Reimagining the Gran Chaco: Identities, Politics, and the Environment in South America

360 Pages·2021·31.255 MB·English

by  Silvia Hirsch, Paola Canova, Mercedes Biocca

Reimagining the Gran Chaco
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Reimagining the
Gran Chaco
Identities, Politics, and the Environment
in South America
Edited by
Silvia Hirsch, Paola Canova,
and Mercedes Biocca
University of Florida Press
Gainesville
Copyright 2021 by Silvia Hirsch, Paola Canova, and Mercedes Biocca
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America.
26 25 24 23 22 21 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hirsch, Silvia María, editor. | Canova, Paola, editor. | Biocca,
Mercedes, editor.
Title: Reimagining the Gran Chaco : identities, politics, and the
environment in South America / edited by Silvia Hirsch, Paola Canova,
Mercedes Biocca.
Description: Gainesville, FL : University of Florida Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This volume
traces the socioeconomic and environmental changes taking place in the
Gran Chaco, a vast and richly biodiverse ecoregion in South America,
illuminating how the region’s many indigenous groups are negotiating
these transformations in their own terms”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021007599 (print) | LCCN 2021007600 (ebook) | ISBN
9781683402114 (cloth) | ISBN 9781683402862 (pbk) | ISBN 9781683402459 (pdf)
| ISBN 9781683403357 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Indians of South America—Gran Chaco—Ethnic identity. |
Indians of South America—Gran Chaco—Politics and government. | Indians
of South America—Gran Chaco—Social conditions. | Gran
Chaco—Environmental conditions. | Gran Chaco—History.
Classification: LCC F2230.1.E84 R45 2021 (print) | LCC F2230.1.E84
(ebook) | DDC 982/.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007599
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007600
University of Florida Press
2046 NE Waldo Road
Suite 2100
Gainesville, FL 32609
http://upress.ufl.edu
A la juventud chaqueña
que lucha por sus territorios para forjar un futuro mejor
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Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction: The Gran Chaco of South America in Transnational and
Multidisciplinary Perspectives 1
Silvia Hirsch, Paola Canova, and Mercedes Biocca
1. The Rise and Fall of an Indigenous Homeland: The Itiyuro River Basin
in Argentina 28
Federico Bossert
2. Were the Chiriguano a Colonial Fabrication? Linguistic Arguments
for Rethinking Guaraní and Chané Histories in the Chaco 53
Bret Gustafson
3. Cosmology of Development: Humanitarian Narratives and
Missionary Work in the Argentine Gran Chaco 73
César Ceriani Cernadas
4. “They Only Know the Public Roads”: Enlhet Territoriality during the
Colonization of Their Lands 93
Hannes Kalisch
5. Death Ritual as Ethnopoeisis: A Farewell to an Angaité Shaman 118
Rodrigo Villagra Carron
6. Between Resistance and Acquiescence: Experiences of Agrarian
Transformation in Two Indigenous Communities in Chaco Province,
Argentina 141
Mercedes Biocca
7. Infrastructures of Settler Colonialism: Geographies of Violence,
Indigenous Labor, and Marginal Resistance in Paraguay’s Chaco 166
Joel E. Correia
8. Tense Territories: Negotiating Natural Gas in Weenhayek Society 186
Denise Humphreys Bebbington and Guido Cortez
9. The Guaraní People’s Struggle for Indigenous Autonomy
in Bolivia 214
Nancy Postero
10. Ayoreo Women and Access to Health Care: Negotiating the
Multicultural Reform of the State in Paraguay 236
Paola Canova
11. Multiterritoriality and the Tapiete Trinational Experience in
the Chaco 256
Silvia Hirsch
Afterword: The Contested Terrain of the Gran Chaco 277
Gastón Gordillo
Works Cited 283
List of Contributors 317
Index 321
Illustrations
Figures
4.1. Maangvayaam’ay’, January 2020 97
5.1. Gregorio Navarro, Wilfredo Navarro, and the shaman Laureano
Ayala 126
7.1. Yakye Axa, 2016, seen from Ruta 5 170
8.1. Timeline of natural gas development and territorial recognition in
Weenhayek lands 197
10.1. Indigenous people outside the INDI office in Asunción, 2019 239
10.2. Amistad Health Clinic in Filadelfia, Paraguay, 2020 245
11.1. Entrance to Guaraní Ñandeva community, near Filadelfia,
Paraguay 267
11.2. Young women in an evangelical campaign, Tartagal, Argentina,
2019 270
11.3. Trinational Tapiete meeting, 2004, Tartagal, Argentina 272
Maps
0.1. The Gran Chaco region 4
0.2. Current areas of indigenous groups studied in this book 25
1.1. The first known cartographic reference to the Itiyuro indigenous
village, circa 1800 31
1.2. Ranches in Chané territory, around mid-nineteenth century 45
4.1. Sites in Enlhet territory in Paraguay 94