Social conflict and ethno-racial identifications in the colonial prelude to caudillismo and the Montonera rebellions

Abstract

This text develops some of the contributions of the book El país indiviso. Poblamiento, conflictos por la tierra y mestizajes en Los Llanos de La Rioja durante la colonia, by Roxana Boixadós and Judith Farberman, in order to understand the colonial history of the region and, above all, its projection for the analysis of rural political mobilization in the XIX century. It is not intended to be a review, but rather a commentary that rescues the analysis of the emergence and evolution of undivided property and the importance of the conflicts that this economic and social formation implied for the belligerence of Los Llanos in the post-independence period. It also addresses the book’s inquiry into the uses of ethnic or racial categories between the mid-18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, discussing some of the conclusions drawn from them. In particular, the need to deepen the decoupling of the categories as collective representations that establish differences of miscegenation as a specific biological or cultural process, and relativize the idea of ethnic-racial homogenization towards the beginning of the 19th century as one of the bases of popular and political mobilization, with a view to a regional explanation of the montoneras beyond Los Llanos.