Deforesting the forest. Reflections on the territory, the relationships, and the species in the Argentine Chaco

FLORENCIA TOLA

SANTIAGO

Workshop; Workshop internacional Equivocal (anthropo)cenes,; 2018

puc

In this presentation I will delve into the nuances of the territorial claim of the Toba people of the Argentinean Chaco. While in the public arena they claim their ancestral territory by relying on stereotypes about the indigenous (e.g., resource-conserving ecological Indians and Pachamamism), in the local communities the practices linked to the territory express a plasticity that oscillates between the extraction regulated by the spirits-owners of animals and the accommodation to local and global economic contexts. My aim is to develop the idea that the forest, rather than being seen by the indigenous people with whom I work as a common good that needs to be protected for the benefit of humankind in the broad Anthropocene, is a relationship within a complex relational framework intersected by power and ambiguity, in which indigenous people, the State, NGOs, farmers and non-human beings together make reaccommodations to contemporary socio-political, economic and environmental contexts.