Race and authenticity in Argentine comics, 1950s–1970s: Indigenous peoples, mestizos, and white settlers on the frontier

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses several Argentine comics published between the 1950s and 1970s that depict the racialised hinterlands of state expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whether set in Argentina or the US, these comics are often celebrated as works that dismantle traditional dichotomies found in comics (e.g. white heroes vs. Indigenous villains). Referring to their use of the archive, of more nuanced Indigenous characters, and even of narratives constructed from “an Indigenous worldview”, comics creators are seen to disrupt stereotypical depictions of race. Positioning the works within a history of race in Argentina and political struggles over its rural interior, I unpack the creators’ claims to “authenticity” to set out an alternative reading of Indigeneity, mestizaje, and whiteness in these comics. I argue that this corpus ultimately preserves existing racial hierarchies by promoting figures of whiteness who support white settlerism in the name of modernisation and progress.