Otras formas de construir parentesco: procesos de familiarización y memorias genealógicas entre los mapuche-tehuelche de la costa y el valle (Chubut, Argentina)

Abstract

In 2009, when I began to work together with the Mapuche-Tehuelche communities of the coast and valley regions of the province of Chubut (Patagonia, Argentina), I shared with them my intention of setting the diverse experiences of being together in the cities into history and context. This article seeks to analyze the processes of familiarization and restoration of unfinished genealogies as one of the possible ways to reflect heterogeneous pasts, present lives rebuilt in cities, and future political projects in meaningful memories. Methodology: Based on a collaborative methodology - focused on ethnographic approaches based on qualitative methods for the production of original information with an emphasis on fieldwork - I have shared various activities, visits and trips with my interlocutors. These communities are the result of particular processes of group formation that are characterized by the migration and arrival of people from different places and with different trajectories. Conclusions: The Mapuche-Tehuelche recognize themselves as one and the same community in the cities when they begin to associate certain physical appearances, life stories and/or indigenous surnames with broader histories of violence, state subjugation, family breakdown and forced migrations. That becoming together as historical subjects produced novel categories of family, ancestry and community. Originality: The article is a contribution to a better understanding of other and diverse creative ways of thinking together as a family, community and/or village, and how these practices enable the regeneration of links in urban contexts marked by histories of domination and various forced migrations.

Keywords

• argentina
• genealogical memories
• mapuche-tehuelche
• relationships
• sense of belonging