Between Atlantic and Pacific Capital Intensification: Territorial Experimentation and Mapuche–Tehuelche Agency in the Pampas and Patagonia, 1850–80

This paper examines borderlands and Mapuche-Tehuelche territories as sites of territorial experimentation in the mid- to late nineteenth century. It focuses on the transition from relatively limited forms of state expansion to more intensified projects of control that became more pronounced by the 1870s. Rather than presenting this shift as a simple story of state imposition, the paper analyzes the interaction between expanding state projects and Mapuche-Tehuelche confederacies, whose territorial practices shaped borderland spaces long structured by mobility, trade, and negotiated authority.

The paper explores how growing bi-front (Atlantic and Pacific) international commercial demands and global circuits of capital, articulated through Chilean and Argentine export economies, intensified pressures over land use and labor regulation, transforming borderlands into strategic arenas where multiple actors sought to extend control over space, resources, people, and communication routes. Within these shifting conditions, independent Mapuche and Tehuelche groups in the Pampas and Patagonia actively incorporated and adapted capitalist practices, producing hybrid territorial arrangements that combined older with new mechanisms such as fixed control over routes, tolls, labor regulation, and land use.

At the same time, state structures operating in borderland towns adapted to these hybrid practices. Administrative categories and records—such as tolls, rents and salaries—registered and normalized forms of control that did not fully align with either Indigenous territorial logics or emerging capitalist territorial imaginaries. By tracing these practices, the paper distinguishes analytically between Indigenous territories, borderlands as shared spaces, and state-defined territories, both in practice and in discourse.

Finally, the paper examines the changes of the 1870s by situating them within broader national and international forces linked to capital flows, technological change, and intensified territorial consolidation. It also shows that, despite state-led military campaigns (1879-1884), hybrid territorial practices persisted and continued to shape the region well into the twentieth century.