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After Centuries of Loss, Seeds of Hope for Argentina’s Indigenous People

Fermín Acuña, vice president of the Ranquel Chieftains Council in Santa Rosa, Argentina, at a monument where the prominent 19th-century chieftain Panguithruz Güor is buried. The Ranquel recovered this stretch of land in 2001 and moved his remains there from a museum.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

VICTORICA, Argentina — Each year on the night of June 23, they gather at the sacred outpost on the brown flatlands to celebrate New Year’s on a pre-Columbian calendar. Wearing ponchos and a type of jewelry called tupu, they make offerings of food, feast on barbecued ribs and tell stories. In the morning, they march around a ceremonial wooden stake and a fire fueled through the night to honor the land.

For the indigenous Ranquel (pronounced Ran-KEL), the scene is charged with many emotions, and offers a glimpse of their resurgence amid a long struggle for recognition after centuries of hardship and loss.

Similar struggles, of course, have unfolded across both South and North America, but the sense of being excluded from the national conversation has been particularly acute for the indigenous peoples of Argentina.

While policy makers in Buenos Aires and the provinces have made reconciliation efforts, indigenous leaders were baffled when Mauricio Macri, after winning the presidential election last year, singled out the achievements of influential European immigrants in his victory speech. (He later sought to calm the waters by meeting with indigenous representatives.)

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Indigenous groups from across Argentina met at an annual encounter in Santa Rosa last month to draft a document to be sent to the government on issues like land rights and health care.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

“No Argentine president has truly tried to repair the damage done to indigenous people,” said Pedro Coria, 51, a trade unionist and the president of the Ranquel Chieftains Council in Santa Rosa, the capital of La Pampa Province.

That damage began after the Spanish conquest, with forced labor in mines far from ancestral homelands and the colonial masters’ use of people as currency in business deals. The native tribes fought back in the 19th century with several incursions. But in the late 1870s, Julio Argentino Roca, a general and soon to be president, led a campaign called the Conquest of the Desert, which seized the pampas and northern Patagonia from them.

General Roca, long considered a hero who opened the wilderness to poor European immigrants and united an unruly nation, has more recently been labeled a genocidal murderer by some historians and activists. That has led to campaigns to rename boulevards dedicated to him, tear down his statues and even remove images of him and his conquest from the 100-peso note.

Yet a consensus on the past treatment of indigenous people, and on responding to their grievances now, has proved elusive. The influential and conservative newspaper La Nación, in a lengthy editorial, recently leapt to General Roca’s defense.

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Juan José Serraino, a goat breeder who is part Ranquel, lives in a small community of Ranquel descendents in Victorica who successfully petitioned the government for reinstatement of their land rights and were conditionally given a six-hectare parcel.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

Indigenous movements in other parts of the region have seen high-profile triumphs. Bolivia has had an indigenous president, Evo Morales, for more than a decade. In Paraguay, an indigenous language on equal footing with Spanish continues to thrive. Ecuador’s government incorporated indigenous concepts in the Constitution in 2008.

In Argentina, however, the commemorations of the nation’s bicentennial in July chafed, seeming to confirm suspicions among native peoples that their culture and history were being ignored.

In a statement, some groups asked rhetorically, “What do we have to celebrate?”

But as debates about the Qom and Wichí people in the north of Argentina often hinge on child malnutrition, and as the Mapuche people in Patagonia battle the encroaching shale oil industry, Ranquel communities have emerged as patient champions of indigenous rights.

The communities have secured a string of victories, including settling land disputes and phonetically transcribing textbooks to preserve their language, which was unwritten. More broadly, they have reversed a tradition among provincial Argentines of concealing their Ranquel ancestry. An indigenous bloodline no longer elicits shame; rather, it is esteemed.

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A monument to Ranquel culture in Leuvucó, which had been their largest settlement before a 19th-century Argentine leader reneged on treaties. The eight figures in the monument symbolize chiefs.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

“They have toiled away largely unnoticed,” said Graciana Pérez Zavala, a historian at the National University of Río Cuarto who has written widely on the Ranquel.

