Conflict and Dialogue in Frontera Spaces: Araucania and Putumayo
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fischer
The formation and transformation of spaces have shaped the societies living in the Americas. The Spanish and the Portuguese (and other Europeans) encountered diverse and numerically large local populations of varying settlement density. They tried to remap America politically, administratively and socially and doing so pushed the “settlement boundaries” – intentionally and unintentionally – further and further towards the “interior of the Americas”. This process, continued by different actors after colonies had reached status of independence, is still ongoing. The actors involved negotiate “territories,” orders and relations of power, an oftentimes conflictual and violent process that at times also rests on dialogue.
This agent-centered research project focuses on the negotiation of “border spaces” in South America since the moment of independence (from Spain or Portugal respectively) and the resulting founding of nation-states. Specifically, this comprises the period from the 1880s until about 1940. The project is part of a more encompassing, interdisciplinary project at the ZILAS (Center for Latin American Studies at CU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) on “Memoria and Border Constructions in Postcolonial Processes of Internal Colonization in America (19th – 21st century)”.
Geographically, my project focuses on the Araucanía in Southern Chile (potentially also on parts of the inland of present-day Argentinia) and Putumayo in Columbia, geographic regions which during the period of interest increasingly moved into the focus of the established (“white” and “mestizo”) elites of the states. The project asks how the categories of “conflict” and “dialogue” or “war” and “peace” can be applied onto the individual actors and their interaction.