Vol. 41 No. 1 (2021)
Articles

The Conquest of the Desert, Trust and the Proximity Principle

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  • Santiago Truccone-Borgogno
Santiago Truccone-Borgogno
Instituto de Filosofía, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Graz, Austria
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.2021.378

Published 2021-05-01

Keywords

  • Indigenous People,
  • Historic Injustices,
  • Legitimacy,
  • Supersession Thesis,
  • Waldron
  • Indígenas,
  • Injusticias hist´óricas,
  • Legitimidad,
  • Tesis de la superacion,
  • Waldron
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

After the Conquest of the Desert, the State of Argentina forcibly imposed its institutional system over the surviving members of several indigenous communities. In that way, their institutions were ousted. The reparation of this historical injustice, at that time, required the reversion of the indigenous institutions. However, we are not in 1885 anymore, and several circumstances have changed. Many indigenous and non-indigenous persons live in the same cities, have interests in similar portions of land, and interact with each other in an infinite number of ways. Therefore, it should be assessed whether indigenous claims for their sovereignty to be restored are still valid. In this paper, I argue that, owed to changing circumstances, these claims have less normative force than they had in the past. Therefore, those injustices cannot be redressed in the same way as in 1885. However, I argue that due to the history of oppression indigenous people have suffered, the Argentinian institutional system has to be reformed so that its application over them not being illegitimate. I propose three measures to achieve this aim: self-government over internal affairs, indigenous representatives in the Senate, and institutional change by a simple majority of votes.

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