tamago en la casa del hombre blanco

TAmagno analyzes the recreation of toba identity in the city of La Plata, through recreating cultural practices. She questions how is identity maintained in spite of assimilationist, acculturation, or proletarization as different authors predict. This is done by redefining territoriality as a discontinuous urban and rural, defined in the historical experience. This experience of migration is thus reconstructed through a series of significant points during migration, as are the intermediate points in between places of origin and the final destination in the city. In spite of the spacial discontinuity among these places there is a symbolic unity, recreated by history and by the trips to the rural areas. There is a strong emphasis among the tobas o get a place in the city where "they could live all together". the toba presence in the city starts in the 60 and appears as a paradox. In spite the first settlements were connected with other settlements in cities and with the rural communities, teh quesion n whether if the people were aboriginal outside the chac is a paradox to recognition. Should government apply indigenist policy with them? [ estas son paradojas nuestras me prece, en todo caso lelvan a la necesidad de reformulaciones, por otro lado invalida la presencia indigena como fundante de la ciudad].
The chaco apperas as a unifying and reference point in the historical narratives about migration and coming to the city. Pampa del Indio appears as a central point in the migrant toba's narratives. [she does not mention whethere spcecific locations are refered, ut probably this is not a central point in her argument]. If initially the group was located in Quilmes, then a part of it moves to La Plata. Others come form Ciudadela Norte (Fuerte Apache), they move form Ciudadela and QUilmes to either La Plata or Derqui, however some families remain in those locations. In La Plata they get land and the possibility of building houses, a work that starts in 1992, through the government "Plan Pro tierra" . The particularity is that the indigenou specificity is not rrecognized, but rather they are given the houses as urban poor, the lands remain as fiscal, they do not yet have a "personería jurídica" [legal recognition as an indigenous association]. The group is not included as legitimate demanders of historic reparation measures as they are not settling in their traditional lands. However in 1999 the city mayor recognizes is presence as a community represented by the Toba Association. The association, even with no legal recognition, was created in 1991 and was according to the author the unifying entity negotiating with the government. For her the community is not only a level of political organization but also a form o flife manifested in the spatial organization of the houses and the use of common areas (where all children play together and all adults watch over all of them). The church, La Iglesia Unida, is also a significant institution bringing people together, organizing communal acivities and keeping links with the Chaco.
She rejects the notion of marginality, as she says that people are in fact integrated in different levels, as well as functionally suboridnated to the city. She points to the fact of language loss, but this is not just a tendency in La Plata but in other urban neighborhoods in the Chaco region too. Kinship is significant way that connects people in the city as well as maintains ties with the rural communities that they visit with frequency. She observes that who travel the most are the married women who generally take the younger kids with them, they stay between one week and three months, and a lot of times the purpose of the trip is to tak care of an ill relative. (paraphrasing page 197). The places they are most in contact with is Quitilipi, Pampa, and Bo. Toba Resistencia. The women political participation in the neighbourhood is secondary and regarded as "help" to the men, thus they are responsible of going to state institutions when men cannot. She concludes that there is not a single identity being produced in the city but a a complex subject position in relation to ethnicity, class, religion. Thus the city is a locus with which the tobas relate but not a space with a rigid socializing structure that is imposed over them. Overall she wants to contribute a better understanding about the internal migrants who hve gone to the city and are regarded under this generic category but many times forced to keep indigenous adscription aside.