La ciudadanización del «indio bárbaro». Políticas oficiales y oficiosas hacia la población indígena de la Pampa y la Patagonia, 1870-1920

Abstract

This article analyzes the ways in which «the indigenous problem» was dealt with as a consequence of the military occupation of a huge territory which till then had been inhabited by Indians who were independent from the authority of the central state. It focuses on the complex visions about the Indian and shows that a series of land policies and initiatives destined to the integration of the indigenous population were launched, with the aim to define the place that the submitted Indians should take in the framework of the Argentinian nation-building process. A further argument is about the conditions for the conversion of Indians into citizens in the framework of the Argentinian conceptualization of the nation, which was strictly territorial.