Una vocación indicial: experticia policial en los modos de investigar, informar y vigilar en la Provincia de Buenos Aires y el Territorio Nacional de Río Negro (1930-1943)

Abstract

The sections and divisions dedicated to intelligence and political and social policing are central to the history of the Argentine police. Recent historiography has highlighted the complexity of interpreting state security policies and their transformations over time as the product of a long-term process. This article examines the modalities and practices of investigation developed by the police forces of the National Territory of Río Negro and the Province of Buenos Aires between 1930 and 1943. The approach is based on pondering the institutional specificities of a period that was little explored in these scenarios from three points of view: first, it reconstructs the process of internal bureaucratisation that both departments underwent as a result of these tasks. Secondly, these sections built up a solid tradition of information materialised in reports,dossiers and files. In this sense, the focus is on the agents who became a group of "experts" in their production, as well as on the logics of information gathering. Finally, we look at the meanings given to the actors "observed".