State construction and "<i>indios amigos</i>": the access to land of Ancalao's tribe in the frontier settlement of Bahía Blanca

Abstract

This paper hypothesis is that public land distribution as private property in Buenos Aires frontier during the decade of 1860 was linked to the construction of an idea of State,  in terms of Abrams (2000 [1988]). From this perspective, by means of regulations and titles, state authorities sought to monopolize legitimate criteria of occupying, accessing and distributing land as well as to impose a conception of space and territory different from the creole and indigenous versions that became marginal. The paper aims to examine how Ancalao’s tribe  of “indios amigos ” gained access to land property in order to analyze how and in which ways this idea of State  had an impact over the organization of space of these indigenous people in Bahía Blanca. Finally, it considers the effects that the access to land might have had in the construction of Ancalao’s “tribe”.