Symbolic frontiers against indigenous people in an argentinean community: Social representations and prejudice

BARREIRO, A.; ETCHEZAHAR, E.; UNGARETTI, J.; WAINRYB, C.

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; Conferencia Internacional sobre Representaciones Sociales; 2018

Universidad de Belgrano

In Argentine, as well as in many countries, indigenous people have been the target of prejudice for centuries. This situation mostly dates to the ?Conquest of the Desert?, a military campaign waged by the Argentine government against the indigenous population during the late 19 th century. Although in the last three decades indigenous groups? claims for reparation and equal social rights have increased in visibility, most still are victims of cultural segregation and poverty. This study analyzes the relations among social representations and prejudiceagainst indigenous people in a small city, where the descendants of both military people and the European immigrants who arrived at the beginning of 20th century to settle the ?conquered? lands, live alongside descendants of the Mapuche indigenous groups who originally inhabited that same territory. Our analyses suggest a contradiction in the attempts to vindicate the indigenous people while maintaining their subordinated and segregated status in the community. That opposition is reinforced by the imaginary frontiers settled by the organization of urban spaces and the representations of the relations between past and present that relegate indigenous people to past and place them into the poorest and most violent neighborhood, implicitly marking them as criminals. Hence, the SR may be at the basis of the subtle expressions of prejudice that are very frequent. However, when the inhabitants of the city have to actually face indigenous people who are not clearly very different from them and when these indigenous people?s claims become more visible, more blatant forms of prejudice become manifest.