Facciones políticas y étnicas en la frontera: los indios amigos del Azul en la Revolución Mitrista de 1874

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of “indios amigos” (i.e. “Indian friends”) settled in the South Buenos Aires frontier in the dynamics of the factions that constituted the argentine national politics during the “national organization” period. We intend to reconstruct the development of the so-called “Revolución Mitrista” in 1874 and the involvement of the cacique Cipriano Catriel indians in Azul, at the frontier south from Buenos Aires. Considering this event we stress the understanding of the logics that inferred the dynamics of the power relations and the construction of political power Buenos Aires frontier during the previous decades before the expansion of national state on the Indian lands in Pampa and Patagonia. At the same time, the goal is to identify the transformations and contradictions experienced by the Indian groups which were settled in the frontiers and who where formally subordinated to the national state. In this sense, we try to illuminate the peculiar characteristics of those local scenarios, seen from a view that goes beyond the ethnic and frontier conflicts, and intends to integrate the complex of social relations that linked those spaces and their actors with both the autonomous Indians populations and central government.

Keywords

• Argentina
• frontier
• 19th century
• indios amigos
• national organization
• Revolución Mitrista