Landscape Domestication among two Mbya-Guarani Communities of the Province of Misiones, Argentina

POCHETTINO, MARÍA LELIA; MARTÍNEZ, MARÍA ROSA; CRIVOS, MARTA

Ethnobiology and Biocultural Diversity

University of Georgia Press

Lugar: Athens, GA, USA; Año: 2002; p. 696 - 704

The concept of domestication, from the biological point of view, traditionally refers to the modifications (genetic and morphological) of plants and animals that result from the action of man by means of the process of cultural selection (León 1987; Rival 1998). In this sense, the Latin etymology of the word is expressive (domus: house), as long as it refers to the incorporation of plants and animals into the domestic scope. Based on our analysis of the obtainment and production of natural resource in the Valle of the Cuñapirú we are able to extend traditional limits of the domestic unit to include spaces that are traditionally considered pristine (e.g., the monte). Balée (1989) argued that aboriginal people of the tropical forests have created biotic niches that become real anthropogenic forests since prehistoric times. We agree, and believe that understanding the domestication of these spaces is an important next step. The existence of forests that are the product 8 Pochettino, Martínez and Crivos of a narrow and ancient association between various plant and animal species and human beings is evident from our observations of Mbyá subsistence-related activities. To the concept of the «anthropogenic» forest we can also apply to these spaces the concept of landscape, in the sense of a common space for activities of living creatures. (Centre for Strategic Studies in Cultural Environment, Nature and Landscape History, University of Southern Denmark). As stated by Greider and Garkovich (1994): Landscapes are the symbolic environments created by human acts of conferring meaning to nature and the environment, of giving environment definition and form from a particular angle of vision and through a special filter of values and beliefs. In this sense, the landscape configurated by the way of life of the Mbyá communities is integrated both by spaces obviously domesticated—the chacra and the capuera—and by the monte. For the Mbyá, the notion of monte as well as that attributed to the flow of water through the monte do not refer to pristine spaces. The monte is not an undifferentiated spaces, but neither is it presented as antithetic to human activity: the monte is a place where human activity finds the natural conditions that make it possible.