Abstract

The article refers to the indigenous communities that have emerged since the 1980s in the cities of Viedma and Carmen de Patagones, in Argentina's Norpatagonia. They have their own name and identify themselves using the categories "Mapuche" and "Mapuche-Tehuelche". These urban communities are doubly challenged. On the one hand, their legitimacy is locally questioned with the argument that the true indigenous people live in rural areas and maintain traditional ways of life. On the other hand, they are viewed with suspicion in the indigenous world itself, basically because they lack territory and do not arise from a common past. With substantial support in the ethnographic method, it is concluded that these urban indigenous communities are best understood as shared projects for a common future. That is, the active intention to form communities transcends uncertainty and the vicissitudes of concrete community configurations.

Keywords: indigenous communities, urban contexts, Norpatagonia, community project

A Common Future: Indigenous Communities in the Cities of Lower Río Negro, North Patagonia, Argentina

This article discusses the Indigenous communities that began emerging in the 1980s in the cities of Viedma and Carmen de Patagones, in Argentina's North Patagonia. They have their own name and identify using the categories Mapuche and Mapuche-Tehuelche. These urban communities suffer double prejudice. On the one hand, their status as legitimately Indigenous is questioned under the argument that "true" natives inhabit the countryside and have traditional ways of living. Yet they are also seen with suspicion in the Indigenous world, because they have no territory of their own and do not share a common past. Drawing on an ethnographic approach, the article concludes that these urban Indigenous communities are better understood as shared projects for a common future. In other words, the active intention to form communities helps overcome uncertainty and the vicissitudes specific to concrete community configurations.

Keywords: Indigenous communities, urban settings, community project, North Patagonia.

Introduction

Indigenous communities in Latin America possess a sort of imperishable halo that alludes to the remote past and the rural environment. This situation occurs despite the fact that some of them are heirs to great civilizations that, both in Mesoamerica and in the Andean area, experienced substantial urban processes. This persistent halo is based on unreflective conceptions firmly rooted in common sense. These are socially constructed notions and prenotions - with deep historical roots - that correspond to the fact that indigenous peoples are generally conceived as pre-modern by definition. Due to this profoundly erroneous but effective vision, "authentic" indigenous people belong to the past and to rural spaces. On the other side of the coin, the indigenous presence in the urban environment -modern by definition- is perceived as an uncomfortable and implausible anomaly (Cfr. Valverde et al., 2015).

This succinct characterization applies almost perfectly to Viedma and Carmen de Patagones, neighboring cities located on opposite banks of the lower Negro River,¹ just 30 kilometers from the sea, in Argentina's Norpatagonia (see map). The article focuses on the indigenous community configurations that have emerged in these cities, with ups and downs, since the 1980s. They typically have their own name and identify themselves using the categories "Mapuche" and "Mapuche-Tehuelche". These communities are doubly contested. On the one hand, their legitimacy is questioned at the local level with the argument that the true indigenous people live in rural areas maintaining presumably traditional ways of life. On the other, they are viewed with suspicion in the indigenous world itself, essentially because they lack territory and do not arise from a remote common past. Urban community arrangements, however, emerge and decline or prevail beyond these objections.

The original empirical materials that support this work were collected by ethnographic means in different periods from 2012 to the present. Strictly speaking, the observations correspond both to the cities of the lower Negro River and to a varied set of rural localities in the north Patagonian space. This aspect is relevant, since several points of this vast territory, particularly in the so-called Línea Sur Rionegrina (see map), are historically linked to the cities of reference by virtue of migratory movements. For the construction of the problem and its analysis I applied the guidelines I proposed in a text of my own. On that occasion I insisted on the need to consider the communities as "problem, process and system of relations" (Serrano, 2020a). For the treatment of the projective dimension of community configurations, a rather novel aspect, I made use of relevant bibliography, as well as my own data and developments within the framework of recent anthropological approaches to the future (Serrano, in press). I also drew on some previous research experiences in other contexts (Serrano, 2008; Serrano, 2008; Serrano, 2008; Serrano, 2008; Serrano, 2008). et al., 2022). Of fundamental importance were the reflections that we are developing around the future and communities in a regional working group created in 2021 within the framework of the Latin American Association of Anthropology (to).2

In the first part of this article I present my approach to the phenomenon of urban indigenous communities in Latin America. Based on the specialized literature, I then review some background information on the problem at the regional and national levels. Next, I deal in successive order with the historical context and the constitutive process of Mapuche and Mapuche-Tehuelche community configurations in the urban contexts referred to. In the final section I address, through original ethnographic materials, the vicissitudes of the urban communities considered as a project. Throughout the paper I try to defend the relevance of analyzing indigenous communities -not only in urban settings- in terms of their projective dimension.

