Author: Miguel Alberto Bartolomé. [source]
Translated by : Franco Bejarano
It is commonplace to assume that the territory that now forms the Republic of Argentina, was almost deserted from the moment of contact with European invaders. But apart from a common place is also a lie. It is true that the population density area was not at all comparable to that held the high Andean and Mesoamerican cultures, but that didn't mean that it was uninhabited. The myth of an immense wild territory that only a few hordes of hunters "barbarians" passed through has been particularly pleasing to the historiography of Argentina, therefore funding the Europanizing model under which the process of nation building was organized. It is very difficult to make population estimates of the magnitude of pre-Hispanic population, especially considering that hunters required fairly large areas to provide for relatively small communities. Many years ago J. Steward proposed that these groups would exceed the 300,000 members, although a more realistic calculation, which includes the high productive capacity of agricultural villages in the northwest, which would amount to only 200,000 people may raise this figure to half a million inhabitants. Yes, perhaps they were not so many, but there they were nonetheless.
From the beginning, the colonial structure of the Rio de la Plata was organized as a port of trade with domains of Upper Peru, controlling an arc-shaped hinterland stretching up to the present borders of Chile and Bolivia. The economic importance of this port grew so much that in 1776 it was configured as the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, inhabited by a thriving population with a rich ranching economy. During the nearly three centuries of Spanish rule, it wasn't necessary to extend the corridor that communicated with Upper Peru, leaving the vast regions, known as Patagonia and the Gran Chaco as the "land of Indians", whose agricultural population remained in tense relations based on ephemeral treaties, missionary efforts, occasional attacks and punitive expeditions. The Spanish colonial strategy did not require the land, the economy based on the extraction and accumulation did not need a colonial expansion.
The weight of the colonization fell on farming and camelid (llamas) raising people of northwestern Argentina. Sedentary cultures influenced by traditional Andean civilization and especially by the expansion of the Inca empire submitted to the colonial institutions such as "the encomienda" or forced labor and compulsive frequent transfers, their rebellion failed to ensure their survival. Thus, historians believe that during the colonial era most of the local groups were extinguished, victims of violence, epidemics and ethnic dilution resulting from the "recongregations", bringing together people of diverse linguistic and cultural affiliation, and the "disnaturalization" which involved massive transfers over long distances. It is assumed that by the time of the revolution of independence in 1810 indian tribes such as the huarpes, the olongastas, the comechingones, the sanavirones, the diaguitas, the Calchaquíes, the tonocotés, and the pulares of the north had already disappeared . The Jesuits also achieved the disappearance of ethnics such as the Lule and the Vilela of southern Gran Chaco, and on the coast the mbeguá, the chan, the Mocoretá, the mepenes and, by the end of the 19th Century, the kaingang as well. But just like many disappeared other just arrived, and during the 17th and 18th centuries, thousands of Araucanians from Chile entered the Argentine territory running from the colonial war and progressively settled the Patagonian forests, pampas and plains previously inhabited by mountain natives, the pehuenches and tehuelches.
Republican Genocide: the conquest of the "desert"
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the newly structured centralist state decided to take up the challenge to conquer and consolidate its "borders." These internal borders, euphemistically called "The Desert", were formed by large areas that since the colonial era had been under the control of indigenous groups. For nearly three centuries equestrian hunters of Patagonia and the Gran Chaco had retained their independence, at the expense of an almost constant state of military tension, occasionally disrupted by a short-lived peace treaty. During this time the difficulty of subjecting and subordinating classless societies and chiefdoms were revealed , since they had no power groups that could be destroyed or purchased, or top leaders that could agree with those enduring alliances. The decades that hosted the "Guerra del Malón" (war of raid), as called for military raids against the indigenous natives of the border establishments, had exacerbated ethnic antagonism, ideologically justifying the war of extermination, which Argentina's history suggestively calls "The Conquest of the Desert."
