CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In Argentina, genocide was perpetrated over Indigenous Peoples and there has been little account of this for more than a century. Therefore, in the present a majority of Argentineans perceive themselves as the outcome of a ?European melting pot?. In this sense, the European colonization of the sixteenth century over a territory imagined as a ?desert? and the expansion of the nation-state by the late nineteenth century are the historical processes that account for this melting pot. This article deals with the events and effects of the last period of territorial annexation and subjugation of the indigenous Peoples perpetrated by the national armed forces between 1876 and 1917, focusing on the state?s genocidal policies and the support of the civil society. These actions as a whole have been paradoxically named by the hegemonic history as the ?campaigns to the desert? , minimizing ?or denying- the existence of the indigenous Peoples. The aim of this paper is to examine the construction and effects of the genocide of the indigenous population as an unthinkable event in history. In the present, different agencies ?such as indigenous Peoples? organizations, academic research, and alternative media- have started to make visible the constitutive genocide of the Argentinean nation state. This has generated a growing debate on the idea and on the historical processes developed since then. In this context a series of specific but related conflicts can be identified and described. We name these conflicts as genocide-prints through which we will consider the scope, not only of the genocide, but also of the current debates on possible/impossible reparations.