The article analyses the perceptions of natives of a rural community on their territory in the region of the Lavalle Desert (Mendoza Province, Argentina). Framed in an ethnic (re)articulation process, the dispute for identity recognition as well as for the land historically occupied, promotes a (re)signification process in the local people of their past. Thus, the appropriation modes of territory and meanings of community are also revisited. The use of the photo elicitation technique based on images produced by local participants, allowed to identify the attributed significance to the natural and cultural space, the social practices and the community in the production of meanings of territory. Either the self-valuation of territorial knowledge in space and time, as well as the positive inversion of the term desert as a stigma, intervene in the positive reaffirmation of their identity and the legitimacy of their claims.