1. The People of Sayhueque

In 1895, the families belonging to the People of Sayhueque residing in the province of Chubut, in Puelmapu,¹ were relocated to the interior of Colonia Pastoril José de San Martín. Their movement was part of the indigenous tribalization policy implemented by the Argentine government soon after the end of the so-called Campaign to the Desert led by Julio Argentino Roca (Delrio 2005). The collective had had previous recognized authority over a larger territory, with organizational dynamics legitimated through alliances and solidarities forged by political, economic and kinship relations between different chiefs and capitanejos or local leaders. The communities confronted the troops of the Argentine State to avoid subjugation after the military advance, which ended in their subjugation and the beginning of long pilgrimages.

Families were taken on foot to concentration camps in Carmen de Patagones, Chichinales or Valcheta (Delrio 2005, Mases 2002, Ramos 2010). Once there, they were distributed as labor, called up and enlisted in the same army in Mendoza, Buenos Aires, Tucumán or Entre Ríos, or taken prisoner to Martín García Island (Papazian and Nagy 2010). Once the processes of settlement were unleashed (Delrio 2004, Delrio and Briones 2002), their history portrayed the state’s objectives of fragmenting these families and adding them into degrading labor systems. Some caciques, such as Don Valentín Sayhueque, were relocated with a small group of his family on 30,000 hectares of land, which they lost through successive and systematic deceptions until they were forced to migrate to the towns. In this scenario, part of the family that had managed to stay on their lands was evicted by the National Gendarmerie in 1944 (Bandieri 2005). They were abandoned under a cliff and spent years living in precarious camps in the town of Gobernador Costa. They are the ones who currently make up the “Mapuche Tewelche Valentín Sayhueque community.”²

II. Memories and Belongings of the People of Sayhueque³

The development of a sense of belonging in the social memory of the Indigenous people of Argentine Patagonia has been influenced by specific structures of domination, where their memories interact with official narrative to create a map of meaning. The link between history and memory of sub-groups such as the Mapuche-Tewelche in Patagonia is crucial to the development of the social fabric and the ensuing birth of the Argentine nation. This connection influences their visibility, their silencing, and assigned value in society. Therefore, history and memory become essential to the construction of the identity of these groups.

The memories of the Mapuche-Tewelche Valentín Sayhueque community breed different maps of meaning that challenge ways of theorizing indigenous differences. The intersection of hegemonic and subordinate representations in the creation of senses of belonging raises the need to examine multiple determinations in a concrete analysis of political, social, economic, and cultural organization, and other aspects that differentiate the production of memory from other processes of meaning development. Collective memories allow us to rebuild specific subjectivities into historical timelines vis-a-vis the interpellation from individual viewpoints.

Stuart Hall highlights the correlations between life experiences, their weight, and the language used to communicate them (2010a). Regarding the memories of the Valentín Sayhueque community, explicit correlations are not shared among generations because they are humiliating and painful to relive, and difficulties are encountered when trying to translate their experiences into a hegemonic culture. In this way, memories may connect images and knowledge, while disconnecting others. During moments of reflection, families often intersperse their past and present to understand who they are. This process adds to the construction of belonging by providing strategic abodes or dwellings (Grossberg 1992). It is —indeed— a work of historical configuration. In this regard, reflection alongside memories is political, since analyzing their history allows them to question their reality and modify their future.

He aims to link these reflections with fieldwork experiences during the return of the Valentín Sayhueque community to their expropriated lands. In a dialogue with madam mayor of Gobernador Costa, the following exchange with the community lonko⁴ was recorded:

[…] I: “Yes, I saw them a day before you came, so I thought, how are they managing?”

L: “Right, and may be if he did not come with the prosecutor, he would have come and kicked uso ut, but his child, his child was sick.”

I: “What´s yours, is yours.”

L: “And I am entitled to it as it is mandated by history, you know how Argentine history goes, don´t you? Well, this belongs to me by history. This place is mine, let me tell you that, and it is not just this, but also all of Laguna del Toro. They took us out of that place and left us in this reserve. And here I am, and here I will stay, I can assure you that, both me and my cousins.”

I: “Of course, because this is something that you should never have…”

L: “Left?”

I: “Left.”

