The Children of the “Indian-Child”. Discourses on Indigenous Childhood Within the Sources on the Argentinean Chaco (End of the 19th Century - Beginning of the 20th Century)

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the ways in which children are referred to in the writings on indigenous peoples of the Argentine Chaco by military, religious, officials and early ethnographers between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the context of the advance of capitalism and the consolidation of the nation-state. Taking into account the discourses about the impact of adults on the ways in which children are conceptualized, and vice versa, we will reflect on the articulation between the images of childhood within the peoples of the Chaco and the meanings present in the discourses on indigenous adults – conceived as ‘children’ from the hegemonic configuration of citizenship. We build a  corpus of sources from which we will point out coincidences, counterpoints and interrelations within the different social fields that were being consolidated in this period, a time when childhood was also beginning to become an object of public debate in the country.