The Catriels, from friends to being under arrest. The end or the continuity of a strategy?

Abstract

The following paper discusses the course of Catriel’s people and their relationship with the Argentine government during the second half of the 19th century, especially between 1878 and 1886, when its leaders and some of their people were detained in the island Martín García.Based on analysis of documents from the Archivo General de la Armada (AGA), the article attempts to analyze changes and continuities, especially the (in)feasibility of the status of ‘Indian friends’ as the Argentine nation state was consolidated, and whether these strategies could be replicated in the spaces where catrieleros were arrested, either by decision of the military or the indigenous people themselves, without losing sight of the context of subjugation and confinement imposed on the aborigines by the government.