Map of the province of Rio Negro, Argentina.

An approach to urban indigenous communities in Latin America

Somehow, the prejudices I mentioned at the beginning of this text are largely reflected in the meager academic attention given to the indigenous presence in urban spaces. Anthropologists have been late to address this issue. Several factors are at work here. A significant one is that, at least until the emergence of urban anthropology (see Hannerz, 1980), the historical division of disciplinary work had reserved the study of cities for sociology, while anthropology was concerned with rural spaces that were eventually distant (in conceptual and geographical terms). It is thus understandable that the first and most emblematic approaches to the indigenous presence in urban contexts are so clearly linked to rural-urban migration. In fact, ethnographic research on the subject grew alongside the so-called "rural exodus", a phenomenon that became more intense in Latin America around the middle of the 20th century. xx. Lourdes Arizpe's (1976) seminal article on migration from the Mazahua area to Mexico City is iconic; by that time Robert Redfield (1941; 1947) had already put forward the famous and controversial folk-urban continuum based on his ethnographic studies in Yucatan.3

Explanations centered on rural migrations often involved two hypotheses that are relevant to this work. On the one hand, it was conjectured that urban experiences would eventually blur indigenous identifications. It was assumed that little by little the city would erase the differences and the indigenous would finally become citizens indistinguishable from others. Their original ways of life would be lost in the inexorable process of assimilation. It was long decades before these powerful assumptions, which still persist, began to be questioned. On the other hand, it was thought that if the indigenous migrants maintained any community belonging, it referred concretely to the societies of origin proper to rural areas. Both theses proved to be inconsistent, or not fully consistent, with empirical observations in a variety of urban settings in Latin America. In any case, ethnographic research came late and without relevant theoretical resources to the systematic examination of urban indigenous contexts.

It will be understood then that urban indigenous communities have received even less attention than the indigenous presence itself in Latin American cities. It may be argued that this is a rather recent phenomenon, which is partially true depending on the specific contexts. According to my interpretation, however, the late constitution of urban indigenous communities as an object of systematic study is also linked to theoretical weaknesses. Anthropologists arrived in the city following rural migrants and, in principle, did not have adequate theoretical frameworks to examine the indigenous in urban settings. Thus, the different lines of research continued to emphasize other aspects of the indigenous problem and to prioritize, even today, its study in rural areas.

Without detracting from other perspectives, my own approach emphasizes ethnographic observation as a key element in the theoretical elaboration. Thus, in the approach I advocate, the community is conceived not as an indisputable datum of reality, but as a problem that the researcher arduously constructs in intimate congruence with the empirical reference. This implies taking into account community configurations as complex and dynamic relational systems. It also implies taking into consideration, at various levels, their eminent processual character (Serrano, 2020a). It will be noted that in the end these are general principles, or guidelines, that are not properly equivalent to a concept of community, nor do they pretend to settle its specific contents. In fact, they suggest rather a ductile model of analysis that admits different conceptions of community. This is not by chance. While seeking to avoid any essentialism, the proposal aims to create channels of communication and comparison between different perspectives in view of the multiple, ambiguous and controversial meaning of the category "community" (Delgado, 2005).

In keeping with the peculiar nature of the communities we examine in this paper, the problematization focuses on time, which, in itself, constitutes a fundamental variable in any process. Already several decades ago Johannes Fabian (2019 [1983]) denounced that anthropologists had long denied the coetaneity of the Other. He proposed the term "allochronism" for this, and his approach was quickly incorporated into the disciplinary debate (Pels, 2015). It soon became clear that the uses of time in anthropological discourse could be many, but never innocuous. It is not difficult to suspect that one of the usual uses is to conceptually situate the Other in the past. This is often the case with indigenous peoples, who, as we have said, are often overtly or implicitly considered pre-modern by definition. In fact, something similar applies to the notion of "community" which, since the formulation of Ferdinand Tönnies (1947 [1887]) at the turn of the century, has been used as a way of situating the Other conceptually in the past. xixappears in inevitable opposition to modern society and, consequently, to modernity itself. In both cases, the object of attention alludes quietly to the past, while the researcher - the prototype of modernity - feels himself to be the legitimate owner of the present. In two ways, then, indigenous communities often suffer from these severe prejudices.4

