Progress at What Price?: Defenses of Indigenous Peoples in Argentine Writing about Patagonia (1894-1904)

Official history boasts that by the mid-1880s, the Argentine government had definitively brought Patagonia under national control, neutralizing the savagery associated with both the land and the indigenous people who lived there. The 1881 Tratado de Límites between Argentina and Chile and the 1884 Ley Orgánica de los Territorios Nacionales demarcated the limits of national sovereignty and organized the newly-formed provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego. General Lorenzo Vittner declared the successful end of the Conquista del desierto in 1885, ending military efforts to subdue indigenous populations in the south (Mases 59). At the same time, presidents Julio A. Roca (1880-85) and Miguel Juarez Celman (1886-1890) organized the sale of public lands and encouraged immigration through propaganda, subsidized passages, and the work of official agents in Europe (Valko 29). The realization of the dream of a white, civilized Argentina appeared to be right around the corner.