Cracks in the Desert: Hegemonic Space and Indigenous Resistance in the Borderlands of Northern Patagonia

Abstract

The 1878 arrival of the Argentine settler state as conqueror in northern Patagonia produced a singular problem for the state: the desert. A colonial imaginary of the absolute outside was now incorporated into Argentina, sparking a long-running territorial conflict that endures to this day. This thesis examines how enduring settler colonial processes shape territorial relations in northern Patagonia and how Indigenous Mapuche and allied actors enact diverse practices of resistance. Bringing settler colonial studies into conversation with political ontology, theories of space and relational approaches to resistance, it conceptualises contemporary territorial conflicts as part of the longue durée of settler colonialism. The research employs a qualitative, ethnographically oriented methodology, drawing on participant observation and partial life-history interviews, as well as documentary sources and urban artistic interventions. It is argued that settler colonialism operates through the application of a hegemonic spatial regime that has rendered Indigenous territory available for transformation into extractive and conservation frontiers. These spatial relations are continually reproduced through processes of bordering, extractivism and exclusive conservation which are presented by hegemonic power as natural and inevitable, while practices of partial recognition and de-recognition attempt to absence Indigenous peoples, both in time and in space. Hegemony, however, remains incomplete. Insistent Mapuche presence and resistance expose persistent cracks within settler colonial spatialities and temporalities. Through these cracks emerge diverse practices of resistance. These practices contest narratives of Indigenous absence, build alliances and articulate alternative relationships to territory. The thesis therefore conceptualises resistance not solely as opposition to particular territorial projects, but as productive and ontological. This resistance is world-making, challenging the spatial and temporal assumptions through which hegemonic settler colonial power is continually reproduced.