It is worth remembering that for Fabian the operation of creating temporal distance with the Other is not fortuitous, since it responds to "existential, rhetorical, political" devices (Fabian, 2019: 57). Taking his argument in a broad sense, allochronism could well allude not only to the denial of the coetaneity of the Other, but also to the subtle denial of its future. This is the case with current conceptions that link the indigenous to the perennial maintenance of a set of distinctive features -customs, beliefs, art, in short, everything that Edward B. Tylor included in his original definition of culture in 1871-. In this way, the indigenous people remain indissolubly tied to the past, while any transformation will be taken as a manifest sign of corruption of their original essence. Since in the sweeping course of modernity changes are inevitable, in the most extreme way it is concluded that indigenous ways of life are irremediably destined to disappear. In short, in these visibly erroneous but persistent conceptions, indigenous peoples have no future. They are denied a future.

I wish to highlight the need to incorporate the future as a relevant element in the discussion about the allochrony of the anthropological object.5 My field observations in the Argentinean Norpatagonia confirm the relevance of analyzing urban and rural indigenous community configurations in the light of the future. In particular, given the notorious emergent, discontinuous and disputed, even contingent, mode of the urban communities of the lower Negro River, it is imperative to consider them in terms of process and specifically with the condition of a project with common future horizons. Before focusing specifically on this, I will review some background research on urban indigenous communities in different Latin American countries and in my own country.

Studies of indigenous communities in Latin American cities

After considerable delay, attention began to be paid to the indigenous communities in the cities at the end of the century. xx. The phenomenon is currently receiving increasing ethnographic research - albeit disparate and in many ways insufficient - in several countries of the region. The following non-exhaustive review is an example of this.6

With reference to Mexico, among several possibilities, I consider relevant the texts by Regina Martínez Casas (2002; 2007), and by Regina Martínez Casas and Guillermo de la Peña (2004) about the Otomi in Guadalajara; likewise, the most recent by María Elena Herrera Amaya (2018) about the Mixtec communities in San Luis Potosí. The publication coordinated by Séverine Durin (2008) about the diverse indigenous presence (Nahua, Huastec, Otomi, Mixtec and others) in the metropolitan area of Monterrey, Nuevo León is noteworthy; this book has the merit of presenting indigenous people as typically urban actors -thus breaking the rural stereotype-, while establishing a penetrating analysis of their individual and collective experiences in the city (Sariego, 2010). The thematic issue "Indígenas y las luces urbanas" (Indigenous people and urban lights) of the journal Relations (2013), which was presented by Thomas Calvo, and the most recent publication coordinated by Iván Pérez (2019) on urban indigenous people in the country's capital. It should be added that in her seminal article, Lourdes Arispe (1976) observed the permanent settlement of a part of the Mazahua migrants in Mexico City and described the web of relationships they established there without suggesting or weighing urban community modes. Mexico is, in all probability, the country where the topic is most researched on a regional scale.

In Guatemala, Manuela Camus (1999) and Santiago Bastos and Manuela Camus (2000) report the case of a metropolitan indigenous community in La Ruedita, in the capital. A group of families originating from Sacapulas (El Quiché), who maintain parental ties with each other, are settled there. This case has some notable similarities with the one reported by Óscar Espinosa (2019) about a Shipibo-Konibo community, of Amazonian origin, established in Cantagallo, a neighborhood of Lima, Peru. In the Andean area, the works of José Valcuende del Río, Piedad Vásquez and Fredy Hurtado (2016) and Miguel Alexiades and Daniela Peluso (2015) can also be mentioned for Ecuador. In Colombia, Manuel Sevilla (2007) refers to the disputes of the Yanaconas to be recognized as a legitimate indigenous community in the city of Popayán (Cauca), in the south of the country. It is worth including in this short list the interesting study by Flávio Silva (2011) on the multi-ethnic community configuration of the Guaraní, Xetá and Kaingang in Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paraná, Brazil.

