The indigenous world in front of the state dominance. Norpatagonia, ends of the XIX century - principles of the XX century

Abstract

The objective of the present work is the analysis of the transformations of the indigenous world during the immediately later years to the Military Campaigns of ends of the XIX century, highlighting its strategies of adaptation before the new relationship with the National State. Then, the changes in the indigenous sociopolitical organization and in their economic relationships by virtue of their new articulation with the state society, are focused through different case studies: submitted tribes voluntarily and relocated in lands assigned by the State; and family groups that, in spite of being isolated of their traditional tribal bonds, maintained their ethnic identity and certain degree of social and economic autonomy. The cases are developed in the territory of the current province of Neuquén , between 1882 and 1919, and they are reconstructed thanks to documents of the Archive Provincial Historical and of Lands and Colonies of the province of Neuquén . These situations present a complex dynamics in which the diversity of continuities, substitutions and disappearances are integrated inside oneself logic of survival, passing over the traditional vision of a contradiction between resistance and assimilation.