Uruguay is today the only country in South America who doesn’t recognize Indian people on histerritory, and this although before 1830, date of the State foundation, several ethnic groups (guaraníes,charrúas, chanáes, guenoas, yaros, biguaes) were present in the territory. However, since 1980, some groups revendicate their Charrúa identity. This ethnic group, according to the official History haddisappeared in the XIXth century. The massacre of Salsipuedes, ending the existence of that social,cultural and political group in 1831, has been, indeed, the firts military operation of the uruguayan Nation-State, only one year after his independance.This thesis purposes to analyze the relation between State and Indian, trying to understand the respective places of the forgetting and the memories constructions for individual persons (field) and the official History (archives). The picture of Indian has been builded at the end of the XIXth century through art, history and litterature, from european and creoles projections, in the service of anationalism who denounced the hybridation, and ignored the last Indian communities living in thenational territory. The Indian hidden, the melting-pot’s utopia (crisol de razas), could purpose anhybridation exclusively between european people, and a new uruguayan identity promoted by theNation-State. With the 60’s, some new identitaries speechs appeared. Hidden during the dictatorship(1973-1985), they becoma identitaries indians ethnics revendications, taking advantage of a newpolitical and memorial context. Through the observation of process participing in the emergence of the Néo-Charrúas groups we will see that the object of the historical concealment goes far than Indian people.
