Indigenous Peoples in Argentina

Indigenous Peoples In Argentina

Argentina has thirty-five indigenous groups or Argentine Amerindians, according to the Complementary Survey of the Indigenous Peoples of 2004, in the first attempt in more than a hundred years that the government tried to recognize and classify the population according to ethnicity. In the survey, based on self-identification or self-ascription, around 600,000 Argentines declared to be Amerindian or first-generation descendants of Amerindians, that is, 1.6% of the population. The most populous of these were the Mapuche, Kolla, Toba, Guaraní, Wichí, Diaguita, Mocoví, and Huarpe peoples. Many Argentines also claim at least one indigenous ancestor: in a recent genetic study conducted by the University of Buenos Aires, more than 56% of the 320 Argentines sampled were shown to have at least one Amerindian ancestor, of which 10% had Amerindian ancestors in both parental lineages. Jujuy Province, in the Argentine Northwest, is home to the highest percentage of households (11%) with at least one indigenous person or a direct descendant of an indigenous people; Chubut and Neuquén Provinces, in Patagonia, have upwards of 8%.