Wichí social-territorial struggles north of the Bermejo river, Salta (1984-2011)

Abstract

In the last decades, the Chaco-Salteño has suffered the advance of agro-productivist and extractivist activities that profoundly affected the lives of peasant and indigenous families. The enclosure of lands that until then were in reserve and clearing for agricultural and livestock purposes caused evictions and dispossession of territories traditionally occupied and used by these social groups. The organizational processes that have been deployed in relation to these phenomena tend to appear intermittent and scattered; however, the struggle has been persistent. The present study tries to analyse the way in which these organizational processes question the advance of capital in the region, its meanings and specificities. The idea is to think of them as modes of articulation and disarticulation, not horizontal or between peers, but in connection with power relations. To specify the analysis, ethnographic work was carried out in the territory during several research stays and joint work with the interlocutors.