Signs of a passive interculturality (San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina 2015-2021)

Abstract

Aborigine community who inhabited —and still do inhabit— the territory currently occupied by the Argentina national state have suffered from simultaneous processes of dispossession, discrimination and pauperization. However, over the decades and within the framework of the struggle that communities have carried out, the government has adapted a part of its legislation to international requirements in relation to the respect for the rights of all people.

Thus, San Carlos de Bariloche —the most populated city in the province of Río Negro— was formally declared as intercultural Municipality in 2015. However, despite the official pronouncement and the commitment required from local leaders, some situations actually reveal a superfluous application of the stated principles, as well as an everlasting existence of a traditionalist historiography that has backward-looking effects on the representatives’ actions.

Based on the analysis of specific circumstances and within the framework of up-to-date local intercultural legislation, this article aims to point out inadequacies in the actions of the Municipality and at the same time account for a vague position regarding the accompaniment and defense of the Mapuche communities. In this way, even though interculturality isn’t restricted only to the relationship between government and indigenous communities, the main objective is to turn on a warning light that motivates an overcoming action on the part of those who have exercised —and exercise— any political function in the city under the conviction that it is necessary to vindicate the rights of the Mapuche people to their own history, territory and identity, as rights enshrined by international law for all the inhabitants of the planet.