Making the indigenous Desert from the European Oasis: Ethnopolitics of Water in Mendoza, Argentina

ESCOLAR, DIEGO; SALDI, LETICIA

JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

Cambridge University Press

Año: 2017 vol. 49 p. 269 - 297

0022-216X

This article analyses the ethno-politics of water in Argentina at the highest point of European immigration, the first three decades of the 20th century. Focusing on the drying of the Guanacache wetlands, located in the wine-producing region of Cuyo, we show how national and provincial ideologies based on "whitening" and "civilisation" shaped policies that favoured European immigrants at the expense of the autochthonous populations in the geographic and social struggle for water. A large-scale environmental reconfiguration was legitimitated by the indigenisation of populations whose land had been dryed.