poniendo el pie en el estribo, si la Civilización ha exigido que Ustedes ganen entorchados persiguiendo la raza y conquistando sus tierras, la ciencia exige que yo la sirva llevando los cráneos de los indios a los museos y laboratorios. La Barbarie esta maldita y no quedaran en el desierto ni los despojos de sus muertos. —My dear Lieutenant, I answered, placing my feet on the stirrup, if Civilization has demanded from you [the military] to defeat the [indigenous] race, pursuing them with torch in hand and conquering their L i v e I n d i a n s i n t h e M us e u m · 115 

lands, science demands that I should serve it by carrying the crania of Indians to the museums and laboratories. Barbarism is damned and in the desert nothing will be left, not even the remains of their dead. (Zeballos 1880, 228) Here, Zeballos made explicit that the military had fought a brutal war of attrition with the Indian nations, one that involved the burning of fields in order to conquer the land. Earlier in his book, he had exalted the soldiers’ sacrifice to the fatherland. Zeballos was confident that the military conquest would be followed by a “Scientific Conquest.” The final stage of the conquest would entail moving the remains of Indian culture to the museum and the scientific lab. Science (archaeology and anthropology) would complete the work of civilization and progress: railroads, ports, military campaigns, and European immigration were not enough. The culmination of the conquest—and the adumbration of modern Argentina—rested on the sequestration of Indian bodies in the museum. This resonates well with Mary Louise Pratt’s important concept of the “anti-conquest”: “the strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony” (Pratt 1992, 7). Zeballos’s interests were similar to Moreno’s: to find the origin of humanity in Patagonia and to carry to the modern city (La Plata, the museum) the remains and objects of Native peoples. These could serve as the foundation of a solid national science, starting with the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. Yet, he went beyond these objectives and wished for living Indians to disappear—not only as living humans but also as contemporaneous subjects with rights and memories. Zeballos wanted them to be removed to antiquity, a place that precluded any discussion of the contemporary condition of indigenous prisoners, or any consideration of the place of Indian nations in contemporary history. He mocked the possibility of Indians having “an archive” in the desert, after discovering certain folders of documents buried in the sand of the Salinas Grandes (Zeballos 1880, 243). Zeballos believed that the “right place” for an Indian was the museum: a place where the Indian (dead or alive) would be an object of study and, as such, could not resist being classed as belonging to prehistory. At the end of his book, Zeballos informed the reader that he had reached the place and time he was seeking: antiquity. 116 · Salvatore

Contemplo con encanto estas ruinas de la primitiva civilización. Estoy en frente de los orígenes de la Humanidad. Me parece que al abrir las sepulturas que guardan los muertos de cada una de las tolderías, porque al lado de cada una hay un cementerio, levanto las toscas piedras de los sepulcros celtas, que penetro en los dólmenes de la primitiva Normandía y que remuevo la tierra sangrienta de los túmulos coronados de árboles, como aquel hollado por Eneas, de donde partía el quejumbroso acento de Polydoro. I contemplate with delight these ruins of the primitive civilization. I am facing the origins of Humanity. It seems to me that while opening the graves that keep the dead of each of the tolderías, for beside each one there is a cemetery, I lift the rough stones of Celtic tombs, I penetrate the dolmens of primitive Normandy, and I remove the bloody soil of the mounds crowned with trees, like those trodden by Aeneas, from where the whining accent of Polydorus stemmed. (Zeballos 1880, 283) In similar ways, Moreno was obsessed with finding the origins of humanity in Patagonia. His “Patagón primitive” was his most precious finding, moving him to claim that the most ancient human type was to be found in Patagonia and not in Europe, as was believed at the time (Podgorny 2009). Moreno also said that the whole of Argentina was a “necropolis of lost races” and that the recently defeated tribes were only samples of “ancient barbarians.” La República Argentina es, sin duda alguna, una vasta necrópolis de razas perdidas. Venidas de teatros remotísimos, empujadas por la fatal lucha por la vida, en la que prima el más fuerte, llegaron unos vencederos y otros vencidos, y se aniquilaron en nuestro extremo austral. The Argentine Republic is, without doubt, a vast necropolis of lost races. Stemming from very remote areas, pushed by the fatal struggle for life, in which the strongest prevail, some arrived as victors and some as vanquished, and they annihilated [each other] in our extreme south. (Francisco Moreno, quoted in Drago [1888] 1921, 189) This is a remarkable paragraph, to the extent that Moreno presents the Conquest of the Desert as one moment within a long cycle of annihilation among L i ve I n d i a n s i n t h e M us eu m · 117 

different tribes. That is why the Argentine territory is filled with the bones of people recently dead as well as prehistoric, so as to constitute a “necropolis of lost races.” Locating the recent military operations within the longue durée of natural and human evolution, recent losses of life looked rather trivial. These “races in extinction” would have died away sooner or later. Live Indians in the Museum of La Plata represented the final conquest, the Scientific Conquest, the moment in which the Indian tribes would cease to be a menace to white and creole frontier farmers and livestock raisers and become themselves objects of investigation of a wide research agenda that included the search for the racial origins of the Argentine nation. In addition to the loss of land and personal freedom, indigenous peoples were to lose their status as actors in the drama of history, becoming mere objects of study. Within the museum, aborigines’ crania and skeletons served to illustrate a rather linear and simplistic story of evolution. In one of the display cases of the main hall of the museum were the skeletons of Inacayal, Foyel, and Margarita; under them, the label read: “antiguos señores de las pampas” (Masotta 2009). Here is an old white man’s trick: to present as “ancient lords” people who have recently been defeated and imprisoned. Thus, Zeballos and Moreno committed an additional and perhaps more insidious offense than objectifying and exhibiting the dead: they sequestered Indian bodies to place them in antiquity, a prison of no return for them and their cultures.

Restitution Can the unburied return to their native places and communities? This impor­ tant issue did not acquire public notability until quite recently. Since the first years of democratization in Argentina, indigenous peoples started to demand from national authorities the restitution of their ancestors’ remains, then in the possession of various museums (Vallejos 2012). The most important of these restitutions took place in April 1994, when the skeletal remains of cacique Inacayal were returned to Tecka, Chubut, and placed in a mausoleum (Endere 2011). After this, the communities reclaimed the restitution of the cacique’s personal items as well as other body parts and objects displayed in showcases (brains, scalp, and death mask). These objects were returned ten years later, in December 2014 (Ametrano 2015). In 2001, the remains of cacique Panghituz

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Guor, or Mariano Rosas, were returned to the Ranquel community in La Pampa Province (Di Fini 2001).18 Before 2001, museum authorities were reluctant to return indigenous remains, arguing that they were the custodians of the nation’s “cultural patrimony.” Yet after the passage of Law 25,517 in 2001, it became mandatory for all museums to return the remains of indigenous peoples to their local communities (Di Fini 2001). However, the state’s failure to regulate the law and the economic crisis of 2001–2002 delayed the implementation of restitution for another decade. Around 2006–2007, the activities of engaged photographers and anthropology students resulted in new discoveries: photographs of Native peoples working in the Tucumán ingenios azucareros (sugar mills), and objects until then considered lost such as Inacayal’s scalp, brain, death mask, and poncho. Earlier, the Mapuche-Tehuelche communities of Chubut had demanded the restitution of other human remains (Inacayal’s wife, Foyel’s daughter, and Eulltyalma, a Fueguino woman). Around that time, the pressure of Native communities and students forced the museum to remove from exhibition the remains of the Fueguino Maish Kensis, who also lived at the museum during the time of Inacayal and Foyel (Vallejos 2012). The return of Inacayal’s remains to Tecka had a significant impact on the local community, both symbolically and organizationally. Inacayal’s mausoleum became a sacred site where people deposited flowers and stones. Local people felt proud that their ancestor was given “military honors” and that his remains had been wrapped in the Argentine flag. After the 1994 restitution, the Mapuche-Tehuelche communities of Chubut became better organized and felt more conscious of their responsibility to defend the rights of indigenous peoples, now included in the 1994 constitution (Endere 2011). By the complementary restitution of 2014, Mapuche-Tehuelche communities had already embraced the rhetoric of human rights and confronted museum authorities’ notion of patrimonial rights (Stella 2016). In his powerful work El museo vacío, Alvaro Fernández Bravo examines the multiple ways in which Argentine and Brazilian scientists and intellectuals “filled” the new natural history museums with objects and meanings that presented the possibility of grounding a narrative of the nation on Native peoples. His work deals mostly with objects, which brought to the cities and to the present the undeniable presence, contemporaneous and ancient, of indigenous

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peoples. My objective in this chapter has been a more modest one: to exhibit once again the anomaly of “live Indians” in the museum; and to unravel the histories of war, conquest, and deception that could explain that anomaly. In addition, I have tried to show how this anomalous presence fed the curiosity of both scientists and the public at large, and how these exhibits were a culmination of the civilizing project of modernity. The service performed by Ameghino, Moreno, Zeballos, and others ultimately produced a Scientific Conquest, which complemented and also went beyond the military conquest. Now, the new sciences of archaeology and anthropology would have the last word about the fate of Patagonian indigenous peoples: in the museum they “disappeared” into antiquity and, as such, ceased to be potential citizens of the newly centralized republic. A long time passed before the state acknowledged this symbolic violence and restituted the bodies of indigenous ancestors. Similarly, historians only recently have come to recognize indigenous peoples as differentiated communities within the modern nation-state, whose struggles for land, sovereignty, and culture merit a renewed effort to document, narrate, and, possibly, comprehend.

Notes 1. A cacique is the chief of an Indian tribe or community. 2. Indios amigos were indigenous groups that entered peace treaties with the Juan Manuel de Rosas government. In exchange for their peaceful interaction, the government payed them with periodical food and cloth rations. 3. Yerba refers to leaves of a tropical herb from Paraguay (Ileasis paraguaiensis) used to make infusions. 4. The great malones of the 1870s, says Ingrid de Jong, were orchestrated by the “Salineros” and had the support of “Chilean” Indians (2015, 34). 5. The Indians’ encampments were called toldos or tolderías, referring to the typical leather tepee that constituted their mobile housing. 6. The battle of Apulé is narrated in Ministerio de Guerra, Historia de los premios militares (1910), 134–35. 7. After the 1882 offensive, many caciques took refuge on the western side of the cordillera, among them Reuquecurá, Ñancucheo, and Namuncurá (Delrio 2005, 68–72). 8. Photographs of the group, taken at Tigre, are dated to 1885. Until then, many of the children of the two caciques remained in the care of their mothers. See Ten Kate 1906; and Vignati 1942.

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9. Carolyne Larson specifies the possible benefits of these live Indians to science: women could be observed at work; their manners could be studied; and measurements could be taken of the whole group that could help physical anthropologists to speculate about the Natives’ behavior and mental capacity (2015a, 42). 10. Julio Vezub, personal communication, January 2018. Members of Vezub’s family—his wife, sister, and two cousins—were imprisoned at Martín García. 11. Larson lists them in this manner: “Inacayal, a brother, his wife, and three or four children, Foyel, his brother, his wife and children, and the translator who accompanies them” (2015a, 42). 12. They resisted being measured and photographed, according to Herman ten Kate’s account. This event of resistance occurred in 1896 or 1897. Only after the mestizo interpreter, Rufino Vera, submitted himself to the procedures did others in the group follow suit (Larson 2015a, 43). 13. The Bertillon method is a system for identifying persons based on bodily measurements, photographs, and notation of data (such as markings, color, and thumb line impressions). 14. Larson claims that the captives had ample freedom of movement inside and outside the museum. 15. At the exit, Resasco wanted to give a tip to the Indian guard, but he refused to accept it. 16. “Some of the skeletons, found in complete form, call attention first due to the perfection of their montage, then due to their antiquity; one of them, pertaining to the Stone Age, still carries two fragments of silica arrows embedded in the dorsal spine” (Barcia 1982, 82). 17. Larson presents anthropologists Moreno and Ten Kate as having a double or ambivalent view of their work with living Indians. They considered them as human beings and valued them as such, yet at the same time they also thought of them as specimens of backward races, simple objects of study (2015a, 48). 18. More recently, in 2010, the museum restituted to her original community the remains of a Paraguayan Aché girl named Damiana or Krygi (González Pérez 2012).

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FIVE

Beyond the “Desert” Indigenous Genocide as a Structuring Event in Northern Patagonia Walter Delrio and Pilar Pérez

Introduction This chapter deals with state policies, government mechanisms, and various social agencies involved in the process of state consolidation and the subjugation and incorporation of indigenous people in northern Patagonia. The period focuses on the military occupation known as the “Conquest of the Desert”—1878 to 1885—as well as its short- and long-term effects once the campaigns ended. The aim of this work is to balance the conceptual scope and limits of analyzing this complex process in terms of war, assimilation, or genocide. At the same time, it seeks to contribute to historical knowledge about the social structure of the National Territories, Patagonia and Chaco, which were incorporated with subaltern status within the national territory from 1884 to the 1950s. Thus, a second part of the chapter will attempt to periodize indigenous genocide, bearing in mind the different steps that led to genocide as well as the outcome of this event. Finally, we will acknowledge the particularities of the Argentine experience in the construction of subalternity within the state-nation-territory matrix. This chapter is the result of our participation in different collective research projects that have studied indigenous peoples’ history in Patagonia, from their subjugation to the present. We have especially analyzed indigenous agency and 122

political organization, as well as the subjugation, exploitation, and discrimination that indigenous peoples have been suffering in Argentina’s society. Our work also draws from debates within Red de Investigadores en Genocidio y Política Indígena en Argentina (RIGPI).1 RIGPI’s first aim has been to study the historical grounds of Natives’ subjugation to the national states in order to make visible the contemporary demands and conflicts of indigenous peoples. Our first task was to understand what happened to the Mapuche and Tehuelche peoples during the Conquest of the Desert. As simple as it may sound, the question has not been academically addressed for over a century, even though the military side of the conquest constituted the last event regarding indigenous peoples registered by national historiography during most of the twentieth century. Bearing this in mind, we have sought to reexamine the process known as the Conquest of the Desert. In this chapter, in order to study the process of subjugation and incorporation of northern Patagonian peoples, we suggest a classification of periods into a “nation-state-territory matrix.” This is a historical relation that is punctuated by the military campaigns but that extends over our national history to the present time. We use the concept “nation-state-territory matrix” to refer to the hegemonic and complex process that simultaneously led to the intertwined construction of state, nation, and territory, establishing values and meanings in spatial, sociological, and institutional senses. The idea of a matrix refers to the analytical possibilities in linking the terms “state,”“nation,” and “territory” in different ways. For example, it allows us to regard the differences between thinking about a national territory and a territorial nation, like the construction of one territory for the nation or the construction of a nation for one territory. Speaking about indigenous incorporation into the nation-state-territory matrix implies not only a historical description of indigenous bodies’ subjection and the persecution of indigenous peoples’ social organization, but also the incorporation of the “indigenous issue” as a political, cultural, and ideological issue within this matrix in Argentina. Mainly, this process implies the construction of the indigenous peoples of northern Patagonia as an internal other.2

War, Assimilation/Incorporation, or Genocide Since the 1980s in Argentina, and coincidentally with the return of democracy, there has been a notable expansion of historiographic, ethnohistorical, and Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 123 

anthropological approaches to the historical relationship between indigenous peoples and the process of state formation. What has been questioned again and again, from different perspectives and for different scholarly purposes, is the empirical and conceptual description of indigenous subjugation and forced incorporation. Works such as those by Raúl Mandrini (1992), Martha Bechis (1992), and Enrique Mases (2002) began a critique of traditional hegemonic views. During much of the twentieth century, such hegemonic constructions characterized the Conquest of the Desert as part of the dispute over sovereignty between the Argentine and Chilean states in the Southern Cone;3 or they described it apolitically, as part of a natural and evolutionary history4 (see Carolyne Larson’s chapter 1 in this volume). In this context, and in direct opposition to these tendencies, new analyses regarding the conquest as a genocide emerged, voiced first by indigenous organizations (1980s) and, in due time, by researchers as well (1990s). In general terms, although our proposal may be somewhat schematic, we identify three possible interpretations that over time have been applied to the process of indigenous subjugation and incorporation in Argentina. Those frames of interpretation of the Conquest of the Desert as an event are: war, assimilation/incorporation, or genocide. Thus, we need to inquire, what are the implications of these three ways of approaching the conquest process? What are their origins and what are their potentials and limits?

War Yesterday and today, we find the discourse of the Conquest of the Desert as a victorious war. The actual participants in the military and political processes of subjugation and incorporation were also the narrators of a history that legitimized their own agency in terms of a war between civilization and barbarism (Ramayón 1980). President Nicolás Avellaneda (1874–1880) remarked on the difference between previous wars against the Indians, which he understood as wars over internal frontiers, and the new narrative of state advance emerging during the conquest. In a daily order delivered to Argentine soldiers on January 11, 1879, he affirmed: “After so many years of war against the Indians, today it [the nation] comes out of the dark and there is a whole People cheering the winners” (Walther 1970, 446). One central element of this argument was the identification and construction of an internal enemy as a threat to the goods and persons as well as the 124 · De l ri o a n d Pé re z

social order of the nation. To this end, the political discourse created and promoted—through the media and even through scientific discourse—an indio malonero (raiding Indian) stereotype5 (Zeballos [1878] 1958; Zeballos [1880] 1960).6 By the end of 1878, just before the military advance began, an editorial in the newspaper La Tribuna identified the origins of the Ranquel people: “Due to the fusion of an inferior race and a corrupted race, true monsters have been born.”7 The monstrosity of the Other consisted of its identification with degenerate races by crossbreeding, by constituting bands of alleged thieves of cattle and persons, by not obeying any law, and by its provenance, especially if from the west of the Andes (as these Indians were suspected of being linked to Chilean interests). This construction of the enemy enabled the Argentine government to erase and ignore three centuries of diplomatic, political, and economic relations between Hispanic creoles and indigenous peoples. These relations amounted to a legal corpus made up of agreements and treaties that explicitly recognized the indigenous sociopolitical units and their territories (Levaggi 2000). The indio malonero stereotype operated as a homogenizing label and as a menace to the indigenous people themselves. This stereotype converged with the construction of an Indian who could be assimilated; that is, an Indian who sooner or later would cease to be an Indian and could eventually be civilized. In effect, when the military campaigns began, the Argentine state broke every treaty and historical agreement established with the chiefs (or longko) that had been signed from colonial times until 1878. At the same time, the army secured specific financing in order to modernize and professionalize the armed forces. Then, Minister of War Julio A. Roca established a multistage plan in order to conquer the so-called desert. The armed forces narrated the Conquest of the Desert—with practically no notable battles or military losses—as an epic story in which they were the victors and agents of Patagonia’s incorporation into the Argentine state’s sovereign territory. Simultaneously, military commanders saw these campaigns as valuable training for officers. Roca, by then president of Argentina, wrote to General Conrado Villegas in 1883: “It is a pity that these romantic campaigns to the Desert are coming to an end, they were an admirable school for commanders and officers of the army.”8 The indigenous population, stereotyped as indios maloneros, were not considered sovereign sociopolitical units or as people with rights but rather Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 125 

as savage elements. In addition, they were coded as obstacles to building national sovereignty. What is more, they were at times seen as a foreign presence that could eventually favor Chilean interests in Patagonia. Therefore, military historiography has understood the conquest as a war (Walther 1970), in the same fashion that the political and naturalist scientific discourse did. Jointly they legitimized and justified the Conquest of the Desert. The event was then inscribed in the national history (Schoo Lastra 1928; Marfany 1940; Biedma 1975) as a step toward the civilizing and modernizing of the state. Altogether, the historical narrative would continue to render invisible not only an array of policies and state actions toward indigenous peoples, but also those indigenous individuals themselves within the rest of the population. As early as 1881, President Roca asserted the success of the campaigns: “In the near future, settlements will arise in those same places; where there are no longer Indians, tribes, or terrible chiefs to terrify the shepherds or prevent the cultivation of the fields.”9 Since then, Argentina’s historiography—with some partial exceptions—has continued to reproduce this interpretation of the events that led to the subjugation and incorporation of the indigenous peoples of the south. These analyses evidently ruled out the stories of prisoners and survivors, and the policies that affected them and determined their destinies in collective and individual terms. The war, its heroes, emblematic sites, and—fundamentally—the narrative and its achievements were immortalized in the daily geography of Argentina. Equestrian monuments and toponomy—names given to squares, streets, routes, and cities—have served over time to fix the hegemonic narrative of indigenous submission as a war won against “barbarism” and the wild “desert.” One hundred years later, in 1979, the dictatorship of General Jorge Videla carried out a colossal commemoration of the campaigns to the desert with a series of activities that included the creation of commemorative coins, military parades, school events, horseback riding, and a massive history conference in honor to the so-called epic of the desert in the city of General Roca, Río Negro Province. In this context, the dictatorship celebrated the role of the armed forces in a war against, and the annihilation of, internal enemies that threatened the national order. The dictatorship identified the desert campaigns of the past with its own operations against rural and urban guerrillas. Civil society actively participated in the festivities that year: newspapers and children’s publications produced illustrated supplements; Channel 9 of the city 126 · De l r i o a n d Pé re z

of Buenos Aires produced the first Argentine miniseries on color television related to the topic; and scout patrols raised towers—simulating observation towers used during the Conquest of the Desert—everywhere (see David Sheinin’s chapter in this volume). Some present-day authors have also chosen to use the term “war” in reference to the conquest. Marcelo Gavirati and Julio Vezub, for instance, propose to replace the term “Conquest of the Desert” with “war for the dominion of Pampa and Patagonia” (2001, 150). Others, like Luis Alberto Romero (2011), refer to an “inevitable war”10 or underline the importance of the technological advantages such as the “train, the telegraph, and the modern Remington” (Vezub 2001, 196–99), in indigenous peoples’ inevitable subjugation.11 In other cases, the process is categorized as a “social war” or a “war for the construction of sovereign power” (Escolar, Salomón Tarquini, and Vezub 2015). This perspective focuses on the confrontation and the strategies developed both by the state and by indigenous polities. It inscribes the Conquest of the Desert as a long-term conflict in which the campaigns are only one episode within the growing tensions. These authors choose the term “war” to acknowledge the agency of indigenous peoples as well as to avoid their victimization.

Assimilation Second, we find the discourse of assimilation, which proposes the conquest as an apolitical outcome or as a naturalized and evolutionary history of civilization understood as universal. On March 1, 1878, an editorial in the Buenos Aires newspaper La Prensa claimed: “We are engaged in a contest of races in which the indigenous life carries on itself the tremendous anathema of its disappearance, written in the name of civilization.” The editorial further stated: “Let us morally destroy that race, let us annihilate their economy and their political organization, let us disappear their tribes and if necessary divide the families.” Some years later, Francisco P. Moreno, a scientist who had inspected the indigenous territory before the military advance, asserted in the context of the opening of the Museum of La Plata in 1887: The Argentine Republic is, without doubt, a vast necropolis of lost races. They came from the remotest theaters, pushed by the fatal struggle for life, in which the strongest survive, some conquerors and some conquered, and became extinct in our extreme south.12 Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 127 

The museum, under Moreno’s direction at the time, was built by prisoners of the campaigns, many of whose bodies became part of the museum’s collection and exhibits immediately after they died. Within this line of thought, assimilation was the only viable option for the individuals or remnants of surviving tribes after the Conquest of the Desert, when the Argentine state announced the “end” of indigenous societies and peoples. In the National Congress, and in the press of the time, a debate began on the destiny of the indigenous populations subjugated, rounded up, and deported from their sovereign lands to different areas of the country. Among the different proposals voiced by Catholic and liberal commentators, ranging from physical elimination to the granting of land to establish agricultural colonies, there was no agreement on a single strategy that would determine the fate of those subjected (Lenton 2014). This legal vacuum favored the processes of deportation (from sovereign indigenous territory in Wallmapu to Argentine state territory)13 and redistribution of indigenous people to different regions of the country, undertaken by state agencies and civil organizations in response to the interests of the different fronts of progressive capitalism: viticulture, sugar and cotton cultivation, domestic service, and recruitment into the armed forces. In these debates, which continued into the twentieth century, the idea of imminent assimilation remained the primary statement. Despite the differences of opinion that emerged depending on the debaters’ respective political positions and social sectors, each nonetheless sustained the need to tutor the indigenous population in this process of assimilation and incorporation as citizens, Christians, and workers. The discourse of assimilation is linked to, and is to some extent a continuation of, the narrative of war. According to this perspective, the surviving Natives would gradually assimilate through citizenship, education, military service, and labor, as well as via state agencies that would gradually establish a presence in Patagonian territory (Quijada 1999; Argeri 2005). At the same time, this discourse has a conceptual counterpart: the gradual—and often forced—loss of culture. Some commentators have described this assimilation as the gradual and successful result of state conquest; others have focused on the actions of the evangelizing agencies; and finally, we find those who identify the outcome only as an epiphenomenon of the processes of capitalist expansion.14 In more recent times, assimilation has also been analytically employed by authors who denounce it as a result of subjection. These authors identify 128 · De l ri o a n d Pé re z

assimilation as forced acculturation and, in general terms, propose to dewesternize the history that explains these processes. Some authors who support this perspective identify as members of indigenous groups themselves and propose a decolonization of knowledge, in the recovery of the forms of knowledge proper to their peoples (Comunidad de Historia Mapuche 2012).

Genocide Finally, recent scholars and activists have reconceptualized the Conquest of the Desert as genocide. The first to propose this understanding of the conquest were indigenous activists in Argentina, in the context of the democratic recovery that began in 1983 and especially in the context of the quincentennial celebration of 1992. Subsequently, academic scholarship has made use of the concept (Trinchero 2005; Bartolomé 2004), in some cases based on the definition formulated by the United Nations convention, but sometimes transcending this legal framework in order to broaden the concept’s significance as a category of analysis (e.g., Díaz et al. 2007; Delrio et al. 2010). Thinking of the conquest as a genocide implies, in the first place, understanding the process in terms of crimes against humanity, as the Argentine state identified indigenous populations as a dangerous “internal other.” This process allowed the forced incorporation of the Natives into the labor market at the same time that they were stripped of material belongings, territory, and their own forms of social organization and cultural production. The genocidal process was successful in the sense that it achieved the definitive subjugation of the Natives and their incorporation into the Argentine state-nation-territory matrix, denying their existence as cultural and sociopolitical units. These three interpretations have limits that we will briefly discuss before detailing our argument that the conquest was indeed a genocide. To begin with, the discourse of war has been hegemonic and predominant in national narratives and has had four central consequences. First, history as a discipline accepted for decades, without further examination, the victorious outcome of incorporation, taking for granted the resolution of the “indigenous issue” with the Natives’ military defeat. This discourse did not contemplate as an object of study the indigenous peoples and the processes that affected them after the campaigns of submission. The policies deployed against indigenous populations from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth were invisible within this historiography. Second, this type of historiographical Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 129 

discourse has been intertwined, in different historical moments, with the objectives of the political and economic sectors, which have politically capitalized on the so-called war or conquest and which have benefited from indigenous lands and labor forces. Third, this discourse has facilitated the construction and maintenance of the stereotype of wild and violent indios maloneros, as well as the idea of the desert as empty and in need of civilizing, installing these notions in popular culture as symbols and truths of the national imaginary and folklore (see Jennie Daniels’s chapter in this volume). Fourth, the interpretation of war has enabled, and continues to enable, a fictitious reality in which comparable sides would have faced each other. Current scholars who employ war as a conceptual frame seek to differentiate themselves from their predecessors by vindicating indigenous struggle. They argue that other options—such as talking about genocide—victimize indigenous people and deny their agency. However, indigenous peoples’ struggles to defend their territory were always a theme of military and nationalist historiography on the war.15 From this perspective, resistance (or struggle) is limited to violent confrontation, and therefore many different political practices and strategies are diminished. In addition, the description of the “war” that some authors propose has framed certain indigenous people and individuals as guilty of “treason” or “collaboration” with the Argentine state. This interpretive framework, enabled by the language of war, presupposes a possibility of choice in the context in which the military campaigns of conquest were deployed. An evident problem with the war interpretation is that it focuses mainly on the great leaders, leaving aside the histories and trajectories of other historical actors: the tens of thousands of families who cannot be understood only through the fate of the chiefs. Finally, in the past as well as today, it is also a discourse with connections to political conflict. The Argentine media refers to the current conflicts involving Mapuche communities in terms of “war” and “confrontation.” Newspaper headlines regarding a 2017 conflict between Argentina’s national parks—a state organism—and a Mapuche community include: “A Mapuche band declares ‘war’ on Argentina and Chile.”16 “Patagonia: the war against the RAM17 advances. The Ministry of Security will provide technical and professional resources to investigate with the prosecutors of Neuquén, Río Negro, and Chubut.”18 130 · De l r i o a n d Pé re z

“Villa Mascardi: the government confirms that the Mapuches used firearms and speaks of a ‘declaration of war’ from the RAM.”19 The language of war, as well as its conceptual framework, shapes the understanding of present-day conflicts in Argentine society and inhibits other political possibilities. It is powerfully based on the stereotype built since the conquest and throughout the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the discourse of assimilation identifies and analyzes the processes of nonmilitary violence but frames them within declaimed civilizing, modernizing, or citizen-inclusion processes. Therefore, quantifying the degree of indigenous peoples’ cultural, political, economic, or social assimilation frequently depoliticizes these processes. Second, the assimilation narrative leaves unexplained the so-called indigenous revitalization processes in Argentina, especially those with enormous presence since the return of democracy in 1983. It disconnects those processes from their particular histories, because they have been invisible to historiography. Third, the assimilation argument has served to question the legitimacy of the “new communities.”20 It has instituted the stereotype of the indigenous trucho or fake, which implies an association with foreignness and a threat to the national social order.21 Fourth, new approaches that denounce the violence of assimilation also entail essentialization in their interpretations. That would be an original starting point from which to think about cross-breedings, acculturation, or gradualization of cultural change. From this point of view, there would be then the possibility of reversion to a prestate or original stage of life in Wallmapu. And fifth, what assimilation stories have in common is presupposing assimilation as a permanent state of loss, whether through earlier narratives of extinction, evangelization, and civilization or later ones of citizenship, development, and ethnic revitalization. Finally, genocide as a framework of interpretation has been criticized by scholars who assume that the concept refers to the total elimination of the indigenous population or the absence of agency, resistance, struggle, or defense on the part of the same. It is also criticized for being anachronistic, since it was a nonexistent category at the time of the campaigns. And those who employ the concept are also accused of essentializing the state as a Leviathan. We will now explore the usefulness and limitations of this conceptualization.

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Subjugation and Settler Colonialism Genocide studies has become a growing field in the past decades. In part this is because the concept is complex and controversial, and therefore it enhances many different questions that challenge researchers from different fields. We choose the concept because it helps us to bridge and understand the relationship between the subjugation and incorporation of indigenous populations in the nineteenth century, and the construction of a resulting social order that continues today. As Zygmunt Bauman has argued (1989), genocide can be understood as only an “end” in itself or, better, as both an “end” and a “means to an end.” As an end, the attack against indigenous populations had a significant economic outcome by the late nineteenth century, which we will sketch briefly in this section, as well as political consequences. But it also had a profound and less evident social impact. Therefore, and following Dirk Moses (2008) and Patrick Wolfe (2006), we analyze the effects of genocide as a settler colonialist deep structure. That is to say, we understand the Conquest of the Desert not as an isolated and violent event but as an event that provided a structuring logic to Patagonian and Argentine society from then on. With this idea, we intend to discern Argentina’s present reality, with its notorious silences and alleged truths that shape common sense. Thus, we will appeal to sources produced in the twenty-first century as well as those from the past. The concept of genocide implies, to begin with, a crime against humanity. We have already analyzed its relevance and applicability in opposition to recent historiographical developments regarding the campaigns in the desert. We have shown elsewhere (Delrio et al. 2010) that the entries in Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide were fully met during the military occupation of northern Patagonia.22 The military campaigns involved not only the advance of troops across Patagonian territory but the installation of forts along the Negro and Neuquén Rivers. These forts, which varied in size, lodged both troops and indigenous prisoners surrendered to the army voluntarily or by force. The Indians were detained in these camps not for any crime or alleged crime they had committed but because they were “Indians.” The forts operated as concentration camps. In the official documents, we have found information on concentration camps operating from 1878 until 1888 (Pérez 2016). Although the campaigns were 132 · De l ri o a n d Pé re z

officially ended by 1885, we find evidence of camps supported by the state until 1888. These camps were the bases from which at least ten thousand Indians were deported from their sovereign lands (Mases 2002).23 Men, women, and children were transported on demand to the growing agricultural centers and the city of Buenos Aires. Many men were sent to work in slavery-like conditions in the sugarcane- and grape-harvesting regions of Tucumán and Mendoza. Young men were also made to join the army, with mandatory service terms of at least six years. Many families were deported to Martín García Island (Papazián and Nagy 2010). Women and children were mostly delivered to the cities in order to work as domestic servants. Although there was a long-standing debate in Congress over this practice, children were separated from their families and renamed after the families that kept them (Lenton 2014). The dismemberment of families, especially children, would guarantee their coming to civilization.24 Recent scholars have come to these conclusions in part because the object of study has slightly changed. The traditional historical narratives of the Conquest of the Desert focused first on the military “epic” and second on the lives and challenges of the caciques (chiefs). These new works, by contrast, reconstruct the trajectories and whereabouts of indigenous individuals and communities, and not just their leaders. We refer to those persons, who could be—or not—part of a prestigious indigenous family, those Indians who had been previously obscured behind the politics of leaders who were recognized by the state’s administrators. The Conquest of the Desert took away the lives, organizations, families, homes, animals, and territories of the Mapuche and Tehuelche people, the great majority of whom had never been warriors or a menace to others. As we have already stated, these violent events were not only aimed to destroy indigenous society and its sociopolitical organizations but were also a means of structuring a new Patagonian society following the military occupation. The control of territory was undoubtedly one of the primary aims of the military campaigns. If we examine these policies—their projects and implementation—we can better understand how they have constructed and organized a population desirable to the Argentine nation under racialized and stratified criteria. The cartography of land privatization reveals that the most productive parcels of land were distributed en masse soon after the military occupation Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 133 

(Bandieri and Blanco 2009). For example, the first to receive land and titles were the land companies, such as the Argentine Southern Land Company.25 By contrast, the indigenous families who survived the campaigns had to wait several years and establish multiple means of organization, agency, and strategy in order to secure even precarious access to land. In 2015, the Honorable Assembly of the province of Río Negro (northern Patagonia) published a report on the state of affairs of public lands. The report shows that one of the recurrent problems of the indigenous population is the precarious land tenancy they have experienced for the past century. Precarious tenancy was one of the principal means of expelling indigenous people from land throughout the twentieth century. On one hand, this leads to the concentration of land. On the other hand, the people evicted from the land add to the growing poor populations of Patagonian cities like Bariloche, Esquel, Comodoro Rivadavia, and Neuquén. (For more on maps and contemporary indigenous conceptions of land, see Sarah Warren’s chapter in this volume.) Soon after the Patagonian campaigns were over, the “indigenous issue” vanished from the national agenda (even though military campaigns in the north of the country were only just beginning). However, the indigenous population that remained in the National Territories of the south was regarded by the state as a security problem. Therefore, an array of police forces were created and security measures enacted to forestall potential crises. Regular and special police forces were responsible for perpetrating attacks, evictions, kidnappings, and other kinds of physical abuse against indigenous people throughout the twentieth century. Some of these attacks were eventually reported to the authorities, but mostly they became a modus operandi against the Indians (Pérez 2016). This persistent violence is still part of the intimate and sad memories of the Mapuche and Tehuelche communities (see Ana Ramos’s chapter in this volume).

