Representaciones (fronterizas) de la mujer y del territorio patagónico

Abstract

In this manuscript we explore spacegender metaphors which were configured in the process of signification of Patagonia as border and desert during the 1879 military appropriation of Patagonia or "Desert Campaign." We seek to evidence what literary and rhetorical mechanisms operated in the sedimentation of territorial senses and how the notion of border is projected in the understanding of the populations, even after considering the place Argentine. For that purpose, we focus on the social sector that became the support and the basis of life possibility for the female population. We will analyze military, literary, and scientific sources associated with the 1879 military campaign, by studying the significance of the territory and the population. We will also show how the particular anchoring of the land in the fortress/women enables us to clarify the survival and the contemporaneity of the notion of border delineated in the process of conquest, and its impact on subsequent legislation and appraisals.