Beyond the “Desert”: Indigenous Genocide as a Structuring Event in Northern Patagonia

Abstract

This chapter deals with state policies, governmental mechanisms, and various social agencies involved within 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 Argentinean experience in the construction of subalternity within the state-nation-territory matrix.