By 1875 the President Nicolás Avellaneda, stated that: "... removing the Indians and occupying the borders does not implicate but to populate the desert ...". The Indians were and were not there, the desert was deserted despite the human presence, but this presence was not white, not even mixed and therefore devoid of recognizable humanity. People meant, ironically, to kill. Depopulate the earth of "those" irreducible and unrecognizable, and replace them with the white image of "us" who ran the emerging national state". Just like this, a set of circumstances, which highlighted the need to effectively occupy nominal borders with neighboring countries, the demand for land by landowners to increase the already highly significant production of meat and grain for export, and the commitment to end the "Indian threat" which allegedly prevented the national setting in terms of a modern state, were the reasons that determined the realization of the successive military expeditions that achieved the Conquest of the Desert. " Starting in 1876, the army, armed by landowners, began open warfare against the "pampas" and Araucanians of the Pampa and Patagonia. This is not the place to discuss in detail the characteristics of this war of extermination, suffice to say that to the cruelty of any war, joined the ethnic contempt that the "civilized" army felt towards the Indians. The result was inevitable, the equestrian warriors were defeated, their villages burned, women and children massacred, they even resorted to biological warfare by sending prisoners with contagious diseases to the villages that wouldn't submit.
In this dramatic process the interest of those who benefited the most from the increase in agricultural export economy was not absent, which incorporated 30 million hectares to the production, I mean to the planters and their British customers. It is no coincidence that in his last tour of the Pampas in 1879, General Roca began the final stage of eradication of the "Indian threat" aboard a train, courtesy of the Buenos Ayres Great Southern Railways Company Limited. Behind the troops would come the modernization and the railroad's presence, increasing transport capacity and accelerating the export economy which continued the colonial legacy.
Almost simultaneously with the invasion of Patagonia, started the military expeditions to the north, against indigenous groups in the vast Chaco region. This area, inhabited by hunters who had developed an equestrian complex since the seventeenth century, were the subject of several attempts by the settlers, including the installation of religious missions, none of which were very successful. In 1870 the military expeditions which attempted the final submission of this contradictory "desert" began , equipped with a geography of forests, savannas and rivers. By 1884 the expedition of General Victorica got the consummation of the Conquest, although had made a new incursion to crush the last remnants of Indian resistances late as 1911. After the defeat, the ancient hunters came to work as farm laborers at timber establishments. But because of the dissatisfaction of the Indians, expressed in continuous rebellions, the local representative of the army signed a contract with the sugar mills of western area in 1914, compromising the indigenous labor and institutionalizing the system of patronage. The military occupation followed by a slow process of civil settlement of the vast "conquered" territory.
It is practically impossible to accurately assess the demographic impact that the military invasion produced, but the record of military confrontations in the nineteenth century figures 10.656 native were killed in Pampa and Patagonia and 1, 679 in the Chaco. However, no one registered the many thousands of deaths from hunger, thirst, cold, or victims of deliberately transmitted diseases. The highly unreliable 1895 census found that some 180 000 people had survived , but these are only estimates.
Once the conquest of the "desert" was accomplished and its inhabitants cornered in the border or forced as farm workers, Argentina took another step forward, after depopulating it was necessary to populate. The State that had defeated the Indians had, in 1880, less than 2.5 million people to take around three million km2 of territory. But that settlement had to be made up with white Europeans who coincide with the image of the ruling elite. By the 1880's, a key decade in shaping today's Argentina, Buenos Aires was already an important sounding board for new ideas that came from Liberal Europe. Social Darwinism and the almost theological idea of progress had its paradigm of reference in white Europe and led the effort to model the population. Thus, immigration laws were passed between 1871 and 1914 5.5731 million immigrants arrived to Argentina, of which 2.7204 million emigrated back, leaving about 2.8524 million new Argentinians . And in a little over four decades, immigration made a settlement of about three million people, most of which came from Italy, followed by Spanish and perhaps 20% of French, English, Slavic and Syrian-Lebanese. If we add to this figure the vegetative growth for 1914 the total population amounted to 8,253,097 inhabitants, which loosely tripled the number of 1880. The desire of having a white nation had been accomplished, in fact by the early twentieth century Argentina liked to be compare with Australia, a booming British colony to which Argentina had exceeded growth in production and demographics.
The current survivors
The racist ideology derived from the war of conquest was largely transmitted by European immigrants, setting a historic block in which the presence of indigenous peoples was not only despised but also considered a relictual archaism and redundant. The present Indian situation is unfortunately similar to that of most indigenous peoples of Latin America. The Mapuche survivors have been cornered in reductions (land reserves allocated by the state), most of which are equipped with poor land and located in the inhospitable Andean spurs or the Patagonian tundra where the climate is extremely harsh and impossible to development of profitable agriculture. The raising of sheep, a poor agriculture, and harvesting of the pine fruit are insufficient resources that require a good apart from the populations to migrate, either temporarily or permanently to urban centers where there is demand for unskilled labor.