The urban community experiences of the Mapuche population in Chile are particularly relevant in this article. It is worth mentioning the work of Andrea Aravena (2002; 2003; 2007), who has addressed the processes of social organization and Mapuche identity construction in urban contexts. This author also participates in association with Francisco Jara (Aravena and Jara, 2019) in the dossier of the journal Antropologías del Sur (2019), dedicated to indigenous people in the city. As in Argentina, in Chile the Mapuche are the most numerous of the indigenous peoples. A significant part of its members live in neighborhoods in Santiago, the capital of the country -something similar happens in Argentina-, as well as in other urban spaces. In them, they promote different modes of organization and community instances in the framework of a growing visibility (Aravena, 2002; Campos, 2019; Villegas, Rix-Lièvre and Wierre-Gore, 2019).

Taken together, the articles mentioned in this brief review address indigenous-based community arrangements in various cities in the region. Not all the authors, however, start from an explicit definition of community, nor do they necessarily agree on it. Even so, they converge -with varying degrees of emphasis- on a set of elements that operate as a common denominator in the different approaches to the problem.

A relevant common factor is the analytical attention devoted to the complex, asymmetrical and historically conflictive articulation of indigenous city dwellers with other actors in the urban scenario. This includes the widespread and tenacious context of discrimination and exclusion, as well as the racism and marginalization suffered by the indigenous population both in social and spatial terms (given their more common settlement in peripheral neighborhoods). In addition, attention reasonably continues to be paid to migrations from rural areas and, in particular, to the maintenance of links with the areas of origin. This aspect is part of the genetic explanations offered without exception by the different authors about the constitutive processes of urban indigenous communities. Finally, there is a unanimous interest in the resignification of indigenous identifications in the city and in the struggles for their recognition. As might be expected, these elements are also present in the treatment of the subject in Argentina.

Urban indigenous communities in Argentina

A key aspect in the Argentine context is that the majority of the indigenous population currently lives in urban areas. Sebastián Valverde et al. (2015: 27) propose a simple but effective image in this regard. They argue, based on different statistical sources, that seven out of ten members of indigenous peoples reside in urban areas and that almost three of them live in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (amba)7 (see also Weiss et al., 2013). Thus, the indigenous population in Argentina not only has a decidedly urban face, but also exhibits a high degree of concentration in the country's largest city. It should be noted that Arturo Warman (2001, in Sariego, 2010) made equivalent considerations about the indigenous concentration in the great Mexico City adding, not without paradox, that possibly the second city with the largest number of indigenous Mexicans was Los Angeles, California. Similar considerations can be made about Santiago, Chile (see Aravena, 2007), which prompts us to think of other analogies on a regional scale.

According to the 2010 census, about 2.4% of Argentina's total population is part of one of the more than 30 indigenous peoples present in the country; the identification criterion was based on self-recognition (indec, 2012).8 The two thirds of the indigenous population that do not reside in the conurbation of Buenos Aires live in different rural and urban areas within the framework of a complex distribution and with a marked regional differentiation within the country. Again according to data from the same census, the most numerous indigenous people is the Mapuche, who constitute around 21.5% of the indigenous population at the national level. The survey showed a total of 205,000 people who recognize themselves as Mapuche; the majority (731 PTP3T) resided in the Patagonian provinces of Río Negro, Neuquén and Chubut. It should be noted that the percentage of people who recognize themselves as indigenous in the Patagonian region is much higher than the national average, almost three times higher (indec, 2015).

In relation to the central theme of this article, the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (inai) reports9 There are 1,853 communities in the country, although with different legal status. According to their typology, 405 of them are urban or peri-urban, while 840 are located in rural areas. There are also 46 communities that are both urban and rural at the same time (others that are registered without specificity complete the overall figure). As for their geographical distribution, they are concentrated to a greater extent in northwestern Argentina. In the Patagonian provinces of Chubut, Neuquén and Río Negro a total of 277 indigenous communities are recorded; they are identified as Mapuche (229), Tehuelche (12), Mapuche Tehuelche (34) and, conversely, Mapuche Tehuelche (1).10

