Memory and spaces in dispute in San Carlos de Bariloche: the monument to Gen. Roca in the Civic Center

Abstract

The article deals with the controversy involving two groups of conflicting memories that have emerged between the 1990s and the present in Argentina, concerning a key historical fact in the origins of the National State in the XIX Century: the so-called "Conquest of the Desert" (1878-1885), and its main commander, the general Julio Argentino Roca (1843-1914). These polemics were triggered by some monuments built on Roca's honor on distinguished cities of Argentina, including San Carlos de Bariloche, located in Patagonia. Part of local people, claims that the monument doesn't honor a glorious past, but a genocide in which the Mapuche people, that first lived on those lands, were persecuted and killed. Here, it will be exposed how such monument became the main target of a symbolic dispute that reveals its contents and origins, on a deep process of fight over land, territorial autonomy, better conditions of life, identity recognition and, finally, the consolidation of new spaces for social and political representation of the Argentinian native