Miguel Alberto Bartolomé, « Los pobladores del “desierto” », Amérique Latine Histoire et Mémoire. Les Cahiers ALHIM, 10 | 2004, [En línea], Puesto en línea el 21 février 2005. URL : http://alhim.revues.org/index103.html. consultado el 25 mai 2010.
From the beginning, the colonial structure of the Rio de la Plata was organized as a port of trade with domains of Upper Peru, controlling an arc-shaped hinterland stretching up to the present borders of Chile and Bolivia. The economic importance of this port grew so much that in 1776 it was configured as the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, inhabited by a thriving population with a rich ranching economy. During the nearly three centuries of Spanish rule, it wasn't necessary to extend the corridor that communicated with Upper Peru, leaving the vast regions, known as Patagonia and the Gran Chaco as the "land of Indians", whose agricultural population remained in tense relations based on ephemeral treaties, missionary efforts, occasional attacks and punitive expeditions. The Spanish colonial strategy did not require the land, the economy based on the extraction and accumulation did not need a colonial expansion.
The weight of the colonization fell on farming and camelid (llamas) raising people of northwestern Argentina. Sedentary cultures influenced by traditional Andean civilization and especially by the expansion of the Inca empire submitted to the colonial institutions such as "the encomienda" or forced labor and compulsive frequent transfers, their rebellion failed to ensure their survival. Thus, historians believe that during the colonial era most of the local groups were extinguished, victims of violence, epidemics and ethnic dilution resulting from the "recongregations", bringing together people of diverse linguistic and cultural affiliation, and the "disnaturalization" which involved massive transfers over long distances. It is assumed that by the time of the revolution of independence in 1810 indian tribes such as the huarpes, the olongastas, the comechingones, the sanavirones, the diaguitas, the Calchaquíes, the tonocotés, and the pulares of the north had already disappeared . The Jesuits also achieved the disappearance of ethnics such as the Lule and the Vilela of southern Gran Chaco, and on the coast the mbeguá, the chan, the Mocoretá, the mepenes and, by the end of the 19th Century, the kaingang as well. But just like many disappeared other just arrived, and during the 17th and 18th centuries, thousands of Araucanians from Chile entered the Argentine territory running from the colonial war and progressively settled the Patagonian forests, pampas and plains previously inhabited by mountain natives, the pehuenches and tehuelches.
Republican Genocide: the conquest of the "desert"
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the newly structured centralist state decided to take up the challenge to conquer and consolidate its "borders." These internal borders, euphemistically called "The Desert", were formed by large areas that since the colonial era had been under the control of indigenous groups. For nearly three centuries equestrian hunters of Patagonia and the Gran Chaco had retained their independence, at the expense of an almost constant state of military tension, occasionally disrupted by a short-lived peace treaty. During this time the difficulty of subjecting and subordinating classless societies and chiefdoms were revealed , since they had no power groups that could be destroyed or purchased, or top leaders that could agree with those enduring alliances. The decades that hosted the "Guerra del Malón" (war of raid), as called for military raids against the indigenous natives of the border establishments, had exacerbated ethnic antagonism, ideologically justifying the war of extermination, which Argentina's history suggestively calls "The Conquest of the Desert."
By 1875 the President Nicolás Avellaneda, stated that: "... removing the Indians and occupying the borders does not implicate but to populate the desert ...". The Indians were and were not there, the desert was deserted despite the human presence, but this presence was not white, not even mixed and therefore devoid of recognizable humanity. People meant, ironically, to kill. Depopulate the earth of "those" irreducible and unrecognizable, and replace them with the white image of "us" who ran the emerging national state". Just like this, a set of circumstances, which highlighted the need to effectively occupy nominal borders with neighboring countries, the demand for land by landowners to increase the already highly significant production of meat and grain for export, and the commitment to end the "Indian threat" which allegedly prevented the national setting in terms of a modern state, were the reasons that determined the realization of the successive military expeditions that achieved the Conquest of the Desert. " Starting in 1876, the army, armed by landowners, began open warfare against the "pampas" and Araucanians of the Pampa and Patagonia. This is not the place to discuss in detail the characteristics of this war of extermination, suffice to say that to the cruelty of any war, joined the ethnic contempt that the "civilized" army felt towards the Indians. The result was inevitable, the equestrian warriors were defeated, their villages burned, women and children massacred, they even resorted to biological warfare by sending prisoners with contagious diseases to the villages that wouldn't submit.
