La Antropología y el saber hegemónico sobre la descendencia y la pérdida de identidad mapuche en Río Negro entre las décadas de 1960 y 1970

Abstract

In this paper I will analyze the process by which, starting with the provincialization of Río Negro in 1955, the category descendant, mestizaje and the discourses on the loss of Mapuche identity were constituted as an object of knowledge in general, and of the Anthropology in particular. The review of a set of archives from the 1970s, which belonged to the anthropologist Antonia Peronja, has led me to recognize meanings associated with the mentioned category. Precisely, the provincial hegemony referred to different subjects as descendants, through practices of epistemic violence and fixation based on social and racial diacritics, and on the idea of loss of identity. At that time, appealing to such diacritics, the indigenous peoples were considered as vestiges of the past and the descendants as the marginal sectors of society. The category descendant thus articulated meanings about degenerative miscegenation, and permeated state assimilationist policies, which were aimed at letting the population die as indigenous. Anthropology had a central place in the constitution of knowledge around this category, locally associated with the hegemony of conservative discourses as part of a historical context marked by political proscription.