Settler Colonialism and Frontier Expansion in Santa Fe, Argentina: Colonization along the San Javier River (1860-1880).

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the process of territorial expansion in Santa Fe during the 1860s and 1870s, based on the categories of settlement colonialism and colonial constitutionalism. From this perspective, it seeks to link the legal language that prevailed during that time with the practices developed by various agents (settlers, provincial and local authorities). In this way, discourses and practices were articulated with a dual purpose: on the one hand, to deny the legal personality of indigenous peoples and their right to land; on the other, to operate as a mechanism that enabled territorial dispossession, exclusion and displacement. As a case study, we take the process of land colonization that took place in the north of the province, in the San Javier River region.