‘Tiempos de reparación’. Reflexiones sobre las políticas de restitución de ancestros indígenas en la Patagonia Argentina

Abstract

The concept of reparation or historical reparation is part of the language with which, for several years, policies aimed to indigenous people in Argentina have been framed. In particular, it is part of the language on which the recent policies of restitution of indigenous ancestry, expressions and spaces that have been heritagized by state agencies are based. In this article, in order to make a critically review to this notion that is unquestionably associated with these policies, I analyze the policy of complementary restitution undertaken by the Chubut province government of the remains of the longko Inakayal, his wife and Margarita Foyel, to Mapuche communities in northwest of Chubut. I especially examine the design and profile that the government of Chubut has given to these restitutions, which were carried out in 2014, with the purpose of discussing what is being repaired, the temporality and the subjects that are the object of reparation, and what is remained in the order of the suspended. Through this analysis I am less interested in merely defining a period, than in questioning certain concepts of the period that are giving content to contemporaneity.