An Attempt to Classify Periods of Genocide We propose a division of periods of indigenous genocide in Argentina in order to facilitate an empirical approach as well as a conceptual definition of genocide. Much of the conceptual debate we have explored so far has addressed the silencing of historical events and the absence of images, with the aim of widening our interpretations of events during the second half of the nineteenth 134 · De l r i o a n d Pé re z

century. At the same time, we must broaden our definition of genocide beyond the legal framework in order to identify the conceptual and historical limits of genocide in analyzing violent events like the Conquest of the Desert. In this case, we propose three stages or periods of genocide, which does not preclude the possibility of other timelines such as, and especially, an indigenous one. What is more, we aim to deal with both indigenous and nonindigenous perspectives. As we have already stated, we understand genocide as a means and as an end. As an immediate end, we identify the deployment of open violence during the military campaigns as a means of terrifying and subjugating the indigenous population. There was also a political and economical end to these campaigns, with the coming to power of a modern oligarchy in the National Autonomist Party (which ruled the country for nearly three decades). The campaigns also performed the long-standing tropes of civilization and barbarism. Thus, the victory of “civilization” over the Natives established a new context for this hegemonic discourse in Argentina, now more than willing to become part of the international world market as a white, modern, and progressive country. As a means, genocide enabled the configuration of a national and Europeanized society that excluded the survival of an indigenous social and cultural order, based on a logic of elimination over a (now) national territory. We propose three periods (the manufacture of an internal other; open violence; and the construction of a new society), which are not necessarily identified with fixed dates and which may thus overlap. Instead, the periods correspond to moments of agency, mechanisms of negotiation, and forces in conflict within given space and local contexts. These periods, which are sometimes subdivided into more stages, are also identified in other genocidal processes by scholars of the field ( Jones 2010; Stanton 1998). In the first period, we consider the 1870s a key decade in the manufacture of an internal “other” in connection with the indio malonero stereotype. Immediately after Argentina pacified the internal conflicts that dated from the colonial period and stabilized its international borders, the war of internal frontiers emerged as the principal national conflict. In this context, the indio malonero became a figure who homogenized and invisibilized other previous constructions of alterity. The indio malonero was depicted and reproduced over and over through art, literature, and the press (see Daniels’s chapter in this volume). The indio malonero was a sacrificial being (using Giorgio Agamben’s term)26 who needed to be eliminated in order to defend the goods and lives Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 135 

of Argentine society, as well as to protect national integrity. The Indians were therefore classified as foreigners, even though they were born on Argentine soil or had adopted Argentine residency (as specified by the constitution). As a result, centuries of interethnic and frontier relationships of all kinds— commercial treaties, political relations, shared towns—were trivialized and denied under the indio malonero stereotype. During the 1870s, intellectual and political elites debated the particularities and consequences of the physical, social, and cultural disappearance of the Indians. Despite the consideration of multiple proposals, the extinction—through various means—of the indigenous “groups” prevailed. Even within this discourse, the official criteria avoided naming Indians as nations, betraying every treaty and parliament agreed upon until that point. They were no longer considered societies or peoples (Briones and Carrasco 2000). In the words of the minister of war, Julio Roca: I will go to the Colorado and Negro Rivers, and if necessary to the utmost south. . . . I will not rest until I have finished them without mercy. . . . I dispatch your commission today, and desire that the treaty which has been arranged with the approbation of the President and myself be approved, and its fulfillment last forever; whatever be the advancements of military posts of Frontier operations do not be alarmed, your interests, your camps, and those of your tribe will be respected. The operations which may be made will be only against unfriendly Indians, against Namuncura, Pincen, or any other Cacique or tribe who continues invading the Frontiers, or consenting to parties leaving from among them to injure our camp establishments; it is they whom the Government has decided to chastise, and I shall persecute them without mercy, even to their extermination.27 A few days after, the minister of war presented his plan to the National Congress: The old system of going from place to place, fighting here and there, and the distribution of the National Forces over the frontier is an immense waste, open to all incursions which the Indians choose to make, [and] has been proved to be insufficient to insure the peace of the frontier inhabitants, who live in constant terror. It is necessary to abandon this method at once, and go directly and seek the Indian in his lair; to 136 · De l r i o a n d Pé re z

submit or exterminate him. . . . The conquest of the Indians will be a matter of no great difficulty, as they have of late considerably diminished, whether taken or killed in invasions or preferring to live among their civilized brethren. The Pampas are not, as is sometimes supposed, covered with many Indian tribes; the Indians occupy fixed and determined localities. Their number is insignificant compared to the resources of the nation. We have 6000 soldiers armed with the most formidable modern weapons to oppose 2000 Indians who have no other defense than dispersion, and no arms except the primitive lance.28 In this first period of genocide, the indio malonero stereotype condensed the danger against society. The necessity to exterminate them was championed by the leading political voices of the time, whereas the economic interests of the conquest were kept out of the public eye. Second, we identify a period of open violence that began with the military campaigns of 1878 and lasted until the closure of state-funded concentration camps in early 1888. The military campaigns unleashed unprecedented violence against families (women, children, and elders) and against the economic resources of those families. With these actions, the military expected the voluntary surrender of indigenous forces. By this logic, the cruel measures against families and the already subjugated population created fear, which spread throughout indigenous territory, even where the troops did not reach. Army officials were fully conscious that they were ignorant of the majority of the territory, and that they could not reach the entirety of it even if they wished to because of its vast size. The Indians, in fear due to the effects of our expedition last year, when they felt once again our troops reaching their dens, ran away scared into the deeper valleys of the Andes. The snow did not stop them in their escape. Many of these unfortunates were victims of inclemency and hunger in the same refuge where they seek salvation.29 It is interesting to notice these recurrent incidents of Indians that frequently run away regardless of our good intentions toward them; this can be understood because of the terror planted among the savages bolstered by news of extermination that circulates in an amazing fashion Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 137 

among them. They share these stories in different ways and they provoke a perpetual distrust that produces as an outcome insecurity.30 The indigenous social memory recalls these episodes of loss, subjugation, hunger, social dismantling, imprisonment, massive deportation, torture, death, and the division of families. In 2013, a revealing source was translated for the first time from Mapuzungun to Spanish, the life story of Katrvlaf (Canio Llanquinao and Pozo Menares 2013). This source—more than a hundred pages long and recorded in systematic interviews conducted by Roberto Lehmann-Nitsche over two months in 1902—has invaluable significance, as it allows us to understand the process of the Conquest of the Desert from an indigenous viewpoint. I had everything I needed. My father was alive, my mother, my brothers, my sisters. Everyone was alive. “Something bad is going to happen,” people said in those days. Slowly, slowly, after a while, the soldiers came into our lands. First, they came to Patagones, the wingka [white people] captured any person they met. That was what happened to the people in our lands. In that way trouble started. Only, some time later, the wingka came in once again. Were they advancing over the Ngulumapu? So they said. We heard all this. That was how I grew up. In those days, we lived near the Welsh. (Katrvlaf, November 22, 1902, in Canio Llanquinao and Pozo Menares 2013, 371) Katrvlaf narrates his youth and the time before the military occupation as well as the “news” they received before they actually met the Argentine army. After the “encounter” at the so-called Battle of Apeleg, his life, as well as that of his family and traveling companions, changed forever. The total dismantling of indigenous political organizations and the violence waged against their families explain the difference between the Conquest of the Desert and any previous confrontation between creoles and Natives. Third, we mentioned the construction of a new society. After the concentration camps and the deportations, relocations, and distributions of people across Argentina, Patagonia was rebuilt as a new society administered as “National Territories.” This society grew upon a successful genocide, not because the indigenous people were wholly eliminated but because the new society excluded them from full citizenship and the national imagination. 138 · De l ri o a n d Pé re z

What happened to the Indians after the Conquest of the Desert? The survivors were freed by 1888, when the most prosperous lands had already been distributed in Buenos Aires, preferably to foreign land companies (such as the Argentine Southern Land Company; see above). A small handful of indigenous chiefs received land for themselves and their “people” (closest relatives), but most families were excluded or only precariously considered as deserving of land. The impoverished and plundered survivors were dealt with as a security issue. Therefore, they were pursued as a menace to the newly created towns and new settlers, who kept arriving in the territory. Their ceremonies were controlled and interfered with by local forces such as the police. The use of indigenous language was attacked through schools and institutions that forbade its use in different ways. The multiple forms of discrimination led most Indians to deny or hide their indigenous identity. To avoid discrimination, they fragmented or silenced the transmission of their knowledge and culture to subsequent generations. Thus, official policies aimed to produce a homogeneous population as well as to silence the genocidal past, and to silence indigenous responses to and denunciations of that past.31 However, indigenous agency and the organization of indigenous families and communities resisted the constant attacks with different political strategies throughout the twentieth century. The multiple forms of struggle, which are still in the process of being remembered and studied, range from the preservation and transmission of painful memories in ceremonies and family narratives to the activities of community and supracommunal organizations such as the Aboriginal National Association (1918–1932), the Indigenous Advisory Council (1984–present), and the Mapuche Confederation (1983–present), among many other organizations that struggle against racism and for indigenous rights (land, culture, and respect). However, the indigenous peoples of the south are still scarcely acknowledged as part of the Argentine national community. Notwithstanding the mechanisms of assimilation and integration, the Indians continue to be considered internal others. And, therefore, they are considered sacrificial beings every time they are framed within the stereotype of the indio malonero. If we adapt our analysis to include indigenous peoples’ agency, the periods of genocide coalesce around precise moments. Soon after the frontier’s negotiated order was broken by the Argentine state, there was a moment of organized resistance against the advance of both national states (Argentina Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 139 

and Chile) over the frontiers. The general uprising of the Araucanians in 1881 (Bengoa 2000) and the previous armed resistance led by Calfucurá in 1872 can be interpreted in this manner (see Vezub and Healey’s chapter in this volume). However, with the 1878 campaigns, the context of negotiation changed significantly. Even though we can identify some recurrent practices, such as indigenous troops (whether forced or voluntary) in the national army, the military strategy and principal aims of the Conquest of the Desert were new and ambitious. They proposed the occupation of the territory and the destruction of indigenous ways of subsistence, and they did not expect to renegotiate the former frontier relations on new grounds. Rather, the military advance was planned to destroy those relations and leave them in the past. The habitual ways of the frontier’s politics were disappeared, or were expected to do so as quickly as possible. The Conquest of the Desert was not the continuity of politics through different means, as Clausewitz postulated, but the final end of these negotiations. In this context, the longko—the indigenous spiritual and social authorities—as well as the indigenous communities more broadly evaluated, reinterpreted, and redefined their roles not only because of the physical elimination of indigenous individuals during the Conquest of the Desert but also due to the fracture of social bonds. The different forms of resistance and agency that developed during and after the campaigns should be contextualized and studied in order to understand the conquest within this absolute and asymmetric power relationship between the state’s administrators and the indigenous survivors. Strategies such as regrouping to demand land, or escaping and hiding; or individual and collective strategies of invisibilization as well as the will to keep social memory alive and to continue ceremonial practices in the face of discrimination, all frame periods of genocide from an indigenous viewpoint. Within the settler colonialist new society in the National Territories—and after the deportations, family dismemberments, relocations, and killings—the Mapuche and Tehuelche people fought to stay within their territory, to survive, and to rebuild a community. Even when they were denied and silenced by state bureaucracy, indigenous people found mechanisms and strategies to reproduce their own existence within the new social structure. They have since deployed their agency, aware of the effects and consequences of presenting themselves as indigenous people. The stereotyped performance, and its function in a society constituted as a 140 · De l ri o a n d Pé re z

result of a successful genocide, is well known and a constant element in present and past conflicts (see Delrio et al. 2018).

Conclusion The concept of genocide is key to avoiding reductionism in the analysis of indigenous incorporation and subjugation in northern Patagonia. We made clear that its use does not deny but rather incorporates other perspectives that focus on resistance, deployment of forces, and agency. More precisely, it is a category that, historically conceived, allows us to pose a large number of questions about a multiple, complex process with consequences for indigenous people in particular and for Argentine society as a whole. Since Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” in 1948, the concept has been related to the necessity of naming and establishing regulations on crimes against humanity committed by states, particularly at foundational moments or in the organization of new societies. When the UN convention defining genocide was drafted in 1948, the events of not only the previous decade were taken into account but also the background of the Armenian people in Turkey, imperialist colonization in Africa, and even westward expansion in the United States (Lemkin 1944). The time that separates the consolidation of the concept with the so-called campaigns to the desert of Argentina is less than the time that separates us today from 1948. The concept is not anachronistically used but is the result of the type of processes that we have presented in this chapter. Studying the Conquest of the Desert as genocide does not imply thinking of the state as a Leviathan, consolidated and homogeneous. On the contrary, what new scholarship has demonstrated is that, in the same process of subjugation and indigenous incorporation, there were contradictions, disputes, the establishment of new forms of relationships, the construction of regulations, discord over resources, and political confrontations. Therefore, we choose to refer to the construction of a state-nation-territory matrix as a framework to analyze and understand how the various elements of the matrix are redefined and dialogically related: that is, state models, ideas of the nation, and ways of thinking of space as territory. By connecting indigenous submission and incorporation to this matrix in terms of genocide, we seek not only to understand the historical description of how the submission occurred—the control Beyon d t h e “ De s e rt ” · 141 

of bodies and prohibitions on indigenous forms of organization—but also to address the construction of the “indigenous issue” as an ideological, cultural, and political element in the development of this matrix in the Argentine case. In contrast, the interpretations framed within the ideas of war or assimilation operate, in some cases, as disguised modes of denial or relativization of the founding violence of a new societal order in the National Territories. In other words, they blur understandings of the sociohistorical complexity of the constitutive process of the state-nation-territory matrix that still configures social relations in northern Patagonia. At the same time, the power of words to create stereotypes, and the relationship of scientific discourses to contemporary disputes over resources, merit attention here. In Argentina, the story of the desert campaigns as a war won over barbarism, which simultaneously halted Chilean ambitions in Patagonia, in the face of a monstrous and sacrificial enemy, has formed and is still part of the national imagination. But fundamentally it is also the tool with which large landowners and extractive companies act to defend their interests. In sum, genocide does not imply the absence of agency or a mere construction of victims and victimizers. Its use as an analytical concept allows us to situate the process in its true proportions and avoids analogies with other types of conflicts that presuppose equality of value regimes and forms of state organization. However, during all three periods of genocide in Argentina, there have been crimes against humanity. Therefore, there are victims and victimizers. We must start pushing forward the question of reparation.

Notes 1. RIGPI is a network of researchers, journalists, film producers and directors, activists, students, and artists who work on the relations between indigenous peoples and the national and provincial states in Argentina. Since 2005, RIGPI has worked collaboratively on research, communication, and artistic projects in order to make the indigenous reality in our country visible, as well as to debate the consequences of genocide in Argentine society in general. 2. By “internal other” we understand the exclusion of a people or group from the imagined community of the nation, although they bear rights as citizens. 3. Raúl Mandrini criticizes these hegemonic views that prevailed until the 1980s: “First, we cannot reduce the frontier topic to the military issue. The war, which was

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by no means constant nor permanent, constituted in any case, one aspect of the whole complex relations” (1992, 67). 4. Even within the context of the subjugation campaigns, we can find these ideas in Francisco Moreno’s writings (1893), and their continuance through different authors during the twentieth century. 5. This stereotype cast the Indian as a warrior and thief who engaged in crossborder raiding. 6. Estanislao Zeballos’s La conquista de quince mil leguas ([1878] 1958) and other writings were published by the government and were compulsory reading for armed forces officials who were in positions of command during the campaigns. 7. Juan Cruz Varela, La Tribuna (Buenos Aires), November 17, 1878. 8. Letter from Roca to Villegas, Buenos Aires, April 28, 1883, cited in Schoo Lastra 1928, 153. 9. Message from the National Executive Power in the opening of sessions of Parliament in 1881, Journal of Sessions from the Chamber of Senators, May 8, 1881, 19. Direction of Parliamentary Information, 1991, 203. 10. Romero writes: “The assertion of an internal sovereignty as well as the urgency to delimit the national borders explains the Conquest of the Desert. A territory like Patagonia, demanded by three state powers, usually generates a war” (2011). 11. The articles by Gavirati and Vezub (2001) and Vezub (2001) are included in the book Patagonia: 13.000 años de historia, edited by María Teresa Boschín and Rodolfo M. Casamiquela and financed by the Benetton Group in the context of the opening of a museum in the Leleque estate. The book is a celebratory publication of Benetton, the largest foreign landowner in Patagonia (the Leleque estate being only part of the 900,000 hectares the group owns in Patagonia). The estate has been in conflict with the Mapuche-Tehuelche communities since its constitution in the late nineteenth century. The Leleque Museum, built during the 1990s, has been repudiated by the indigenous communities of the region, who have been demanding for decades their right to the land. In general terms, the book and the museum support the discourse of an inevitable war and refer to the indigenous peoples only until the Conquest of the Desert, remaining silent about their subsequent survival, rights and demands, and twentieth-century history generally. 12. Francisco Moreno, Revista del Museo de La Plata, Talleres del Museo de La Plata, 1890–1891, vol. 1, 46. See Ricardo Salvatore’s chapter in this book. 13. By deportation, we mean physical movement from one place to another, specifically forced movement between two different sociopolitically conceptualized spaces. 14. See, for example, Cabrera 1934; Canals Frau (1953) 1986; Clifton Goldney 1963; Franco 1967; and Terrera 1974, among others. 15. We can verify this by reviewing the titles of the papers presented at the 1979 conference in celebration of the Conquest of the Desert, mentioned earlier. These papers were published in four volumes in 1980. See Sheinin’s chapter in this volume.

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16. “Un grupo mapuche le declaró la ‘guerra’ a la Argentina y Chile,” Perfil, February 7, 2018, at https://www.perfil.com/noticias/sociedad/un-grupo-mapuche-le -declaro-la-guerra-a-la-argentina-y-chile-20141113-0031.phtml. 17. The RAM is an alleged (by the government) Mapuche terrorist group that has launched anonymous attempted minor attacks against property. 18. “Patagonia: avanza la guerra contra el RAM,” Noticias Urbanas, February 7, 2018, at http://www.noticiasurbanas.com.ar/noticias/patagonia-avanza-la-guerra -contra-el-ram/. 19. Jaime Rosemberg, “Villa Mascardi: el Gobierno asegura que los mapuches usaron armas de fuego y habla de una ‘declaración de guerra’ de la RAM,” La Nación, November 26, 2017, at https://www.lanacion.com.ar/2085946-villa-mascardi -el-gobierno-asegura-que-los-mapuches-usaron-armas-de-fuego-y-habla-de-una-de claracion-de-guerra-de-la-ram. It is important to clarify that no weapons or any trail of firearms were found during this so-called confrontation or declaration of war. Nevertheless, the naval police executed a young Mapuche male, Rafael Nahuel, who was in the area. 20. Some communities have only recently become visible to the state discourse and protocols, and they are criticized as opportunistic by state agents and part of Argentine society. 21. Jorge Lanata, a well-known journalist, denounced a “fake” community in Tucumán. “Jorge Lanata denunció que existe una comunidad originaria “trucha” en Tucumán,” El Tucumano, August 28, 2017, at http://www.eltucumano.com/noticia /242814/jorge-lanata-denuncio-existe-comunidad-originaria-trucha-tucuman. 22. Article 2 states that genocide includes “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.” 23. The Memories of the Ministry of War and the Navy count as the outcome of the 1879 war operations “14,172 Indians suppressed from the Pampa. This figure excludes the number of Indians killed in persecutions or due to hunger in the desert” (Memories of the Ministry of War and the Navy, 1879, PVI, General Archive of the Nation Library, Buenos Aires). The Memories describe that more than ten thousand of these Indians were “chusma” (women, children, and elder people). 24. Articles 15 and 16 of the national constitution (1853–1994) promote the conversion of indigenous peoples to the Catholic faith in order to bring prosperity to the country. 25. This company was the largest British company in Patagonia. Today, these lands and their estates, like the Leleque estate, belong to the Benetton Group (see note 11).

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26. Agamben (1998) identifies as sacrificial beings any persons who could be killed despite the mandates of prevailing laws. These individuals constitute an exception to the regular norms that is socially accepted. The philosopher identifies these exceptions in different historical periods. 27. Letter from Julio A. Roca, minister of war, to Chief Baigorrita, reproduced in the Buenos Aires Herald, August 6, 1878. 28. Julio A. Roca, minister of war, presenting his project to Congress, reproduced in the Buenos Aires Herald, August 18, 1878. The Herald, an English-language newspaper, supported Roca’s campaign as minister of war and his road to power. The editors not only published every speech he gave, but they also sent a field correspondent with Roca during the so-called Conquest of the Desert. On February 13, 1879, the editor gave a full-page answer to the London Times, which had headlined an article two days before referring to Argentina as “Immoral and Sanguinary.” Warren Lowe, editor of the Herald, was gifted with land on the Negro River after the campaigns. 29. Memories of the Ministry of War and the Navy, 1882, vol. 2, 239, General Archive of the Nation Library, Buenos Aires. 30. Ibid., 295. 31. The indigenous emergency implies a very delicate, personal, and familiar process within the indigenous population as well. Recent generations have had to deal with their elders’ silence and personal stories of racism and violence.

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SIX

Redefining Borders The Desert in Argentine Literature Jennie I. Daniels

Introduction Vast stretches of cold, arid territory have enticed the imagination of generations of writers. Although Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert (1878–1885) lasted less than a decade, the pampas and Patagonia drew the attention of explorers such as Charles Darwin (see his Voyage of the Beagle), scientists, missionaries, and public officials throughout the nineteenth century. Their travel journals and narratives, and fictional representations inspired by the region, create what literary and cultural scholar Gabriela Nouzeilles calls a “practical map” for state occupation (1999, 38). Projects of mapping and occupation of a state’s territory necessitate “mechanisms of discrimination against both competing nations and segments of the State’s own population” (37). Thus, indigenous populations join the representations of the Patagonian landscape as a signifier whose meaning shifts over time. In this chapter, I examine literary representations of the Argentine desert and its indigenous populations. Just as literary works often depict their desert settings as not urban without referencing specific locations in the national interior, so are indigenous people often portrayed as faceless hordes rather than specific groups. Still, these representations always engage with the question of national identity. The desert (pampas, grasslands, and Patagonia) acquired a special significance to a generation of writers exemplified by Ricardo Güiraldes (1886–1927), Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), and Adolfo Bioy Casares 146

(1914–1999). In many of their best-known works, these borderlands symbolized a “certain essence of Argentineness: . . . the unknown image of oneself ”1 (Lojo 1996, 133). Moreover, the question of being Argentine necessarily involves a discussion of alterity within the state: who are, and who are not, considered full citizens, together with their defining characteristics. In my review, I consider several well-known Argentine literary works that engage with the desert during the early years of the nation (after the 1810–1818 struggle for independence), contemporary to the Conquest of the Desert, in gaucho literature of the turn of the twentieth century, and through the end of the twentieth century. Although by no means a comprehensive list of Argentine literary works that portray the desert, representative early texts offer some of the foundational narratives of a newly forming nation in the process of defining its national identity. The earliest writers explore the identity of their arising nation through its rural roots, and rather than rejecting these as the nation urbanizes, many subsequent authors build on this literary tradition. The desert is a contested symbolic space whose meaning changes over time according to the political aims and social context of literary intellectuals. The authors under study employ several dichotomies including urban/rural, white/ nonwhite, and civilized/barbarous to construct representations of the citizen and the Other in the national imaginary.2 I find that the earliest authors use representations of the desert to advocate for who must be conquered either for national gain or due to a perception of threatening difference: the desert and its indigenous population are inextricably linked as barbarous elements to be suppressed, in contrast to the “enlightened” citizens of European descent. The Conquest of the Desert and its genocide against indigenous peoples mark a turning point for literary intellectuals, who reimagine the desert (and its indigenous heritage) as located in the mixed-race gaucho. Gaucho literature of the turn of the twentieth century explores this theme in more detail and provides two options as the nation modernizes: for the gaucho to assimilate or to be eliminated. However, in spite of the ideological struggle, the gaucho figure retains sympathy in the national imaginary, both as a symbol of Argentine heritage and as a representative of the mistreated lower classes. While these depictions of the desert persist in later literature, many twentieth-century writers contest exclusionary representations of the desert and its people that serve as tools to economically and politically marginalize the nation’s Others. During the twentieth century, some literary intellectuals relocate the barbarousness R e de f i n i n g B orde rs · 147 

of the desert to urban centers, with the rural and/or historically marginalized segments of the nation deemed civilized or essential to the nation. Ultimately, an exploration of this trope in Argentine literature reveals that the desert is significant as a liminal space, a racial, economic, political, and social frontier that at the same time reflects structures at the very heart of the nation.

Early Argentine Literature Argentine literature during the period of national consolidation (roughly 1818–1885) establishes the desert as a region that writers conquer figuratively through literary description and representation. Graciela Montaldo, an expert in Argentine literature and culture, argues that rather than an arbitrary literary setting, “the countryside . . . is that place where an identity is proposed through extreme differentiation, it is the ground of a constant appropriation of the past and the traditions where our culture is reconstructed daily” (1993, 14). The desert is a space of Otherness in early texts, yet as it acquires significance in the national imaginary, it develops into a site of national heritage. At the heart of many texts written during the early to mid-nineteenth century is an attempt to assert control over traditions and spaces that inform narratives of inclusion and exclusion. Although some texts represent an overt struggle between rival political factions (e.g., José Mármol’s Amalia and Esteban Echeverría’s El matadero), in others the conflict is portrayed as a struggle with natural elements or indigenous occupants of rural areas. In both types of texts, authors employ naturalist and/or romantic narration, and characters embody European Enlightenment ideals that directly contrast to the difference of the desert and the people residing there. An early example of the desert landscape representing national Otherness is Esteban Echeverría’s epic poem La cautiva (1837). A romantic poet, Echeverría was a progressive unitario sympathizer, fleeing to Montevideo in 1840 during the federal dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835–1852). The unitario faction within Argentine politics aspired to open liberal markets that would facilitate international trade and integration. La cautiva explores the desert landscape through the perspective of a criollo woman taken captive by an indigenous tribe and lays bare the dangers of an unconquered national interior. This epic poem begins with María as a prisoner of an indigenous tribe, after they raid the settlement where she lived. She escapes, finds her husband dying 148 · Da n i e l s

on the plains, and tries unsuccessfully to keep him alive. Argentine soldiers find María, but she also expires when they relate the news that her child is dead. The poem extols the virtuosity of an Argentine identity built on white, Christian ideals, contrasting María with her indigenous captors. Like other “foundational fictions,”3 the honorable female represents the contested body of the nation; in this case, María is threatened by an uncivilized indigenous tribe and by the desert itself. The desert, in Echeverría’s poem, represents a space that exists in contrast to urban Argentina, to international borders, and to other countries. Its juxtaposition with these spaces necessarily identifies the desert as something on the outside, rather than at the heart of, the nation (Torre 2010, 13). Marking the desert and its people as uncivilized and threatening dominated the thinking of the unitarios in part because the dictator Rosas himself was a prominent landowner, and they intentionally connected rural places to the violent authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism of his regime. Additionally, in La cautiva the desert is an indomitable place through which indigenous people (indios) and people of European decent (cristianos) alike pass. In Western thought, passage implies chronological progression, movement through time, and therefore Patagonia is a site of struggle (Nouzeilles 1999, 35–37). Not only does it seem to be the end of the world, but it is also “a chronotopical infinity stretching between modernity and barbarism” (35). However, passage often fails to end in destination. The desert in La cautiva is “vast” and “taciturn” (Echeverría 2004, 11); “grandiose” (13) yet “inhospitable” (95). Natural dangers await the captives, including a brush fire, wild animals, and exposure. Thus, just as the natural environment is untamed, depicted in literary representation as defying domestication attempts, the region also seems to resist the “civilizing” influences of modernity. Likewise, the desert would seem entirely barbarous were it not for its beauty and anthropomorphized pride. Literary characters act within this seemingly infinite area and provide human representation of ideal, civilized citizens and uncivilized Others. Echeverría’s poem develops characters according to established tropes of the period about the Indian, the virtuous white woman, and the heroic white man. These characters struggle with the desert and with each other, but their depictions clearly define the limits of Argentine society, drawing from and shaping the national (and international) imaginary. The poem begins with the desert, as Echeverría introduces a region unknown to the majority of his contemporary readers. Through negative R e de f i n i n g B orde rs · 149 

descriptors such as those mentioned above, the writer establishes the desert as place, but also as antagonist. Even within the presentation of the desert, the epic introduces the indigenous villains; place and people share irreparably barbarous characteristics. The third stanza introduces an “errant tribe” (12) that “crosses” (12) the desert and erects temporary dwellings there, marking the region as the site of passage between modernity and barbarism as mentioned above. The indigenous tribe is painted as a “band of savages,” naked, strange, and cruel (16). They use “inhuman knives” (17) and, “like thirsty vampires” (21), drink the blood of a mare. While captive white women and their children, representatives of civilization, cry, the Indians get drunk (23). The poem’s representation of the desert and its indigenous occupants suggests the need for the Argentine state to occupy and subdue both the region and its inhabitants, and to protect and defend Argentines (i.e., those deemed civilized through their urbanization, whiteness, and participation in state endeavors). Thus, La cautiva provides an example of how intellectuals in a newly independent nation envisioned its frontier and, by extension, the geographical and human limits of its society. In this poem, the unitario agenda appeals to a national identity rooted in European, Christian, liberal ideals, starkly differentiated from a rural, indigenous Argentina. Another intellectual who engages with the desert during the early years of the Argentine nation, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, was one of the most influential writers of this period and a contemporary of Echeverría. Sarmiento’s discussion of civilization and barbarism recalls moments in La cautiva and is well known throughout Latin America; his dichotomy has gained prominence in both political and literary arenas, including representations of the desert. His writings have been influential throughout the nation’s history: Sarmiento’s work is significant in part because it illuminated progressive intellectual aspirations for the newly independent nation, and in part because his philosophy influenced his later presidency (1868–1874). His most widely read work, Facundo: Civilización y barbarie (published in 1845), addressed the social and political divisions of his day. Facundo, named for the rural strongman Juan Facundo Quiroga (1788–1835), is a work of creative nonfiction that discusses national topography and geography, explores early Argentine society, and traces connections between Facundo and Rosas. This was a critical national moment. Argentina had declared independence from Spain on July 9, 1816, after six years of independence wars. The newly independent state experienced several civil 150 · Da n i e l s

wars and conflicts (two of the earliest took place in 1814–1820 and 1826–1835), during which time Sarmiento began to form relationships with the Generation of ’37. This group of activists was composed principally of politically oriented writers, including Echeverría, who believed that literature (and romanticism particularly) could and should be employed as a political and cultural tool, and who advocated economic liberalism, republicanism, material progress, and European Enlightenment values (Katra 1996, 86–91). Like others in this group, Sarmiento opposed the Rosas dictatorship and published his writings in segments while living in exile. However, the election of Bartolomé Mitre in 1862 marked the beginning of greater national unity. Mitre (1862–1868), together with the following two presidents, Sarmiento himself (1868–1874) and Nicolás Avellaneda (1874–1880), established the political foundation of the state. Sarmiento, an unitario like Echeverría, penned Facundo as a veiled allegory and critique of Rosas’s regime. In these early decades of national consolidation, the progressive Generation of ’37 portrayed rural Argentina, including the desert and its inhabitants, as uncultured, uneducated, and violent. Through his creative nonfictional representation, Sarmiento represented both Facundo and Rosas as barbarous caudillos (strongmen; i.e., political and military leaders) who were the antithesis of enlightened European civilization. He claimed that these leaders represented an ironic backlash from the provinces, which had begged unsuccessfully for incorporation into the life of the colony and the newly forming nation (Sarmiento [1845] 2000, 15–16). Sarmiento argued that the port city of Buenos Aires was the most civilized place in the nation and a beacon of potential progress, yet uneducated people like Rosas’s supporters mocked its customs and even brutalized those who followed them (21). In this highly intellectual work, the writer traced the physical space of the desert and its impact on national processes. The desert—which he noted varied in actual landscape and vegetation—was devoid of human dwellings or anything that would denote civilization, and its dangers had inspired a sense of resignation in the Argentine population that a violent death might take place at any time. This resignation had deleterious effects for a newly forming democracy (13– 14). Sarmiento’s depiction of the desert echoed earlier literary representations like Echeverría’s La cautiva but moved away from strictly fictional portrayals. Portrayals such as this set the stage for state intervention in the region in post-Rosas Argentina, as the regions inscribed as barbarous became the target of military campaigns intended to occupy and subdue. R e de f i n i n g B or de r s · 151 

Ironically, as emphasis on European ideals increased, so too did the prominence of indigenous populations within the national borders. Echeverría, Sarmiento, and other writers (clergy, soldiers, politicians, administrators, educators, etc.) formed part of what Ángel Rama calls the lettered city: historically, these men served as “instruments of social communication,” a group that “developed the ideologization of power that was allocated to the public” (2002, 32). Scholar Francine Masiello, in her reflection on nationalist periods in Argentina, argues that although dominant social factions like the lettered city generally define national identity, the process of national self-definition actually is “a moment dominated by the periphery” in which “unanticipated voices enter the public arena” (1992, 11). Thus, as thinkers and politicians such as Sarmiento developed, promoted, and attempted to enact their ideal national community free of indigenous populations, they made indigenous communities much more noticeable. This increased attention on nonwhite people was another factor that led to support for the Conquest of the Desert.

