The Silences of Agrarian Change in Two Indigenous Communities in Chaco Province, Argentina

This paper analyses the multiple forms in which state policies, the actions of dominant classes and the everyday practices of subaltern groups interact and shape the dynamics of agrarian change at a local level. Taking a long-term historical perspective, the paper shows how those processes are perceived, experienced and acted upon differently according to the various ways in which displacement, negotiation and resistance are inscribed in local collective memory.
The ethnographic work that underpins this analysis focuses on two indigenous communities in the province of Chaco, Argentina: the Qom community of Pampa del Indio and the Moqoit community from Las Tolderías. Exploring the memories of past periods and the concrete mechanisms through which agrarian change occurs, the work analyses the multiple perceptions and positions that members of these communities adopt in relation to the model of industrial agriculture linked to the expansion of soybean cultivation, and how in so doing they give rise to different process of rural transformation.