Adjusting the focus: looking at Patagonia and the wider Argentine state through the lens of settler colonial theory

Abstract

ABSTRACT Notwithstanding predictions about the exhaustion of the so-called Myth of White Argentina, recent developments signal the continuing vitality of Argentina’s European creation myth. How can it be that, despite the victories secured by more than three decades of Indigenous and Afrodescendant activism, it may prove so hard to topple? This article borrows insights from settler colonial theory to address the endurance of the Myth of Whiteness in Argentina not only as a discursive construction of racial domination but also as a fundamental structure that obscures the shady claims of the Argentine state to the land it occupies. As well as investigating the explanatory power of the analytical framework for the particular case, the article unpicks the layers contained in the narrative of White Argentina, drawing attention to the crucial role the European creation myth has played not only in Argentine history but most importantly in the current cycle of ‘progressive neoextractivism’. Contextualising Argentina within settler colonial studies also contributes to debunking accounts of Argentinean exceptionalism by locating Argentina within global logics of settler colonial domination and providing a wider framework which may help identify illuminating commonalities in the international context.