The Conquest of the Desert The desert—portrayed in early literature as indomitable and uninhabited— assumed greater significance to the Argentine state as it sought to bring all aspects of the nation under its domain. Nineteenth-century Latin American nation-states aspired to sovereignty and territorial unification, a desire embodied in discourses about modernity (Dabove 2007, 26). As mentioned previously, the desert represented a space between modernity and antiquity, a place where people passed through in literal and figurative journeys. The objective of the conquest was to propel this journey toward modernization by establishing state control throughout the state’s territory. The state imposed its dominion not only on the desert but also over its inhabitants. David Viñas, in his foundational work Indios, ejército y frontera, argues that Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert was the culmination of the Spanish conquest of the New World. The choice was to convert or die (Viñas [1982] 2003, 45, 51), and in Argentina as much as during the Spanish Inquisition, conversion was not only spiritual but included sociocultural components as well. In contrast to nation-states in Europe, which have constructed modern states in opposition to external enemies, Latin American elites have identified threatening “Others” as those who emerge from within and below and jeopardize social or economic norms 152 · Da n i e l s

(Dabove 2007, 4). What writers had described as indomitable became the focus for civilization; indigenous groups, who did not constitute inhabitants in the eyes of dominant society, were targeted for integration into Argentine society (Torre 2010, 18). This modernizing project would require violence: the nation-state needed a monopoly on various forms of violence but also hegemonic consensus legitimizing this monopoly. The lettered city mediated consensus, and the literary representations of its authors were a significant practice that served this hegemonic project (Dabove 2007, 26–27). The 1870s and 1880s witnessed overlap between representations of the desert that developed Nouzeilles’s “practical map” (1999, 38) of the territory and its inhabitants, facilitating occupation and conquest, and writings that engaged with the territory-as-nation from an insider’s perspective. Nonfictional expeditionary narratives written by participants in the Conquest of the Desert provide detailed physical descriptions of the region and relate interactions between representatives of the Argentine state and indigenous people and groups. Although the desert already served as a trope in Argentine literature, no fictional literary corpus emerged to represent the military campaigns. However, José Hernández’s epic poem El gaucho Martín Fierro (1872), and its second part, La vuelta de Martín Fierro (1879), reveal an internalization of the aims of state conquest through the rebellion and subsequent pacification of its protagonist. The poem’s first part relates a gaucho’s conscription and forced labor, which eventually prompt him to escape into the desert. The latter part, written in the early years of the conquest, describes how Fierro returns and reintegrates into his community. By the end of this period, state sovereignty over the desert had transformed the land from frontier to national interior and incorporated surviving indigenous populations as targets for assimilation (Torre 2010, 18). Earlier literary portrayals of the desert, like La cautiva, influenced nonfictional literature of the conquest and literary works like Hernández’s poem Martín Fierro, which, in turn, influenced later representations. Sarmiento’s dichotomy of civilization and barbarism had shaped understandings of urban versus rural Argentina, including the human populations within each. Written portrayals of the desert prior to the military campaigns had begun to chart a practical map, inscribing physical space with a political project (Torre 2010, 13). Literature of the conquest comprised nonfiction expeditionary narratives written by soldiers, scientists, clergy, politicians, and journalists from 1870 to 1900 (11–12), which later writers then used as a model for fictional representations R e de f i n i n g B or de r s · 153 

of the desert (19).4 As an alliance between the state, science, and technology (Torre 2010, 16), the Conquest of the Desert took the form of military action, but it also projected the Argentine state onto interior regions of the nation, which reverberated in the national imaginary. The pampas, grasslands, and Patagonia thus developed as an imaginary concept with real political implications. The officers and other expeditionary writers pertained to the higher echelons of Argentine society; of the patrician class, the lettered city, these predominantly male participants helped to shape a collective understanding in Buenos Aires of the desert that in many respects reinforced earlier stereotypes. Expeditionary narrative explains the campaign, often discussed as a genocide in contemporary scholarship, which effectively brought indigenous groups under the control of the Argentine state. Still, even as these writings serve to justify occupation and conquest using descriptions of a barbarous interior and uncivilized inhabitants, closer encounters with both also reveal the region’s economic potential. Expeditionary narrative and its contemporary literary production are depictions “from above,” primarily written by men of the lettered city. The former provides abundant material to corroborate the need for and success of state modernization campaigns, while the latter engages with the ability of the state to assimilate rural populations. In other words, they raise the question of who the rural subject is and how he or she comes to identify as part of the nation. However, this rural figure is not represented as an indigenous person; the campaigns significantly reduced the indigenous population, and in any case, the distance between the reading Argentine and indigenous groups was great. The indigenous Other still existed in the national imaginary, but his presence was often moderated and eclipsed by the gaucho, or Argentine cowboy. Colonial miscegenation produced the gaucho, who did not exist prior to colonization. Part of a class that worked for landowners, gauchos have never existed independent from rural capitalism (Dabove 2007, 169, 173). The gaucho as a mixedrace character embodies the challenge of domesticating indigenous elements and assimilating them into the nation-state. Hernández’s Martín Fierro, which he wrote and published in two parts that bookend the period of the Conquest of the Desert, explores the experience of a gaucho as he navigates first marginalization by the state, and then assimilation. This work suggests that the desert is within the Argentine, and that the work of both state and citizen is to rid themselves of barbarous elements. Thus, both expeditionary narrative 154 · Da n i e l s

and late nineteenth-century literature promote the Conquest of the Desert as a finalization of national consolidation. As mentioned above, Hernández published the well-known epic poem in two parts: El gaucho Martín Fierro (1872), more commonly known as the Ida (Departure), and La vuelta de Martín Fierro (1879), or the Vuelta (Return). Collectively, the two parts are referred to as (El) Martín Fierro. Publication dates are significant when considering this work alongside the Conquest of the Desert, as the Ida preceded it and took place during Sarmiento’s administration, while the Vuelta was published mid-conquest during Avellaneda’s relatively more peaceful presidency (Carilla 1968, 581).5 The poem, widely recognized as the most important literary work of the era (Carilla 1968, 584), relates the adventures and persecution of the gaucho, Fierro. In the Ida, when Fierro is detained on trumped-up charges, a judge sentences him to six months of labor for an army colonel. Three years later, having worked the colonel’s fields and fought indigenous tribes, Fierro returns home to find his wife and children gone. After two more years of living as a gaucho matrero, or a gaucho fleeing from the law, Fierro discovers how little value the gaucho has in his society. He sets off to live among an unnamed indigenous tribe in the desert (Hernández [1879] 2010, 57). The Vuelta represents a substantial shift in tone: it begins with Fierro’s living for five years in an unnamed location among an unidentified indigenous people, and then relates his return to “civilization” and reintegration into dominant society. During the writing of the Ida, the lettered city itself was in turmoil; the work is significant in part because it challenges Sarmiento’s dichotomy of civilization/barbarism and promotes an alliance between the lettered city and gauchos. Juan Pablo Dabove notes that “for the briefest of moments, there was collusion between letrado and rural outlaw whereby one could serve as a metaphor for the other” (2007, 167). A few decades earlier, Sarmiento had argued that Rosas and Facundo were backward and violent like a gaucho, but in this story, the gaucho suffers at the hands of the state. Notwithstanding, the president maintained a strict silence regarding the work, even though he responded to other writers of the period (Carilla 1968, 579). Hernández’s masterpiece provides a defense of the gaucho that runs contrary to Sarmiento’s conceptualization of the figure. While Sarmiento’s early writings note certain gauchesque virtues like intelligence and honor, in later texts he denounces the gaucho as morally depraved and ignorant (Carilla 1968, 574–75). Thus, at the time of the R e de f i n i n g B orde rs · 155 

Ida’s publication, state discourse promoting education and “progress,” which included both public works and a push for European immigration, identified the gaucho as a threat to social and economic projects. Sarmiento advocated their suppression in order to build more effectively an Argentine nation free from the threat of the violent backwardness he associated with Rosas (Dabove 2007, 170). The author’s political defeat likely inspired this shift: Hernández began writing the Ida as a disgruntled elite, recently having suffered defeat in a large rural uprising. As the political situation stabilized, however, the critique takes another turn. It is through the Ida and contrasting Vuelta that, in spite of limited reference to a desert setting, Martín Fierro provides a literary complement to expeditionary narrative. The second part relates how the gaucho returns and remakes his life, suggesting that it is possible to tame and assimilate these liminal figures on the margins of Argentine society. Instead of documenting historically significant people, places, travel, and battles, the story of Martín Fierro focuses on the humanity and destiny of the persecuted gaucho (Chiodi 1980, 338). More importantly, the gaucho in this work serves as the prototype of the Argentine subaltern hero. Elevated by Hernández’s representation, the gaucho’s banditry is a response to state abuse, and Martín Fierro is a defense of this subclass (Chiodi 1980, 336; Dabove 2007, 165). The epic poem humanizes the gaucho and denounces his ill-treatment at the hands of state and society. Still, characters do not fully eclipse the landscape; the setting is always present, in spite of relatively scarce descriptions (Chiodi 1980, 336). Olga Chiodi gives two reasons why Hernández only imprecisely defines space in the epic poem: a gaucho narrator would not pay much attention to his landscape, and the poem’s primary aim is to defend the gaucho, which does not require attention to place (338). I contend, however, that Martín Fierro ultimately locates the desert within Argentine national identity. This seminal poetic work identifies the mestizo gaucho as Argentine, in opposition to contemporary state discourse. The acknowledgment of a fundamental Argentineness in this figure reveals not only a breach between state and citizen but also an early (though brief ) alignment between the lettered city and the masses, which became more prominent during the twentieth century. Likewise, it locates the question of the desert not solely as a physical space but rather within the citizen, albeit a domesticated citizen who is lower class, nonwhite, and of rural origin. While the Ida eventually identifies the desert within the lower-class citizen, 156 · Da n i e l s

it also represents a more literal landscape. Hernández, like his earlier intellectual counterparts, employs desert symbolism to emphasize his critique of Argentine society, but in a different way. Earlier works imbue the desert with the discourse of savagery in order to link “backward” elements like the dictator Rosas to rural areas and to promote the urban center as civilized. For Hernández’s Fierro, in contrast, rural regions are a beautiful space of freedom. “For me, the land is flowers / as soon as I see myself free; / where desire takes me / there I direct my steps / and even in the shadows, undoubtedly / to wherever I wander” ([1872] 2010, 35). Society, on the other hand, signifies hardship and rejection. Fierro claims that “being a gaucho is a crime” and that for the state, the gaucho is only good for government conscription and votes (41). The distinction reveals a yearning for open space and freedom from persecution as a “bandit” (21), an epithet that Fierro thinks is undeserved. In the Ida, Fierro’s adventures take place in what seems to be the province of Buenos Aires, but when he escapes the confines of his forced labor, he heads to the edge (frontera)6 of the desert, which represents his liberty. The desert frontier heightens a sense of the gaucho’s precarious position in the social order of Hernández’s day. The frontera serves a double function: it is the edge of civilization and the beginning of an unknown, unconquered place and space. Regarding the former, Hernández employs the desert as part of his defense of the gaucho by representing the borderlands as an unconquerable place; earlier writers had deployed this trope to express the region’s Otherness, and contemporary military campaigns were initiating its conquest. In the poem, we see early attempts to subdue rural regions, represented through the gauchos’ conscription by military officers. Additionally, the state and corporations have desert colonization projects underway, but the bard of the epic poem believes these will fail, since the frontera is unchanging and consumes those who attempt to conquer it. He notes that “the men in charge” have grand plans for the “lands on the frontier”: “They turn everything into projects of colonies and rails / . . . / But if things continue as they have gone until the present / it could be that suddenly / we will see the land deserted, / and bleaching only / the bones of those who have died” (53–54). In addition, Hernández’s desert is divided into pampas (campo or pampa in the poem) and the desert by a border. Fierro crosses the border into the desert, yet the border is also the beginning and depth of desert space. Initially, it is the state that sends Fierro to the frontera; later, he chooses to go with his friend Cruz into the desert (57). R e de f i n i n g B orde rs · 157 

The crossing into the desert signifies, for the gaucho, both his mistreatment at the hands of the dominant classes and state agents, and his rejection of contact with a society structured to fit their demands and desires. The Ida differs from the Vuelta in that while the former shows the persecution of the gaucho within Argentine society, the latter justifies the work of the conquest. In the Vuelta, Fierro describes the indios, specifically the men, as ruthless and cruel “brutes” ([1879] 2010, 61), murderers of the sick and of infants, and violent toward their wives and other women. As Fierro states, “I have witnessed agonies, / I have seen many cruelties, / crimes and atrocities / that the Christian does not imagine; / since neither the Indian nor the Indian woman / knows what mercy is” (74). Although the story does not mention the desert campaigns that began between the publication of the first and second parts, the Vuelta reveals an intensification of tropes of the “bad Indian.” The indio is portrayed as capable of inconceivable barbarity; he is a fierce wild animal (62, 67) in savage human form. As in the Ida, the desert is still “immense” (61) and “infinite” (64), disturbed when the indigenous tribes return from their raids (68), and difficult and dangerous to cross (82). However, in contrast to the first part’s focus on the plight of the gaucho, the Vuelta describes a people worthy of persecution by the cristianos of Buenos Aires. The indio is a “child of the desert” (80): his or her characteristics are tied to the land. Like the desert, dangerous to the cristiano, the indios are represented as the antithesis of civilized society. This representation agrees with expeditionary narrative in the sense that the autochthonous people, like the desert, must be conquered, subdued, and brought into alignment with the sovereign state. The mestizo gaucho Fierro returns home, renouncing the desert. The Conquest of the Desert marked the beginning of a significant shift for the borderlands in state discourse and in the national imaginary. The landscape that initially emphasized the gaucho’s social precariousness ultimately solidifies under the Conquest of the Desert as a theater of state domination. Although the Ida portrays Fierro’s desertion to live with the indigenous people optimistically, the Conquest of the Desert and its timing between the two parts brought about a more homogeneous representation of the nation in the Vuelta; this second part does away with the imagining of Argentina as frontier territory (Dabove 2007, 174). In the Vuelta, this errant gaucho, a mestizo descendant of the desert, returns domesticated to society. “Indianized” and barely recognizable (Hernández [1879] 2010, 85), Fierro finds his two sons and 158 · Da n i e l s

begins reintegration as a member of society. However, the second part finishes by pointing out that Fierro’s sons are both lame, and “sons of a lame man” (85). This marker of marginalization signifies the heritage that the narrator has bequeathed to his children: though citizens, these nonwhite, lower-class Argentines bear the desert within themselves. Later literature takes up the question of the desert within the Argentine.

Turn-of-the-Century Gaucho Literature Important social questions like immigration and urbanization meant that the conquest was not foremost in the minds of most Argentines at the turn of the twentieth century (Torre 2010, 13). However, the desert as a space of symbolic national heritage emerged in literature in response to changing demographics and national campaigns like the Conquest of the Desert that were underwritten with the abovementioned elite desire for “modernity,” often a euphemism for state sovereignty. The desert trope helps to articulate the tension between delinquency necessary to the state in the construction of a national Other, and a nascent nostalgia for the desert as a site of national identity in the face of growing European immigration. Since the state thought that it had eradicated the indigenous population, it needed a new counterpoint to Western civilization to help define Argentine national identity. Simultaneously, immigration increased, peaking with nearly one-third of the population being foreign born in the early twentieth century (Sánchez-Alonso 2013, 613). Neither the immigrant nor the gaucho could be saddled entirely with the definition of Other in this changing context: the immigrant was generally of European origin and economically useful, and the gaucho represented a national heritage in a relatively new country with a shifting citizenry. For this reason, the return and domestication of Martín Fierro marks another turning point in the lettered city’s representation of its nation and its cultural legacy: the gaucho as lower-class citizen, containing the desert within him, could be both venerated and repudiated. At the turn of the century, a generation of literary intellectuals known as the Generation of the Eighties (1880s) explored their rapidly changing society. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed an influx of European immigrants to Buenos Aires, which was rapidly becoming a cosmopolitan urban area. In a relatively short period, the nation had gained independence, consolidated political power and processes in the urban seat of Buenos Aires, R e de f i n i n g B or de r s · 159 

brought rural regions under national control, and increased access to formal education. Meanwhile, the intellectual elite were experiencing a shift in identity as well. Where Sarmiento was a man of letters and a public official, and the writers of the Conquest of the Desert were often both soldiers and politicians, the Generation of the Eighties were no longer men of action but rather identified as intellectual elites with sensibilities threatened by the vulgar or foreign popular classes (Montaldo 1993, 19). The desert, and particularly the pampas, retained the mythical roots of Argentine culture that included warring indigenous groups and the more familiar mestizo gauchos. During this period, “creating the cultural foundations of an immigrant country over this subsoil [would] be the task of the intellectuals that resolved to think explicitly about the past as meaning, as interpretation” (Montaldo 1993, 24). Argentina required a rebirth in the national imagination, a way to explain and defend its cultural heritage to both natural and foreign-born inhabitants. At the heart of this reimagining was the expulsion of the indio from within the citizen. Sarmiento had excoriated Rosas as the embodiment of the national interior’s barbarity. For Sarmiento, Rosas was “almost an Indian. Someone penetrated too much by the irrationality of the Desert, difficult to explain according to liberal axiology. ‘A barbarous politician’” (Viñas [1982] 2003, 48). Likewise, Fierro’s return and reintegration as an honorable worker excises the “Indian that he has stuck inside” (Viñas [1982] 2003, 163), which ultimately serves the interests of the national elite (162). It is clear that barbarousness is located in the desert and its children (Hernández [1879] 2010, 80), including gauchos, and by extension potentially reaches white Argentines who share a common cultural background. The desert penetrated Argentina’s citizenry through indigenous ancestry and a rural cultural heritage; ironically, even as the desert was elevated in the national imaginary as symbolic Argentine heritage, its unseemly aspects required extirpation. This could be achieved in part through the whitening, “civilizing” effects of European immigration, and in part through the assimilation of nonwhite, poor, rural Argentines into the urban industrial economy. Gaucho literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century expresses how the literary elite reinscribed the meaning of civilization and barbarism, urban and rural, Christian and Indian after the subduing of the desert. The genre is “one of the most original and significant types of fiction developed in Hispanic America” (Lichtblau 1958, 294) and spans the turn of the century, developing 160 · Da n i e l s

and maturing as a genre. Here, I discuss two gaucho novels: Juan Moreira (1879), by conquest soldier and writer Eduardo Gutiérrez, and Don Segundo Sombra (1926), by landowner and aristocrat Ricardo Güiraldes.7 These works, though by no means the only notable exemplars of this genre, roughly bookend the period of gaucho literature (1870s–1920s) and demonstrate a maturation of aesthetics within the genre. They also represent two versions of the gaucho: one as combatant, and the other as a disappearing figure (Dabove 2007, 189). This distinction, significant because of the literary and cultural traditions that developed out of it, nonetheless responded to a changing social and political life in Argentina. The gaucho as symbolic of the desert and the rural seemed to be struggling for his life in the national imaginary: in Juan Moreira, the gaucho represents a persecuted group, while in Don Segundo Sombra, he seems to be more venerated, yet naturally disappearing from the scene. As the gaucho was eclipsed by an increasingly educated and politically mobilized class of working poor located primarily in urban areas, and because the state had claimed sovereignty over the desert, the question became one of elimination or assimilation. The eponymous protagonist of Juan Moreira is a character that has resonated with readers since his first appearance in Gutiérrez’s novel; this gaucho is eliminated through police assassination. The work was the first serial publication (folletín) in Argentina, and in spite of its mediocre literary composition, the novel provides a comprehensive representation of Argentine contemporary society (Lichtblau 1983, 4, 5). Based on the life of a bandit and popular hero of the same name, the novel relates episodically the injustices he faces and his encounters with law enforcement. Moreira’s story takes up the political critique of Martín Fierro through a picaresque gaucho-bandit persecuted by authorities for real and invented crimes but, unlike its forerunner, carries this persecution to its logical end when police sent to arrest Moreira kill him by stabbing him in the back. The violent resolution stands in contrast to Fierro’s acquiescence and reintegration. Like Hernández, Gutiérrez sympathized with the gaucho’s plight, and their works’ conclusions, though different, suggest the inevitability of the gaucho’s decline. Still, unlike Martín Fierro, which has been employed in a variety of political meanings, “Moreira’s place in Argentine cultural memory [is] the ultimate icon of popular opposition to the state’s violence” (Dabove 2007, 178). Over the past hundred years, the story has been remade in theater productions, film adaptations, and novels, demonstrating the figure’s continued heritage in the Argentine imaginary. R e de f i n i n g B orde rs · 161 

Intimately connected to a space that no longer exists, yet still containing elements of the barbarous desert, Moreira embodies subaltern resistance to the Argentine nation-state as a social bandit-hero. By positing the gaucho as hero, Juan Moreira proposes an “uncompromising alternative to the resigned accommodation offered by La vuelta de Martín Fierro” (Dabove 2007, 177): the novel rejects projects of assimilation. The post–Conquest of the Desert frontier was no longer an alternative national space, and indios that remained lived within the nation-state as “friendly Indians” (181, 184). The gaucho inherited to a certain extent the place of the indio, but works like Juan Moreira challenge a simplistic Othering of the gaucho. Gutiérrez’s work defends the citizen-gaucho by portraying Moreira as “inherently as good and as honorable as other men” (Lichtblau 1958, 296–97). The novel represents Moreira’s vices together with his virtues, and Argentine social memory continues to regard Moreira “with mixed emotions of dread and admiration” (Lichtblau 1958, 297). His veneration in the social imaginary suggests a fascination with repressed vestiges of the early nation, and a defense of people living in the social and political margins; his repudiation may stem from the class-based depiction of vices in the lower classes used to discredit opposition to repression. The lettered city responded to Juan Moreira with vitriol (Dabove 2007, 178). Writer Vicente Quesada, Gutiérrez’s contemporary, exemplified the lettered city’s response when he claimed: “It could be said that [the novel’s] exclusive objective has been to flatter the basest passions and to lionize the brigand” (Dabove 2007, 178). Juan Moreira’s style, content, and social critique differ from, and were believed inferior to, Ricardo Güiraldes’s Don Segundo Sombra, which is widely agreed to represent the summit of gaucho literature (Lichtblau 1958, 298). In this novel, the gaucho fades away, and his apprentice assimilates to elite society. Güiraldes’s story relates the coming-of-age of Pedro, the illegitimate child of a wealthy man. As a teenager, Pedro is sent by his aunts to work in the campo, where he learns to be a gaucho from his mentor and true gaucho Segundo Sombra. Upon his father’s death, Pedro inherits a small fortune and must abandon his life as a gaucho. Sombra sees Pedro through the transition, then leaves him. The contrasting representations of the gaucho figure, and their reception by the lettered city, reveal the latter’s preferred trajectory for these representatives of the desert within the citizen. Moreira dies, stabbed in the back, a symbolic example of the persecution and elimination of the gaucho malo (bad gaucho). In contrast, Güiraldes’s 162 · Da n i e l s

gaucho fades into the landscape once his protégé assimilates back into wealthy society, a peaceable representation of the decline of the gaucho and his troublesome potential. Don Segundo Sombra intimates that the noble heritage of the gaucho continues in the Argentine citizen, although this time among the elite instead of the lower classes. “‘Look,’ my godfather said, smiling as he placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘If you are a truly a gaucho, you will not change, because no matter where you go, you will go with your soul out in front’” (Güiraldes [1926] 1971, 239). A representation of a mythic national past rooted in the rural desert, Sombra mentors young Pedro until the latter discovers and is ready to take his place among the elite. This portrayal of a national future suggests a noble heritage cleansed of its problematic elements. Nostalgia is mitigated by Sombra’s claim that once a gaucho, always a gaucho. The lettered city’s overwhelming approbation of this version of the Argentine citizen stakes a claim in the assimilated gaucho who carries the best of the desert nobly inside himself and asserts a national identity based in a distinctly Argentine past, in the face of significant European immigration ( Joseph 2000, 343). Notwithstanding, it is the gaucho-bandit Moreira who lives on in the national imaginary, resisting elimination even in death. The divergent internalizations of the rural past reveal how the project of defining Argentine national identity is tied up in classbased identities that became even more apparent throughout the twentieth century.

The Twentieth Century Since the first decades of the twentieth century, Argentine writers have continued to explore the desert, the pampas, and Patagonia in their works, preserving, reconstructing, or otherwise responding to the aforementioned tropes and themes. During this time, the growth of urban centers led to another shift in the literary location of barbarousness: the city. The gaucho fades or becomes a figure of political resistance, and literary works engage with the recurring theme of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s civilization and barbarism to consider a variety of Argentine landscapes, not only the desert. As I turn to literary works of the past century, I highlight characteristics of a limited number of works and authors to consider two important ways in which literary intellectuals have continued to modify the desert trope, while still employing it to speak into the political and social processes of their time. The first innovation is the reversal of the urban-civilized/rural-barbarous R e de f i n i n g B orde rs · 163 

binary, which took place in early twentieth-century literature. Reputed Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges produced a prolific body of literature and complicated Sarmiento’s dichotomy. His works often represent the city of Buenos Aires, considering urban space as a new fount of possibilities for experimentation and exploring this new frontier of “literary urbanization” (García Cedro 2009, 15–17). The urban, for Borges, is unknowable and dangerous, while the landscape of the plains is familiar and thus more closely related to the civilized. Borges employs language previously used to describe the desert as barbarous to represent the city. This leads Gabriela García Cedro to note: “It is not risky to think that civilization is what is natural, and barbarism, what is foreign” (2009, 22). As the urban consolidates as the dominant mode of living, a certain nostalgia pervades representations of the desert, locating the heart of Argentine society not in modernized urban space but rather in the nation’s interior, which had been considered perilous in the years of national consolidation and the Conquest of the Desert. While gaucho literature locates the potentially barbarous desert in the Argentine citizen and critiques or advocates for its suppression, assimilation, or elimination, writers who portray the urban as barbarous landscape often reconstruct the Other as working-class urban society. The concept of the Indian within the man persists, though in a new form. The young protagonist of Roberto Arlt’s El juguete rabioso (Mad Toy, 1926), Silvio, stands in contrast to his contemporary Pedro in Don Segundo Sombra. Both come of age in their respective novels, but while Pedro learns to valorize the rural ways of the noble gaucho before taking his place among the elite, Silvio must learn to navigate the dangers of the city and its injustices as represented in the military and police, scrappy youths and criminals, a large immigrant population, and dodgy businessmen. The novel tells the story of Silvio’s adolescence through episodes that explore how a bright but poor young man from an immigrant family might make a life for himself: petty crime, entering the military as a cadet, working for small business owners, or engaging in more serious criminality, which he ultimately rejects. Authors such as Borges and Arlt again explore Otherness through landscape, but this time as urban space. The city has become a dangerous place where one must learn to survive, much like the desert in earlier writings. Not only may the desert be within the citizen, but where these children of the desert, the working classes, are concentrated in the city, the urban becomes a new representation of the dangerous desert. 164 · Da n i e l s

By taking on the city, early to mid-twentieth-century intellectuals struggled to make sense of a changing nation. The lettered city was changing along with society. Sarmiento, Echeverría, Gutiérrez, and Hernández were social and political elites who aimed to shape national identity “from above.” Güiraldes, also born into a landowning, aristocratic family, represented declining national traditions in his work, while Borges, of an educated middle-class family, traveled extensively and wrote from a cosmopolitan perspective that situated Argentineness within traditions of Western civilization. Meanwhile, the state used public education at the turn of the century “to transmit national values to the children of immigrants and to reinforce national cohesion. Literacy rates increased from 36.8 per cent in the 1880s to 71.3 per cent in the 1920s” (Sánchez-Alonso 2013, 611). Arlt, then, represented a shift in the lettered classes as a writer “from below.” A self-educated writer from a family of immigrants, Arlt was far removed from earlier debates about the desert, gauchos, and their import to national identity. Still, even as the lettered city began to give voice to the historically marginalized (women as well as nonwhite and/ or economically disadvantaged people), these writers’ work engages with discourses of civilization and barbarism, which in Argentina are intricately tied to symbolisms of the nation’s rural interior. More recently, the 1980s witnessed a resurgence of literary texts that undertook a new exploration of the desert. Already a familiar topic with well-known symbolisms that varied from dangerous and unfamiliar, to birthplace of the politically resistant gaucho, to nostalgia for a mythical heart of the nation, the desert in these novels allowed authors to rewrite previous, well-known works (Garramuño 1998, 149), overlaying them with contemporary versions of older debates. One such author, César Aira, is perhaps the most prolific Argentine writer of all time. His novels and short stories touch on a variety of topics and have been received with varying levels of enthusiasm by literary critics and the reading public. Two of his novels take place in the desert: La liebre (1991) and Ema, la cautiva (written in 1978 but published in 1981). Both texts rewrite earlier works and intersperse the genre of novel with travel writing. La liebre engages with Lucio V. Mansilla’s 1870 Una excursión a los indios ranqueles and Estanislao Zeballos’s 1884 Callvucurá, both complex and important texts of the Conquest of the Desert (Garramuño 1998, 150). Ema, la cautiva modifies Esteban Echeverría’s La cautiva (1837), discussed above, and for this reason I focus on it here. However, each novel relates an excursion to the desert and R e de f i n i n g B orde rs · 165 

indigenous territory in particular, and each raises questions pertinent to its sociohistorical moment. These two novels serve as examples of how the region continues to hold significant symbolism in the national imaginary; intellectuals have imbued the desert (and the city-as-desert) with meaning to portray their understanding of inclusion in and exclusion from national identity. The works return to the desert, which has become an interior-exterior space of Otherness in Argentine constructions of national identity. The desert represents the heart of Argentineness as originating in a rural national past. It is also, if no longer unknowable, still largely unknown and thus exoticized. The desert continues to be a less developed region, not modernized, and therefore imagined alternatively as untouched, pristine, backward, uncivilized, and holding monetary potential as a place to be developed. Ema, la cautiva, one of Aira’s earliest novels, engages with several of these markers. This work rewrites Echeverría’s poem La cautiva, but with an emphasis on the futility of life, and particularly of capitalist society. In this way, the author challenges contemporary political practices. Twice captive, Ema is first a prisoner of the Argentine army for some minor offense, likely prostitution, and is transported to Pringles to serve as a concubine to the soldiers there. Indigenous people later abduct her during an indigenous raid; they treat her as a free person, but initially she has no reason to leave and nowhere to go. Ema learns about breeding pheasants during her captivity among the indigenous communities and eventually leaves them to establish her own farms. The novel’s end describes the inception of a successful pheasant farming operation that provides the delicacy to Buenos Aires. The setting is similar to that of the earlier text. Ema’s travels depict the southern frontier through the outpost at Pringles, the Pillahuinco River, and indigenous domains. However, the captive protagonists are markedly different. Echeverría’s María was the epitome of the female Christian Argentine during national consolidation: white, chaste, and fighting for her own and her husband’s lives in the hostile desert region. Aira’s Ema is representative of the socially marginalized Other and reveals the second main difference in intellectual approaches to national identity between the early nineteenth and the late twentieth centuries. Ema is exoticized, with brown skin and features that are sometimes African, sometimes Asian. Chastity is not a consideration, as white or indigenous partners, though forced upon her, also offer stability and companionship. Ema, therefore, is Other within a territory that, in the original 166 · Da n i e l s

version, was also the home of Argentine Otherness. However, rather than a site of misfortune, the desert landscape becomes a place she might exploit for financial gain. Ema, la cautiva engages with the earlier desert trope to turn it on its head, showing the desert not as Other but instead as the very heart of a capitalist economy dating back to pre-Columbian times. At a moment when the latest dictatorship was implementing the foundation for neoliberal capitalist projects (Beccaria and Carciofi 1995, 190; Faro de Castro and Valladão de Carvalho 2003, 477), Ema, la cautiva suggests the futile nature of this way of life. Through the representation of the Argentine periphery as a hub of capitalist production and a mechanism for the expansion of currency circulation, Ema, la cautiva suggests that Ema’s obtaining a means of production merely inserts her work into the inutilidad8 of production and circulation. Near the end of the novel, Ema attends an indigenous fair that she later deems senseless and repetitive (Aira [1981] 1997, 179), hoping to buy a grand male pheasant stud. She finds that whenever “the magnates had the opportunity to get together, the theme that inspired their best conversations was the art of money” (172). The novel suggests with hyperbolic anachronism that the indigenous tribes employed an advanced capitalist economy and had in fact “invented the theater of money” (181). Ema’s potential buyer, Colonel Espina, suggests that Argentine capitalism has its roots in this “indifferent sadism” (181). He states: “Sadism is power and pleasure; and above all, repetition. . . . [Indigenous people] have arrived at money that is accumulated and annihilated at the same time. We are so far away” (181). In a context of periodic inflation and rising national debt, this understanding of capitalism is one that may have seemed near at hand to Aira’s contemporary readers, rather than distant. Aira’s rewrite of Echeverría’s familiar piece depicts the nation’s Others, both the desert and socially marginalized people, as integral to the nation-state’s capitalist economy even though on the surface they are rejected, feared, and alienated by the dominant classes. Like others of the lettered city, Aira deploys the symbolism of the desert in Argentina’s national imaginary to reconstruct collective identity. While Arlt’s El juguete rabioso signaled a shift in the lettered city’s support for those marginalized by the state and society, Aira’s work not only makes the Other his protagonist but also uses her to demonstrate the participation of all social classes in capitalist economic structures. The desert, as both site of national origin in the indigenous population and peripheral to R e de f i n i n g B orde rs · 167 

the urban national center that Ema’s pheasants will feed, is central in the novel’s critique. Rather than a threatening region or a site of national cultural heritage, the desert is integral to the national economy, just as Ema is.

