Repensando la frontera sur Argentina: concepto, contenido, continuidades y discontinuidades de una realidad espacial y étnica (siglos XVIII-XIX)

Abstract

This article aims at revising what has been said to-date about the Southern frontier in Argentina, rethinking both the very concept of «frontier» and the processes undergone in that complex, diffuse and scarcely known ambit. New interpretations are proposed and renovated research lines are suggested. To that aim a series of basic categories are isolated —territory, violence, exchange, politics and ethnocultural interactions— which are analyzed in the context of a new society expres- sed in the expansion of a multiplicity of settlements. In the end the study analyzes the continuities and discontinuities betwen end18th-end 19th Centuries. The overall objective is to emphasize the need to analyze and re-evaluate not only the Indians’ presence but their participation in and along the very processes of nation building in 19th Century Argentina.