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

LETICIA SALDI; DIEGO ESCOLAR; LETICIA SALDI; DIEGO ESCOLAR

JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

Cambridge University Press

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2017 vol. 49 p. 269 - 297

0022-216X

This article analyses the ethno-politics of water in Argentina at the high point of European immigration, the first three decades of the twentieth 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 autochthonous populations in the geographic and social struggle for irrigation water. A large-scale redistribution of water resources drove the indigenisation of indigenous and criollo populations and the desertification of their land.