Demandas indígenas, burocracias estatales e intervención antropológica en la Patagonia Argentina

Abstract

When the 1994 constitutional reform introduced in its provisions, among other items, the recognition of certain rights to indigenous people, it generated contradictions and doubts about which subjects to include in certain claims, how to do so, and how to respond, from the legal system, the hardships received from other state powers less imbued with the changes that cast doubt on the relevance of certain treatments for certain groups. It is in this context that proliferate, from very diverse sectors as both state and independent, calls to anthropologists, specially in cases of indigenous land claims. From the territorial claim of an indigenous family occurred in the heart of a Public Defender Office in Patagonia, Argentina, this article will attempt to reflect about the challenges and questioning these requirements raises to anthropologists regarding our intervention, the possibility of producing scientific knowledge in nonacademic areas, and regarding the range of relationships, intersections and reflections we face in the dialogue with the legal world and with past and present state bureaucracies.