“They’re ripping apart the notion that indigenous people were exterminated during the Conquest of the Desert,” she added. “They are showing that they are alive.”

A short distance from Victorica, a farming town of about 6,000 enveloped by forests of caldén trees, the Ranquel can point to perhaps their proudest achievement — the return of a two-hectare site (about five acres) that was part of their largest settlement, Leuvucó, before General Roca reneged on peace treaties and sent soldiers rampaging across the central plains.

They recovered the barren stretch of land in 2001 after putting aside clan rivalries and enlisting the aid of federal and provincial authorities. That is where they celebrate New Year’s, and it is where they buried the remains of a prominent 19th-century chieftain, Panguithruz Güor, that had been kept in a museum 500 miles away.

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A meal at the national encounter of indigenous groups from across Argentina last month.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

To outsiders, the patch of land and the rusting monument to several Ranquel chieftains may seem little more than symbols. But they have power.

“Symbolism is important,” Fernanda Alonso, the social development minister for La Pampa Province, said in an interview in Santa Rosa. For the Ranquel to flourish, she said, “they have to reconstruct their past.”

Previously, visitors to La Pampa were unlikely to learn much about the province’s indigenous heritage, though they might have noticed the image of a mounted Ranquel on the provincial crest and some of the ancient trails.

Though some scholars point to earlier endeavors to advance the cause of indigenous people, 2001 is widely viewed as the year of a rebirth for the Ranquel, energizing more than 20 communities across La Pampa.

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A class in the Ranquel language at the headquarters of the Chieftains Council in Santa Rosa last month.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

“The restitution was a landmark,” said María Inés Serraino, 47, a science teacher in Victorica, where her neighbors announce their arrival with a rhythmic clap of hands. “It is paving the way to rescue a culture we were always denied.”

Ms. Serraino recalled how her paternal grandmother, a Ranquel who married a Sicilian immigrant, regaled her with stories about indigenous values, like cherishing nature and communal life.

In recent years, she and her family have formed a Ranquel community of 14 people, recognized by the National Institute for Indigenous Affairs.

Though bolstered by a law passed in 2006, indigenous peoples across Argentina continue to struggle over land rights. But Ms. Serraino’s community, named for her grandmother, has conditionally been given a six-hectare parcel by the municipal authorities. On the land, her group wants to revive the tradition of community subsistence farming. It is also putting up a small building for meetings and cultural events.

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Mercedes Soria, an indigenous leader, led the opening ceremony at the national encounter.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

Similar success stories are being replicated across central Argentina, not just in La Pampa but in neighboring San Luis Province, too.

In western La Pampa, the authorities have supported Ranquel communities, including one called Epumer, that have been threatened with eviction because of legal battles over territory. Fears abound of an escalation in such disputes as farmers seek new frontiers beyond Argentina’s agricultural heartland.

Seeking to reconnect the population with its indigenous roots, leaders also give talks to schoolchildren. And in Santa Rosa, which will host a Latin American summit meeting of indigenous peoples this month, the chieftains council moved about five years ago into modest rented headquarters that house a small library and guest rooms.

In a meeting room where a newly designed Ranquel flag is displayed, classes in the Ranquel language are taught to groups of adults. In Victorica, road signs even carry Ranquel translations of Spanish street numbers.

Still, obstacles persist. Advocates, for instance, say no community has yet been handed the deeds to reclaimed lands.

And highlighting the tentative nature of even the Ranquel’s most pivotal accomplishment, Osvaldo R. Borthiry, 83, the landowner who donated the two hectares at the Leuvucó site, said his children would decide the property’s future.

Others dismiss the idea of working within the system and call for a separatist stance. “When your country does not represent who you are, what else can you do?” said Miguel Ángel Saulo, 62, a leader of the Tehuelche people in the south of Argentina.

But the Ranquel and their supporters remain undeterred.

“It used to be embarrassing to say that you were a descendant of indigenous people,” said Marcela Suárez, 46, a janitor, as she stamped around the wooden stake at Leuvucó. “Now it makes you proud.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: After Centuries, Seeds of Hope for Indigenous Argentines. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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