In this dramatic process the interest of those who benefited the most from the increase in agricultural export economy was not absent, which incorporated 30 million hectares to the production, I mean to the planters and their British customers. It is no coincidence that in his last tour of the Pampas in 1879, General Roca began the final stage of eradication of the "Indian threat" aboard a train, courtesy of the Buenos Ayres Great Southern Railways Company Limited. Behind the troops would come the modernization and the railroad's presence, increasing transport capacity and accelerating the export economy which continued the colonial legacy.
Almost simultaneously with the invasion of Patagonia, started the military expeditions to the north, against indigenous groups in the vast Chaco region. This area, inhabited by hunters who had developed an equestrian complex since the seventeenth century, were the subject of several attempts by the settlers, including the installation of religious missions, none of which were very successful. In 1870 the military expeditions which attempted the final submission of this contradictory "desert" began , equipped with a geography of forests, savannas and rivers. By 1884 the expedition of General Victorica got the consummation of the Conquest, although had made a new incursion to crush the last remnants of Indian resistances late as 1911. After the defeat, the ancient hunters came to work as farm laborers at timber establishments. But because of the dissatisfaction of the Indians, expressed in continuous rebellions, the local representative of the army signed a contract with the sugar mills of western area in 1914, compromising the indigenous labor and institutionalizing the system of patronage. The military occupation followed by a slow process of civil settlement of the vast "conquered" territory.
It is practically impossible to accurately assess the demographic impact that the military invasion produced, but the record of military confrontations in the nineteenth century figures 10.656 native were killed in Pampa and Patagonia and 1, 679 in the Chaco. However, no one registered the many thousands of deaths from hunger, thirst, cold, or victims of deliberately transmitted diseases. The highly unreliable 1895 census found that some 180 000 people had survived , but these are only estimates.
Once the conquest of the "desert" was accomplished and its inhabitants cornered in the border or forced as farm workers, Argentina took another step forward, after depopulating it was necessary to populate. The State that had defeated the Indians had, in 1880, less than 2.5 million people to take around three million km2 of territory. But that settlement had to be made up with white Europeans who coincide with the image of the ruling elite. By the 1880's, a key decade in shaping today's Argentina, Buenos Aires was already an important sounding board for new ideas that came from Liberal Europe. Social Darwinism and the almost theological idea of progress had its paradigm of reference in white Europe and led the effort to model the population. Thus, immigration laws were passed between 1871 and 1914 5.5731 million immigrants arrived to Argentina, of which 2.7204 million emigrated back, leaving about 2.8524 million new Argentinians . And in a little over four decades, immigration made a settlement of about three million people, most of which came from Italy, followed by Spanish and perhaps 20% of French, English, Slavic and Syrian-Lebanese. If we add to this figure the vegetative growth for 1914 the total population amounted to 8,253,097 inhabitants, which loosely tripled the number of 1880. The desire of having a white nation had been accomplished, in fact by the early twentieth century Argentina liked to be compare with Australia, a booming British colony to which Argentina had exceeded growth in production and demographics.
The current survivors
The racist ideology derived from the war of conquest was largely transmitted by European immigrants, setting a historic block in which the presence of indigenous peoples was not only despised but also considered a relictual archaism and redundant. The present Indian situation is unfortunately similar to that of most indigenous peoples of Latin America. The Mapuche survivors have been cornered in reductions (land reserves allocated by the state), most of which are equipped with poor land and located in the inhospitable Andean spurs or the Patagonian tundra where the climate is extremely harsh and impossible to development of profitable agriculture. The raising of sheep, a poor agriculture, and harvesting of the pine fruit are insufficient resources that require a good apart from the populations to migrate, either temporarily or permanently to urban centers where there is demand for unskilled labor.
---------------------------------
Miguel Alberto Bartolomé, « Los pobladores del “desierto” », Amérique Latine Histoire et Mémoire. Les Cahiers ALHIM, 10 | 2004, [En línea], Puesto en línea el 21 février 2005. URL : http://alhim.revues.org/index103.html. consultado el 25 mai 2010.
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