Painful memories, memories of pain: mapuche’s reflections and debates on the return of human remains mapuche-tehuelche in Patagonia argentina

Abstract

Since 2013 the government of Chubut province, Patagonia Argentina, prompted several restitutions
of indigenous human remains in which many Mapuche and Mapuche-tehuelche communities of this
province participated, including some of the Andean Region of Parallel 42° ?Chubut northwest and
southwest of Río Negro. This article examines the dynamics and reflections that this process was
generating among Mapuche of this local region. Dynamics and reflections that were framed like painful
memories in the context of historical land claims and reaffirmation processes of subjectivities and
indigenous rights. The purpose of this paper is to show how in these processes, “remains” that seemed
part of an inert heritage were vitally refigured, illuminating the historicity and tensions of physical and
social geography of space and the violence, continuities and disruptions that have formed it. It analyzes
the displacement produced from the notion of “indigenous human remains” as “heritage object” to
“painful memories and of pain”, examines the concepts from which these “painful memories” allowed
rethink indigenous experiences and describes the links and the construction of the “common” that put
into play in the context of certain emerging tensions.