The book coordinated by Valverde is very useful for this topic. et al. (2015) unequivocally titled: From the territory to the city. It is a collective work that, beyond the centrality of indigenous migrations to urban spaces, addresses different organizational processes that include the reaffirmation of identity, ethnopolitical claims and recognition, among other relevant aspects. In particular, it focuses on community developments, laying reasonable foundations for further discussion in the Argentine context. The book presents a wide variety of cases (16) focusing on different indigenous configurations in urban settings. In what should be considered a starting point rather than a limitation, most of them refer to Greater Buenos Aires and the Qom (Toba) people; and to a lesser extent to other indigenous groups - Mapuche, Moqoit (Mocoví), Guaraní, Diaguita, Ranquel - in different cities of the interior of the country.11 There is no place to go deeper into these materials and I refer to the original text for that purpose. However, it is worth mentioning that only one of the chapters deals with the Mapuche people and refers to the city of Bariloche, located in the mountain range area in Norpatagonia.

Other previous and more recent works on indigenous community processes in Argentine cities deserve to be mentioned. Liliana Tamagno's studies (1986; 2001) on the Qom in Quilmes and Greater La Plata (Buenos Aires) are precursors; and likewise those of Héctor Vázquez and Margot Bigot (Vázquez and Bigot, 1998; Bigot, Rodríguez and Vázquez, 1991) also referred to the Qom in Rosario, Santa Fe. Other works in Greater Buenos Aires approach the subject with a different focus. Among them, Juan Engelman (2019) refers extensively to different indigenous groups in this urban space and Ayelen Di Biase (2016) about the Guaraní in José C. Paz (Buenos Aires suburbs). On the other hand, always in the ambaEngelman and Ma. Laura Weiss (2015) focus on four communities: a Guaraní and a Kolla community in the town of Glew, a Qom community in Marcos Paz, and the very interesting multi-ethnic community "Nogoyin Ni Nala", composed of members of diverse peoples, although originating from the same region (the Chaco): Qom, Mocoví and also Guaraní and Tonocoté. Weiss (2015) also deals with this community in another article.

In relation to Patagonia, some works can also be mentioned. The article by Valentina Stella (2014) -of great affinity with what I present here- analyzes the process of conformation of a Mapuche-Tehuelche community in Puerto Madryn, Chubut. Although she does not focus specifically on the community issue, in her text on the Mapuches in the waria (city), Andrea Szulc (2004) notes the relevant statements of an indigenous leader: "[the Mapuche are still] seen as stagnant societies lacking a project for the future". In turn, Weiss, Engelman and Valverde (2013) deal briefly with the Mapuche in Bariloche, Río Negro. Already in the lower basin of the Negro River, our study area, Serrano et al. (2022) address the incipient community processes developed by Quechua and Aymara migrants in the urban and peri-urban areas of Viedma and Carmen de Patagones. The work of D'Angelo (2023), also of great importance here, is devoted to Mapuche and Mapuche-Tehuelche community configurations in both cities. At the same time, I have partially referred to this topic in a recent publication (Serrano, 2020a).

The indigenous community phenomenon in the cities of the lower Negro River

Any sensible approach to the indigenous community problems in Patagonia must take into account the profound dislocation suffered by the native society as a consequence of the violent imposition of the national State in the last quarter of the last century. xix. Indeed, the so-called "Conquest of the Desert" - a brutal euphemism - meant not only the dispossession of lands, but also the intentional disarticulation of families and other indigenous social groupings that previously prevailed in the vast territory (see Delrío, 2005; Serrano, 2015). The different community configurations observed today in the northpatagonian space are linked, through different complex historical trajectories, to those bloody events that darken Argentine history.12

The effective subjugation of the indigenous population and the expropriation of their territories was followed by a long period of invisibilization characterized by the denial of their identities and ways of life. In national and regional narratives, the indigenous Patagonians were assigned to the past and to remote rural areas, where they could perhaps preserve their customs. Gradually their languages paled and the word "paisano" began to be used to designate them; ethnic designations fell into disuse. The city was an inappropriate place for them and, seen in opposition to civilization, they were ideologically condemned to barbarism and precariousness. The policies of invisibility admitted a set of devices that sought - not without contradictions - the disappearance or assimilation of the indigenous population, but invariably aimed at their silencing (Cfr. Gordillo and Hirst, 2010). These policies were often complemented with strategies of self-concealment as a measure of protection and preservation. For a long time, being identified as indigenous meant being subjected to humiliation and unnecessary risks.

