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The conquest of the desert
Between the arrival of the first explorers in around 1520 and the notorious Conquest of the Desert (1878-1885), Patagonia escaped the control first of the Europeans and then of the Creoles. A window lasting three centuries during which the parallel worlds of the white man and the indigenous peoples coexisted in many different ways, not necessarily hostile ones; and where an
immense (physical and social) space opened up, known as the "frontier society". According to historian Raul Madrini, the "white and indigenous societies were not isolated worlds, separated from one another", and the frontier was a blurred and fluctuating line. In spite of this, the ideological image of the "savage" who needed to be molded and regimented by civilization became increasingly widespread in the nineteenth century.
In the imagination of Westerners, the Tierra Adentro (Inland) became a black hole that swallowed up all the incipient civilizing efforts. A no-man's land, an empty expanse, a desert to be conquered, an ideological concept sitting well with the creation of a compact, homogenous Nation State with well-defined borders.
And so the Conquest of the Desert came about today the term War of Pampas and Patagonia is preferred a political and military campaign conducted by General Julio Argentino Roca (the future president of Argentina) that decimated, or expelled, all the indigenous populations of the region north of the Limay and Negro rivers. From then on the indigenous peoples withdrew
into specific areas (the reserves), recycled themselves as rural workers, and underwent a violent process of cultural transformation and marginalization.
(19/10/2005)
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