El indio cautivo: los casos de Inacayal y Orundelico (Jemmy Button) del abyecto romántico al objeto biológico

Abstract

The following article analyze how the literary and pictographic myth of the “cautiva blanca” kidnapped by the “malón” is replaced, at the end of the XIX Century, by the “indio cautivo”, a scientific myth that pathologizes the bodies of the indigenes as an otherness to the Europeans and to the newborn Argentinian citizenship. By the implementation of mug shots, human skull measurements, and fingerprinting, the figure of the “indio cautivo” is de-subjectivated and built as a “biological object” whose body only deserves to be classified and examined. This article will take the case of Inacayal as an example of this myth, portrayed according to criminological parameters.