The Indian Policy of Jujuy Province, 1835-1853

The changing status of the Indian population in postindependence Spanish America has been a major theme of historical research and writing, with primary emphasis for obvious reasons on the cases of Mexico and Peru. Bolivia and Guatemala have received a secondary share of attention, but other countries have been relatively ignored. Certainly the case of Argentina is seldom cited save in connection with the ebb and flow of the frontier between Creole settlements and semiautonomous native peoples of the Pampa and Patagonia. The latter story, of course, has more in common with that of westward expansion in the United States than with the situation of settled Indian communities in Mexico or the central Andes. But there are some exceptions even in Argentina, involving native communities more akin to those of Cuzco or Chiapas than to the original inhabitants of Kansas and Wyoming or of the Argentine Pampa.