Conclusion An examination of several well-known literary works from the beginnings of an independent Argentine nation through the end of the twentieth century demonstrates that representations of the desert have influenced the formation of national identity. Initially identified with violence and barbarism by the lettered city, the desert’s symbolism was highly influenced by the Conquest of the Desert. As the desert gained symbolic significance as a national marker within the citizen, it has held sway both as an element at the heart of subaltern resistance and as a site of national heritage. During the twentieth century, writers have responded to experiences and national challenges by utilizing and changing, embracing and rejecting these symbolisms, yet the lettered city continues to engage the desert through fiction to represent a liminal space between national and foreign, citizen and Other. The distinction between citizen and Other is a significant one, and continues to influence the national imaginary and the experience of citizenship. President Juan Domingo Perón (1946–1955) together with his wife Eva (Evita) cultivated ties with the working classes. Pejoratively known as cabecitas negras for their darker hair, skin, and eyes, many of these workers had migrated from regions where indigenous ancestry was more common. The middle and upper classes applied the racist epithet, akin to “halfbreeds,” to suggest that they were an easily manipulated horde, a rural invasion into Buenos Aires and Argentine politics, rather than an economically disadvantaged sector intentionally taking advantage of a political opening. Argentina’s most recent dictatorship (1976–1983) marks another significant moment when echoes of the desert resonate, as comparisons between the Rosas regime and that dictatorship (led by a succession of military officers) are not uncommon in postdictatorship literary representations, contributing to representations of a repressive government that tortured and murdered an estimated thirty thousand people. Struggles for autonomy, rights, and increased access to citizenship by Argentine Mapuche organizations over the past several decades indicate that far from disappearing, indigenous communities continue to thrive in spite of often limited resources. 168 · Da n i e l s

The political implications of inclusion or exclusion in conceptions of national identity affect civic participation, which in turn influences day-to-day life. Cholera outbreaks in the early 1990s, for example, challenged middle-class urban Argentine national identity as a developed nation by revealing connections between region, ethnicity, and poverty. Elites responded with the presupposition that indigenous people, who suffered disproportionately from the outbreaks, were Other, not like them. Not only does this response hark back to earlier tropes discussed in this chapter, but it also had real implications for the response to the epidemic as well as long-term consequences in communities impacted by the outbreaks. Cholera is closely associated with poverty, and as it spread ominously toward Buenos Aires from the northwestern provinces of Salta and Jujuy, “the Salteña elite took advantage of the situation to resignify understandings that associate the indigenous to misery, incapacity, savageness and brutality” (Carrasco 2000, 270). The outbreaks brought indigenous communities back into the spotlight of public discussions in a negative manner, suggesting supposed innate degeneration and a need for state paternalism. The question of an inclusive national citizenry is not only a matter for Argentine society. Every society has populations that are deemed insiders or outsiders in its national imaginary. Writers, artists, activists, politicians, and other members of society employ narratives that locate marginalized groups of people either within or outside the parameters of national identity, thus contributing to their marginalization or to their empowerment. The desert, in Argentina, is one motif used in such narratives. Given the variety of ways in which the lettered city and others have employed it throughout the nation’s history, desert symbolism underwrites understandings of race, politics, society, and economics and plays an important role in social, economic, and political inclusion and exclusion.

Notes 1. All translations are mine. 2. The term “imaginary” refers to how people imagine themselves as a collective entity. The national imaginary, then, is the set of values, laws, symbols, and so on that contribute to the conception of the nation. 3. See Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America by Doris Sommer (1993). 4. Of this, Claudia Torre states: “All of these [expeditionary] writings initiated a R e de f i n i n g B or de r s · 169 

veiled and complex dialogue with the emerging stories in Argentine literature, . . . whose scenes, images, and stereotypes they tried, many times, to emulate or to rewrite” (2010, 19). 5. Although Bartolomé Mitre challenged Avellaneda’s presidency and deployed the military, Julio Argentino Roca’s troops defeated him and established the legitimacy of Avellaneda’s administration. Emilio Carilla notes that during his presidency, there was less internal conflict than previously, in spite of the military campaigns of the conquest (1968, 581). 6. In Spanish, la frontera signifies a limit, edge, dividing line, national border, borderlands, boundary, and frontier, in literal and figurative senses. 7. English translations of this novel leave the original title untouched, since it is the gaucho’s name, but adds an explanatory subtitle: Shadows on the Pampas. “Don” is a title of respect roughly equivalent to Mr., and the gaucho’s name is Second Shadow, in part a reference to how his role will fade away. 8. Inutilidad might translate as uselessness, incompetence, or inadequacy. This term is used frequently throughout the novel as a descriptor of life cycles, organisms, and life itself.

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SEVEN

The Long Conquista del Desierto and the Making of Military Government Indigenous Policy, 1976–1983 David M. K. Sheinin

In 1979, Argentines celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Conquista del Desierto. In public pronouncements by de facto president Jorge Rafael Videla, by government ministers, and by media supportive of military rule, a severe commemorative tone was struck. It highlighted the finality of the conquest as a key moment for the consolidation of the state, the importance of agricultural settlement in nation building, the central place in society of Catholic moralities, and Argentina’s civilizing mission on the frontier. That historical memory was also at the core of how dictatorship leaders understood their political, cultural, and social mission at the time. In March 1976, the military had come to power convinced that Argentina’s slide into political convulsion and economic uncertainty was the consequence of the undue influence of peronismo on the dismantling of a foundational nineteenth-century liberal commitment to nation building. The military’s restorative mission emphasized what many officers believed were traditional values, including the central place of Catholicism in society and the myths of frontier conquest in the creation of a modern Argentina.1 Most Argentines had known that a coup was coming months in advance of March 1976. The country had descended into an economic crisis marked by rampant inflation and severe government debt. Political violence primed by revolutionary groups on the far left and paramilitary organizations on the far 171

right threatened to overwhelm a weak democratic government. Moreover, for over two years the armed forces had been waging an internal war against armed guerrillas in the northwestern province of Tucumán and elsewhere. Since 1930, military government had been a recurring feature of Argentine political life, accepted by many Argentines as a periodic undemocratic interlude necessary to reestablish order in times of crisis and to set the nation back on a democratic path. Most, however, were stunned at the ferocity of military rule between 1976 and late 1983. The armed forces were responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of thousands of people. A plan to liberalize international trade and investment decimated Argentine industry and destabilized the economy. In 1982, the military government briefly occupied the Malvinas Islands, prompting a war with the United Kingdom and precipitating the fall of military rule in 1983. The conquista held specific and intricate meanings for the armed forces in regard to imperatives of the present. These included how the armed forces understood the completion of a grim task launched by President Juan D. Perón five years earlier—the annihilation of the Argentine revolutionary left. This chapter charts the historical and ideological significance of the Conquista del Desierto to the Argentine military, explores how those ideas impacted many other Argentines, and demonstrates how a perceived set of mandates emanating from the conquest helped influence military government dictates and policies on First Peoples.

The Military’s Centennial On June 11, 1979, de facto president Jorge Rafael Videla reached the city of Neuquén to mark the anniversary of the arrival at the same spot, one hundred years to the day, of Julio Argentino Roca (then minister of war) at the head of the expeditionary army. Two days earlier, Videla had taken part in the ceremony to bless a new cathedral in Bahía Blanca. Also present were army chief of staff Guillermo Suárez Mason, interior minister Albano Harguindeguy, and economy minister Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, among many other high-ranking military officers and civilian government officials. So-called indios amigos (friendly First Peoples), descendants of First Peoples who had joined the Conquista del Desierto in support of the subjugation and annihilation of other indigenous peoples, were also in attendance. Media sympathetic to the regime noted the 172 · S h e i n i n

ease with which Videla and other dignitaries moved among the public. There was no need, the media gushed, for excessive security, the result of the nation finally having emerged from the political violence of the past decade. In his speech, Videla introduced familiar nationalist tropes. He celebrated the unity of Argentines. Conquered indigenous peoples were remembered for an amorphous spiritual purity, serenity, and nobility.2 Videla’s lofty tone dovetailed with how others in positions to influence the public discourse remembered the conquest and celebrated its centenary. A special anniversary supplement appeared in the Buenos Aires daily Clarín, a publication staunchly supportive of the government’s political mission. Advertisements appealed to and advanced a link in people’s minds between the frontier, the conquest, and an ongoing march of “civilization.” A brilliant advertisement from the state-owned Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires stated simply, “La opción de los que eligen” (The option of those who choose). Not only did the ad assert the notion of a “dynamic and modern” bank in a substatement that followed, but it reaffirmed the government’s long-standing argument that military rule represented a constitutional continuity from the earliest period of state formation to the present. The military represented caretaker governance, according to this narrative, with both legal and historical legitimacy dating back to 1879.3 The government of the province of Catamarca celebrated with an advertisement that invoked the tourist slogan “Catamarca Fantástica.” “As in our independence struggle,” the ad boasted, “Catamarca took part in 1879, delivering the blood of our sons in the heroic Campaña del Desierto. As such we confirmed our national sovereignty.” Provincial identity was forged in blood through the historical continuity from national independence to national consolidation in 1879.4 The Sociedad Rural Argentina, made up of large and midsized agricultural and livestock producers, posted a short series of documents that spoke to its members’ shared commitment in 1879 to securing the frontier. In a manifesto dated that year to the governor of Buenos Aires Province, the Sociedad Rural had cited “the continuous invasions and depredations” of First Peoples against those who worked the land. In 1879, the Sociedad Rural had offered its complete cooperation in a new military strategy designed to repel indigenous peoples from the frontier. The ad reminded readers of the society’s slogan, which as presented now took meaning from the conquista’s elimination of First Peoples: “Cultivar el suelo es servir a la Patria” (To cultivate the soil is to serve the Nation).5 T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De si e rto · 173 

In affirming what it called “our FAITH in the sovereignty of the country” and by capitalizing the word “faith” twice in their short advertisement, the Banco de la Provincia de Río Negro used a double entendre to evoke the historical centrality of the Catholic Church in nation building.6 The Argentine Association of Coca-Cola Bottlers tied 1970s cultural modernity and the military government’s vision of a globalized economy to the centennial: “One hundred years ago, Argentina could not write this [ad]. We had no typewriters, no airplanes, no monorails . . . and, of course, no soft drinks. But we had the desire to build a country over the Desert.”7 There were dozens of other celebrations of the conquista.8 The federal police printed a thousand copies of a commemorative volume whose title— Cuestión de indios (A Question of Indigenous Peoples)—reflected the analytical subtlety of a sledgehammer. In clear reference to the recent military campaign against the revolutionary left in Tucumán, Cuestión de indios claimed that the conquista had marked the end of violent indigenous savagery and that the military had consolidated civilized order on the frontier.9 In May 1979, the popular and widely read historical magazine Todo es Historia published a special edition recalling the conquest. The magazine had run a contest for the lead article in the issue. An elaborate explanation of the competition process posited that a scrupulous review had come up with the winning entry, an essay by “Ronel-Có.” It was only after the selection had been made that the contest jury, led by magazine director Felix Luna, discovered the supposed enigma of the pen name (an anagram for coronel, Spanish for “colonel”). The author was in fact a retired military officer, Orlando Mario Punzi. The article and the issue as a whole commemorated the conquest not only as a triumph of civilization but also as a process by which the armed forces functioned as the bearers of civilization in what was presented as the “necessary” combination of wiping out those who could not be civilized while at the same time bringing much-needed elements of civilized society to those same populations. Based on a poor array of obscure published sources, Punzi conceived of the conquest as reaching back to the period of Spanish colonial rule. There had been three “general reasons” for the conquest. The first combined the inevitability of a military civilizing mission with the impossibility of a conquest without violence. “Hostile” indigenous peoples “required elimination.”10 The second resurrected a long-standing set of myths (based loosely on history) that identified the Andes as a dangerous frontier. Before 1600, the nomadic 174 · S h e i n i n

Querandí people lived on the pampas (southern plains). Although imagined in 1928 by the cartoonist Dante Quintero as Tehuelche, not Querandí, the wildly popular cartoon character Patoruzú incorporated some of the same fantasies nonindigenous Argentines had long assigned to Querandí peoples: physically prepossessing, enormously strong, and almost mystically skilled hunters. Just as Quintero drew his cartoon character for decades as the “last” of a Tehuelche dynasty, the historian Daniel Conlazo awkwardly romanticized the “disappearance” of the Querandí people. It was “as though a mystical historical maw had suddenly opened and consumed them.”11 However, the story became more sinister as a late twentieth-century memory of a conquista historical prelude. It created an origin story for ongoing late1970s military and political tensions between the Argentine military government and a military dictatorship in neighboring Chile. Araucano First Peoples had come across the Andes along what generations of Argentine historians termed the “camino de los chilenos.” This marked an ambiguous, long-standing Argentine melding of a Chilean frontier threat with an indigenous one.12 The impact of the migration was to change radically (and negatively) the ethnic makeup of the region. They came in migratory waves in search of the natural bounty of the land. The invaders violently destroyed the environmental stability and purity of the Querandí world as well as the region’s “legitimate” First Peoples. The third of Punzi’s causes of conquest was a redemptive consequence of the Chilean invasion. The advance of civilization in the decades before 1879, toward a desert that had, in fact, been settled by the Araucano people from over the Andes, ousted those same indigenous-Chilean interlopers, inept in agriculture and destructive of the natural world.13 No centennial work organized military thinking as effectively and clearly as the collection Epopeya del desierto en el sur argentino, attributed to thirteen contributing chapter authors, all but one of whom were active or retired officers. The Círculo Militar, a politically powerful officers club that had held its first meeting in 1881 and had released dozens of books on military history and strategy, published Epopeya.14 If, in fact, there had been no collusion between those behind the Todo es Historia special issue and the armed forces, the coincidence of themes in the magazine and Epopeya was remarkable. But the chapters in Epopeya introduced a more complicated story of conquest, one distinct from Videla’s somber tribute and from the finality of the Todo es Historia issue. They made clear that the problems that defined the conquista remained unresolved. T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De si e rto · 175 

While the conquista as a military operation concerned a relatively narrow slice of Patagonia in 1879 and for years afterward, the “desert” extended to almost all of what is now considered Argentine territory. Osiris Guillermo Villegas argued that as much as anything else, the conquista meant to define the frontier as a military border with Chile, whose expansionism had threatened Argentine sovereignty in the 1870s—as it continued to do in the 1970s.15 Beyond muddying the triumphal finality of the conquista, there were themes explored in Epopeya that had not been touched in the magazine’s special edition. A chapter on Roca highlighted personal and professional qualities in keeping with the military’s vision of its governance imperative in the 1970s. In 1863, for example, during the War of the Triple Alliance, at the head of a battalion during the Battle of Yatay, Roca disobeyed an order to retreat. He fought on heroically in a display of “argentinismo vigoroso.”16 His decision marked not only a “correct appreciation” of the situation but also an understanding that by attacking rather than retreating, he was “carrying out the spirit of his transcendent mission.”17 In defense of the nation, then, a soldier might reasonably defy the orders of his superiors. A decade later, as a patriotic officer charged by the state with maintaining order in the countryside against almost invincible revolutionaries, Roca had set a similar example. The message was clear: the judgment and actions of a military officer in a time of crisis better represented the interests of the state than the civilian government that he served. In addition, the conquista had led to tangible scientific achievements that had heralded the modern state. The military advance south had provided cover for the geographical explorations of Francisco Moreno around Lago Nahuel Huapi; the zoological survey of the pampas by Alfredo Ebelot; and the work of an exploratory scientific commission specifically sanctioned by Roca and charged with the collection of zoological, botanical, and mineral specimens along the conquista route. It also laid the foundation for the gruesome cataloguing of indigenous bodies in the nation’s most important museum, the Museo de La Plata (see Ricardo Salvatore’s chapter in this volume).18

Did the Conquest End? The concept of the armed forces as bearers of civilization was still more elaborately constructed. Before and after 1879, the armed forces played multiple social roles in “civilizing” the frontier. This included the promotion of public health 176 · S h e i n i n

in the service of civic progress. In 1969, six years after having signed Decree 2713 proscribing all Peronist political activity, Lieutenant General Benjamín Rattenbach adopted the desarrollista (developmentalist) political language of the times, celebrating a military role in the promotion of public health, housing construction, and other measures to end poverty on the frontier. Attention to that military function, he argued, was an important reminder to soldiers of their larger mission with regard to civil society.19 A century earlier, the armed forces had played a key role in responding to the devastating yellow fever outbreak of 1870–1871. The armed forces took responsibility for stemming disease spread by assuming obligations the state could not otherwise handle. These included closing ports to vessels from Paraguay on reports of yellow fever there; sending physicians to Corrientes; and in 1871 declaring April 12–May 15 holidays in Buenos Aires to curb the rapid spread of the disease. The armed forces also identified putting down an uprising in Entre Ríos Province as a crucial contribution to the fight against yellow fever, blurring the lines between military missions and those in public health and social uplift.20 Through the 1970s, Argentine military strategists often conceived of the frontier with specific reference to the challenges identified by nineteenth-century military leaders. From its first flight over Argentine territory in Antarctica (1947) through the 1970s, the Argentine air force logged a series of “firsts” in flight as triumphs of modernity and professionalism over a dangerous, frigid frontier. In 1944, General Jorge A. Giovanelli argued that in the formation of military strategy to protect Argentina’s southern “frontier,” campaigns in Patagonia should be considered “desert operations.”21 Protecting the Patagonian frontier presented problems similar to those partially overcome in 1879, including the establishment of “secure” transportation routes and the construction of a network of permanent bases (although in this case, air force and navy installations were vital). When Giovanelli cited the heightened morality and combative spirit of General Martín Miguel de Güemes (1785–1821), there was no metaphoric intent. The reference was meant as part of a practical guide to mountain warfare for mid-twentieth-century soldiers.22 From the late 1890s through 1930, from Chaco to Salta to Corrientes to Patagonia, soldiers often became the first nonindigenous settlers on the frontier in colonias militares (military settlements), although some of those labeled “indios” by the new settlers likely had nonindigenous ancestors.23 Soldiers acted as agents of the state in destroying recalcitrant First Peoples. Afterward, T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De s i e rto · 177 

in a dominant historical narrative, they turned civilian and became teachers, neighbors, and fellow citizens to those indigenous people who remained. In the latter capacity, and in a long-standing populist description that conceived of the frontier as empty, they stood in contrast to the beneficiaries of unequal land distribution who had done nothing to populate rural areas and who in some cases had never even visited their lands.24 Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “La otra muerte” (The Other Death, 1949) contemplates how battle shaped the moralities of a former soldier in the decades he lived anonymously as a gaucho on the frontier in rural Entre Ríos Province.25 But here again there were contradictions in Argentine historical narratives. While soldiers and former soldiers who settled on the frontier had what many saw as a salubrious impact on indigenous survivors of long-term conquest, their civilizing role was compromised. Writing in 1925, the jurist Miguel Ángel Cárcano evoked the mixed character of the frontier as both civilized and barbaric. The frontier had always been a region of military chieftains, where settlers who had arrived initially as military conscripts lived in penury. By the “nature of their constitution,” Cárcano wrote—likely in reference to a long-standing Argentine narrative of racial mixing on the frontier as a force that inevitably compromised the civilizing mission—settlers were unable to hold back indigenous invaders. Settlers even encouraged immoral lifestyles among those responsible for the civilizing tutelage of First Peoples. For Cárcano, as for many elite (and later, middle-class) Argentines, this was a reflection of a morally porous frontier prospering “on the limits of civilization, alongside barbarism, in a context of constantly incited base passions and sinister plots” among the locals, where racial identity became amorphously “Black” (negro) and, as such, dangerous.26 As did other Argentine writings before 1990 on the conquista, Cárcano’s book concerning how “public” lands had been settled in Argentina educed a crucial contradiction. As did Videla and Coca-Cola in 1979, he celebrated 1879 as an end point in Argentina’s civilizing mission and a start date in the construction of a modern, European-influenced nation. At the same time, though, the processes he described leading up to and prompting the conquista were ongoing and incomplete. The conquista both civilized and did not civilize the frontier, and it remained a work in progress. The long-standing relevance of what Cárcano wrote was reflected in a 1972 reissue of his book by the highly regarded Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires—a third edition for a third generation of readers. Stated from a different perspective, and emphasizing a number of 178 · S h e i n i n

distinctions between northern and southern frontiers, “the Conquest of the Desert in the pampas and Patagonia had aimed at emptying those landscapes of native peoples. . . . The approximately contemporaneous military conquest of indigenous peoples in the northwest and the northern Chaco had resulted in the forced assimilation of many of these groups into creole Argentine economic structures en masse as day laborers.”27 The persistence of a dangerous frontier in the Argentine imagination stands in contrast to more conclusive triumphalist narratives dominant in Canada and the United States of wars equivalent to the destruction of Argentine First Peoples in 1879 (though in each case, victory was far from “conclusive” for the First Peoples who remained). In the United States and Canada, triumphal historical accounts leave no doubt as to the finality of conquest and the triumph of a civilizing mission. In Argentina, however, the problems identified by Cárcano in 1925 and Orlando Punzi in 1979 as motives for the conquista never vanished. The frontier remained close by, racially subversive, morally ambiguous, porous, subject to invasion, and dangerous. Among white, urban Argentines, the enormous twentieth-century popularity of Dante Quintero’s Patoruzú was not the only manifestation (in this case through humor) of the persistence of the dangerous frontier as a predominant cultural theme. Thirteen years after the conquista, Ángel Della Valle painted the masterpiece La vuelta del malón (The Return from the Settlement [Raid], 1.87 m x 2.92 m). It was exhibited in 1893 at the Argentine pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and today occupies a wall in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires; the painting has served as the inspiration for many latter-day (often anticolonial) artistic re-creations of the same scene. As did his contemporary, US artist Frederic Remington, from an urban perch Della Valle painted frontier scenes he did not himself experience. But where Remington’s renderings of “cowboys and Indians” confirmed American narratives of civilization’s triumph over barbarism, in its depiction of an indigenous war party returning from the razing of a nonindigenous settlement, La vuelta explores a perhaps metaphorical but still violent, somber, and hostile indigenous frontier. Among other terrifying tropes signaled is the prominent place in the painting of a nude, captured white woman. (This detail features on multiple covers of Esteban Echeverría’s epic poem La cautiva, discussed by Jennie Daniels in chapter 6.) La vuelta del malón tells us something else. In the United States, most would have agreed that by 1892 the frontier (if it still existed at all) was at T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De s i e rto · 179 

least three days by rail and wagon west of Boston and New York; Della Valle’s frontier—and Argentina’s—was still and would remain on the doorstep of civilization, at once distant and close at hand.28 By some measures, Florencio Molina Campos was the most prominent Argentine artist of the twentieth century. At midcentury he was by far the most recognized. For three decades, his watercolors graced the pages of the footwear manufacturing giant Alpargatas SAIC’s widely distributed wall calendars. Molina Campos painted what some called viñetas gauchescas (gaucho vignettes). The scenes and subjects of his work almost always marked a romanticized rural, frontier past, often meant to evoke a nostalgic smile as the new month’s calendar page was turned over on a Buenos Aires kitchen wall. Some images highlighted the gaucho as a quintessentially Argentine figure featuring, not coincidentally, some of the same elements evoked in reference to the Querandí people and to Patoruzú: bravery, loyalty, physical skills, and human decency. The crossover between the settler/gaucho and indigenous people remained an intriguing and troubling constant in Molina Campos’s work. A white, urban gaze identified the cartoonish art as both endearing and hideous. Faces generally combined what urban Argentines saw as an indigenous unattractiveness with the figure of the gaucho, who were one and the same, a combination that underlined ongoing problems on the frontier that Cárcano had identified. The October 1944 Alpargatas calendar page features a nuclear family on two horses. A gaucho with indigenous features is in the lead. Trailing close behind is a woman of similar features carrying a light-skinned, blond baby: “Que noj ha salido lindo ‘l rubio” (How lovely our blond baby came out) reads the caption in deliberately imperfect Spanish, a technique meant to underline distance from the civilized.29 Molina Campos’s Escuelita crioya (Little Creole School, 1936) (again spelled poorly to evoke frontier cultural weakness) shows a female schoolteacher out on the frontier, in the yard of a one-room schoolhouse, calling a class of eight children of various ages to line up at the start of the school day. In a scene that may have evoked the earliest years of the twentieth century in Buenos Aires Province, the teacher is bespectacled and simply and professionally dressed in a long skirt and medium heels. The children are groomed and equally well attired. While on the one hand Molina Campos brings out the key civilizing and nation-building roles of women teachers and one-room schoolhouses on the pampas, the subversive frontier is present as always. The most striking 180 · S h e i n i n

feature of the painting is the indigenous, racially subversive features of both teacher and children. As did Argentines more generally, the armed forces understood the twentieth-century frontier both as having been conquered in 1879 and as still unconquered. The conquista was as much the start of a modern civilizing mission as its conclusion. Entirely absent from centennial celebrations was any recollection of another military frontier: that along the Entre Ríos–Corrientes border, where in 1880 conflict between the province of Entre Ríos and the federal government had threatened to plunge Argentina back into civil war.30 As early as 1881 there was a new military campaign against First Peoples in Río Negro.31 There were military expeditions against Chaco First Peoples in 1870, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1883, and 1884. Military conflict in the region continued for another twenty-five years. As late as 1929 an Argentine military expedition reached Chaco with a scientific corps in tow. In 1911, a year after Argentina celebrated its independence centennial and in a process that replicated nineteenth-century campaigns, the army marched on the Chaco and Formosa territories along the border with Paraguay, complete with a scientific mission. But a generation after the conquista, in Chaco the armed forces demonstrated a far greater sense of responsibility than they had in 1879—and that was remembered officially in 1979—for the integration of indigenous peoples into national life. That sense of responsibility should not be confused with what First Peoples themselves would have understood as their rights. The former might reasonably be categorized as colonialism.32 In 1912, the expedition’s commanding officer, Colonel Enrique Rostagno, reported to his superiors in detail on civilizing indigenous peoples as the responsibility of the armed forces. The civilizing mission, he wrote, complements “the efficiency of action of the soldier. It’s not easy and it can’t be improvised.” Rejecting the centuries-old legal and cultural designation in many jurisdictions in the Americas of indigenous peoples as children, Rostagno wrote that it was a grave error to consider First Peoples to be minors. His points reflected a staid version of Molina Campos’s more tongue-in-cheek Escuelita crioya. In light of the infrastructure, institutions, and tools imparted by the military for indigenous peoples to use to own and protect their property and to work their land under the umbrella of civilization, they would be so flush with cash (“cantidades de dinero”) that their integration into Argentina as citizens would be fast and easy. These keys to how the military assumed responsibility for civilizing T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De s i e rto · 181 

First Peoples also included plans for the building of new settlements where indigenous citizens would live and for an ongoing presence of the armed forces on the frontier to establish moral and religious guidance (in the restriction of firearms and alcohol, for example). In the late 1970s, the armed forces would revive those frontier precepts.33 Through the 1930s, scholars, scientists, writers, and intellectuals as well as armed forces officers continued to imagine Argentine territory beyond the pampa humeda and the pampa seca (the cultivable plains to the south and to the west of Buenos Aires) as undiscovered frontier. Some “conquering” expeditions, including several to Mendoza, were nonmilitary and involved mapping, mountain climbing, geological surveying, and collecting flora and fauna.34 But by the 1950s many urban Argentines saw the frontier as “settled” in a popular culture that set the complicating lessons of 1879 aside. Indigenous Argentina and the frontier it represented were both present and absent. Peronist politics and cultures excised First Peoples from revolutionary narratives except in carefully defined and incomplete folkloric settings that celebrated indigenous peoples as a remnant of the past, and did so in a manner that subsumed indigenous identities to those of racially nondescript Argentine workers.35 From the 1940s onward, Peronism has drawn support from working people of color who migrated over the decades from the country’s interior, as well as from their children and their grandchildren. More recently, and for similar reasons, that support has often come from Paraguayan, Bolivian, and Peruvian immigrant families. In public policy and important projects, including the building of public housing after 1945 for migrant families inside the geographical borders of the national capital, generations of Peronist leaders understood the ongoing power of racialized tropes and the ambiguous deliminations of the “civilized” frontier framed by Della Valle, Molina Campos, Quintero, and others. That said, some cultural constructions of the Cold War gently emptied the frontier of First Peoples, save for a lingering indigenous mysticism, while national political parties and movements set First Peoples aside.36

Guillermo Corrales’s Journey Guillermo Corrales’s life is the story of the ambiguous legacy of the conquista and the attendant uncertain relationship of the state to First Peoples. His story follows the path of many Argentines who moved from rural areas in the 182 · S h e i n i n

north of the country to Buenos Aires during the Cold War. It also reflects the memory of the conquista. Corrales was both a product and a part of a culturally constructed frontier as he and others imagined it, with an indigenous identity lost then later found. Born in 1947 in the tiny frontier village of Profundidad, Misiones, Corrales formed strong ideas on racial identities early. When he was seven, an older brother made fun of him for being “Black.” It was an accusation; Corrales was not the son of their “mother” but of a woman of African descent in their village, identified by others as such for her skin color. At the time, the comment bothered Corrales.37 Complicating the family racial narrative and touching indirectly on Cárcano’s anxiety over the racially ambiguous frontier, Corrales’s mother, Ana, was born out of wedlock, the impoverished daughter of a well-off Spaniard. Now and again she visited her father’s home, twenty kilometers away. In a story reminiscent of the most famous migrant in twentieth-century Argentina, Evita Perón, and her relationship with a father distanced by race and class, on those visits Ana’s father gave her some rice, a little flour, and perhaps some used clothing that belonged to his “legitimate” children. In a manner that presents the memory of the nineteenth century as chronologically close, Corrales recounts that one of Ana’s uncles had taken part in the War of the Triple Alliance. Corrales’s paternal grandmother had been “una india,” always in a blouse, a long skirt, and without shoes—that is, indigenous dress. “Her physiognomy was that of a savage,” he went on. As a child, Corrales understood this description as scornful. The use of the term “her physiognomy” and the word “indio” signified somebody uneducated, of lesser status, and invoked ideas advanced by both Cárcano and Rostagno on the absence of moral formation. His paternal grandmother spoke Guaraní, not Spanish. Ana was always sharply critical of Corrales’s father, referring to him as “un negro” (in this case, indigenous). Not far in racial emphasis from Molina Campos’s October 1944 calendar illustration was Corrales’s insistence that his mother was “almost blonde.” “You’re what you wish to be,” Corrales stated in 2014—something it had taken him years to accept—“not what they say you are.” Ana’s stories were the only evidence Corrales had of his indigenous ancestry: that and what he described as the “sentimental.” How else could he explain his disdain and resentment late in life for the consumption of anything “foreign,” from films to books to television programs?38 As a child in Misiones, Corrales began to distance himself from his T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De s i e rto · 183 

indigenous roots and his mother’s stories in conjunction with the Peronization of the family. Narratives shaped by racial identity dissipated in the face of the family’s interest in class-based politics. Corrales’s eldest brother, Carlos, some twenty years his senior, had become a Peronist. As did many eldest male children of poor, rural families, Corrales’s brother went to work in a nearby town. His employer was a bookkeeper. Carlos worked for “la ropa y la comida,” eating what was left over from his employer’s family meals and wearing secondhand discards. His boss treated him well, allowing him to study. Carlos’s education “opened his eyes” to what was happening in the country after 1945, and he became a Peronist. Corrales, his siblings, his cousins, and his parents listened as the eldest brother spoke enthusiastically about Peronism’s commitment to the rights of workers, women, and the elderly. Under Peronism, Corrales said, “we were able to drink milk” for the first time. Corrales’s father was the first in the family to vote freely, independent of a boss’s will. Carlos talked every family member into becoming a fan of the Racing football (soccer) club, believing incorrectly that Perón was a Racing supporter. Despite recalling this error with humor, Corrales remains a Racing fanatic, part of a Peronist identity so strong that he noted: “I have no Independiente fans as friends” (Independiente is Racing’s chief club rival).39 At age nine, Corrales moved with some family members to the industrial town of Florencio Varela in greater Buenos Aires.40 He began working at fourteen. In the two decades that followed, his identities included that of Peronist worker, union member, bricklayer, printer, salesman, custodian, and supervisor in a metallurgy plant. He became a fan of the famous tango singer (and committed Peronist) Hugo del Carril. Corrales’s indigenous identity, he recalls, intruded only peripherally and occasionally. One day, out of the blue, his friend Hector Emilio Trejo said to him, “You must be descended from indios.” At the time, as he had when his brother had called him “black,” Corrales took offence, in part because, along with one of his six siblings, he identified as light skinned. It was only much later, Corrales recalled in 2014, that he started to “recover his indigenous identity.”41 In the 1960s, Corrales began to find his way back to his indigenous past through a new interest in the Uruguayan independence leader José Artigas (1764–1850), a dissident figure in the Argentine historiography of the conquista for his morally and racially subversive reliance on indigenous military units and his more egalitarian approach to First Peoples. The same fellow workers who 184 · S h e i n i n

alerted Corrales to Artigas also made him aware that one of his favorite singers, the popular Palito Ortega, was superficial and trivial. Corrales started listening to the folk music of the Uruguayans Alfredo Zitarrosa and Anibal Sampayo and the Argentines José Larralde and Hernán Figueroa Reyes, all of whom celebrated frontier cultures at the intersection of indigenous, gaucho, and, in Zitarrosa’s case, African Uruguayan life. Much later, Corrales saw this shift as his having begun to make his way back to his Guaraní heritage.42 By the early 1970s, Corrales had joined the Florencio Varela branch of the Juventud Peronista ( JP). He was uninterested in revolutionary violence and became disillusioned by a JP leadership that, in the way they dressed and in their behavior, seemed to him examples of a well-off sector of the population unable to represent worker rights. In 1975, Corrales traveled half-heartedly to a JP rally in Rosario. One by one, delegations from around the country marched into the soccer stadium where the visitors had gathered. When representatives from Tucumán arrived, the moment changed Corrales. Everybody knew that they were Montoneros, fresh from doing battle with the military in the north. Corrales was struck by their dark skin color, their seriousness of purpose, and the looks of conviction on their faces—unlike the light-skinned leadership of the Juventud Peronista. For him, Peronist class-based politics were being subsumed by a new understanding of the politics of racial identity, the centrality of the Tucumán frontier, and the beginnings of his return to self-identification as Guaraní. For the time being, though, and in the aftermath of the March 1976 coup d’état, he said nothing about it and went about quietly living through the dictatorship. He distanced himself from any political activity and from the tensions between his indigenous and other identities.

