Tácticas de invisibilización y estrategias de resistencia de los mocoví santafesinos en el contexto postcolonial

Abstract

This paper analyzes the cultural and historical processes undergone by the Mocoví Indians of the province of Santa Fe, in their relationship with diverse agents of mainstream society in the 20th century. The focus is on the practice of invisibilization of their ethnic identity since the beginning of the century, analyzing their relations with the political strategies of resistance that preceded them and those that followed: the political and religious millenarian movement in San Javier, 1904, and the process of "identification” and ethnic political organization from the mid-1980s on. The concealment of identity was not simply just a consequence of the colonial and post-colonial policies of domination of passive or defeated agents, but a "tactic” adopted by the Mocoví to redirect a situation of domination and hegemony. Finally, I sustain that the politics of resistance cannot be understood merely as a response to specific scenarios imposed by hegemonic groups, but are also the result of the cultural and historical experience of the actors, and most particularly, of their fragmented and concealed tactics of resistance, carried out in their daily practices and also in their ritual spaces.