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NY Times, Sept. 12 2016
After Centuries of Loss, Seeds of Hope for Argentina’s Indigenous People
By JONATHAN GILBERT
VICTORICA, Argentina — Each year on the night of June 23, they gather at
the sacred outpost on the brown flatlands to celebrate New Year’s on a
pre-Columbian calendar. Wearing ponchos and a type of jewelry called
tupu, they make offerings of food, feast on barbecued ribs and tell
stories. In the morning, they march around a ceremonial wooden stake and
a fire fueled through the night to honor the land.
For the indigenous Ranquel (pronounced Ran-KEL), the scene is charged
with many emotions, and offers a glimpse of their resurgence amid a long
struggle for recognition after centuries of hardship and loss.
Similar struggles, of course, have unfolded across both South and North
America, but the sense of being excluded from the national conversation
has been particularly acute for the indigenous peoples of Argentina.
While policy makers in Buenos Aires and the provinces have made
reconciliation efforts, indigenous leaders were baffled when Mauricio
Macri, after winning the presidential election last year, singled out
the achievements of influential European immigrants in his victory
speech. (He later sought to calm the waters by meeting with indigenous
representatives.)
“No Argentine president has truly tried to repair the damage done to
indigenous people,” said Pedro Coria, 51, a trade unionist and the
president of the Ranquel Chieftains Council in Santa Rosa, the capital
of La Pampa Province.
That damage began after the Spanish conquest, with forced labor in mines
far from ancestral homelands and the colonial masters’ use of people as
currency in business deals. The native tribes fought back in the 19th
century with several incursions. But in the late 1870s, Julio Argentino
Roca, a general and soon to be president, led a campaign called the
Conquest of the Desert, which seized the pampas and northern Patagonia
from them.
General Roca, long considered a hero who opened the wilderness to poor
European immigrants and united an unruly nation, has more recently been
labeled a genocidal murderer by some historians and activists. That has
led to campaigns to rename boulevards dedicated to him, tear down his
statues and even remove images of him and his conquest from the 100-peso
note.
Yet a consensus on the past treatment of indigenous people, and on
responding to their grievances now, has proved elusive. The influential
and conservative newspaper La Nación, in a lengthy editorial, recently
leapt to General Roca’s defense.
Indigenous movements in other parts of the region have seen high-profile
triumphs. Bolivia has had an indigenous president, Evo Morales, for more
than a decade. In Paraguay, an indigenous language on equal footing with
Spanish continues to thrive. Ecuador’s government incorporated
indigenous concepts in the Constitution in 2008.
In Argentina, however, the commemorations of the nation’s bicentennial
in July chafed, seeming to confirm suspicions among native peoples that
their culture and history were being ignored.
In a statement, some groups asked rhetorically, “What do we have to
celebrate?”
But as debates about the Qom and Wichí people in the north of Argentina
often hinge on child malnutrition, and as the Mapuche people in
Patagonia battle the encroaching shale oil industry, Ranquel communities
have emerged as patient champions of indigenous rights.
The communities have secured a string of victories, including settling
land disputes and phonetically transcribing textbooks to preserve their
language, which was unwritten. More broadly, they have reversed a
tradition among provincial Argentines of concealing their Ranquel
ancestry. An indigenous bloodline no longer elicits shame; rather, it is
esteemed.
“They have toiled away largely unnoticed,” said Graciana Pérez Zavala, a
historian at the National University of Río Cuarto who has written
widely on the Ranquel.
“They’re ripping apart the notion that indigenous people were
exterminated during the Conquest of the Desert,” she added. “They are
showing that they are alive.”
A short distance from Victorica, a farming town of about 6,000 enveloped
by forests of caldén trees, the Ranquel can point to perhaps their
proudest achievement — the return of a two-hectare site (about five
acres) that was part of their largest settlement, Leuvucó, before
General Roca reneged on peace treaties and sent soldiers rampaging
across the central plains.
They recovered the barren stretch of land in 2001 after putting aside
clan rivalries and enlisting the aid of federal and provincial
authorities. That is where they celebrate New Year’s, and it is where
they buried the remains of a prominent 19th-century chieftain,
Panguithruz Güor, that had been kept in a museum 500 miles away.
A meal at the national encounter of indigenous groups from across
Argentina last month. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
To outsiders, the patch of land and the rusting monument to several
Ranquel chieftains may seem little more than symbols. But they have power.
“Symbolism is important,” Fernanda Alonso, the social development
minister for La Pampa Province, said in an interview in Santa Rosa. For
the Ranquel to flourish, she said, “they have to reconstruct their past.”
Previously, visitors to La Pampa were unlikely to learn much about the
province’s indigenous heritage, though they might have noticed the image
of a mounted Ranquel on the provincial crest and some of the ancient trails.
Though some scholars point to earlier endeavors to advance the cause of
indigenous people, 2001 is widely viewed as the year of a rebirth for
the Ranquel, energizing more than 20 communities across La Pampa.
“The restitution was a landmark,” said María Inés Serraino, 47, a
science teacher in Victorica, where her neighbors announce their arrival
with a rhythmic clap of hands. “It is paving the way to rescue a culture
we were always denied.”
Ms. Serraino recalled how her paternal grandmother, a Ranquel who
married a Sicilian immigrant, regaled her with stories about indigenous
values, like cherishing nature and communal life.
In recent years, she and her family have formed a Ranquel community of
14 people, recognized by the National Institute for Indigenous Affairs.
Though bolstered by a law passed in 2006, indigenous peoples across
Argentina continue to struggle over land rights. But Ms. Serraino’s
community, named for her grandmother, has conditionally been given a
six-hectare parcel by the municipal authorities. On the land, her group
wants to revive the tradition of community subsistence farming. It is
also putting up a small building for meetings and cultural events.
Mercedes Soria, an indigenous leader, led the opening ceremony at the
national encounter. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Similar success stories are being replicated across central Argentina,
not just in La Pampa but in neighboring San Luis Province, too.
In western La Pampa, the authorities have supported Ranquel communities,
including one called Epumer, that have been threatened with eviction
because of legal battles over territory. Fears abound of an escalation
in such disputes as farmers seek new frontiers beyond Argentina’s
agricultural heartland.
Seeking to reconnect the population with its indigenous roots, leaders
also give talks to schoolchildren. And in Santa Rosa, which will host a
Latin American summit meeting of indigenous peoples this month, the
chieftains council moved about five years ago into modest rented
headquarters that house a small library and guest rooms.
In a meeting room where a newly designed Ranquel flag is displayed,
classes in the Ranquel language are taught to groups of adults. In
Victorica, road signs even carry Ranquel translations of Spanish street
numbers.
Still, obstacles persist. Advocates, for instance, say no community has
yet been handed the deeds to reclaimed lands.
And highlighting the tentative nature of even the Ranquel’s most pivotal
accomplishment, Osvaldo R. Borthiry, 83, the landowner who donated the
two hectares at the Leuvucó site, said his children would decide the
property’s future.
Others dismiss the idea of working within the system and call for a
separatist stance. “When your country does not represent who you are,
what else can you do?” said Miguel Ángel Saulo, 62, a leader of the
Tehuelche people in the south of Argentina.
But the Ranquel and their supporters remain undeterred.
“It used to be embarrassing to say that you were a descendant of
indigenous people,” said Marcela Suárez, 46, a janitor, as she stamped
around the wooden stake at Leuvucó. “Now it makes you proud.”
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