The occupants of lands in the Norpatagonia. The national Inspectors, the ideal colonist and real resident in the early 20th century

Abstract

The present work realizes an approximation to the occupants who populated the north of the Patagonia Argentina, particularly the Territory of Rio Negro, on the base of the reports of inspection realized by civil servants of the National Direction of Earths in the year 1904, 1910 and 1920-21. These reports do not include the totality of the territory, different zones being inspected in these years, particularly the destined ones to work as colonies or reservations -Conesa, Choele Choel, Frías, The Cuy, Valcheta-. The same ones inform about the settlers, the form of possession of the land, the production and the realized investments, classifying and qualifying the settlers of agreement to different variable. The statement constructed by these inspectors was turning out to be the most important input at the moment of deciding the access to the land. There are studied the reports that these state agents were producing, characterizing the conditions of the poblamiento and putting in production of the region on the part of the small producers of minor cattle or crianceros, complementing these sources with the regional press and the existing production on the topic.