Policy and Practice One Hundred Years Later It was Enrique Rostagno’s version of the unfinished conquest and the armed forces’ responsibility for First Peoples that drove a new approach by the military to indigenous peoples after the 1976 coup d’état. The military was not interested in those described by Corrales or the people depicted by Molina Campos in what for many white, urban Argentines was the racially ambiguous, morally compromised mold of the frontier inhabitant cast by Miguel Ángel Cárcano. The armed forces targeted for modernization those ignored by national political movements for decades—First Nations people who identified as such still T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De si e rto · 185 

living on the frontier on traditional lands. Frustrated by what they saw as the failure of weak democratic governments to consolidate an Argentine spiritual, moral, and ideological tutelage of First Peoples, the military government set about transforming indigenous lives in a manner that fit together with larger neoliberal objectives for society and citizenship. Government language combined conquista historicisms with a striking appeal for an end to indigenous poverty, long absent in national political discourses.43 An official guide for visitors to the FIFA World Cup held in Argentina in 1978 described the nation’s first industrial facilities: “Conquering the lands of indigenous people to incorporate them into the nation was one of the key objectives of the white man during the past century.” Beginning in the early 1870s, the comment continued, Victoria Pereyra had directed a timber mill in Chaco, employing peons and “more than one hundred docile Indians.” According to Julio Roca, “with manly rectitude” she accumulated a fortune despite the continuous attacks of “savage hordes.”44 Privately, the military government approached what they viewed as the problem of indigenous citizenship less combatively than had Roca in describing Pereyra or than did the World Cup guide in repeating it. In November 1982, responding in part to reports of First Peoples turned away from health clinics in Misiones, the Ministry of Social Action lamented that Argentina had all but forgotten its indigenous populations: “They have not integrated into our society of European origin. They remain on the margins, condemned to a backward existence, misery and sickness.”45 The post-1976 modernization of rural First Peoples, long living in poverty on the fringes of urban society, would address a level of malnutrition and infant mortality as devastating as anywhere in the Americas. Tuberculosis was rampant. In Chubut, diet-related blindness was common, and in many parts of the country, unscrupulous merchants distributed alcohol to indigenous people as part of a strategy to gain an advantage in the purchase of traditional crafts and other goods.46 Without consulting First Peoples in any systematic fashion, the military government proceeded on three legal precedents. Article 67 of the 1853 constitution had identified indigenous peoples as enemies against whom the state would maintain the security of the frontier, conserve peace, and promote Catholic conversions. However, the nature of that civilizing mission had been altered in 1959 (Law 14,932/59)—with no notable impact on First Peoples—in legislation confirming Argentina’s adherence to International 186 · S h e i n i n

Labor Organization Convention 107 affirming the protection and integration of indigenous populations into the national mainstream. In addition, in 1968 Argentina had ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Law 17,722/68), and in 1978 the government promised the creation of a national convention to fight discrimination in education (Law 17,693/78). Also in 1978, the National Directorate for Social Assistance launched a series of interdepartmental meetings at the federal level, to which provincial representatives were also invited. Planning language reasserted the place of the armed forces in modernizing and advancing the frontier, integrating First Peoples into the national mainstream.47 The military reassumed an administrative command of the process they had not held since the early twentieth century. National Decree 2336/78 assigned the National Superintendency of Frontiers (Ministry of Defense) supervisory control over indigenous reservations as well as over housing construction, social and cultural activities (from sports events to music festivals), and government land distribution in indigenous communities.48 Officers implemented a “national model” by which First Peoples would no longer live indigenous lives. The armed forces, in conjunction with civilian experts and bureaucrats, would direct communities into activities that would make them productive citizens on a model reminiscent of Enrique Rostagno’s vision, resulting in stable family and community social structures. Only now indigenous identity would be commodified and homogenized in that process. Indigenous crafts and folklore economies throughout Argentina would be brought together in what might seem now a tragicomic network of souvenir manufacturing and sales, stressing Rostagno’s “cantidades de dinero” as an end result in an appallingly oversimplified version of indigenous cultures.49 First Nations representatives who attended the interdepartmental meetings reacted negatively, cautioning of consequences that might include indigenous community breakdown in the face of what amounted to a cultural assault and new antagonisms between indigenous and nonindigenous communities. They argued that ignorance of First Peoples lay behind the new policies and warned of an impending mestizaje of indigenous cultures. The structural mainstay of the conversion of First Peoples into citizens would be a central market in Buenos Aires for the sale of indigenous crafts from all over the country.50 In another reflection of Rostagno’s vision of a rebuilt frontier, and citing appalling living conditions, government officials moved people to villas de emergencia T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De s i e rto · 187 

(emergency villages), where there were secure food and water sources. Never distinguishing between First Nations, the dictatorship called indigenous life “primitive.” This included a limited mastery of Spanish and supposedly nomadic lifestyles, both of which intrinsically blocked advancement. Disputing Law 17,693/78 and heralding a new version of contradictory visions of the post-conquista frontier, the military government rejected “racism” as the cause of indigenous community crises. Instead, they were the result of “abandonment” by nonindigenous society.51 Beginning in 1980, the National Directorate for Social Assistance coordinated the plan. The approach was decentralized, drawing on the expertise of provincial bureaucrats and independent social scientists, including the sociologists Héctor Osvaldo Cloux (who in 2005 was director of the Culture and Crafts Section of the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs) and Graciela Cardarelli, whose work after 1983 on the health and education of impoverished children won the sponsorship of UNICEF and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation among many other organizations.52 The dictatorship identified a monoculturalist/pluriculturalist binary in indigenous societies. Based on no clear scientific evidence or consultation with First Peoples, this model sorted out culturally isolated groups from those with some nonindigenous features. First Peoples played no role in decision making. In Formosa, participation was limited to three indigenous advisers to the local process and indigenous teaching assistants in schools to help build Spanish-language knowledge among children, which the military government believed would take three years to achieve satisfactory results.53 In Neuquén, local authorities worked to create a Spanish-language dictionary of indigenous expressions. In other provinces, school curricula were altered to feature skills thought necessary in preparing indigenous people for the modern, traditional crafts–based economy. Because indigenous communities were on the frontier in every sense indicated in the centennial commemoration of 1879, the military viewed the modernization project as relevant to national security. Remedying poor housing and sanitation conditions would end the threat of Chagas and other insect-transmitted diseases, identified as coming across the border from Bolivia and Paraguay. In addition to the ongoing foreign “infestation” of Chilean workers in the south, authorities worried about an equally dangerous threat to First Peoples in the north, from merchants coming across the Chilean, Bolivian, and Paraguayan borders with alcohol. To military 188 · S h e i n i n

authorities, non-Catholic evangelists appeared to be secret sects that preyed upon indigenous adversity. In addition, although the insurgency in Tucumán had been defeated, government officials remained convinced that the frontier region was especially subject to political subversion.54 As they had a century earlier, the armed forces viewed Catholicism as a moral force on the frontier. Federal authorities charged the Special Committee on Education and Catechism with developing a Catholic pastoral strategy for indigenous Argentina. In Chaco, in a pointed effort to counter the rise of Protestant faiths believed to be coming over the border from Paraguay, the provincial government subsecretariat of social action collaborated with the church in building chapels in First Nations communities. A federal government subsecretariat of faiths launched an intelligence initiative to better understand evangelical groups working in indigenous communities. It sought to restrict those proselytizing forays and what authorities considered their corruption of (Catholic) biblical instruction. The result, the government reasoned, was the emergence of syncretic, fanatical religious cults among indigenous peoples, which, according to the subsecretariat of faiths and social scientists working with the regime, were accelerating fatalism among First Peoples.55 The prejudices of the military governments both federal and provincial— and of the social scientists who advised them with regard to religious observance—reflected both the influence of the Catholic Church and long-standing conquista narratives on faith and civilization on the frontier. Authorities became alarmed by an August 1978 episode in Neuquén. Pentecostal missionaries presided over what officials called a trance-like service among indigenous Argentines that led to four deaths and anticipated by five months the Jonestown massacre in Guyana.56 In addition to the arrival of evangelical Christianity in the north, across the border from Paraguay, military authorities were also concerned with a number of devotional cultures, including that of San La Muerte. Likely having originated in Paraguay, the reverence for San La Muerte crossed into Argentina before the conquista, where it became especially associated with the crossover between indigenous and nonindigenous rural cultures that troubled Miguel Ángel Cárcano in Chaco, Formosa, Corrientes, and Misiones. Adored as a skeletal human figure, San La Muerte was a component in the 1970s of the practice of Catholicism among many rural Argentines, even though the church hierarchy rejected the worship of the popular saint as paganism. Part of what worried military authorities after 1975 was that veneration T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De si e rto · 189 

of San La Muerte and other popular saints unrecognized by the church had begun to spread to greater Buenos Aires and other urban centers with migrants from northern provinces—the frontier creeping closer to the city. Moreover, in the 1970s there were reports of the saint’s followers associating him with Christ, in one case describing him as a “fleshless Christ.”57 The general administration of the Provincial Aboriginal Institute of Formosa pressed for better regulation of missionaries among First Peoples. Authorities discovered that many were leaving indigenous communities in what they described as a spiritual crisis. In a move that reflected a larger military emphasis on patriotic symbols in the promotion of moral good, officials in Formosa proposed that missionaries serve as state representatives in demonstrating respect for national symbols and by not preaching that poverty was divinely esteemed. Indigenous rights served as a pretext for the state to close several small evangelical churches.58 The government estimated that the new central crafts market in Buenos Aires would generate employment for eighty thousand indigenous people. It would promote better-quality crafts production, encourage artistic creativity, and generate the market-driven application of smart rural designs for modern urban lifestyles. Despite the flourish and energy that went into planning, the military government never built the central market or followed through on the planned integration of First Peoples into the mainstream. Several factors likely played a role in the collapse of the project. These included sharp economic decline in Argentina after 1980, the Malvinas war, the beginning of the end of military rule in 1982—and the absurdity of the project design.

The Return of Democracy With the fall of dictatorship, the new democratic government took over where the military had left off in trying to better the lives of indigenous Argentines. A new survey identified two hundred thousand indigenous people in Argentina, including thirteen First Nations spread over twelve provinces. It was not clear how the authorities assigned or denied indigenous identity to those surveyed. In Buenos Aires Province, First Peoples constituted 0.11 percent of the population. In Jujuy, they were almost 17 percent. In stark contrast to language adopted and invoked by the armed forces in the late 1970s, Congress passed Law 23,302/85 (1985) assigning the federal government responsibility for preserving 190 · S h e i n i n

indigenous cultural and linguistic identities and for upholding the “historical repair of [indigenous] communities, dispossessed unjustly from their lands.”59 There would be a new indigenous judicial system drawing on First Nations norms and practices. Indigenous communities were assigned new authority over their traditional lands, and the sale of those lands to nonindigenous Argentines was prohibited. Bilingual education in rural schools would become the norm (Spanish and indigenous languages), and there were new protections specific to indigenous workers. The provinces passed similar laws. Federal lands were distributed to First Nations in Neuquén, Formosa, and Chaco.60 Even so, the federal and provincial governments proved unable to do much to assist the Mataco people and other First Nations in the north as they struggled with cyclical flooding in the 1980s. Much of the legislation passed enthusiastically by new democratic governments, regionally and nationally, did little if anything to improve substantively the lives of First Peoples. Passed to protect indigenous languages and to offer “historic reparations” to First Peoples, Law 23,302 (1985) achieved little, although other measures were more successful, including tougher compliance rules for labor laws in indigenous communities.61 The long-standing trope of “invasive” Araucano and other indigenous groups was finally discarded, altering an enduring notion of the frontier. Until 1987, only those First Nations present at the time of the Spanish conquest “counted” as indigenous. Now, greater leeway on that definition allowed the Ava Guaraní people, who had lived for centuries along what is now the Bolivia-Argentine border, to self-identify as a First Nation in Argentina.62

Conclusion Since around 1990 in Argentina, the politics of the past has often consigned academic and popular understandings of military rule to a narrow set of defining features of dictatorship. These include the killing of civilians; mass torture and kidnapping; disastrous economic policy; the building of an opposition human rights regime; and military propaganda mechanisms designed to purge the nation of the political movement that many (not all) military officers considered a plague on the nation—peronismo. This chapter breaks that mold in two significant regards, by expanding how we understand military governance. First, without negating dominant narratives on military government brutality, T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De s i e rto · 191 

it ascribes a complex policy-making process to military leaders. That does not make military government policy or action laudable or “good.” It does, however, remove policy making from the realm of torturers and killers. More specifically, this chapter addresses policy toward First Peoples as a function of how military officers in the 1970s understood what they believed was their historical responsibility dating back to the Conquista del Desierto: public health, economic development, social programs, education, and national security on the frontier generally and for First Nations specifically. During the last dictatorship, while some officers were overseeing secret detention centers, others were exercising a multifaceted plan to better the lives of First Peoples by improving rural education, building much-needed housing, providing better access to medical facilities, and more. Severely flawed though it was (under a government that often brutally suppressed dissent), the military plan to improve indigenous lives drew not only on decades of experience in shaping the frontier but on sustained input from civilian anthropologists and sociologists, as well as from indigenous leaders who were not shy about criticizing government authorities on the threat military government plans posed to the cultural integrity of First Nations. A second advance comes in how we might understand the military’s relationship to the frontier. Until now, we have only considered part of the story. We knew that through the Secretaría de Información Pública (the public information secretariat, a propaganda arm of the federal government), the Ministerio de Cultura y Educación, and the Ministerio del Interior, military rulers worked through school curricula and in other forums to “alert” Argentines in rural areas of the putative danger to national security of a possible Chilean attack and of the ongoing menace of leftist terrorism. In addition, the Ministerio de Cultura y Educación launched the program “¡Argentinos! Marchemos hacía las fronteras” (Argentines! Let’s march to the frontiers). In conjunction with other programs, schools marshaled groups of teenagers who traveled to rural areas in the provinces of Chaco, Misiones, Entre Ríos, and elsewhere to undertake a range of work details including painting buildings, building classrooms, and repairing roofs. Moreover, in conjunction with military units in the field, the Ministerio de Cultura y Educación sent well-known sports figures, including boxers Sergio Victor Palma and Carlos Monzón, to entertain troops in Tucumán and to appear at various other locations in rural areas—national popular culture brought to the frontier. Government offices in Buenos Aires

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sent Argentine films to be shown in small towns and promoted the study of Argentine folklore as practiced in the countryside.63 But in each of the above cases, authors have emphasized a Buenos Aires gaze—a vision for change in rural areas that drew always on calculations and formulations from the capital city. This chapter shows that, in addition, military authorities demonstrated a certain amount of disdain for a centralized approach to the frontier. That disdain drew on a long-standing sense that the armed forces had traditionally understood rural areas better than civilian authorities and that decentering planning and action programs away from Buenos Aires better served the frontier.

Notes 1. Sheinin, Consent of the Damned, 9–10. 2. “Centenario de la Campaña del Desierto,” special supplement, Clarín, June 11, 1979; Carlos A. Florit, “El sentido nacional que tuvo esa campaña,” Clarín, June 11, 1979; Bidondo et al., Epopeya del desierto; Trímboli, “1979: La larga celebración”; and Walther, La Conquista del Desierto, 2nd ed., 62–66. 3. Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, “La opción de los que eligen,” Clarín, June 11, 1979. 4. Provincia de Catamarca, “Vamos a desenterrar el Tesoro de Catamarca,” Clarín, June 11, 1979. 5. Sociedad Rural Argentina, “La Sociedad Rural Argentina, las fronteras y los indios,” Clarín, June 11, 1979. 6. Banco de la Provincia de Río Negro, “1879–1979,” Clarín, June 11, 1979. 7. Asociación de Fabricantes Argentinos de Coca-Cola, “Hace 100 años,” Clarín, June 11, 1979. 8. Trímboli, “1979: La larga celebración.” 9. Arcos et al., Cuestión de indios. 10. Punzi, “Una epopeya argentina,” 11. 11. Conlazo, “Los querandíes, un enigma histórico.” See also Larson, “Natural Athletes: Constructing Southern Indigenous Physicality.” 12. See Bernarós, Cultura ciudadana, 43; Darío Cora and Rodríguez, “Construyendo la nueva Argentina”; and Rodríguez, “‘Invisible Indians,’ ‘Degenerate Descendants,’” 131–32. 13. Punzi, “Una epopeya argentina”; and Zeballos, Viaje al país de los araucanos, 167–72. 14. In 1979, the word “epopeya” appeared repeatedly in reference to the conquista. Like its French equivalent épopée, it has no single-word English translation. Depend-

T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De si e rto · 193 

ing on context, its meaning can combine an epic moment, an epic narrative (fiction or nonfiction), a historically important event, and/or an element of myth. In the Argentine context, with reference to the conquista (but also in regard to a small number of other seminal historical events such as General José de San Martín’s crossing of the Andes in 1817), “epopeya” references a historical event of grand political importance with foundational patriotic implications (with thanks to María Alejandra Porras for her advice on this translation). 15. Villegas, “Expansionismo territorial chileno.” 16. Miró, “Personalidad del General,” 115. 17. Ibid., 117. 18. Picciuolo, “Misión científica y técnica”; Romero, Poderes militares en la Constitución Argentina, 131–44; Larson, Our Indigenous Ancestors, 33; and Quijada, “Ancestros, ciudadanos, piezas de museo.” 19. Rattenbach, Prologue to Entre ejército y montañas, 9–11. 20. Ruíz Moreno, La peste histórica de 1871, 61–63. See also Berri, Las enfermedades del soldado argentino. 21. Giovanelli, Protección de fronteras, 84. 22. Ibid., 200–201. 23. Adamovsky, “La cultura visual del criollismo.” 24. Carrasco, De Buenos Aires al Neuquén, 108; and Martino and Delgado de Nicolás, “Las colonias militares en la conquista del desierto,” 35. 25. Borges, “La otra muerte”; and Obligado, “El alma del payador,” 119–22. 26. Cárcano, Evolución histórica del régimen, 165. 27. Larson, Our Indigenous Ancestors, 119. 28. Vázquez, “Entre el arte y la política”; Carman, Los orígenes del Museo Histórico Nacional, 205–7; and Cerisola, “Imágenes para una nación.” 29. Rovira-Collado and Rovira-Collado, “La figura del gaucho en la historieta argentina.” 30. Albónico, “Entre Ríos en la Cuestión del 80.” 31. Almeida, Modesta Victoria, 107–36. 32. Comando en Jefe del Ejercito, Reseña histórica y orgánica, 491–99; Rodríguez, Campañas del Desierto; and Bidondo, Historia del Regimiento 5, 263–310. 33. Rostagno to minister of war, November 30, 1911, in Rostagno, Informe fuerzas en operaciones en el Chaco, 24; and Scunio, La conquista del Chaco, 437–40. 34. Reichert, La exploración de la Alta Cordillera. 35. Chamosa, “Indigenous or Criollos?”; and Chamosa, “Criollo and Peronist.” 36. Velázquez Martínez, Tierra heroica; Gioja, Entre ejército y montañas; and Ministerio de Obras Públicas de la Nación, Administración General de Parques Nacionales y Turismo, Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, Temporada, 80–85. 37. Guillermo Corrales, interview with the author (1), February 13, 2014, Florencio Varela, Argentina. 38. Ibid.

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39. Guillermo Corrales, interview with the author (2), February 17, 2014, Florencio Varela, Argentina. 40. Monteagudo, Migraciones internas en la Argentina, 49–56; “Migraciones internas en la Argentina,” La Razón, March 23, 1957; and Gordillo, “The Savage outside of White Argentina,” 249–51. 41. Guillermo Corrales, interview with the author (3), February 20, 2014, Florencio Varela, Argentina; and Calzon Flores, “Hugo del Carril y su trayectoria como ídolo popular.” 42. Adamovsky, “El criollismo como canal de visions críticas,” 26; and Buchbinder, “Caudillos y caudillismo.” 43. Rodríguez, “Políticas educativas y culturales”; Lvovich and Rodríguez, “La Gendarmería Infantil”; and De Luca and Álvarez Prieto, “Las transformaciones de curriculum.” 44. Entre Autárquico Mundial, Guía de información general de la República Argentina, 121. 45. No. 39, Ana Richter, Counselor, National Commission on Aboriginal Politics, to Héctor Mendizabal Nougues, Delegate, National Commission on Aboriginal Politics, November 23, 1982, 105, Political Division, Archive of the Argentine Foreign Relations Ministry, Buenos Aires (hereafter MREC). 46. Carrasco, Los derechos de los pueblos indígenas, 31–32; Wright, “Colonización del espacio, la palabra y el cuerpo”; and Rodríguez, “La noción de frontera en el pensamiento geográfico.” 47. Richter to Mendizabal Nougues, “Reunión sobre política aborigen,” August 20, 1982, 105, Political Division, MREC. 48. Laurelli and Rofman, “La región litoral argentina,” 139–40. 49. No. 39, Richter to Mendizabal Nougues, November 23, 1982, 105, Political Division, MREC. 50. Argentina, Ministry of Social Welfare, Memorandum, 1982, 311, Political Division, MREC. 51. Gaggiotti, “La pampa rioplatense”; and Hecht, “Pueblos indígenas y escuela.” 52. See Cloux, “Ijiwil pa jitalkiunaye,” 18; and Cardarelli and Rosenfeld, Las participaciones de la pobreza. 53. Alam, “Civilización/barbarie en los manuales de historia secundario”; and Morales Urra, “Cultura mapuche y represión en dictadura.” 54. Elías, “Derechos humanos, salud y trabajo social”; and Mendoza, “Western Toba Messianism.” 55. No. 39, Richter to Mendizabal Nougues, November 23, 1982, 105, Political Division, MREC; and Kalinsky and Cañete, Hechos escritos con fuego, 29. 56. “El trágico ayuno,” La Mañana Neuquén, January 31, 2010; and “La matanza de Lonco Luan,” Clarín, March 29, 2000. 57. Graziano, Cultures of Devotion, 105; and Coluccio, Cultos y canonizaciones populares, 119–25. T h e Lon g Con qui sta de l De s i e rto · 195 

58. No. 39, Richter to Mendizabal Nougues, November 23, 1982, 105, Political Division, MREC. 59. Ministry of Foreign Relations, Subsecretariat of Human Rights, “Informe argentino al comité para la eliminación de la discriminación racial,” August 2, 1988, 49, Political Division, MREC. 60. “Autodeterminación y desarrollo para los indígenas de Río Negro que tendrán su propia ley integral,” La Razón, November 28, 1988. 61. Ministry of Foreign Relations, “Medidas para promover y proteger los derechos humanos pertenecientes a pueblos indígenas,” June 3, 1987, 432, Political Division, MREC. 62. Langer, Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree, 41–49; Ministry of Foreign Relations, “Informe sobre las medidas adoptadas de conformidad con el programa de acción para el 2° decenio de la lucha contra el racismo y la discriminación racial,” 1987, 416–19, Political Division, MREC; and Bazán, “La problemática indígena.” 63. Rodríguez, “Políticas educativas y culturales”; and Alonso, “Nacionalismo y catolicismo.”

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EIGHT

Senses of Painful Experience Memory of the Mapuche People in Violent Times Ana Ramos

The “Conquest of the Desert” is the official tale about the formation of the Argentine nation-state, in which the violent invasion of indigenous territory acquires a narrative place as a heroic and foundational deed. An event built on silences more than images of the past, the temporality of the Conquest of the Desert seems to encompass only the narrow timeframe during which certain “battles” took place and “the last caciques surrendered.” In the memory of the Mapuche people, this event (described as a genocide) brings together other social experiences, produces other silences, and generates other images of the past. But the political potential of Mapuche narratives does not lie solely in the description of the painful and the unspeakable—such as physical torture, forced confinement, hunger and misery, rape, and the death of children—but also in the implicit complaints, agency orientations, and presuppositions within the epistemic frameworks of the past. Different temporalities, historical agents, and significant events structure the poetic forms with which the memory organizes the sensory world. Through the nütram, they take on Mapuche meanings and experiences of the past and the present. This chapter is an analysis of the events of the Conquest of the Desert from the viewpoint of Mapuche memory, which, since those critical events, has focused on restoring and rebuilding the people. 197

Ancient Conversations (Nütramkam) “The actual history isn’t told by the books” Mauricio Fermín · an elderly Mapuche of the Lof Vuelta del Río

As has been repeatedly said, every people narrate their stories, but only those texts that meet the epistemic criteria and ontological frameworks of state hegemonies become “real” (Blaser 2013; de la Cadena 2015). This has happened to stories about the so-called Conquest of the Desert; official texts and the dominant imaginary have transformed the conquest into one of the central, epic events that founded the Argentine nation-state. Nevertheless, to the Mapuche people, these events are remembered as years in which “the forces of nature stopped being in tune with the earth,” the years of the “great killing,” and the moment in which “words became lies,” the land was fenced, and “nature decided to stop speaking.” The Mapuche people record their ancient conversations—with fathers, mothers, grandparents or other relatives, and community members—about those decades of violence between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in oral and collective texts called nütram.1 By identifying a story as a nütram, the narrator conveys that the experiences that are being told therein must be understood as what really happened in the past, as the lived experiences that the protagonist chooses to tell, in order to preserve them in the memory of future generations and as a trace to be followed so that history may carry on in its course.2 This character of truth, of retelling and the teaching of important lessons, is what has made the nütram one of the most performative genres in the struggles, claims, and political projects of the Mapuche people. With the purpose of understanding the meanings that these experiences of pain have in social memory, I now turn to contextualizing the historical production of the nütram as well as their transmission at the core of the Mapuche people.

The Silence That Speaks Memory Army ambushes; the years in which the Mapuche were pursued and forced to hide in the Andean cordillera; the distances they were forced to walk, rounded up like animals; the children who witnessed the killings; the tortured women; the 198 · Ra m o s

hunger in the concentration camps; the forced relocations as enslaved laborers and the irreversible separation of families; children who would never be seen again; the lost children who would never know who their parents were; the elderly who were left alone and forgotten; the piles of dead bodies—these are just some of the painful images from that past. Yet, these are not often reproduced in explicit or detailed narratives; rather, they have been retransmitted as memory each time in the nütram, without the need to transform them into direct speech. In many nütram, the validity and performative force of these painful experiences are embodied by narrators and audience through silences, or what is being presupposed or implied. As we will see in the next section, certain phrases such as “my grandmother knew how to cry” (“sabía llorar mi abuelita”), “at the time of the killing” (“en el tiempo de la matanza”), or “when I was a prisoner” (“cuando estaba prisionera”) bring images of violence into the present without the need to replay every detail. I present these images as some of my interlocutors retold them. Just like me, they did not always know how to fill in the significative gaps that contextualized certain nütram as “sad stories” (“historias tristes”). The fragments that I transcribe below are some of the historical explanations that my interlocutors would give before or after executing a nütram so that I could interpret the stories they told. The moments in which these brief references to violence enter the narrative of a nütram are often meant to indexicalize the context that must be presupposed in order to interpret the significance of the events that are being told.3 That elderly woman used to say that the Indians were taken rounded up like a tropilla [troop of horses or cattle]. Do you know what they did to the woman who got tired? They hid in the vizcacha’s [South American rodent] cave because they would cut off their breasts and left them like that. . . . To me, that’s a horrible thing. And the men who got tired, they grabbed them and left them staked into the ground. (Valentina Nahuelquir, Cushamen, 1998) They grabbed the little ones and left them skewered as if they were grilled meat and left them planted like that. When they saw all those things happening, many longkos [chiefs] gathered and set up a date for a reunion so they could escape all together through the Andes Mountains, because the invaders were too many and they were all armed. ( José Ñanco, Llafenco, 2001) S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe ri en ce · 199 

My grandfather went missing during the war; they say he was three years old at the time. They killed his father and mother when they were running away through the Andes Mountains so he ends up by himself. He was covered in the knitted blankets they used for the horse saddle [matrones] crying in some mountain path when a woman who was fleeing from the army found him and raised him. (Carmen Calfupan, Vuelta del Río, 2003) My late grandmother ran away from the place where she was imprisoned and came back here, to her place. She knew how to keep a conversation going and she knew how to cry, and I knew how to pay attention. My grandmother knew how to cry when she remembered. They took her but she ran away. She used to tell how they were rounded up like a tropilla, with all their animals, but they were no longer the owners of those animals; they [the Argentine army] would not even give a piece of meat to the [previous] owners of those animals, only they ate the ones that were being rounded up. They were like animals. And they say they were rationing the food only to survive until they arrived at the place where they all would be finished. As for the ones who couldn’t walk any longer, they say they would cut their throats just like that. They would round them up so they didn’t escape. They took them far, they said they could see women who had children getting sick, and others getting their throats cut. Only one biscuit per week my grandmother said they gave them. . . . My poor grandmother knew how to cry. (Agustín Sánchez, Futa Huao, 2004) There were many siblings; some fled through the Andean cordillera. But my grandmother and another couldn’t follow them. There, where they kept them imprisoned was my grandmother. They say people would starve to death. There was a small hill where they used to throw the dead ones, and there they would burn them. She said they would starve to death there. My grandmother used to say that those who were kept captive and later died would be thrown on the hill, and when many of them were there, they say they would burn them. (Ana Prane, Prane community, 2006)

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My late grandmother on my mother’s side died at 130 years old. She had been kept captive when they came to fight the Mapuche and the Tehuelche. They took all those people; they grabbed them and took them. Those who weren’t killed they took alive. My grandmother was young when they took her, with her mother and an uncle. My grandmother used to remember every bad treatment they had to go through. They took her to Buenos Aires, there they were taken. She used to tell me at night, she told me and knew how to cry, my grandma, I wasn’t in any condition to hear all that, what she told me. (Enrique Cárcamo, Futa Huao, 2006) I ran away, my grandmother used to say, she knew how to tell me. She had come from where they were locked down. There, they used to take the children, they took all the children. And she says that her mother, when they [the soldiers] would want to take her, would sit and remain there sitting, and hid her under her quipan (Mapuche garment). They couldn’t take her, not even by force, nothing, and she stayed there, that’s it, and under her skirt she said she was put. And that is how she says she was saved and could run away. But her father and the others were taken, they were all taken away. My grandmother used to know how to tell that in language. . . . I knew how to pay attention. . . . She knew how to cry, my grandmother, poor [thing]. . . . She is at the cemetery, up there, my grandmother. (Catalina Antilef, Futa Huao, 2006) They used to count people’s deaths; they say that they would cut the indigenous people’s [paisanos’] throats, men and women. And they also say that they hid, so the killers would pass them by, they buried themselves; they made caves so that they couldn’t be seen. So, like that, some young boy sometimes could be saved, poor people, how much have they had to suffer. (Florentino Llanquetruz, Blancuntre, 2008) My grandmother went fleeing from La Pampa, she fled from there. She had a large family; she had sisters, brothers, father, and mother. But, it came that time when they would do the killing in the place where they had their tents. The army arrived with the priest at the tents and

S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe r i en ce · 201 

they killed the whole family. All of her sisters and brothers. My grandmother was the eldest and she fled in the night with the youngest one, whom I got the chance of meeting. My grandmother tells that the priests raped her other sisters; they cut off their entire breast, killed her mother. Her only family was her sister, the one she saved, my grandmother, as a child. (Manuela Tomas, Puerto Madryn, 2008) Within the intimacy of their kitchens, the Mapuche have told those experiences to one another; first they told them to others who were part of those violent events, and today they tell them to their sons, daughters, and grandchildren. In those private moments, the nütram began to take shape; they went by the name of “sad stories,” whose memories made the eldest ones cry the most. Each nütram narrator is the guardian of one very specific image; one that results from the particular perspective of the ancestor who, as a child or young adult, spoke about the suffering of their people during those decades from their point of view. That is the reason why Mapuche thinkers often maintain that memory is like a river whose force depends on the conjunction of many memories. To the members of the Mapuche people, each one of these fragments has the sense of the whole and proves the existence of a purposeful political policy of genocide designed explicitly to exterminate their people (see Delrio and Pérez’s chapter in this volume). As the elderly man Florentino Llanquetruz explained in his own words: “Those were the years of the winka [non-Mapuche people] decree of killing indigenous people; they took them, they threw them (like it’s done with boleadoras). . . . I don’t know how it was before that government decree of killing people” (Blancuntre, 2008). But these fragments of memory not only entangle in a horizontal way, combining different experiences of people who lived pain in similar ways; in the same kitchens where some tell and others listen, the unity of the text also entangles in a vertical way between different generations and through time (Delrio and Ramos 2011). During the first three decades of the twentieth century, many of the Mapuche found some place—in the less productive lands that remained “open fields” after more fertile land was redistributed to private or state hands—where, as the nütram often express, they could “live quiet.” Nevertheless, many communities and dispersed inhabitants could not find that quiet way of living that they yearned for. New contexts of violence began in the 1930s, generated by elite interests in those few lands where the Mapuche and 202 · Ra m o s

Tehuelche were reorganizing their lives: violent evictions, in which invaders would burn their houses and belongings and abduct entire families in trucks just to leave them in other places; security forces operations, such as those of the gendarmería (border police), who actively sought opportunities to torture Mapuche people; arbitrary legislation that benefited those who wanted to evict indigenous families from their land; homicides that went unpunished; and many other humiliating policies, all of which continue today. They came from there and they used to run after the indigenous people [paisanos]; the border patrol arrived in the year 1939 or so, and there they began to take the people away, by foot they took them, all the indigenous people off to work, they took them by whipping them, or beating them up. I have this as an experience; I was already nine years old in the year 1940. (Carmen Jones, Vuelta del Río, 2006) They burned all the animals, the whole house down, and that is how they took us away. They killed the people there, those who had children; [they] took them away from their parents and sent them away to do some labor, and killed them by flogging them. . . . I was little, how could I know. But I saw how my father fought with a border patrol man and how they took him away . . . and all of his horses, and even a blanket [matra] that my mother herself had made, and they took it all away. I was pressed tight to my father’s legs, oh, how I cried. I clutched to his legs. (Margarita Burgos, Futa Huao, 2006) In the chains of transmission of these experiences, the images of violence at the end of the nineteenth century overlap with the new generation’s own experiences. And within this flow, the violence became the main topic of the nütram, even in its expression through silence. These fragments are a product of the excavation of silences and the recovery of speech, but in order to understand how experiences of terror are felt and understood, the work of memory also invites us to think about this in the opposite way, through silences that are still immersed in Mapuche subjectivities. Silences, just like speech, are cultural and political, affective creations with very specific and local significances. In other words, they are produced within a particular frame, with certain listeners and tellers “in the ears” or the mind (Dwyer 2009). In the same argumentative line that Leslie Dwyer has proposed, I sustain that if those most painful S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe ri en ce · 203 

fragments were mostly produced as silences, it has to do with the fact that the Mapuche people have tried to give social existence to those painful memories or repressed memories in order to elude the treacherous realm of speech and dominant narratives about “what really happened,” and the subordinated memory about the history of the state. The way in which the nütram have given existence to a socioculturally significant memory for the Mapuche people consists of displacing “interior pain”; reorganizing the saddest experiences from the past; and placing their own agencies at the forefront in the making of history, Mapuche knowledge, and the binding commitments between people, ancestors, and forces of nature.

