Foundational historical narratives: remembering the argentine ?conquest of the desert?

CARRETERO, MARIO; BARREIRO, ALICIA

Santos

Simposio; 41st Association for Moral Education Conference (AME); 2015

41st Association for Moral Education Conference (AME)

History Education has an unclear relation with moral issues. On one hand it is well established that History educators should present historical matters including their moral implications. But on the other hand, in many countries moral issues of foundational narratives are included in many nations only from the point of view of the Nation-State. We think this matter is needed of both much more relevant and empirical research and serious theoretical reflection. In this paper, an example is presented about Argentina, a Latin American Nation-State having a clear European origins on its foundational narratives. Specifically, The ?Conquest of the Desert? was a military campaign waged by the Argentine government against the indigenous population during the late 19th century. This period of national organization and territorial expansion involved the extermination of the native populations, with thousands being killed or sold to wealthy landowners. This paper reports the findings from an ethnographic study conducted in a town founded during this period by the military forces, where nowadays descendants of the military men and the European immigrants live alongside the descendants of the original inhabitants. In observations of the symbolic resources of the town and in interviews and discussions with European and military men descendants we identified two distinct narratives about this historical process: a traditional account concerning the peaceful coexistence of colonizers and indigenous groups alongside a revisionist account that emphasizes the genocide of indigenous groups and the looting of their lands by the Argentine military. We consider the juxtaposition of these two narratives as an expression of a state of cognitive polyphasia that allows Argentine people to espouse a ?politically correct? version of the past while, at the same time, denying the conflict between colonizers and indigenous groups. We submit that this juxtaposition serves to make it possible for them to cope with the collective guilt that arises in relation to their ancestors? behavior, while at the same time delegitimizing ongoing indigenous claims about past injustices and the need for historical reparation.