Exploration and colonization practices. Mauricio Jesperson's narratives about the Gran Chaco during the first half of the 20th century

Abstract

The aim of this article is to provide a first approach to the life and works of Mauricio Jesperson (1888-1969), explorer and colonizer of Gran Chaco who was born in Sweden and arrived to Argentina in 1913 at the age of 25. The figure of Jesperson and his role in the colonization of the Great Chaco have gone unnoticed in the historiography of this region. The article presents and analyzes two types of documentation; a selection of documents from the Jesperson archival fund kept at Lund University's library and some of his published works which were written during his stay in Sweden in the 1940s. Most of the published and unpublished sources are in Swedish. We deal mainly with his accounts of inter-ethnic relations in frontier areas in Southern Chaco as well as colonization practices in this type of areas in Northern Chaco. In this work I emphasize that these publications are valuable historical sources that not only shed light upon the conventional forms of representing the territory and its population but also contribute to a better understanding of the images which emerge as a result of certain practices in the territory. These narratives deal with conflicts and daily life on the frontier, as well as, some aspects of colonization practices until this moment looked over by historiography, especially in what concerns the advance of the Bolivian State on the Pilcomayo and its colonization policies before the Chaco War.