Despite being sweeping, these policies never fully consummated their objectives. Many people maintained a sense of indigenous belonging while sustaining cultural practices and logics that, when the time came, were again expressed and flourished.13 Thus, in the 1980s, the tenacious invisibility of indigenous peoples began to wane. At the same time, the advent of democracy in Argentina brought with it the promotion of a series of laws14 that favored the resurgence of indigenous identifications. This happened in line with the growing appreciation of cultural diversity -in correspondence with the discrediting of the alleged homogeneity of nations- and in accordance with the resurgence of ethnic identities observed at a global level. Slowly, Argentine society began to assume itself as diverse, giving way to the recognition of native identifications. The first indigenous communities present in the Viedma-Patagones urban complex, also called La Comarca,15 emerged in this particular context during the following decade.

The emergence of the indigenous communities in Viedma and Carmen de Patagones

Founded on the banks of the Negro River in 1779, Carmen de Patagones was for a long time the only stable settlement of Spanish-Creole origin in Patagonia. Being a river port with an outlet close to the sea, it was a strategic enclave in an enormous territory that remained in indigenous hands until the fateful dates of the military campaigns initiated by the Argentine State in 1879. In the meantime, an intricate web of relations with the native societies was established there. Based on the analysis of epistolary exchanges, Julio Vezub (2011)16 points out that by 1856, almost 70 years after the founding of Patagones, the social base was still indigenous "to the point that the surrounding ranchos were confused with the toldos" (the tents where the Indians lived). However, in their examination of the neighborhood records of the Partido de Patagones, Jorge Bustos and Leonardo Dam find that by 1887-after the imposition of the national State-had been consummated, out of a total of 2,019 urban inhabitants, only 115 (5.6%) were settled with indigenous categories (Indian, Indian, Chinese), most of them minors. This issue had to do with the indiscriminate distribution of indigenous children, another of the cruel results of the conquest of the desert. The authors conclude that the indigenous children were recent inhabitants of Patagones. However, when comparing with previous records in the neighboring town of Viedma, they note that recognized caciques and the indigenous groups they headed were recorded as "Argentines", a clear sign that the processes of invisibilization had already been unleashed (Bustos and Dam, 2012).

Much later, in the last two decades of the 20th century, the xxthe first indigenous communities arose in Viedma and Patagones. According to my analysis, these formations essentially articulated two types of actors: indigenous migrants who arrived from the Southern Line around the middle of the same century and members of families of Mapuche or Tehuelche origin who had been living in La Comarca for a long time, by virtue of different migratory processes and local origin. The most recent migrants settled in peripheral neighborhoods without necessarily creating community ties among themselves. As in many other cases, they maintained strong ties with their places of origin. Even so, they brought with them specific senses and experiences of indigenous-based community that were expressed, for example, in both individual and collective customary ritual practices.

Kinship played a key role in the formation of solidarity and lodging networks for the newcomers, which were essential aspects of their move to the city. At the same time, the isolation in peripheral neighborhoods and the frequent situations of discrimination in the urban space contributed to strengthen the processes of common identification. This happened, for example, in Villa del Carmen, a neighborhood of Patagones with a strong Mapuche influence. Some people from there and from neighboring neighborhoods such as Villa Rita and Villa Linch, in the west of the city, were relevant participants in the formation of city communities and in the re-emergence of indigenous identifications.

The first local urban community was formalized in the 1980s. By then, annual community rituals were already taking place on the emblematic La Caballada hill.17 and at another point in Carmen de Patagones. Different people from La Comarca and other localities who were not necessarily members of the community participated there. At that time and in the following decade, different forms of indigenous organization began to develop, including language teaching, weaving and weaving workshops. palín (traditional game), among others. In addition, processes of political organization and vindication around the indigenous cause originated, which was spurred by the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the conquest of America, as well as by the impact of neo-Zapatismo in Mexico. For its part, the gradual recognition of the State's18 This translated into some benefits and concessions -always limited-, which were complemented by the actions of the Catholic Church and non-governmental organizations, which was especially important in the creation of one of the communities. Even more important is that all this generated collective experiences and a propitious framework for the creation of new urban communities (Cfr. D'Angelo, 2023: 108-109), while encouraging the always difficult personal processes of self-recognition of indigenous identity, phenomena between which I find a close connection.

