Afterlives in captivity: Indigeneity and penal deportation in southeastern South America

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study analyzes intersections between penal deportation and Indigenous captivity in southeastern South America during the eighteenth century. Via records on Lincompani, a cacique taken captive in the southern borderlands of Buenos Aires and exiled to the Malvinas Islands alongside other prison laborers (presidiarios), it highlights the scale of penal deportation within the early Americas and connects the practice to the formation of geopolitical borders. As colonial officials banished purported criminals to borders, rather than across them, and banished male Indigenous captives from one borderland to another, these forced migrations reinforced territorialized spatial logics and contributed to Indigenous land dispossession. Drawing upon a half century of records from Malvinas, the article also analyzes convicts' and captives' experiences of penal deportation, highlighting instances when their shared status as presidiario may have superseded or been subordinated to ethnic distinctions, considering the gendered logics that shaped their banishment, and reflecting upon the narration of their actions via colonial records.