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.

Temáticas

The future in common. Indigenous communities in the cities of the lower Negro River, Norpatagonia Argentina.

  • Javier Serrano

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.