L: “See, we did not leave because we wanted to, but because my mum became a widow, and we were all young; the same happened to my aunt. My aunt was left alone, and she did not see that the children had left to work and the poor thing had to leave at some point. And I´d tell her: ‘And who sold you out?’ ´I think… X sold… what´s the name… X,´ she said. I´d ask her: ´And where are the deed of sale papers?´ ´He kept them. He kept them because there was no purchase and no sale.” […].⁵

This conversation casts light on the production of collective subjectivity born out of stories on land expropriation from families. The lonko uses history and memory to argue and assess land grabbing practices in her community.

In this exchange, the families are evaluated “for abandoning” their land. Even so, the lonko rectifies that they were induced —they had no choice—, and shows how multiple powers impact the trajectory of individuals. She questions the official history that denies the pre-existence of Indigenous peoples, with documents that uphold the contrary; she claims other expropriated lands and pleads the case of an initial donation from a compadre to her grandfather. Thus, she exposes the injustice suffered by her community and looks into the role of different actors in its history.

The lonko shares stories that breed the collective memory and stand for collective subjectivity. These memories are contextualized in territorial disputes, so these experiences have allowed the community to understand the social structure and reverse the negative impact on the families. Looking back at their history allows them to interpret the past through a different lens, to redefine it.

The way in which a community processes its collective experiences also conveys skills to understand and reflect upon them, and certainly impacts on how they define their identity in various historical contexts (Beliner 2005). Their memory is organized around experiences of dispossession and displacement that may be linked to those of other families in the region, without subsuming their differences. Singularities in difference may be identified on comparing communities´ historical trajectories.

The production of local differences in memory is related to the articulation of regimes of metamemory that each group develops throughout history. This influences how they evoke, forget, and reflect on that process. Collective memory creates its own regimes to breed truth and guide future generations in the process of remembering/forgetting in a way that may prove meaningful to the group (Foucault 1980).

In the Valentín Sayhueque community, some events are represented without the need for explicit words, which may be their way of expressing emotions or avoiding pain. These representations create an internal structure that organizes local truth. Meta-memory connects these representations with hegemonic structures, creating a complex dynamic in the operation of meaning in each case.

Social memory is relevant in the experience of group relations, disputing the sense of belonging to hegemonic senses and rearticulating group identity on an ongoing basis (Restrepo 2013). Memory intervenes by challenging dominant power and generating alternative knowledge, including the connection with the past and the transfer of collective representations.

Reconstructing the meta-memory regimes of Indigenous groups allows us to understand how the indigenous subject is founded and founded anew (Foucault 1980). We analyze the narrative that the memory of a group considers to be true or false, as well as the ways to reach the truth and who determines it. This type of discourse is acknowledged as “true stories” by our interlocutors.

Memory and representations give birth to new knowledge and subjects. People´s relationship with these realms is analyzed from a personal and collective perspective, especially among the community’s youth. The reflection of young people on collective history is evinced as key in local meta-memory.

Upon observation of the above practices, it is key to contextualize them and understand the dense implications of what is said and done, as well as people’s interpretations of them all. It then becomes necessary to follow Hall’s (2010b) approach in order not to make theory assume or explain social processes beforehand.

Shared memory in the Valentín Sayhueque Indigenous community plays a critical role in the way some members re-signify their social functions and perspectives, according to Nicolás Rose (2003). Sharing memories of the collective past can lead people to newly articulate their identities and take on other ways of understanding the world.

It is worth commenting on Hall’s (2010c) approaches regarding the current hypothesis. Reconstructing the communities´ meta-memory regimes allows us to theorize from indigenous lenses and explore the relationship between theory and politics. Theoretical approaches should be acknowledged as tools for understanding that may not detach social practices from their meaning. Ethnographic searches are experiences of knowledge reconstruction, always valuable for the families with whom we share.

The goal is not to claim absolute truths about memories, but to use Stuart Hall’s (2010a) approaches to analyze the research problem in an ethical and political manner. This allows researchers to understand the social dynamics and challenges surrounding the social sciences, realizing that social factors operate in diverse ways depending on specific conditions. This approach implies an ongoing and unfinished work; in continuous feedback from the contexts of the people we interact with.

The above observation pinpoints memory´s critical role in experiencing group relations, confronting belonging, and building alternative knowledge. Social memory becomes a tool to challenge dominant positions and reach an understanding about the bonds with the group, the territory, the national state, and ancestors. Through the transmission of keys for reading the past, one learns to (re)interpret collective representations (Haverkamp 1996).

By observing the social processes in the Valentín Sayhueque Indigenous community, it is possible to grasp how the interaction with memory may displace the movement and the subjection-subjectivation relations of its members (Rose 2003).

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