Contributions for a history of the “indigenous community” in the northwest of Chubut, Argentina

Abstract

At the end of the 1950s the signifier “community” was not used to designate indigenous political frameworks; however, forty years later it was widely used. This paper focuses on characterizing and situating the emergence of the “indigenous community” as a political subject within the framework of inter-ethnic relations in the northwest of Chubut. We suggest that the “indigenous community” is configured as the signifier of an articulation between local supra-family frameworks and political, economic, demographic and legal transformations that took place since the 1960s and crystallized during the democratic restoration in the 1980s. We appeal to history and ethnohistory, ethnography, and document and newspaper review to support our hypotheses.