According to my records, in 2020 there were seven community configurations in La Comarca (one of them periurban), whose trajectories and effective existence varied in each case. All of them had their own name in the Mapuche language without allusion to toponymy or family lineages, as is frequent in rural communities in Norpatagonia. Some of them had "papers", that is, formal recognition by the State, either through legal status (granted or in process) or as a civil association, while others explicitly refused to be constituted with reference to the State. In fact, two of the communities confirm their existence in express opposition to the State, which they consider their historical hostile antagonist. The effective existence of the communities is usually evaluated by the indigenous inhabitants of the city themselves according to the customary celebration of traditional rituals, among which the following stand out wiñoy tripantu (New Year), as well as the degree of participation in different community activities that require effective presence. These activities may include, among others, mobilization in political demonstrations, participation in community assemblies or in more informal meetings that often involve the consumption of shared food. When all of this declines, their concrete existence is called into question. However, trajectories are not linear and some communities that seemed to have disappeared re-emerged at specific times. It should be added that many of the activities at the local level are shared by members of different communities and that, in addition to those mentioned, there have been projects to create others that did not come to fruition.

It should be noted that membership in the indigenous communities in Viedma and Carmen de Patagones is a voluntary and revocable act. Unlike in rural contexts, the shared territory of the19 and kinship do not play a decisive role in this, nor does residential contiguity. As part of their dynamism, discontinuities and conflicts are not altogether infrequent, so that a person can be part of one community and later of another. Although this itself is often questioned in the rural indigenous perspective, it reveals the importance of community projects beyond the present of urban communities at any given time.

The urban community as a project: "I want to form a community".

I have affirmed that the urban indigenous configurations of the lower course of the Negro are best understood in terms of a shared future project in an ethnic and communitarian key. These projects allude to the manifest and active intention of forming communities beyond the failed community experiences or the uncertain existence of some of them. This theme constituted first a working hypothesis and then a corollary arising from the analysis of these configurations. The analytical procedure involved the composition of a matrix of diverse data critically examined and subjected to triangulation. To this end, I made use of the guidelines I proposed in a recent article (Serrano, 2020a), in which I pointed out that communities must be considered as a problem that the researcher constructs - on this occasion I basically consider them as projects for the future -, taking crucially into account the processes and the system of relationships involved in each case. In fact, I suggested then the convenience of examining communities from a projective point of view. I refer to that article for those who wish to go deeper into the approach. In any case, I present original ethnographic materials with a double purpose: on the one hand, to show strong indications that support the working hypothesis and, on the other hand, to illustrate a crucial aspect of the phenomenon: beyond the vicissitudes of the community process, there are indigenous-based cultural practices and logics that precede it and give rise to its development.

The first time I became aware of the peculiar character of the local city communities was in a conversation with Manuela,20 a pillankuse21 a Mapuche man in his 60s. We had been friends for a long time and she had invited me to her house for mates. We had met recently at a demonstration in Viedma, where she was wearing her precious Mapuche silver jewelry. On this occasion she had prepared fried cakes and a pudding; we sat in the kitchen to mate and talk. A mutual acquaintance came up in the conversation and she expressed her disillusionment with the community in which they both participated (one of the first in Viedma). He claimed that there were many reasons, but that the main cause was that the rituals were not being performed: "Ceremonies are not being performed, neither is the New Year's Day (the New Year).wiñoy tripantu). Total imbalance because the community is drawn. It is the basis of our ceremony, culture, religion. It is an imbalance for the community, for all the members". I had heard her talk about it before.

In a previous conversation, he had explained to me that all people have newen (energy) positive and negative, that we all live with that. He explained that the ceremonies are to maintain the balance. He then argued that there is a good part and a bad part, that nature is composed of that: "That life and death is that, and that we are the fruit of that. Hence the importance of rituals: the most important thing is the ceremony to keep us at a spiritual level. Because if we do not do ceremony, then the person's imbalance and all things will go wrong. That is proven. This time, in the continuation of the talk, Manuela added something that still resonates in my ears: "I want to form a community". I clearly understood that the future played a substantial role in the community process.

