From State Advance to Extractivism. Territorial Effects on Mapuce Society in Neuquén (late 19th-20th century)

Abstract

This article explores the connections between the state advance and extractivism in Neuquén, from the end of the 19th century and during the 20th century, to observe the continuities in the territorial effects and the effects on Mapuce society in Neuquén, based on the analysis of the state and extractivist advance. To this end, it situates the consolidation of the Argentine state in northern Patagonia through a process that is contested as ‘genocide’, and analyses how this is constituted as a material and symbolic precedent for the imposition of an extractivist energy matrix based on the exploitation of natural resources. It also looks transversally at the forms of resistance and organisation of the Mapuce people for territorial defence and their local expressions in the territorial and provincial periods of Neuquén.