School representations about “lo Comechingón” in Córdoba

Abstract

What imaginaries about the aboriginal are constructed nowadays in Córdoba? This article analyzes the common sense suppositions according to which in the province, especially in the city of Córdoba, the natives are traced back to a more or less distant past. The representations built from the hegemonic social imaginary deny the contemporaneousness of the natives, or at best, they consider its presence as an anomaly; that is to say, they place the aboriginal as a former and outside reality turning it invisible, or giving a relative vision of its contemporary and autochthonous presences in a context of emergency and “comechingon” identification. Thus, said presences become doubted and questioned. These relative presences define a form of aboriginality in which the doubts about the authenticity, from the spatial temporal locus established in the imaginary of Córdoba, question the indigenous identifications. Through the analysis of school texts I look into the pictures, the meanings and senses about the current native presences, which are built, reproduced, established and disputed in the educative sphere of our province.