Keep Rising (Seguir Levantándose) The nütram about the years of violence tell “how, despite adversity, the Mapuche did what nobody believed they could do: survive and later reconstruct themselves as a people.”4 But, in addition to this, they also throw into relief those aspects of Mapuche knowledge that allow them to interpret this reconstruction as a result of alliances between human and nonhuman agents. Agreeing with Jonathan Hill, I view the struggles of indigenous groups to reappropriate their power over their past after demographic collapse, colonial domination, and other ways of removing their power as involving the challenge of “poetically constructing a shared understanding of the historical past that enables them to understand their present conditions as the result of their own ways of making history” (1992, 811). Seen from this angle, the nütram are a way of making history. However, they are also the stories that, in reorganizing sensory experiences, creatively perform the longed-for world of the ancestors in the present. As narrated by the survivors, the nütram forefront the return to their places, the reencounter with their loved ones, and the intervention of natural forces who guided their return. In this sense, these narratives were invested with advice about how to continue resisting and repairing the threatened world. The “sad stories,” then, identify a group of tales that were culturally invested with authority because of their images and knowledge of the past, which were sustained in the poetic and ritual practice of narrating them again and again. Belarmina Nahuelquir, from Cushamen Mapuche community, remembered a nütram her grandparents had told her: 204 · Ra m o s

As a child I was raised with my grandparents, Siberio Huenchunao and Josefa Huenchueque, and when we were hand in hand I would listen to everything they said when they would start their conversations. Once, a conversation about a woman who was once a prisoner, captured by those who killed indigenous people, came up. They say she ran away from that prison and she came here crossing the fields and hills. They say that, at the beginning the lady was lost, she did not know where her relatives were, and she was very hungry. They said that the tapiñen5 appeared to her, which is the lion, and stayed by her side, staring at her. Then, the lady got frightened, found a tall tree, and climbed it. From the top she performed the tayil [song]6 for the lion. So, the tapiñen, as she was singing to him [tayilequeaba], started to cry; he would clean his tears from his eyes with his hands. When she was done performing that rogativa [ceremony], she descended from the tree, and they say the lady carried on with her journey. The tapiñen was guiding her, indicating to her where she would have to go next. When she was at the halfway point of her path, when she already had advanced enough, they say that some guanacos [a camelid native to the pampas] were coming, and they say that when they passed nearby, the lion killed one of them close to her. The lady grabbed it and took its meat so that she could eat. The tapiñen left her. And the lady continued with her journey; she was no longer afraid. She kept going. That is why grandpa says that there is no use in displeasing an animal like that, because he is not bad; you better leave him alone and then do a rogativa for him, just like that lady did. The lady arrived at her home, and when she did she found her relatives. My grandfather used to tell many things, what happened before with the people, what it was that they would do. (Personal conversation, 2011) In different places, people remembered stories similar to the one that Belarmina told, in which a tiger, a lion, a puma, a ñanco (small eagle), or another being from nature guided an ancestor through the journey back home, when he or she would be escaping from the killings or the concentration camps where indigenous people had been prisoners. Other stories tell how environmental forces acted to restore the world that had been destroyed. For example, some groups of displaced families—joined together because they were running away from the army or because they were S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe r i en ce · 205 

searching for a place to rest and “live peacefully”—would welcome natural forces as entities representing their ancestors, or received from the stars a command to hold a ceremony (kamaruco) and constitute themselves as a new group of belonging and identity. Prudencio Tramaleo, from the Mapuche community of Loma Redonda, says that the kamaruco that they hold annually began in the north, when they were returning from “the war that was happening with those that took and killed people.” Many families were returning, putting up encampments: “Tolderías [encampments] they would call them.” My grandfather spoke about that story that there is. One day, he says, when they were starting to take down the toldería so they could move to other place, a girl who was there playing all of a sudden looked up. They stood there watching and saw something coming down the sky, which went directly to her heart. Then, the girl stood up. My grandfather asked: “What happened to you?” and she replied: “It seems that a star came into my heart.” She was eight or ten years old at that time. . . . Those who were camping kept going, searching for a place to live quietly. More than ten years they kept going. When the girl was twenty years old she began to cry. The girl cried. Then they arrived at a valley and lit a fire. The girl kept crying. So they did a tayil [song/tayilquearon] for three days. After the third day the girl got lost. They searched for her; they did a purrun (ceremonial dance). They were about to leave when, on the fourth day, when the sun was coming up, they heard the cry of the girl from the top of a hill, a tall hill that was there. That girl was sent to teach them how to do the kamaruco. . . . Later the girl explained, “I was caught so I could have a conversation with you about giving advice, then I will get lost by myself again, and you won’t see me again.” The last advice she gave them was that they never . . . never try to forget. That is the only thing she said. (Personal conversation, 2006) In a similar sense, Martiniano Nahuelquir tells about the time when the families who were running away with his grandfather Fernando Nahuelquir through the Andes saw their ancestors doing a kamaruco on top of a hill. Warned in his dreams, Fernando knew that at that moment, they were being named as a new group of belonging, and those circles of people whom they saw on that hill was a kamaruco that they must not forget. 206 · Ram o s

The intervention of environmental forces that communicate how to regenerate bonds and restore indigenous ways of inhabiting the world is also remembered by Mauricio Fermín, from the Mapuche-Tehuelche community of Vuelta del Río. This elderly man narrates the path of return of a grandmother who managed to escape from a concentration camp in Buenos Aires where she was held prisoner with other women and children. She said that not only were they always hungry there but they were also forced to work from sunup to sundown producing flour. One night she decided to hide under a pile of dead people who had been thrown into a gorge and managed to escape the guard, starting her return journey at daybreak. After avoiding different obstacles, she found other families that were returning from other places. One of the women with whom she shared the encampment one day was surprised by her partner when she was boiling a child so she could “have something to eat”: And she says that one day the men went out searching for ostriches and guanacos for two days testing their luck. When they came back, a man went to see his wife. He was shocked when he saw that she was boiling a kid in a pan. . . . The man got angry and wanted to grab the lady, but she fled running. . . . She says that she saw a rainbow falling over the ones who knew how to dig up the land, and who were digging the land up. She says that the earth opened up and that she descended on a cable. She remained under the land. Six months was she lost; after six months they let her come up once again. They say she brought some wheat seeds, peas, broad beans . . . she carried everything on her head. She says that they told her down there under the earth, the people from down below, that they told her she had to sow everything. “Now you’ll have something to eat.” And all of a sudden the lady appeared to the man. They say the man had great joy. After all that suffering because he couldn’t find her. She says that he asked where she had gone, and that she said she had been under the earth. They say she came after the war, just walking . . . she says that the woman had gone through a lot of misery. Then the woman told that under the earth, there were many rich people who have myriad farms. We are above those people from down below, and that woman saw all those people who lived there. The man was very happy when the woman appeared to him. I remember that my grandmother told me all this. (Personal conversation, 2005) S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe r i en ce · 207 

Some of the other nütram tell about the “sad stories” that point out the mistakes or bad decisions that some people made. In those cases, the experience being transmitted aims to prevent those who hear it from similarly taking a wrong path. For example, María Huilinao, from the Mapuche community of Vuelta del Río, remembered one night in which her grandmother began to have a conversation with her about how she arrived at their community: “I suffered a great deal,” she says to me, because she fled with “mom and the other little sister who died of hunger along the way,” she says. She says that they were camping there over three months, eating the very little they carried; they made ñaco [toasted flour]. During the winter they stayed camping, and they went through the ugliest times. . . . And a family who was also returning joined them, she says. So, then they became two families, she says, that came together, keeping each other company. She says that they butchered a chulengo [baby guanaco] to survive the winter. . . . But the other family who was with them said that they were tired of eating meat, that they wouldn’t eat it, and threw it away . . . so then, they didn’t have anything left to eat. She says that she said: “Go for a walk over that hill, maybe there may be some chulengos and you could grab one,” she says that she said. And they went . . . the boys that were with them went there . . . and they said they didn’t find anything. Grandmother says that she told them, “Well, you made a mistake,” she says that she said using the Mapuche language; “Tomorrow we will wake up early, at five in the morning, and we will rise and do a nguillantun [rogation]. Because they messed with the other family, now we all have to pay, suffer hunger in an equal way, here.” So the next day they woke up to do the rogation in the morning. Later, they stayed awake, and about nine in the morning, they say they looked ahead and on a hill near them a troop of guanacos were visible. And at that moment, she says she told them, “The guanacos are coming, we must go to hunt them.” They went, she says. They went, and she says that she did the nguillantun so that they would catch a guanaco so that they could eat. . . . How quickly they grabbed them! They had a few days of hunger because at those times some mistakes were still made, because they were people who walked and threw food away. And that is what my late grandmother told me. She told me: “And this that I am 208 · Ra m o s

telling you is true, because I went through that. I went through all that,” she says to me, “I suffered a great deal,” she says to me. “I suffered. . . . To this day I still get sad when I remember that.” (Personal conversation, 2004) In a 2011 conversation, Belarmina Nahuelquir explained to me that in those years of the killings the women had to hide their children under their clothes, because if they didn’t the winka (white invaders) would find them and take them far away. One nütram tells the story of some families who were running away from the winka; because they were tired from walking so much, they decided to get some rest. Then, a young girl came running; she was also fleeing and warned them that the winka were coming. After giving them the warning, the young girl continued her journey, crossing the open field. But nobody paid her any attention. They all remained seated, resting when “those winka who removed children from their mother arrived. . . . Not even one single boy they left.” When the nütram finishes, Belarmina’s grandfather highlighted the fact that the young girl was telling the truth and that the families at first did not believe her, and reminded Belarmina that she always had to trust advice and warnings from her people. In this historical yet synthesized tale, the mistake that was made is also what builds up knowledge about how to carry on the course of history. The Mapuche with whom I spoke often named the stories about the experiences suffered during the years of genocide “sad stories.” However, in those “sad stories,” painful experiences are often presupposed in a narrative plot focused on return. “Return” is understood in multiple dimensions: as a return to a place where they could live quietly, as a restoring of affective bonds and ties of belonging, and as a restoration of dislocated knowledge. Return always implies a context of death and violence at the beginning, but the nütram mention this violence only briefly, or silence or presuppose it, in order to emphasize the restoration of the destroyed people. This does not imply that Mapuche do not remember the pain and suffering—they even cry sometimes when they are narrating those events—but the Mapuche have chosen to transmit those memories by narrating them as historical events of how they managed to survive. The nütram transmit to future generations the importance of remaining together, of never forgetting their ways of interacting with nature, and, as a Mapuche activist would say, of rising once again as a people despite such adversity. S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe r i en ce · 209 

As Janet Carsten (2007) maintains, by returning to the notion of a critical event (Das 1995), these contexts of violence invaded personal and family life, destroyed social and cultural links, and interrupted the transmission of knowledge. Nevertheless, during and after those critical events, new ways of remembering emerged to express the pain and dispositions toward the past, the present, and the future, with enough political potential to inspire projects of restoration.

The Nonevent of “Conquest of the Desert” However, despite its purpose as a story of truth, the nütram was displaced from national discursive formations about the past and genres authenticated by historical science and the state. With this displacement, silences were produced, and the Conquest of the Desert became the most vertebral nonevent (Trouillot 1995) of Argentine historiography. The nütram’s exclusion produced silences in many different ways. First, by erasing the archives of social images, texts, traces, and vocalities of that period, and by exclusively considering the perspective of certain questions and categories from the past, the processes of nation-state formation—understood here as a set of more or less intentional decisions made in the interests of certain social groups or ideas (Wade 2007)—created the “nonevents” of Argentine history. The concentration camps in which many Mapuche people and families were confined; the forced relocation of children; the enslavement of indigenous labor; the physical torture, massive death, years of violence and misery, and territorial dispossession, were swept under the rug. But many of the longest-lasting silences in Argentina’s social imaginary were not due to hiding or ignoring these Mapuche stories but rather to the Western devaluation that allowed the parallel existence of the nütram. This was possible because of two disconnections between nütram and Western epistemologies: a disconnection from verisimilitude and a temporal disconnection. The first produces a distance between the events described in the nütram and “real facts” from the past, while the second produces a distance between the nütram’s mythical time and the time of recent history. For these reasons, the nütram did not have a place in the mausoleum of history texts and lost any opportunity to be heard as true knowledge of the past. I will concentrate briefly on these disconnections, because their effects endure in the stigmas and stereotypes that 210 · Ram o s

are still used to justify the repressive policies of the Argentine state toward the Mapuche people.7 The nütram’s disconnection from verisimilitude was an easy task for state makers in that the experiences that the nütram addresses narratively understand the world as it was (and still is) maintained by Mapuche narrators. The ontological frame used to interpret facts and define ways of existence in the world differs profoundly from the European ontological frame from which the criteria of verisimilitude of modern science derives (Briones and Ramos 2016). In the nütram, historical agencies, political forces, alliances, and messages pertain to humans and nonhumans, living people and ancestors. The nütram is an ancient conversation, but one that cannot have a place in historiography, not even as an oral or peripheral source. An elderly Mapuche woman from the city of Bariloche explains the nature of the conversation in which the nütram acquires its sense of being like this: Many words were lost, but the earth will speak again; it will talk again with the mountain, the trees. The ancients said that in those places there are conversations, the spirits will be known, the spirits will be back and we will be able to learn again. We are again raising our words, and we will be standing on our feet again. (quoted in Ramos and Cañuqueo 2018) Therefore, tales where a nawel (tiger) guides an elderly woman as she is running away from a concentration camp, or stories that tell how ancestors would appear to help a family escape from the army, or tales about how people who live under the earth help other people recover their knowledge in order to end their misery, were never considered to have truth value according to the epistemological and ontological criteria that determine “what really happened.” On the contrary, these stories were gathered together and published in books of “indigenous legends” or “Mapuche legends.” And, because they were categorized as legends, myths, traditions, or beliefs in a folkloric tradition, they became narratives without any connection whatsoever with history, science, or the truth about what had happened (Ramos 2010). The nütram’s temporal disconnection resulted from a more complex process. Clearly, when the nütram is made into a myth or legend, what is narrated stays outside history, in the alleged atemporality of “people without history” or “cold societies.” But it also has a correlation with the way in which the “conquest of S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe ri en ce · 211 

the Americas” was constructed in the social imaginary as the only colonization event, including the arrival of Columbus to the continent, the explorations and conquests of the Spanish Crown, and the military campaigns against indigenous people conducted by nation-states in the nineteenth century. Condensing all these events within the symbolic “quincentenary” annihilates the fact that the Mapuche people were sovereign in their territory only 130 years ago. In the opposite sense, but with similar effects, in 2010 Argentina celebrated its bicentenary, taking 1810 as its date of origin, when independence was declared from the Spanish Crown. In the interim, Argentine military campaigns against the Mapuche people began in the 1870s, concentration camps were established and continued until the end of the 1890s, and the Mapuche people sought to return to their territories at least into the 1930s. The longevity conferred on the state-nation-territory matrix (see Delrio and Pérez’s chapter in this volume) called “Argentina” made the violent events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries unthinkable and chronologically distant; in the best-case scenario, it is assumed that those events must have occurred at least two hundred years ago. In this way, the unhistorical time of myth, the five hundred years of colonization, and the longevity of the Argentine nation are reinforced. These different, meaning-laden timelines make it impossible to think about Mapuche tales from the nütram as recent memory. Meanwhile, the experiences of repression and violence during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983 are a part of our recent history of pain, and constitute our subjective expression of citizenship and a consensuated model that has been institutionalized in such expressions as nunca más (never again) and no olvidar (no forgetting). The experiences of violence that the Mapuche people have suffered for the past 130 years, and that continue today,8 could never be thought of by Argentine society as a recent history of pain and even less as constitutive of our expressions of democracy and citizenship. Nevertheless, the nütram carry on with their own flow of transmission as an underground memory (Pollak 2006) for the Mapuche people, on the outskirts of Patagonia’s larger cities and in towns and rural zones distant from each other. The Mapuche have continued to narrate and listen, at the core of their most intimate groups or spaces reserved for activism, to “the stories of their grandfathers and grandmothers.” With those tales, Mapuche today take on their own identity searches; they maintain their claims and articulate alliances to retain or recover their territories. The nütram has been the material 212 · Ram o s

with which the Mapuche people have undertaken the simultaneous processes of restoring their memories, producing ancestral knowledge, and maintaining the world. The nütram have created shared bonds of belonging between people with diverse social trajectories. Ultimately, the nütram have held together the exchange of words and conversation that gives sense to the expression “we will be standing on our feet again” (quoted above). Today, Argentina faces a particular historical context. We are observing the rise of two parallel yet related processes. On the one hand, the hegemonic discourses—those heard in the media or read about in official texts such as books, judicial files, and congressional debates—construct the Mapuche regaining his territory in an unusual way: he is no longer simply “foreign” (Chilean) or a “fake Indian,” but also a “terrorist.” On the other hand, the Argentine state has intensified its repressive policies,9 appealing to tropes such as the conspiratorial intervention of alleged foreign interests in Mapuche struggles, the irrational and threatening violence of certain Mapuche sectors, and the illegitimacy of their historical claims. Precisely for this reason, today more than ever, scholars should cooperate with the Mapuche project of holding the nütram in high regard to begin to understand, for the first time, the affective and political significance and sense of being part of a history of violence in the past and the present. In sum, the nütram are not the last traces of an ancient culture or an extinguished tradition. Their social significance and meanings are contrary to their earlier collection as myths and legends; they are living historical phenomena whose validity has as much to do with their character of truth as with their status as recent memory. Several authors have pointed out that crises, moments of violence and disruption, often have the most significant effects on human life experiences (Melion and Küchler 1991; Carsten 2007). Experiences of pain, suffering, dismantling, and loss inaugurate the process of memory as people struggle to articulate what is being maintained by a society that has been subjugated and fragmented. The nütram are pieces of verbal art in which the Mapuche have inscribed these experiences as shared images. And, as those images were passed on to others as something to be kept in their memories, they became a focus of Mapuche social memory. In the same way, one could argue that these experiences of violence structured the tales of belonging of those who think of themselves as survivors, and of their people as an affective and political community under ongoing reconstruction. The so-called Conquest of the Desert, S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe ri en ce · 213 

far from being a distant temporal event, is the main theme of current Mapuche social memory because it is the context in which the most necessary advice and ancestral knowledge consolidate and are constantly re-created so that the Mapuche people can “keep rising.”

Final Words: Political Projects and the Restoration of Memories The nütram are the discursive genre through which the Mapuche people have historically inscribed their experiences of pain, their sad stories, and their evidence about what really happened in the past. Generated in different contexts of violence, they renew and combine memories through the longue durée of history, revealing that the official dates that circumscribe the violence between 1878 and 1885 are a fictional narrative of official history, because those experiences of violence, mistreatment, and exclusion have carried on systematically to the present day. The nütram also function as interpretational frames for the past, in which the trajectories of the ancestors are tied in a common text with the trajectories in progress, producing a historical continuity that collides with their own temporalities and events in the fractures, the erasures, and the silences of the national historiography. In the social imaginary of the Argentine people, the systematic violence toward the Mapuche people has always been silenced, but the nütram, in the privacy of Mapuche homes, has kept this knowledge alive. The poetic choice of structuring memories from the past as narratives that value the ways of “returning” from different experiences of violence has also been a political decision. The nütram have oriented Mapuche actions in the struggles of new generations toward the permanent recuperation of territories, knowledge, and social bonds. The nütram continue to renew similar interpretations of history and also inspire the production of new nütram. These experiences of pain are deeply constructive in the biographies of the Mapuche who are living today on the outskirts of Patagonia’s big cities, and in rural zones and towns, because they have shaped their own life trajectories as they shaped those of their parents and grandparents. They have circulated within larger- or smaller-scale contexts of violence (specifically, state repression at the hands of security forces), and most have also affected the daily lives of the Mapuche at school, in the streets, in dealing with bureaucracy, in prison, in their experiences with alcohol, drugs, hunger, and misery, and so on. But these experiences—whose immediate effects are the destruction of a people—are 214 · Ram o s

internalized as significant silences to give existence to the social memory of a people in ongoing reconstruction. This memory, focusing on different ways of returning, constitutes the main performative tool in reestablishing a living world that the ancestors narrated in the nütram. The ways in which silences and words join together in the nütram, on the one hand, organize the recent memory of the Mapuche people affectively and politically and, on the other, underscore their validity. It is a recent memory because the repression, the forced relocation, and the massive death occurred just a hundred years ago, and, in many families, it is the grandparents of the living who experienced those events and “knew how to cry when they remembered.” But also, because they did not exist in the national imaginary, those events of terror were never deeply questioned by the rest of society, nor were reparations offered by state policies. And this is far more serious, because the effects of that absence are still operating in the halls of power to justify repression and violence toward the Mapuche in the present. Thus, the validity of these memories—implicit or explicit in the nütram—reside in the living reality of these violent events for the Mapuche people, as much as the political and performative potential of narratives of returning. In conclusion, I would like to examine how some Mapuche activists have been incorporating the nütram’s historical sensibilities as political philosophies into their different revitalization and resistance projects. The nütram often function as commands from the ancestors that give advice about how to continue the course of history. On the one hand, the nütram command Mapuche to continue the struggle undertaken by the ancestors to redress injustices, to hold the people in esteem and value their unity in the face of the fracturing and painful effects of state genocide. On the other, the nütram command Mapuche to remember the quest to reconstitute a world in which constitutive relationships, between humans and nonhumans and with the ancestors, are defined again in terms of conversation or binding reciprocity. But, within these general interpretive patterns of the nütram, those who experienced violence, pain, and injustice—the young and old, in urban and rural communities— each also highlight their individual trajectories. The entangled transmissions of the nütram allow for diverse ways of relating past and present, in order to restore the history of the Mapuche people. In this way, the nütram also allow the gestation of political projects according to how each person experiences and understands his or her own “returning” to Mapuche identity. S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe r i en ce · 215 

In a 2017, an autonomous Mapuche parliament (trawn) convened at Cañio community in Chubut Province. Many Mapuche activists participated in the meeting, including those who defend their territory from potential evictions in rural areas and others who, because they have recently left the cities, are now fighting for territorial recuperation in rural areas. While sitting by the fire, they conversed about a recent event in which a member of Cañio community had been involved; he was unjustly suspected of being part of an alleged armed organization and of having stabbed someone. The members of the trawn decided that, in order to answer those false accusations in a collective way, it was necessary to begin the conversation with a nütram. After sharing their nütram of return, heard in the intimacy of their families and communities, they concentrated on describing their own returns. I will not delve deeply here into the interesting discussion that this topic generated, but I quote the words that one of the participants used to synthesize the main ideas: The main topic is to know how to continue the writing of that history, how we can still give continuity to those tales. The nütram is an indicator of paths, and we see that each one of us has kept giving them continuity in our own way. The subject generates many feelings, and to each one of us those feelings connote different hopes and different bonding. But according to what we just listened to, and despite our differences, we are all returning as well. The nütram acquired its importance and strength so that it can show us which is the right path that will help us to return to our true way of being Mapuche. We suggested that the nütram were for a long time understood as fable, but as Marilyn [a participant of the trawn] said, the most serious part of all was that we also came to think that we didn’t exist as well. Because we considered what was being told in the nütram as not entirely the truth, we were denying ourselves. We are that history; to deny it is to deny ourselves. To return to the Mapuche self is far more complex than to return to a physical place, and just like the winka society never understood our nütram, now it can’t understand our political projects of return. They can’t understand why Cañio community members have decided to think of themselves as being Mapuche and to defend the mountain from the touristic undertaking that the state wants to do; they can’t understand our kimun [knowledge] about the existence of the beings who inhabit 216 · Ram o s

the place. Inasmuch as we began to strengthen ourselves in our kimun, we begin to understand the shared responsibility of looking after the territories in which our ancestors lived or that we live in, to protect those lands so that the forces that live there and allow us to live as Mapuche can continue to exist. Our return is not only to the territory that we defend or recover; it is also mainly a return to the Mapuche ways of inhabiting it. That is why we are going through a very difficult phase in comparison to the rest of the society that isn’t Mapuche; our knowledge is deeper, and so is the incomprehension of the rest of the society toward us. Everything that it is happening to us now is going to be misunderstood. But we also know that our struggles, whether they are small or big, are the returns that later on will be the new nütram, even though some may want to call them fables. That is how we build our history. (Trawn, December 2017) The memories of the army’s campaigns against the Mapuche people at the end of the nineteenth century are called “sad stories” by the Mapuche, and, more often than before, they are now being remembered and are renewing feelings of pain and injustice. In nütram, those images of violence and suffering were “muted, . . . yet their muteness spoke memory” (Dwyer 2009, 127). It is by attending to how silence blocks the emergence of certain conclusions and enables the articulation of others that we can recognize the value and importance that Mapuche agency has had in the regeneration of their affective and political bonds, with which the Mapuche people have managed to reconstruct and are still reconstructing themselves.

Notes 1. In the Mapuche language, nütram refers to the discursive genre of “true story/ ies.” In this language, the singular or plural is grammatically indicated in the sentence and is not specified by the form of the noun. 2. The way in which we understand the nütram here (as a communicative event or performance, which, by its poetic form, points out the interpretive context in which what is being told as much as what is being assumed acquires specific sociocultural senses) is framed in studies of the ethnography of the performance (Bauman and Briggs 1990) and perspective (Golluscio 2006) of Mapuche verbal art. Since in previous works we focused on the narrative poetics of nütram (Ramos 2017), we mention S e n s e s of Pa i n f ul E x pe r i en ce · 217 

here only those that accentuate their character of truth, of retransmission and advice. The truth often indexicalized itself through metacommunicative comments of openness and enclosure (“she experienced that when she was nine years old,” “it occurred like that”), and retransmission by the repetition of verbs about saying (“they say,” “they say that they said”). The relation between narratives and advice is inspired by Walter Benjamin’s ([1936] 1991) proposition about poetics in the art of narrating (Wolin 1994; Hillach 2014). 3. Note to the reader: I, Carolyne R. Larson, contributed to the editing of these excerpts. I have made every effort to remain faithful to the original and to honor the authorial rights of Ana Ramos, but I also take full responsibility for any inaccuracies or misinterpretations that might exist. 4. Grandmother of Mauro Millan (Mapuche activist from Chubut Province), interview with the author, 2007. 5. Because it is referred as “tapiñen,” the lion is no longer considered a biological animal and rather is understood as a representation of the forces of nature and the ancestors. 6. A tayil is a sacred song or chant with which the Mapuche communicate with the forces of nature in order to promote well-being or to establish an agreement about living together (“leave each other at peace”). 7. The illegitimacy of Mapuche claims are often currently presented through the following stereotypes and inventions: the Mapuche are Chileans; the Mapuche are violent; and even, the Mapuche do not preexist the Argentine nation-state. 8. State policies of repression and violence against the Mapuche people did not end with the military campaigns of the nineteenth century, as they continue in the systematic practices of eviction and territorial removal; various interventions by security forces that have included torture, humiliation, and death; and the absence of policies truly respectful of Mapuche autonomy in order to enable intercultural coexistence. 9. In 2017, in Patagonia, repression and violence once again became a theme of everyday life. First, the border patrol (gendarmería) suppressed a social protest at Pu Lof en Resistencia in Cushamen (a Mapuche community), and a young man who was there in solidarity with the indigenous cause died during the operation. A few months later, in a territory that had been recovered by the Lof Lafken Winkul (another Mapuche community), security forces (prefectura) opened fire on young Mapuche who were preparing to begin a ceremony, killing one and injuring others. In addition to renewing historical pains, these two events have been challenge for Argentine conceptions of the Mapuche, who many believed had already won certain rights, a voice in debate, and the means of negotiating with the state (Briones and Ramos 2018).

