Political vocabulary for the indigenous peoples of the Chaco and Pampa regions during the colonial period: nación and parcialidad

Abstract

In the documentary sources of the colonial period, one usually finds the words nación, parcialidad, parcialidades or parciales linked to indigenous groups. As many other terms found in the sources, their use has spread -without much analysis- to academic writing since the beginnings of anthropologyin Argentina. A closer examination to the situations and contexts in which these terms are used and registered -on frontiers, in Cabildos, in Jesuit writings and in the works of the first ethnohistorians- allows us to identify different nuances. We sustain that reflecting on those contexts and nuances could shed light on the imaginaries of colonial agents regarding the political organization of indigenous peoples in the past and, at the same time, enlighten the ways in which these terms have remained as technical political vocabulary in the academic literature.