Laura Pensa

My work looks into the construction and dissemination of different narratives of the Great Chaco region - a lowland space of the Amazonia- and their indigenous inhabitants. It analyzes the mechanisms by which a social and spatial region was geopolitically constituted, both material and symbolically, guided by narratives that have circulated and created certain visual regimes of history in relation to the violence of the colonial past and the continuity of its structures in the republican present. I investigate the connections between the colonial period and the current state of imaginaries surrounding indigenous people, land rights, and their conflicts in Argentina, since collective possession of land based on ethnic identity requires the re- writing of official narratives. This research also analyzes how contemporary native and academic practices have challenged and contested the construction of said narratives and the ways they enact a rupture on colonial and national discourse.