218 · Ram o s

NINE

Mapping Mapuche Territory Reimagining the Conquest of the Desert Sarah D. Warren

For contemporary Mapuche communities in Argentina, the Conquest of the Desert serves as a backdrop for current political and social claims. In this chapter, I analyze maps of Mapuche territory, Wallmapu, which extends across the Andes and includes parts of current-day Chile and Argentina. I show how contemporary maps of Mapuche territory include borders, boundaries, and places of historical significance related to the Conquest of the Desert in their renderings. I argue that utilizing discourse related to the conquest allows Mapuche organizations to demonstrate their historical relationship to the land in southern Argentina and to use this relationship as the foundation for their current nation-building projects. The maps further this relationship by utilizing Mapuche words for place names, thus implying a continuity of cultural and linguistic practices predating and withstanding the devastation caused by the Conquest of the Desert. This is particularly important given the Argentine context in which indigenous people and their claims are largely invisible in the dominant public discourse. In 2006, the Mapuche cross-border news publication Azkintuwe published a series of articles about the Museo de La Plata and its history of preserving and displaying the remains of Mapuche people taken captive during the Conquest of the Desert. The articles state that the Mapuche leader Inacayal1 and his family were taken prisoner during the military campaign and brought to the museum as “artifacts” to be studied and kept. He and his family members 219

remained there until their death. One article includes the following description of his final days: “‘I was the leader of my land; the huincas2 stole my land, killed my people and robbed my horses’; they say that Inakayal repeated this phrase through the hallways of the museum, condemned to clean and care for the remains of his ancestors” (Lonkopan 2006, 12). The description of a Mapuche leader taken captive and forced to wander through the halls of a museum of the colonizer is an image of both despair and memory. The phrase attributed to Inacayal highlights the things in life that were important to him and that were lost through the Conquest of the Desert—land, family, and horses. But this story is also about something more than just Inacayal. It appeared in a Mapuche newspaper, Azkintuwe, which was founded with the goal of sharing news throughout Mapuche territory extending from the Pacific Ocean (Ngulumapu, in current-day Chile) across the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean (Puelmapu, in current-day Argentina). Mapuche people call this territory Wallmapu, and part of the mission of Azkintuwe was to forge a common identity across this territory. The story of Inacayal’s remains and the struggles to return them to his community of origin show the ways in which the Conquest of the Desert continues to function for the Mapuche people. Mapuche news sources report on these long-ago events and on the current attempts of Mapuche communities to have their ancestors’ remains returned to them. Mapuche words are used in the newspaper, in its name as well as in some articles, to make the language—and its speakers—more visible. This stands in stark relief against state policies enacted after the Conquest of the Desert to eradicate indigenous languages through Spanish-language schooling and thus force an Argentine identity on indigenous people. The Conquest of the Desert is referenced in both obvious and subtle ways by Mapuche organizations, intellectuals, and activists who imagine themselves to be a nation and are making claims for visibility and rights based on this nation-building project. In this chapter, I look at how the Conquest of the Desert is used as both an implicit and an explicit frame for current-day claims-making by Mapuche political and cultural organizations. I focus on how maps and mapmaking figure into this process. For Mapuche organizations and individuals who create maps of Mapuche territory, these maps draw on the official narratives of the Conquest of the Desert but also present this historical moment in different ways. The maps open the possibility of re-creating and rewriting history and of understanding the Conquest of the Desert in a different historical and 220 · Warr e n

cultural perspective. The maps also work to make explicit the current-day nation-building claims of the Mapuche people. Current Mapuche political claims and representations of Mapuche territory play out against the backdrop of a national discourse that constantly questions the authenticity of Mapuche people as indigenous to Argentina while simultaneously defining Argentina as a “white” nation ( Joseph 2000). Being a white nation here depends on there being an “other” against which to define national identity. Hegemonic discourse in Argentina often posits Mapuche people as Chilean invaders who displaced another indigenous people, the Tehuelches (Briones and Delrio 2009). This narrative suggests that the people who call themselves Mapuche are not truly indigenous to Argentina for two central reasons: First, they are descendants of Chilean indigenous people. Second, the indigenous people native to the land east of the Andes were supposedly killed and/or displaced by both the Conquest of the Desert and the invasion of indigenous peoples from west of the Andes. This perspective is so prevalent in Argentina and so ingrained in Argentine ways of thinking about the Mapuche people that it is a common trope still regularly repeated in popular culture.3 My analysis focuses on the idea of Wallmapu, the Mapuche nation, and its cartographic construction. I suggest that Mapuche individuals and organizations have used and are continuing to use maps to rewrite history and make claims as part of an indigenous nation-building project. Because the Conquest of the Desert is a pivotal moment in the narrative of Argentina as a nation, it also figures prominently in the attempts of Mapuche organizations to promote a different narrative of the nation. Maps are a central, visible part of this, among other cultural products including newspapers, art, and music. In this chapter I analyze three maps produced by Mapuche organizations, chosen from a wide range of maps that have proliferated across the internet and in books. I chose these maps because they represent three different moments in time and three different perspectives on what the Mapuche nation looks like, both its contours and its internal details. These differences show different ways of constructing a narrative of a Mapuche nation that pushes back against the hegemonic definitions and understandings of historical events like the Conquest of the Desert. The first modern maps of a single Mapuche nation emerged from a series of cross-border meetings in Chile and Argentina in the 1990s and early 2000s. One purpose of the meetings was to revive the idea of the Mapuche as a single, unified people. Out of these meetings came a Mappi n g Map uc h e T e r r i tory · 221 

national flag (Ancan Jara 2017) and proto-maps of a single Mapuche territory extending across Chile and Argentina (Warren 2019). One of the most visible maps that came from this time period appeared on the masthead of Azkintuwe. Envisioned as a newspaper representing Mapuche reality and politics on both sides of the Chile-Argentina border, Azkintuwe published its first issue on October 12, 2003. This initial issue and all subsequent print and digital editions—which continued until 2013—featured a masthead of a map of Mapuche territory superimposed with the face of an old man (fig. 9).4 The initial team of Azkintuwe was made up of about a dozen young Mapuches who had been deeply involved in the student movement in Chile, advocating for student housing for indigenous students coming to cities to attend universities. Through their engagement in the nexus between student activism and activism around indigenous identities, they began to make connections with Mapuche youth in Argentina. One of the founders of the newspaper told me that when they were preparing to start the newspaper, “the people who had the closest contact with the people from Argentina said, ‘Hey! Why don’t we do it from both sides? Because then those folks can collaborate and distribute the newspaper.’ And the kids we knew [in Argentina] were the most enthusiastic about a Mapuche newspaper.”5 The desire to publish a newspaper spanning both sides of the border was complicated by the fact that, despite having a network of Mapuche youth in Argentina, “none of them wrote.”6 The editorial team started looking at the work of established, non-Mapuche journalists in Argentina and found much of it to be “very honest” and well done. They searched for Argentine journalists’ email addresses and contacted a handful of them, who, to the surprise of the Mapuche youth in Chile, said, “Let’s do this. Don’t worry—we won’t charge you anything. Let’s just do it!”7 The creation of Azkintuwe shifted the hegemonic national narratives of the Argentine and Chilean states by presenting a collective cross-border Mapuche identity. Pedro Cayuqueo, one of the founders and the editor of Azkintuwe, told me that one of the first articles they received was from an excellent journalist from Bariloche, Argentina: “He sent a really beautiful piece about a rural community. He did it as a review of the Conquest of the Desert. It was like finding something that has always been there but that you didn’t know. You had never been taught about it.” Cayuqueo’s sense of wonder about his lack of knowledge translated into a commitment to disseminating this knowledge to 222 · War r e n

Mendoza Santiago

San Carlos

Río Cuarto

Melincué Junín

Trenque-Lanquen

Aruako Temuko

Buenos Aires

Bahía Blanca

Kalfucura

Neuquén Valdivia

Osorno Furilofche Chiloe

Figure 9  Masthead of Azkintuwe. Courtesy of Pedro Cayuqueo, editor of Azkintuwe.

a broad readership in both countries with the goal of reshaping the national narratives, much like the newspaper did with its article about Inacayal. The masthead map was a clear visual symbol of the unity of Mapuche territory and was used intentionally for this purpose. Cayuqueo told me that when they launched the first issue of Azkintuwe, “we put the map that we put on it as an example of what we wanted. What it implied, what we wanted to project as an imagined vision, was super strong [potente]. And afterward, the acceptance that the newspaper got in Argentina was incredible.”8 The founders saw the written word and its visual accompaniments as central to the vision represented by the newspaper’s name. In Mapuzungun, the Mapuche language, Azkintuwe means “the lookout.” According to Cayuqueo, “when we gave it the name that we were going to give it, ‘the lookout,’ it wasn’t just to look at the states but also so we could look at ourselves. In other words, people could see the newspaper, and it’s like looking in a mirror. . . . And you begin to realize that the stories that the old people tell in both territories are similar. And moreover they are super similar contexts because the military conquests were parallel.”9 The newspaper, of which the map is a central symbolic element, Mappi n g Map uc h e T e rr i tory · 223 

aided in uniting Mapuche people on both sides of the border and helping them see their similarities. It also validated the stories of older community members, whose voices had not had a place in official written historical narratives. In this way, Azkintuwe’s articles and masthead contributed to the claims-making process of the Mapuche people against a state that had made them largely invisible. As I describe below, these claims both draw on important moments in national history, such as the Conquest of the Desert, and also rewrite the interpretations of this history.

The Background of the Conquest of the Desert The Conquest of the Desert serves as a backdrop for many political and cultural claims made by current-day Mapuche organizations in Argentina. It does so because of both its symbolic importance and its actual devastation of Mapuche communities. Although the political threat to the Mapuche nation began long before the Conquest of the Desert, it was the conquest that solidified the relationship of the Argentine state toward the Mapuche people, and it did so in two main ways. First, the Conquest of the Desert brought Mapuche people who had beforehand been on the margins and even sometimes outside the realm of official state control, into the jurisdiction of the Argentine state (Delrio 2005). Communities that had previously functioned as autonomous political units now found themselves incorporated into the Argentine state. Indeed, as Claudia Briones and Walter Delrio argue, indigenous policy solidified after the Conquest of the Desert in an attempt to fully empty “the desert” of self-identified Indians (2009, 56). Thus, the autonomy of nationhood was disrupted at the time of the Conquest of the Desert, and the policies that followed it were designed to remove Mapuche people from their lands and, through schooling and labor, transform them into Spanish-speaking Argentine citizens. Second, the Conquest of the Desert mostly solidified the international border with Chile, which had the effect of limiting—at least theoretically— the movement of Mapuche people across the Andes.10 Initially, the border remained relatively porous in practice, even if it created two distinct citizenship regimes and realities for people living on either side of it. With the implementation of border controls along the roads traversing the Andes, however, the division became more concrete. This impacted people’s ties to family and community members across the Andes, made crossing the Andes more 224 · War r e n

challenging, and shifted thinking about who constituted the Mapuche people. It created a symbolic barrier between Mapuche people in Chile and those in Argentina, pushing them to think of themselves less as a common people, belonging to a single nation, than as two separate peoples embedded in different nation-states. The Conquest of the Desert, then, acts as a central historical and symbolic moment in the memory of Mapuche people. It crystalized both the incorporation of Mapuche people into the Argentine nation-state and the political separation of Mapuche people across the Andes.

Maps and Nation Building: Borders As various scholars show, maps have historically functioned and often continue to function as tools of the state—meant to measure, control, and demarcate boundaries. They are visual representations of a geopolitical area, imbued with meanings and power associated with geopolitics (Anderson 1991). And yet, as the recent burgeoning literature on borders shows, the actual borders that get represented in maps have political and cultural histories. They are not natural indications of group belonging, as much as colonial states tried to show this. Instead, they are products of specific decisions and negotiations, and responses to obstacles—geographic (rivers, mountains, oceans) and cultural (villages, political interests, resources) (Radcliffe 2010). Borders play a central role in the official narratives of the Conquest of the Desert and in Mapuche counternarratives of it. Before and during the conquest, the border between the civilized elite of Buenos Aires and the uncivilized “desert” began expanding westward toward the Andes and was marked by shifting lines of forts (see Briones and Delrio 2009; and Wright 2008, 88, for a discussion of the word “desert”). This line was represented both in the imaginary of the Argentine state and on maps from that period (see, e.g., Walther 1970, app. 5). Maps and borders are more than just tools of the state, however. They have also been reappropriated by indigenous groups in multiple ways. In land claims, indigenous communities in Chile and elsewhere draw on historical maps to offer evidence of the validity of their claims for particular parcels of land (Hale 2011; Mallon 2005). In other places, activist researchers have engaged in mapmaking projects with indigenous communities, resulting in collaborative maps that serve the interests of the community (Herlihy and Mappi n g Map uc h e T e rr i tory · 225 

Knapp 2003; Hirt 2012). Finally, with the relative ease of use associated with new technologies like Google Maps, it is easier than ever to create a map, and indigenous groups are increasingly utilizing new forms of technology to communicate and represent themselves as they want to be represented. In his article on Mapuche cultural revival and creativity, Guillaume Boccara argues that Mapuche maps break down the taken-for-granted border of the Andes, erected by the Spaniards in their maps and political decisions. Not only do these maps emphasize the connections between Mapuches in Chile and those in Argentina, they literally flatten the Andes, thus flattening the symbolic wall dividing the two countries and the naturalness of a division between the two (2006, 3). In his analysis of Mapuche mapmaking, Boccara argues that this process not only denaturalizes the border between Chile and Argentina but also makes the territory distinctly indigenous, distinctly Mapuche. Indeed, many of the maps contain indigenous labels and are part of a narrative process supporting a decolonial idea of a “transnational community-to-come” (2006, 9). Boccara does not address, however, the ways in which certain historical moments and processes are made visible in maps while others are rendered invisible. Particularly striking in the Argentine case are the ways in which various maps of Mapuche territory invoke the memory of the Conquest of the Desert—either through the borders drawn, the landmarks noted, the spellings used, or the places left unnamed and unmarked. Borders—as imagined through lines of forts and geographic features like rivers—were central to the official imaginings of the Argentine nation before and during the Conquest of the Desert and also are important in how the conquest gets reimagined and reincorporated in current cartographical representations of the Mapuche nation, Wallmapu (Warren 2013). The map in figure 10 is from an urban Mapuche organization in southern Argentina that produced a series of ’zines from 2001 to 2006. This organization was made up largely of urban Mapuche youth reclaiming their Mapuche identity (Kropff 2011; Scandizzo 2004). This map, produced in an issue of the ’zine devoted to territory, was an early map of Wallmapu, and I consider it to be a foundational map for thinking through what Mapuche territory means and how a visual representation of this territory reflects political and cultural claims (Warren 2019). It shows the process of reclaiming a narrative of what it means to be Mapuche and how to represent this identity geographically.11 Chile and Argentina are clearly denoted as different and separated 226 · War r e n

Santiago

Traiguén

Neukén Fiske Menuko (gral. roka . . . )

Temuko Kechu Kawin Los Pellines

Viedma Argentina

Anekón Carrilauken Furilofche Chico Grand Huahuel Niyeu El Bolsón (jacobacci) Eskel

Chile

José de San Martín

El recorrido del MapUrbe ’zine (algunos puntis)

Figure 10“Territorio Mapuche Ocupado,” from Campaña de Autoafirmación Mapuche Wefkvletuyiñ: Estamos Resurgiendo.

nation-states in this map. Chile is shaded gray while Argentina is white. The border between the two—as solidified during the Conquest of the Desert—is depicted as something real that differentiates between the experiences of Mapuche people on the two sides. Of note in figure 10, however, is the language used to unite the experiences of Mapuche people across the continent. The title of this map is “Territorio Mapuche Ocupado” (Occupied Mapuche Territory). These words indicate a lack of differentiation among Mapuche people across the Andes. People residing in both places are designated as Mapuche, as a people whose collective territory is now occupied by two separate and distinct nation-states. For Argentine Mapuches, the dispossession of land came about through the Conquest of the Desert, and the title of this map makes implicit reference to the military process that stripped Mapuche people of their lands. The title also complicates the notion of the border, showing that, although it exists, it can also be transcended by common experiences of territorial occupation. An article accompanying the map argues: “The concept of Wallmapu is what questions the ideas of the Argentine state that say that there is a Chilean Mappi n g Map uc h e T e rr i tory · 227 

Mapuche and another Argentine [Mapuche], and it is what unites the territorial recognition [reivindicación] on both sides of the [Andes] mountains.”12 Drawing on the idea of Wallmapu is particularly important here. It naturalizes the Mapuche language for defining Mapuche land historically and in the present. It unites Mapuche people and histories across the Andes, denaturalizing the Andes as a geographic border and a political (imagined) border. It contests official/dominant histories on both sides of the border that make Mapuche people invisible. Finally, it draws directly on memories of a time before the Conquest of the Desert when indigenous people had more freedom to cross the mountains and when they were not under the full jurisdiction of one or the other of two antagonistic states. A focus on Wallmapu as the imagined and understood Mapuche territory, and as delineated in the maps I analyze, is directly related to the Conquest of the Desert. It is a rebuttal to the nation-state imaginings of Mapuche people that draw on an interpretation of the Conquest of the Desert based on the official discourse of an empty “desert” waiting to be conquered. These ideas are supported by scholarly work that emphasizes the connections among indigenous peoples across the Andes. In a project looking at the role of Mapuche travelers from Ngulumapu to Puelmapu, Álvaro Bello argues: “[B]y talking about processes of territorial integration, one could give the impression that we are talking about a territorial reality that has the same characteristics as modern nation-states, with frontiers, limits, customs, and visas. In reality, we are dealing with a process of territorial integration whose essence is actually found in social practices and in imaginaries, kinship relations [parentesco], and multiple forms of appropriation” (2011, 16). The social practices Bello notes are reflected in the myriad ways indigenous people consolidated their relationships with one another both in Puelmapu and across the Andes. As Jorge Pavez Ojeda shows in his collection of letters between Mapuche leaders (2008), indigenous leaders communicated with one another across the Andes, utilizing the written form to make alliances and share information. People moved freely across the Andes, both as part of extended kinship networks and through extensive trading networks (Bandieri 2001), particularly in the transport and trade of cattle taken from the Argentine pampas and sold in Chile (Bandieri and Blanco 2001). As Bello suggests: “The construction of Mapuche territory in the nineteenth century takes place through a process that integrates different and distant spaces, through the 228 · Warr e n

establishment of nodes, networks, and netting, constituted through cattle routes and spaces, places of residence, and circuits and networks of political-military alliances” (2011, 38). Further, the power of Mapuche leaders in Ngulumapu (Chile) was consolidated and reinforced by their access to cattle. Mapuche leaders in Ngulumapu had to engage in a wide range of alliances with non-Mapuches and Mapuches in the borderlands of the Andes to gain access to cattle from the pampas. Despite the danger involved in crossing the Andes to participate in cattle raids with pampean Mapuches, the pampas “was a place from which, if one returned alive, triumphant and with riches, [one was] awarded sufficient prestige as to affirm the power of any valiant lonko [leader/ chief ] from Araucanía” (Bello 2011, 181). The participation of Mapuche youth from both sides of the Andes in raids on Argentine ranches in the 1830s led to more formal relationships in the following decades (Ratto 2003). Mapuche leaders from Puelmapu and Ngulumapu had solidified their relationship with one another by the 1840s, with the village of the longko13 Calfucurá in Salinas Grandes as a central meeting place. Testimony from an ex-captive Argentine in 1874 attests to this process: “Calfucurá sent ambassadors everywhere. . . . The Muluches [Mapuches from Ngulumapu], represented by the leader Magüiñ, had no problem declaring themselves in solidarity with Calfucurá’s cause. . . . And while some [Mapuches from Ngulumapu] left [Salinas Grandes], others came, attracted by the abundance that one could attain and the ease with which one could acquire animals” (Santiago Avedaño, cited in Pavez Ojeda 2008, 87–88). Through the movement of people, identities shifted as alliances shifted;14 language was shared, and borders—which were never a linear marker among indigenous people or even between indigenous people and the Argentine state (Briones and Delrio 2009)—moved and became more or less porous. For current indigenous struggles, what is important about these debates is the way that they frame collective memories of dispossession and inform current claims for national identity. Indeed, as Bello shows for the Chilean side, the memories of relationships and of movement across the Andean pampas are still shared in Mapuche communities (2011). The maps in the Azkintuwe masthead and in figure 11 show a slightly different interpretation of Mapuche territory and history. In the Azkintuwe masthead, the border is erased from the political map and covered with an image of an old Mapuche man (Warren 2019). The image obscures the area that Mappi n g Map uc h e T e r r i tory · 229 

Río Choapa Río Cuarto Santiago

San Carlos

Melincué Junín

PUEL MAPU NGULU MAPU

Neuquén Temuko

Bahía Blanca

Kalfucura

R í o Neg r o

Figure 11  Map of Wallmapu. Author Unknown.

could be marked with a border. Above Wallmapu, the border is present, as are the names of the current-day countries present on the map: Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. The border is between the Mapuche nation and neighboring nation-states and does not show internal differences between Chilean and Argentine Mapuche histories. The historical moment invoked seems to predate the Conquest of the Desert and the dispossession of Mapuche people from their land. In figure 11, a similar map, current political borders are marked within Wallmapu and beyond it. In addition to the actual indication of the border, the names “Ngulu Mapu” and “Puel Mapu” are marked on the map, indicating the connected yet separate identities and experiences of the Mapuche people. These kinds of connections work to erase the border, while the distinct histories of the territorial dispossession—through the Conquest of the Desert in Argentina or the Pacification of Araucanía in Chile—simultaneously reinscribe it. The external borders of Wallmapu also draw on histories and representations of the Conquest of the Desert. It is worth noting that while some maps of 230 · Warr e n

Wallmapu (in this case, figures 9 and 11) clearly and explicitly mark the borders of the Mapuche nation, others do not (in this case, figure 10). This difference is typical of the various maps of Wallmapu found online. On the one hand, maps such as those from MapUrbe’zine may seem imprecise and vague. But on the other, such vagueness can be seen as a useful interpretation of Mapuche territory. Before the arrival of Europeans, Mapuche communities did not have fixed and bounded borders that marked the beginning or end of their territory. Instead, their territory was known but nebulous, with geographic features that perhaps were not frequently crossed but that were crossed nonetheless. Creating a map without distinct cartographic lines refutes the colonial idea of a nation-state. It pushes back against the assumption that nations must be defined by formal borders. Similarly, maps without fixed borders offer the same kind of flexibility for political or cultural purposes. They leave open the possibility that the Mapuche nation is not bounded by borders. It has a central heart, but the boundaries of this heart need not be absolutely rigid. Also, the borders need not coincide directly with a particular moment in history but might look different at different moments in time. Such a map, then, might be a more accurate depiction of Mapuche territory prior to the Conquest of the Desert—an area with general boundaries but without a fixed and cartographically marked border. It is a tool both for representing Mapuche history and for making political claims based on that history. The external borders in the other two maps (figs. 9, 11) are distinctly drawn. They are lines marking the extent of the Mapuche nation and the places where the Mapuche nation reaches its limit. Both maps symbolize this line as the literal end of the gray color that fills the Mapuche nation. It is the place where the colorful filling meets the white background indicating the Chilean, Argentine, and Uruguayan nation-states. It is worth examining the external borders of each of these two maps in more detail. Both maps have the same northern border, which extends from the Río Choapa in Chile across that country, then continues south along the Chile-Argentina border, going through the Argentine town of San Carlos, south of Mendoza and San Luis, through the towns of Río Cuarto, Melincué, and Junín. It then turns south again and follows the Río Salado to the Atlantic Ocean. Of particular note in this section of the border is the way it follows a line of forts, which delineate the border from the time prior to the Conquest of the Desert through the campaigns themselves. Mappi n g Map uc h e T e rr i tory · 231 

The region to the north of this border was the Confederación Argentina, the group of provinces that remained distinct from Buenos Aires through much of the 1800s until the confederation collapsed in 1862. Prior to the Conquest of the Desert, the area south of this border was constructed as pampas land occupied by settlements of indigenous people. The maps from Azkintuwe and figure 11 maintain this construction of the border and as such its reference to independence before the Conquest of the Desert. This northern border of Wallmapu clearly demonstrates how Mapuche mapmakers draw on historical moments to construct a map in such a way that validates their own claims to a prior existence as an independent people. Utilizing a commonly understood border as a northern perimeter recognizes the historical relationship between indigenous people and early European settlers. Yet, it is important to note the exclusion of the city of Mendoza from the map. Mendoza figures into accounts of Mapuche cross-Andes relations prior to the Conquest of the Desert. For example, Jorge Pavez Ojeda shows correspondence between a Mapuche Catholic priest from Ngulumapu who traveled to Mendoza to participate in the ordination of another Chilean Mapuche man, the son of a longko from Valdivia (2008, 55–56). In his descriptions of the Mapuche confederation uniting Mapuche longkos from both sides of the Andes, Pavez mentions a Mapuche war chief, Mangil Wenu, who participated in raids in Mendoza in the early 1800s and who possibly traveled to the central part of the pampas, specifically Salinas Grandes, as part of a bigger group in 1846 (2008, 87). Another account of a Mapuche leader from Ngulumapu from the early 1900s suggests that this leader came back from Argentina to become a powerful longko after participating in cattle raids in Argentina, noting: “They all took part in a great raid near Mendoza” (Guevara 1913, 87, cited in Bello 2011, 185). Thus, while the centrality of the pampas to imaginings of Wallmapu is clearly represented in the maps, land around Mendoza that was also at least partially inhabited—or at the very least traversed—by Mapuche people does not figure into the memory constructed by maps of Wallmapu. Despite the historical significance of these lands before the Conquest of the Desert in forming identities and forging relationships across the Andes, these processes are all but erased from the maps depicting Wallmapu. Although it is not entirely clear why this is, I would suggest that it has to do with historical narratives and maps drawn under the auspices of the colonial government that put the border between indigenous groups who occupied the pampas and the 232 · War r e n

colonial provinces to the south of the towns of San Luis and Mendoza. Thus, while raids into Mendoza figure in Mapuche memories and relationships of the 1800s, the current-day mapmakers took as their reference for the northern border of Wallmapu a boundary that was relevant but porous in the 1800s. The inclusion of this border is an indirect reference to the Conquest of the Desert. While the conquest erased this internal border, its inclusion in the Mapuche-made maps points to its importance as a reminder of colonialism and its constraints. The southern border of Wallmapu in figure 11 makes a similar if not even clearer reference to the history of the Conquest of the Desert. In this map, the border follows the current-day border of the province of Río Negro, which itself follows the river of the same name until it reaches the Río Neuquén. The Río Negro figures prominently in both the discourse leading up to the Conquest of the Desert and the military endeavor itself. Prior to the conquest, maps from the 1800s show the limit of the imagined Argentine nation. The Río Negro served as a border between the Argentine nation and the land to the south, Patagonia, in most cartographic representations of the Argentine Confederation until 1875. Although Patagonia officially came under the control of the Argentine state through the Conquest of the Desert, the nascent nation made rhetorical claims on it starting in the 1860s. In 1867, the Argentine Senate sanctioned a law that ordered “the occupation of the Río Negro and Río Neuquén as the new border line” (Contreras Painemal 2010, 124). This border, too, then reminds viewers of a border at the center of the Conquest of the Desert, a border meant to be erased through the military actions of the conquest. In contrast, the maps in figures 9 and 10 show an indistinct border to the south of the Río Negro, incorporating territory that is the current-day home to many Mapuche communities and families.15 This is both a more expansive view of Wallmapu and, as I suggest above, a way of refusing the constraints associated with Western ideas about what constitutes a nation and how that nation is bounded.

Reimagining Place-Names In addition to the importance of borders on these maps for drawing on implicit and explicit references to the collective memory of the Conquest of the Desert, the geographic places marked on the maps are also of importance. Of Mappi n g Map uc h e T e r r i tory · 233 

note on the maps are the spellings of different locations, in which the letter k is substituted for the c or qu of Spanish. In this way, Temuco becomes Temuko and Neuquén becomes Neuken. Such spellings invoke both a preconquest time in which Mapuche people had the power to determine how to name places of significance to them, and an imagining of a different reality. These imaginings are further bolstered by the actual renaming of places on the maps. The town of Bariloche, now synonymous with chocolate, Swiss-inspired architecture, and skiing but also home to many Mapuche people and political organizations, is transformed back to its indigenous name: Furilofche (figs. 9, 10). Some rivers also take on their indigenous names. The Río Salado becomes the Chadileufu (figs. 9, 11), and the Río Negro is represented by both its Spanish name and the name Kuruleufu (fig. 11). Most importantly, General Roca, the town in the province of Río Negro named after the military leader of the Conquest of the Desert, is transformed into Fiske Menuko, a Mapuche name, in figure 10. This is one of the most symbolic gestures aimed at transforming the memory of the Conquest of the Desert. General Julio Roca is generally remembered by the Argentine nation in glorious terms as a military leader who consolidated the Argentine state through the conquest of lands that were empty or nearly so (Briones and Delrio 2009). His name connotes something different for Mapuche people, however: dispossession, genocide, and displacement. Changing the name of an important town in southern Argentina from General Roca to Fiske Menuko is more than a semantic change. Such a change pushes back against the normalization and glorification of indigenous dispossession. It points to what was destroyed and, simultaneously, what still remains of indigenous peoples— language and culture. The renaming indicates that this is still a place inhabited by Mapuche people who will not be erased by military conquest or cultural genocide and who have an alternative memory of the Conquest of the Desert and its impacts. If some names are changed, either through spelling or through actual changes in the name, it is important to note that some names are not changed. It is hard to determine the exact reasons for this. A Mapuche activist involved in the creation of the Azkintuwe map recounted that the organization did not have access to software like Google Earth at the time of its creation but instead downloaded a map from the internet and drew the borders on it. The map’s creators added places of significance but recognized that they were limited in the 234 · Warr e n

number of places that they could put on the map because of space constraints. They chose places that seemed significant to them at the time. In his description, however, the activist also mentioned that were they to do it over again, they might utilize Google Earth to “identify historically significant spaces that would have had an interesting media impact. For example, the places where there were battles or massacres during the Chilean and Argentine invasions, or where there were fights against the Spanish.”16 This comment suggests that the Conquest of the Desert and the Pacification of Araucanía were central to how the mapmakers were thinking about their construction of Wallmapu. It also suggests that the technology at hand shapes the kinds of maps that are made and how they are made. The temporality of maps matters in that maps invoke a past moment but reflect both the technological constraints and the political significance of locations in the current moment. Finally, this description of the process indicates the political nature of mapmaking. Mapmakers make decisions about which locations to include and what names to give them. Mapuche mapmakers were particularly aware of the political impact of their choices, seeking out ways to make maps that would support their political claims and validate the historical basis for these claims.

Conclusion: Claims-Making and Interpreting the Conquest of the Desert The maps of Wallmapu created by Mapuche mapmakers are important because of their references to Mapuche history, but even more because they invoke historical moments, names, and identities to support current political claims. For example, showing continuity of language through place-names on maps bolsters support for bilingual intercultural education. Similarly, indicating a shared Mapuche identity across the Andes shows solidarity, kinship, and deep cultural connections that go beyond the nation-state, inspiring a discourse of nationhood that both resides within and transcends the nation-state’s border (Warren 2013). That these mapmakers often use the Conquest of the Desert as a backdrop for their claims has important implications for the continuity of Mapuche identity. One of the places where the continuity of this identity is particularly important for claims-making is in bilingual and intercultural education. Despite the Argentine state’s attempts to turn indigenous people into unmarked Mappi n g Map uc h e T e r r i tory · 235 

citizens through an education system that imposed the Spanish language and Catholicism, Mapuche people maintained their language. Language facilitated communication within and across Mapuche communities and worked to preserve culture in Argentina, and the politics of these processes are central to Mapuche perceptions of the relationship between culture and the political legacy of the Conquest of the Desert. Many Mapuche communities and organizations continue to see the maintenance of language and culture as a political response to the aims of the Conquest of the Desert. For some communities, this revolves around listening to elders’ stories and memories of the conquest, told in Mapuzungun (Briones 2007). Some organizations are more explicit in the connections they make between territorial dispossession and cultural revitalization. In describing the work of an urban Mapuche organization in Bariloche, Lorena Cañuqueo and Laura Kropff suggest that the fanzines, videos, and theater projects that emerged did so in response to the “hegemonic ideology based in ideas of extinction and assimilation” due to the “military appropriation of patagonian territory” (2005). Similarly, leaders from an urban Mapuche organization in the city of Neuquén argue that, although teaching and maintaining the Mapuche language is important, its importance truly matters when put in historical political context. During a conference drawing together indigenous peoples from across the region, they argued: “One can only talk about language if indigenous peoples have their territory” (Congreso Internacional de Las Lenguas 2007, 10). It is telling that in both of these examples, the issue of territory is central to constructions of cultural and linguistic revival. This shows the extent to which Mapuche people see their identity as being connected to land, but also the extent to which memories of the Conquest of the Desert and its rupture of communities from land figure into cultural claims and processes. Drawing on the discourse of peoplehood and territory that predates the Conquest of the Desert does two things. First, it shows these to be authentic Mapuche people with claims to southern Argentina before the arrival of—and displacement by—the Argentine state. Second, it traces a continuous line between the language and cultural practices of indigenous people prior to their incorporation into the Argentine state and those making the claims today, thus legitimizing those claims and showing them to be authentic, relevant, and real. Maps are important to this process. The imaginings produced by Mapuche organizations that advocate for changes in state structures, like education, and 236 · Warr e n

those that want to conceive of a Mapuche nation that exists outside the confines of the Argentine nation-state invoke both memories and future ideals. This is perhaps one of the most striking aspects of these imaginings, particularly the maps I analyze above. Memories associated with the Conquest of the Desert and with colonialism more broadly invoke the state and its actions in ways that point to the trauma and pain associated with these historical processes. Names are erased; places are erased; people are erased. The maps show that even when Mapuche people imagine a Mapuche nation, Wallmapu, it is tinged with colonial constructs—indications of forts, of borders constructed and overcome through military conquest that transformed or erased internal and external political boundaries. Yet the Conquest of the Desert and the symbols associated with it also get refigured in new and important ways. Maps are created; new educational programs are implemented; discussions about the relationship between bodily remains and their place in history take place. The maps are a particularly important place to see this dialectical process in that they weave together different time periods. The maps are not a pure representation of a historical Mapuche nation that existed prior to the consolidation of the Argentine and Chilean states. Nor are they a representation of the current reach of the Mapuche nation. Finally, they cannot be taken as solely a projection of a future Wallmapu. They are all three at once, a bringing together of past, present, and future imaginings of Wallmapu. It is worth reiterating, too, that they are varied. There is no single representation of what Wallmapu is, was, and should be in the context of military conquests on both sides of the Andes. I see this as the place where there is the most potential for creativity and for a healing of the deep wounds inflicted through the Conquest of the Desert. Through these maps, which represent the coming together of different time periods and different realities of Mapuche experience, Mapuche people can represent their own ideas of nationhood in ways that both engage with and transcend their historical trauma.