The community to which Manuela aspired existed fundamentally as a project. In her speech, the answer to the unsatisfactory conditions of the present was in the future, in the community to be built. She told me that she had been working on it, that she had already talked with the "grandmothers" -old women receive great respect and deference among the Patagonian Indians-, and that she was "inviting" people. As a general rule, the guests were descendants of migrants who arrived around the middle of the 20th century. xx or members of indigenous families of long residence in La Comarca (as I have mentioned). At the same time, all of them were part, in one way or another, of the networks of relationships that were established from the different organizational processes that took place towards the end of the century. The case of Carlos, one of the guests, will help to better understand the process of integration into the community project.

Approximately 18 years old, Carlos lived with his indigenous grandmother, although he did not recognize himself as such. However, he began to participate in a Mapuche language workshop and soon became interested in ritual practices and, at the same time, redefined, in a decisive way, the relationship with his grandmother. She was a native of the Línea Sur rionegrina and she introduced him to other dimensions of the Mapuche world. Finally, after being invited, he was introduced and admitted to the community in an emotionally charged ceremony:

It was a very deep shock that they asked permission from the earth for me, and that they presented me, with the makuñ (blanket) and the trailonko (headband), and that the words were said so that I could wear them, and that the other men would impose that on me at that moment. It was terrible. It's like, tears is [sicThe first thing that sprouted, but it was... and so was the rest.

In the same ritual maneuver, Carlos completed his indigenous identification and community membership. The future had been consummated.

Both the need for periodic performance of rituals and the invitation procedure were central to another community project -for the time being unsuccessful- that I followed up in Patagones. Likewise, the importance of spiritual life and the restoration of balance through ceremonial practices constitute key elements in communitarian preaching at the local level. This refers both to collective rituals, which are carried out cyclically, and to those performed individually each morning at sunrise. Since many of these practices had been lost in La Comarca -particularly the ceremonies linked to seasonal changes-, since the 1990s great efforts have been made to recover them. To this end, among other things, a pillankuse from the rural hinterland of Norpatagonia, who shared his kimun (knowledge), and trips were made to different places, including the Temuco area in Chile, in search of specific knowledge about the steps to follow in the different rituals.22

To conclude, I would like to mention that the lack of balance is often expressed with a sense of urgency, and the deteriorating situation of many of the indigenous city dwellers in the lower Negro River is often explained by this. In the words of one pillankuse of Carmen de Patagones: "[hence] so many addictions, so much alienation, so many illnesses. Because they are spiritual illnesses that affect the psychic and the physical" [see D'Angelo, 2023: 111-115, about the same thing in his conversation with a lonko (head) of a local community]. The solution is then sought by restoring the balance through ancestral ceremonial practices performed individually and collectively. Those who have specific knowledge in this regard and can guide the group ceremonies -usually the pillankuse- play a fundamental role in local community configurations. Their influence goes even beyond the authorities of each community.

Coda

On the same weekend in June 2023, I had the opportunity to attend two indigenous ceremonies in urban contexts in the lower Negro river basin. They were celebrating the wiñoy tripantu (New Year) on the dates of the winter solstice, which has meanings of renewal of life, since from then on the period of daylight begins to lengthen. Although there were some differences in the specific development of the rite, in both cases a circle was formed -the round is of great importance in Mapuche rites-, yerba mate was offered to the mapu (Earth) and following the indications of the pillankuse the two fundamental aspects of the ritual were performed: thanks for what was received in the year that is behind us, and a request for the well-being of the year to come. The meanings of the past and the future were intimately present there. Like the other people in the circle, I prayed for my own health and well-being, as well as for my loved ones, in the coming year. Unlike some of the people in the circle, however, I had no community to ask for. In their case, they also prayed for the future together. In my interpretation these annual celebration rituals constitute one more sign of the clear vitality of indigenous peoples in the urban contexts of Northern Patagonia. A vitality, it can be said, charged with a future.

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Javier Serrano holds a degree in Anthropology from the National University of La Plata (unlpD. with honors from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (ciesas). He obtained his master's degree at the latter institution. He is currently a professor-researcher at the Universidad Nacional de Río Negro (unrn(Sede Atlántica), in the Argentinean Patagonia. His main lines of research refer to migratory processes and community studies, indigenous issues, future-utopias in anthropological perspective, as well as kinship relations.