Deforesting the forest: Territory and relations in the Argentinean Chaco

Abstract

This article examines the nuances of the Toba (Qom) people’s territorial claims over the Argentinean Chaco. While in the last decade in the public and international arena, they claim their ancestral territory by relying on stereotypes about Latin American Indigenous people (e.g., ecological Indians and Pachamamism), in the local sphere, the practices linked to the territoryexpress a plasticity that oscillates between predatory activities regulated by the spirit owners of animals, protective actions against extractivism, and specific accommodation to disruptive ecological changes. I build on the idea that the monte or 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, is a relation within relations intersected by power and ambiguity. Indigenous people, the nation-state, nongovernmental organizations (NGO), settlers, and nonhuman beings make together accommodations to contemporary ecological degradation and the forest is the result of these relations.