Notes 1. For the sake of consistency across the volume, I am using the spelling Inacayal, but I recognize that some people prefer an alternative spelling, with a k instead of a c. 2. Huinca is a Mapuche word that means “robber”; it is used to describe nonMapuche people, usually in a derogatory way. 3. A cursory review of social media related to Mapuche people in southern Mappi n g Map uc h e T e rr i tory · 237 

Argentina reveals this story arising in multiple places. The fact that many Mapuche activists and their supporters have to continually refute this story is testament to its lingering power in the popular imagination, which wrongly points to the inherently “outsider” status of Mapuche people in Argentina (see also Lenton 2017). 4. Digital versions of Azkintuwe can be found at https://issuu.com/azkintuwe. 5. Pedro Cayuqueo, interview with the author, March 24, 2009. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. The Conquest of the Desert expanded Argentina’s military control to the Andes, and Argentina and Chile agreed to a border that followed the highest points in the Andes along the Pacific-Atlantic watershed in the Border Treaty of 1881. Current Mapuche discourse refers to this time frame and the Conquest of the Desert as a central moment dividing Mapuche communities in Chile and Argentina, although the border was not defined in some parts of southern Patagonia until 1902 through the Pactos de Mayo. 11. For the map and discussion, see https://hemi.nyu.edu/cuaderno/wefkvletuyin /zine311ngutram.htm. 12. Ibid. 13. For the sake of consistency across the volume, I am using the spelling longko, but the spelling lonko is also commonly used. 14. See Graciana Pérez Zavala (2007) for a description of this in Argentina. 15. The current-day province of Río Negro is home to a number of Mapuche organizations (Cañuqueo and Kropff 2005). In 2010, 7.1 percent of the province’s population identified as indigenous (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos 2010, 51). 16. Mapuche activist, email communication, January 18, 2016.

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CONTRIBUTORS Rob Christensen is a doctoral candidate in Latin American history at Georgetown University. His research focuses on studying Indigenous people in South America and understanding how the environment and manmade conflict has impacted the socioeconomic order in their communities. Jennie I. Daniels is an associate professor of Spanish at the College of Idaho. Her research focuses on memory studies, detective fiction, and the representation of social exclusion and marginalization in postdictatorship literature and film. Her work has been published in journals including Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana, Hispania, and Confluencia. Walter Delrio is a professor of history at the Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, Sede Andina, and the director of the Instituto Patagónico de Estudios de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Universidad Nacional del Comahue. He is the author of Memorias de expropiación: Sometimiento e incorporación indígena en la Patagonia, 1872–1943 (Bernal, Argentina: Editorial Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2005); and coeditor of En el país de nomeacuerdo: Archivos y memorias del genocidio del estado argentino sobre los pueblos originarios, 1870–1950 (Viedma, Argentina: Editorial Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, 2018). Mark Healey is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut. His most recent book is The Ruins of the New Argentina: Peronism and the Remaking of San Juan after the 1944 Earthquake (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), also translated into Spanish through Siglo XXI Editores, Buenos Aires, in 2012. Carolyne R. Larson is an associate professor of history at St. Norbert College. She is the author of Our Indigenous Ancestors: A Cultural History of Museums, Science, and Identity in Argentina, 1877–1943 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015). Pilar Pérez is a professor of history at the Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. She is a researcher for the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Diversidad Cultural y Procesos del Cambio, Bariloche.

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She is the author of ¿Quién mata a Lucas Muñoz? Versiones sobre la vida, desaparición y muerte de un policía rionegrino (Buenos Aires: Teseo, 2019); and Archivos del silencio: Estado, indígenas y violencia en Patagonia Central, 1878–1941 (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2016). Ana Ramos is a professor of anthropology at the Universidad Nacional de Río Negro and a researcher for the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Her most recent books include Memorias en lucha: Recuerdos y silencios en contextos de subordinación y alteridad, coauthored with Carolina Crespo and María Alma Tozzini (Viedma, Argentina: Editorial Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, 2016); and Parentesco y política: Topologías indígenas en Patagonia, coauthored with Claudia Briones (Viedma, Argentina: Editorial Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, 2016). Ricardo D. Salvatore is a plenary professor of history at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. His books include Wandering Paysanos: State Order and Subaltern Experience in Buenos Aires during the Rosas Era (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Disciplinary Conquest: U.S. Scholars in South America, 1900–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); and Subalternos, derechos y justicia penal: Ensayos de historia social y cultural argentina, 1829–1940 (Barcelona: Gedisa Editorial, 2010). David M. K. Sheinin is a professor of history at Trent University and academic correspondent of the Academia Nacional de la Historia de la República Argentina. His recent books include Making Citizens in Argentina (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017); Sports Culture in Latin American History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015); and Consent of the Damned: Ordinary Argentinians in the Dirty War (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012). Julio Vezub is the vice director of the Instituto Patagónico de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, and professor of history at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco. His most recent book is Patrimonios visuales patagónicos: Territorios y sociedades, coauthored with María Inés Rodríguez Aguilar (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación, 2017). Sarah D. Warren is an associate professor of sociology at Lewis and Clark College. Her research focuses on indigenous and gender identities in Latin America as well as citizenship and nation building. Her work has been published in journals including Ethnic and Racial Studies, Sociological Forum, Qualitative Sociology, and the Journal of Latin American Studies.

266 · Con t ri bu tors

INDEX Page numbers in italic text indicate illustrations. Aboriginal National Association, 139 acculturation: assimilation as forced, 129; experiment of, 111; of Foyel and Saygüeque, 108 Agassiz, Louis, 109 agricultural elite, 7 agricultural settlement, 171 Aira, César, 165–68 Alejo Vignati, Milcíades, 103 alliances, 44; indigenous groups and, 68; political alliance, 5; between Saygüeque and state, 46, 56–57; shifting of, 229; state alliances, 46, 56–57 allocation, system of, 50 Alsina, Adolfo, 18–19, 25 alterity: constructions of, 135; indigeneity and, 13 Ameghino, Florentino, 109, 120 Anaya, Sócrates de, 90 Aneiros, Federico León, 105 anti-conquest concept, 116 anti-intellectualism, 149 antiquity, 116–18 apathy, 107 Araucanization, 33 Araucano. See Mapuches Araucanos de Ruca Choroy, 63 Argentine Confederation at Paraná, 99 Argentine Southern Land Company, 134 argentinismo vigoroso, 176

Arlt, Roberto, 164–68 Artigas, José, 184–85 assimilation: or elimination, 147; as forced acculturation, 129; of indigenous people, 127–29; war, genocide and, 122–31 atavism, 110 authoritarianism, violent, 149 Avellaneda, Nicolás, 8, 19, 25, 124, 151; arrangements broken by, 46; brutality of campaigns by, 52; legitimacy of, 170n5; military language used by, 31 Azkintuwe, 219–20; creation of, 222–24; maps from, 229–32; masthead of, 223 Baigorrita, 24, 90 barbarism, 25, 126; civilization and, 113, 124, 135, 153, 160–64; modernity and, 149; Sarmiento discussions on, 150, 155; triumph over, 179 Barros, Álvaro, 5–6, 27, 56, 57 Bauman, Zygmunt, 132 Beaufils, Émile, 106–8 Bechis, Martha, 124 Bello, Álvaro, 228 Benjamin, Walter, 217n2 Bernal, Liborio, 100 Bertillon method, 105, 121n13 Boccara, Guillaume, 226 borderlands, 6–7, 170n6; conflict on, 14; Conquest of the Desert marking shift

267

borderlands (continued) in, 158; controls on, 224–25; Pampas borderlands, 3, 4–11; symbolism of, 147 border police (gendarmería), 203 borders: external, of Wallmapu, 230–31; as fixed, 231; between indigenous groups, 232–33; nation-building, maps and, 225–33 Borges, Jorge Luis, 146–57, 164, 178 brutality, 45; of Avellaneda, 52; military, 191–92; of Roca, 52 cacicazgos (decentralized community groups), 5, 28 Caitruz, Damacio, 63 Calfucurá, 54, 60, 98–99, 140 Callvucurá (Zeballos), 165 Cañiumir, Ignacio, 62 cannibalism, 59 capitalism, progressive, 128 capybara (animal), 4 Cárcano, Miguel Ángel, 178–79, 185 Cardarrelli, Graciela, 188 Carsten, Janet, 210 Casares, Adolfo Bioy, 146–47 Catholic Church, 174, 189 Catholicism, 171, 189 Catriel, 24, 84–85 cattle: distribution of, 46; embracing, 4; military support from, 27; unequal access to, 55; weather influencing, 85 La cautiva (poem, Echeverría), 148–53, 165–67 Cayuqueo, Pedro, 222–23 Chiodi, Olga, 156 Choele Choel, 9, 93; advance of troops on, 54–57; control of, 24–27; occupation of, 87–89 cholera, 82, 169 Círculo Militar, 175 citizenship: access to, 168; democracy

and, 212; neoliberal objectives for, 186; regimes for, 224 civilization: barbarism and, 113, 124, 135, 153, 160–64; catalyst for, 39; Sarmiento discussions on, 150, 155; social progress, prosperity and, 40; as triumphant, 18 climate systems: influence of, 84; in Pampas and Patagonia, 72–74 climatological science, 11 Cloux, Héctor Osvaldo, 188 cold societies, 211 Cold War, 182–83 colonial miscegenation, 154 colonias militares (military settlements), 177 colonization, 82 Columbus, Christopher, 212 community autonomy, 5 concentration camps, 9, 77, 132–33, 138, 199, 205 Conlazo, Daniel, 175 Conquest of the Desert (La Conquista del Desierto), 1, 233, 238n10; approaches to, 11; Argentines saved by, 17–18; as backdrop for political and social claims, 219; background of, 224–25; as breaking point, 3; desert symbolism influenced by, 168; economic motivations for, 21; end of indigenous sovereignty marked by, 71; environmental factors shaping, 72, 92–93; as genocide, 129–31, 141; goal of, 30–31; healing from, 237; historical importance of, 10; as historical process, 14; hundredth anniversary of, 171; ideological significance of, 172; indigenous people after, 139; lives taken by, 133; maps referencing memory of, 233–34; military campaigns, 25; military divisions in, 24–26; modernization objective of,

268 · I n de x

152; narratives of, 29–40; as nonevent, 210–14; participation in, 18; as part of cycle of annihilation, 117–18; principal aims of, 140; processes of, as ongoing, 178–79; proposing, 18–22; results of, 39–40; Roca role in, 25–26; stages of, 101; as symbolic memory for Mapuche people, 225; understanding of, from indigenous viewpoint, 138–39; from viewpoint of Mapuche memory, 197; as war, 124–27; won by logistics, 83 La Conquista del Desierto. See Conquest of the Desert Corbetto, P. M., 109–10 Corrales, Guillermo, 182–85 Cox, Guillermo, 98–99 criminality, 164 critical event, 210 Cuestión de indios (A Question of Indigenous Peoples), 174 cultural recognition, 5, 10–11 cultural rights, 10 Cunnningham, Andrew, 79–80 Dabove, Juan Pablo, 155 Darwin, Charles, 146 Daza, José S., 27, 88–89 decentralized community groups (cacicazgos), 28 Degroot, Dagomar, 93 Della Valle, Ángel, 179–80, 182 Del Valle, Aristobulo, 22 democracy: citizenship and, 212; return of, 123–24, 190 democratization, 118 deportation, 64, 133, 138, 140, 143n13 desarrollista (developmentalist) language, 177 desert: barbarousness of, 147–48; change in meaning of, 147; national heritage symbolized by, 159; representations

of, 148–51, 157–58, 164–67; symbolism of, 168–69 diplomacy, 52–53, 55 discrimination: indigenous identity threatened by, 139; mechanisms of, 146 diseases, 177; cholera, 169; exposure to, 79; famine and, 89–90; indigenous societies vulnerability to, 74–75, 77–78; influenza and cholera, 82; laboratory revolution and, 80; measles, 81, 95n33; tuberculosis, 186; weather, war and, 72, 77, 82–85, 92. See also smallpox dislocation, 14 dispossession, 227, 230; memory of crime and, 62; territorial, 210; violence, exclusion and, 2 Don Segundo Sombra (Güiraldes), 161–64 Drago, Luis María, 110–11 Drury, Adolfo, 102 Dwyer, Leslie, 203–4 Ebelot, Alfredo, 84, 176 Echeverría, Esteban, 148–53, 165–67 economic growth, 10 economic liberalism, 151 economic stagnation, 17 economic systems, 4 El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), 73–74, 84–89, 92–93 Ema, la cautiva (Aire), 165–68 encampments (tolderías), 23, 56, 75, 120n5, 206 Enlightenment, European, 148, 151 ENSO. See El Niño-Southern Oscillation epistolary sociability, 53 Epopeya del desierto en el sur argentino, 175–76 Epumer, 24, 37

I n de x · 269 

Escuelita crioya (Little Creole School), 180–81 Una excursión a los indios ranqueles (Mansilla), 165 expansionism, 176 expeditionary narrative, 154, 158 export rates, 7 Facundo (Sarmiento), 150–51 Facundo Quiroga, Juan, 150–51, 155 faith, 174 families, dismemberment of, 133, 138, 140 famine, 79; diseases and, 89–90; due to weather, 71, 73 Farro, Máximo Ezequiel, 112 fatalism, 189 Federalist revolts, 47 Fermín, Mauricio, 207 Fernández Bravo, Alvaro, 119–20 FIFA World Cup, 1978, 186 Figueroa Reyes, Hernán, 185 foreign attacks (huinca malón), 62 foreign invader (huinca), 56 foundational fictions, 149 Foyel, 97–100; capture of, 102–4; resistance of, 107 freedom, 157 friendly Indians (indios amigos), 120n2, 172; cultural mediation of, 6, 48; as intermediary, 61 García Cedro, Gabriela, 164 gaucho, 7, 154–56; as hero, 162; persecution of, 161; as politically resistant, 165 gaucho literature, 147; turn-of-thecentury, 159–63; in twentieth century, 163–68 gaucho vignettes (viñetas gauchescas), 180 gendarmería (border police), 203 Generation of ’37, 151 Generation of the Eighties, 159–60

genocide, 197; classifying periods of, 134–41; concept of, 132, 141–42; Conquest of the Desert as, 129–31, 141; first period of, 136–37; indigenous-state relations and, 13; stories of, 209; violence, silencing and, 13; war, assimilation, and, 122–31 Giovanelli, Jorge A., 177 golden age, 10 Google Earth, 234–35 Google Maps, 226 government bonds, 21 government mechanisms, 122 guanaco (animal), 4 Güemes, Martín Miguel de, 177 La Guerra al Malón (Prado), 37 Güiraldes, Ricardo, 146–47, 161–65 Guor, Panghituz, 118–19 Gutiérrez, Eduardo, 161–63, 165 Halpreín Donghi, Tulio, 6 Harguindeguy, Albano, 172 herd destruction, 23–24 Hernández, Horacio, 92 Hernández, José, 153–62, 165 Hill, Jonathan, 204 historical trauma, 237 historic reparations, 191 Huilinao, María, 208–9 huinca (foreign invader), 56 Huincahual, 98–99 huinca malón (foreign attacks), 62 human evolution, stages of, in Museum of La Plata, 113 human rights, 119 hunting grounds, 4 identity, 14; externally applied, 4–5; territory, memory and, 11 imaginary parliament, 62 immigrant groups, reputations of, 7 immigration, 159

270 · I n de x

impoverishment, subordination and, 65 Inacayal, Modesto, 97, 220; attack on tribe of, 102; before captivity, 98–101; capture of, 102–4; friendly Indians joined by, 100; remains of, 119; silence, sadness, and rage of, 106–8; Villegas, C. E., and, 101 indigeneity, 2, 11, 13 Indigenous Advisory Council, 139 indigenous communities: modernization project for, 187–89; social and economic traits of, 22–23; uprooting of, 57 indigenous-creole interactions, 6 indigenous culture, 187; detachment from, 114; loss of, 128 indigenous disappearance, 18, 39 indigenous economy, resilience of, 76 indigenous emergency, 145n31 indigenous erasure, 38 indigenous groups, 15n7; alliances and, 68; borders between, 232–33; control over, 187; extinction of, 136; massacres of, 50–51; military action by, 46; names for, 4; relationships between, 48 indigenous identities: denying of, 190– 91; discrimination threatening, 139; shedding of, 10; shifting of, 229 indigenous judicial system, 191 indigenous language, eradication of, 220 indigenous leaders: adaptation of, 61; military correspondence of, 54–57, 59–60, 67 indigenous mysticism, 182 indigenous organizations, 124, 138 indigenous paganism, 83 indigenous people, 1; assimilation and incorporation of, 127–29; attacks on, 8–9; as barbarians, 4; as captives of Museum of La Plata, 105–11, 113–14, 118–19; after Conquest of the Desert,

139; death of, 19–20, 32; ejected from territories, 22; employment for, 190; forced movement of, 50; freedom of travel for, 228; historic reparations for, 191; identifying, 189–91; injustice suffered by, 30; as invisibilized, 10; knowledge of landscape, 23; life of, as primitive, 188; mobility and solidarity of, 47; physical abuse suffered by, 134; remembrance of, 173; resistance of, 121n12; responsibility of civilizing, 181–82; as subdued and assimilated, 29; suffering and helplessness of, 34– 35; terminology for, 41n38; threats to national security by, 29; trans-Andean travel struggles of, 87–88; victimization of, 127; violence against, 9, 14, 31; weather impeding escape of, 86 indigenous politics, 5 indigenous resources, state control of, 49 indigenous revitalization processes, 131 indigenous rights, 2–3, 14, 57 indigenous settlement patterns, 22–23 indigenous societies: prosperity for, 76; seminomadic, 4; vulnerability to disease, 74–75, 77–78 indigenous sovereignty, Conquest of the Desert marking end of, 71 indio malonero (raiding Indian) stereotype, 125, 135–42, 143n5 Indios, ejército y frontera (Viñas), 152 indios amigos. See friendly Indians influenza, 82 interior pain, 204 internal colonialism, 113 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 187 International Labor Organization Convention, 186–87 inverted raids, 20 invisibilization, strategies of, 140

I n de x · 271 

Jenner, Edward, 78 JP. See Juventud Peronista Juan Moreira (Gutiérrez), 161–63 El juguete rabioso (Arlt), 164–68 Juventud Peronista ( JP), 185 Katrvlaf, 138–39 Kensis, Maish, 105, 119 kidnapping, 134 kinship, 54–56, 75–76 Kollio Kotar, Manuel, 66 laboratory revolution, diseases, and, 80 Lagos, Hilario, 24 Lanata, Jorge, 144 land privatization, 133–34 land resources, 10 land rights, 5; as military reward, 65; struggle for, 10–11 Larralde, José, 185 Lasciar, Captain, 31–32, 102 Lazzari, Axel, 33 Lehmann-Nitsche, Roberto, 138–39 Leleque Museum, 143n11 Lemkin, Raphael, 141 Lenz, Rodolfo, 61–62 Levalle, Nicolás, 24, 38 La liebre (Aira), 165 Linares, Mariano, 58–59 Linares, Miguel, 49, 56–58, 69n9 literacy: increase in rates of, 165; of Mapuche elites, 53 literary urbanization, 164 literature, early Argentine, 148–52 Little Creole School (Escuelita crioya), 180–81 Llanquetruz, Florentino, 202 Lombroso, Cesare, 110 longkos weichafe (warrior chiefs), 52 Lopes, María Margaret, 108–9 Luna, Felix, 174

malnutrition, 77 malones (raids), 19–20, 75, 120n4 malón huinca (white man’s raid), 50 Malvestitti, Marisa, 62 Mandrini, Raúl José, 4, 124, 142n3 Manquel, Félix, 64 Mansilla, Lucio, 54, 165 Las Manzanas (indigenous government), 43, 54, 59 mapmaking, 219–22, 225, 235 maps, 219–22; from Azkintuwe, 229–32; continuity of language and identity on, 235–36; nation-building, borders and, 225–33; references to memory of Conquest of the Desert on, 233–34; temporality of, 235 Mapuche activism, 2, 212, 215 Mapuche Confederation, 139 Mapuche incursion, 33 Mapuche organizations, 236–37, 238n15 Mapuche people, 4; attack on, 46; authenticity of, 221, 236; Conquest of the Desert as symbolic memory for, 225; experiences of, 199–210; guerilla tactics used by, 50; identity searches by, 212–14; legends of, 211–12; literacy of, 53; memory of, 134, 197, 202–17; representations of territory, 13; resolve of, 43–44; survival fought for by, 140; written evidence left by, 61–62 Mapuche-Tehuelche leadership, resolve of, 43–44 Mapuche territory, contemporary maps of, 219–22 Mapuzungun (language), 62, 76, 236 Marco, Miguel Ángel de, 104 marriage, norms surrounding, 56 Martínez de Hoz, Alfredo, 172 El Martín Fierro; Ida and Vuelta (poem, Hernández, J.), 153–62 Mases, Enrique, 50, 124 Masiello, Francine, 152

272 · I n de x

massacres, of indigenous groups, 50–51 measles, 81, 95n33 Memories of the Ministry of War and the Navy, 144n23 memory, 2, 13; Conquest of the Desert as symbolic, for Mapuche people, 225; of crime and dispossession, 62; fragments of, 202; of loss, violence, and survival, 12, 138; maps referencing, of Conquest of the Desert, 233–34; of Mapuche people, 134, 197, 202–17; of pain and suffering, 209; resistance in narrative and, 61–68; social existence given to, 204; territory, identity, and, 11 mercantile systems, 5 mestizaje, 187 migration: circuits of, 58; as forced, 64; impact of, 175 military campaigns, 3; against Chaco First Peoples, 181; of conquest, 51; for Conquest of the Desert, 25; overview of, 45; by Rosas, J. M., 5–6; violence unleashed by, 137–38 military correspondence, 18, 32–37, 53; of indigenous leaders, 54–57, 59–60, 67; war diplomacy and, 55 military occupation, society reconstruction and, 133 military reward, land rights as, 65 military settlements (colonias militares), 177 military vulnerabilities, 23 Millaman (Longko), 65 Mitre, Bartolomé, 22, 59, 151, 170n5 modernity: barbarism and, 149; civilizing project of, 120; desire for, 159; triumphs of, 177 modernization, 152; project for indigenous communities, 187–89; as targeted, 185–86; violence required for, 153

Molina Campos, Florencio, 180–82, 185 Montaldo, Graciela, 148 Monzón, Carlos, 192 Moreno, Francisco P., 15n7, 43, 55–56, 59, 85, 98, 118, 120; detachment from indigenous culture, 114–15; geographical explorations of, 176; Inacayal and Foyel released by, 104; lobbying by, 61; Museum of La Plata collections obtained by, 111; opening of Museum of La Plata, 127–28; origins of humanity sought by, 117–18; protection for, 100–101; unity and, 68 Moses, Dirk, 132 Museo de la Plata. See Museum of La Plata El museo vacío (Fernández Bravo), 119–20 Museum of La Plata (Museo de La Plata), 13, 176, 219; Inacayal and Foyel at, 97–98; indigenous people as captives in, 105–11, 113–14, 118–19; indigenous remains returned by, 119; international recognition for, 112–13; Moreno opening, 127–28; Saygüeque and, 104–5; skeletons, crania in, 111–18; stages of human evolution in, 113; visitors to, 108–11 Musters, George, 98–99 Nahuelpan, Francisco, 64 Nahuelpan, Sergio, 64 Nahuelpi, 66 Nahuelquir, Belarmina, 204–5, 209 Nahuelquir, Martiniano, 206 Namuncurá, Bernardo, 24, 28–29, 54–56, 59–60 Namuncurá, Manuel, 59, 104 Ñancucheo, 60, 101 ñandu (animal), 4 National Autonomist Party, 135

I n de x · 273 

National Directorate for Social Assistance, 187–88 national heritage, 148, 159 national identity, 28, 150; defining, 159; elites shaping, 165; engagement with, 146–47; Otherness and, 166–67; parameters of, 169 national imaginary, 130, 139, 149, 163, 169n2 national independence, 27 National Superintendency of Frontiers, 187 National Territories, 138–42 nation-building, 14; maps, borders and, 225–33; projects for, 219–20 nation-state: as civilized, 31; formation of, 11, 12 natural resources, awareness of, 28 nawel (tiger), 211 Neculmán, Juan de Dios, 59–60 Northern Patagonian Confederacy, 75 nostalgia, 163, 180 Nouzeilles, Gabriela, 146, 153 nütram (ancient stories and conversations), 198–217 Occupied Mapuche Territory (“Territorio Mapuche Ocupado”), 227 O’Donnell, Sabino, 91 Olascoaga, Manuel José, 27–30, 34–37, 39–40, 47 Oris de Roa, Lino, 45, 66 Ortega, Rufino, 65 Osborn, Thomas O., 26–27 Other, 135, 142n2, 168–69 Otherness, 157; exploring, 164; national identity and, 166–67; space of, 148 “La otra muerte” (short story, Borges), 178 pacification, 33 Palacios, Nicolás H., 101

Palma, Sergio Victor, 192 Pampas Borderlands, 3, 4–11 Pampas Confederacy, 75 Parrish, Woodbine, 85 Patagonia: military occupation of, 132; social structure of, 122 paternalism, 169 Pavez Ojeda, Jorge, 228, 232 peace: struggle for, 10–11; uneasy, 46 peaceful conquest: narratives of, 32; notion of, 31 Pehuenches, 4, 47 Penna, José, 79 Pereyra, Victoria, 186 Perón, Juan D., 172 Peronism (peronismo), 171, 182–92 Perry, Richard, 25 Pincén, 24; adaptability of, 83; capture of, 38 place-names, reimagining, 233–35 Podgorny, Irina, 108–9 political alliance, 5 political autonomy, 10–11 political disgrace, 17 political power, 25 positivism: of Barros, 57; of Roca, 57 poverty, 35, 169 Prado, Manuel, 37 Pratt, Mary Louise, 116 precipitation, yearly averages in Bahía Blanca, 74 Prelorán, Jorge, 63 pride, resilience and, 37 prosperity: for indigenous societies, 76; social progress, civilization, and, 40 Provincial Aboriginal Institute of Formosa, 190 Puelches, 4 Pulmarí Valley, Neuquén, 67 Punzi, Orlando Mario, 174, 179 Purrán, 59, 65–66

274 · I n de x

quarantines, for smallpox, 78–82, 91 Quesada, Vicente, 162 A Question of Indigenous Peoples (Cuestión de indios), 174 Queupú, 56, 63 Quijada, Mónica, 4, 104 Quintero, Dante, 175, 179 Quintuhual, 99 Racedo, Eduardo, 17, 24, 38, 94n31; journal of, 32–36; smallpox description by, 80–81; smallpox infecting troops of, 91 races, disappeared, 109–10, 118, 120 racial identities, 183 racial mixing, 178 raciones (tribute goods), 76, 84 racism, 145n31, 188 Rahola y Tremols, Federico, 110 raiding Indian (indio malonero) stereotype, 125, 135–42, 143n5 raids (malones), 19–20, 75, 120n4 Rama, Ángel, 152 ranching industry, 6 Ranquel, 4, 28, 54 Rattenbach, Benjamín, 177 Red de Investigadores en Genocidio y Política Indígena en Argentina (RIGPI), 123, 142n1 reductionism, 141 religious missions, 46, 50 Remington, Frederic, 179 Remington repeater rifle, 83–84, 92 republicanism, 151 resistance, 13, 28, 30, 71; Calfucurá leading, 140; consequences of, 31–32; endurance of, 61; of Inacayal and Foyel, 102, 107; of indigenous people, 121n12; as limited, 60, 68; in memory and narrative, 61–68; state facing, 46 restitution, of indigenous remains, skeletons and crania, 118–20

Reuquecurá, 53–56, 60 revenge (tautulún), 62 Reyes, Antonio, 6 RIGPI. See Red de Investigadores en Genocidio y Política Indígena en Argentina Rivas, Ignacio, 59 Roca, Julio Argentino, 1, 38, 105, 176; arrangements broken by, 46; becoming president, 45; brutality of campaigns by, 52; Conquest of the Desert role of, 25–26, 145n28; indigenous knowledge relied on by, 47; military language used by, 31; military offensive proposed by, 19–24; multistage plan of, 125–26, 136–37; positivism of, 57; triumph of, 27–28 romanticism, 151 Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 46, 61; dictatorship of, 148–51; hegemonic system designed by, 52; military campaign by, 5–6 Rosas, Mariano, 45, 118–19 Rostagno, Enrique, 181, 185, 187–88 Saldías, Adolfo, 6 Sampayo, Anibal, 185 San La Muerte, 189–90 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 22, 47, 100, 152, 156, 160; civilization and barbarism discussed by, 150, 155; Facundo, 150–51; national identity and, 165 SASM. See South American Summer Monsoon Saygüeque, Valentín, 28–29, 100–101; correspondence with Namuncurá, B., 59–60; family of, 53; Museum of La Plata and, 104–5; state alliance with, 46, 56–57; surrender of, 45, 61, 102; treaty by, 69n18; Villegas C. E., correspondence with, 54–57

I n de x · 275 

Scientific Conquest, 110, 116, 118, 120 Servy, Luis de, 112 settler colonialism, 11, 214 silences, significances of, 197, 199, 203–4, 210–17 silencing, genocide, violence and, 13 skeletons, crania, 121n16; indigenous people demanding return of, 118–19; in Museum of La Plata, 111–18 slave trade, 78 smallpox (viruela), 32, 34, 71, 77, 90; mortality rates due to, 91–92; quarantines for, 78–82, 91; symptoms and diagnosis of, 80–82; treatment options for, 91; vaccine for, 78 social agencies, 122 social progress, 10, 40 social structure: of Chaco, 122; of Patagonia, 122 social systems, 4 South American Summer Monsoon (SASM), 72–74 Spanish Crown, 212 Spanish Inquisition, 152 Spanish surnames, concealing effect of, 48–49 starvation, 32, 35, 138 state consolidation, 122, 148 state-nation-territory matrix, 123, 129, 141, 212 state policies, 122 Suárez Mason, Guillermo, 172 subordination, impoverishment and, 65 “Tame Indians of Linares,” 58 tautulún (revenge), 62 tayil (sacred song), 205–6, 218n6 Tehuelche people, 4; attack on, 46; memories of violence, 134; resolve of, 43–44; survival fought for by, 140 temporal disconnection, 210–12 Ten Kate, Herman, 105–7, 121n12

territorial expansion, 31 “Territorio Mapuche Ocupado” (Occupied Mapuche Territory), 227 territory: control of, 133–34; identity, memory and, 11; indigenous people ejected from, 22; maps of Mapuche territory, 219–22; Mapuche representations of, 13; options for defense of, 64–65 threats, 12; disease as, 78; of indigenous invasion, 25; to national security by indigenous people, 29; weather as existential, 74 tiger (nawel), 211 Todo es Historia (magazine), 174–75 tolderías (encampments), 23, 56, 75, 120n5, 206 trade, 5, 58; networks of, 74; right to, 57 trade agreements, 6 Traipe, Francisca, 64 Tramaleo, Prudencio, 206 treaties: as broken, 125; used to buy time, 84; violation of, 8–9 tribute goods (raciones), 76, 84 triumphalism, 1 tuberculosis, 186 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 132, 141 unity, 10; celebrating, 173; Moreno, F. P., and, 68 urbanization, 150, 159 Uriburu, Napoleón, 24 Vera, Rufino, 121n12 Victorica, Benjamin, 105 Videla, Jorge Rafael, 126, 171–73 Villegas, Conrado E., 23, 45, 47; deadly campaign led by, 51–52; Inacayal and, 101; Saygüeque correspondence with, 54–57

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Villegas, Osiris Guillermo, 176 Viñas, David, 152 viñetas gauchescas (gaucho vignettes), 180 Vintter, Lorenzo, 27, 31–32, 34, 103–4 violence: exclusion, dispossession and, 2; genocide, silencing, and, 13; against indigenous people, 9, 14, 31; intensifying, 5; memory of loss, survival, and, 12, 138; military campaigns unleashing, 137–38; modernization requiring, 153; new contexts of, 202–3; outbursts of, 7; phrases bringing images of, 199; political, 171–72; racism and, 145n31; repression and, 212, 218nn8–9; significant impact of, 213; social and cultural links destroyed by, 210 viruela. See smallpox viticulture, 128 La vuelta del malón, 179–80 Wallmapu: external borders of, 230–31; maps of, 226–28, 230, 235

war: assimilation, genocide and, 122–31; Conquest of the Desert as, 124–27; language of, 131; weather, diseases and, 72, 77, 82–85, 92 Ward, Henry Augustus, 109 war diplomacy, 48 War of the Pacific, 54 War of the Triple Alliance, 8, 47, 92, 176 warrior chiefs (longkos weichafe), 52 warrior ethos, 44, 65–66 weather: cattle influenced by, 85; diseases, war, and, 72, 77, 82–85, 92; economic depressions from, 74–75; escape of indigenous people impeded by, 86; as existential threat, 74; famine due to, 71, 73; El Niño, 73 Wenu, Mangil, 232 white man’s raid (malón huinca), 50 Wolfe, Patrick, 132 Zeballos, Estanislao, 30, 114–16, 118, 120, 143n6, 165 Zitarrosa, Alfredo, 185

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