Ala Plastica Interview

Otros­Nosotros: An Interview with Ala Plastica

(November 8, 2007 and August 2011, San Diego, California)

Translation by Annie Mendoza, Fabian Cerejido and Grant Kester

You have worked largely in the Rio de la Plata basin. Can you describe the area briefly?

The Rio de la Plata basin has an expanse of 3,200,000 square kilometers, approximately one third of the area of the United States and almost equal in size to all of the countries that make up the European Union. It stretches into Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. The basin consists of a dense network of streams, tributaries and smaller rivers, which eventually meet up in two rivers—the Paraná and the Uruguay—whose waters pass through a delta of 14,000 square kilometers. After traveling 320 kilometers through gently sloping ground, they enter the estuary of the Río de la Plata through fourteen different river­mouths. The whole river and lake network of the River de la Plata Basin forms a kind of feedback system, which charges and re­charges the huge Guarani Aquifer. The basin is at the center of many discussions related to the process of privatization, and the geo­politics involved in the expropriation of water resources by capitalist enterprises. It has been home to tens of millions of people, including many of the native populations of the Americas, which dwell in the area of the Andes (Kolla and the dry lands (Toba and Huichís) and the lower regions and coastal jungle 1The basin is also home to Europeans, who first arrived at the time of the Spanish conquest. Beginning in the late nineteenth century subsequent waves of immigration brought settlers from Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Middle East.

I know you’ve worked regularly with willow cultivation in the past. What is the history of willow or wicker crops in the area?

more than a century ago, to attract the settlement of European colonists in the coastal areas, where they reproduced ancestral practices from their countries of origin. Over time they gradually transformed these landscapes into what we might define as "neo­ecosystems." In addition to willow cultivation in the areas of the Delta and the Estuary, other forms of agricultural production are practiced all along the river basin, which invigorate the local economies.

When did the government first become interested in the "development" of the Rio de la Plata?

In Argentina the term “Kolla” or “Collas” is generally used to refer to anyone of Quechua­Aymara origin.

1

The Western perspective on these territories has always centered on mining or extraction industries. To clarify this point it is enough to note that the toponym “Rio de la Plata” (“River of Silver,” first used in 1516) reflects the fact that this river was the point of entry into the two main rivers to the silver mines of Potosi.2 Since then the extractive imperative has been applied without interruption throughout the region. In the last decade a new extractive conception, which treats the various eco­systems of the planet as part of a “global factory,” has taken root. This concept has already produced an expansion of industrial agriculture and forced the displacement of people at a level never seen before in the region. This situation clearly reflects a power struggle that is at the center of the debate on globalization, as the nation­state loses power to transnational corporations. For many, the progress of the globalization process is such that nation states are not only getting weaker: they are disappearing altogether. What is less clear is what will replace them.3

In 2000 the twelve Latin American presidents agreed to initiate the Project for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (Proyecto de Integracion de la Infraestructura Regional Sudamericana) or IIRSA, an ambitious plan for the implementation of physical projects as well as changes in laws, rules and regulations, to facilitate regional and global trade. The IIRSA initiative stems from a strategic business vision generated years ago (1996) in the corridors of corporate banking institutions, and was based on an assessment of the productive capabilities of various territories in the region, along with the physical infrastructure (transport, energy and telecommunications) needed to support business opportunities. IIRSA is a state and private coordinator for a wide range of projects that already existed and which have now been given a regional framework linked with the imperatives of neo­liberal globalization.

Is there a history of organized political resistance in the Rio de la Plata basin?

The answer to this question is "yes," however this "yes" is multidimensional. The first dimension is at the micro­regional scale, for example, on the southern fringe of the estuary or on the delta. These areas are characterized by a post­industrial situation. Many of the inhabitants of these areas have developed physical and intellectual activities closely related to the ecosystem and have over the years, and in accordance to the very peculiar history of Argentina, embraced different forms of organization and political reorganization, associations, unions, political parties, etc. A second dimension concerns political resistance within the territorial state. Argentina in particular has a rich history of resistance and civil achievement associated with the struggle of these organized groups. We can analyze a third dimension beginning with the impact of the trans­nationalization process on the region, in the service of economic operations aimed at revitalizing the global economy.

These began during the military dictatorship of the 1970s and evolved further during the 1990s. Currently, most of the initiatives being proposed by the new “progressive” 2

Potosi in Bolivia was one of Spain’s main sources of power and wealth during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Enormous silver deposits were discovered there in 1545.

3

See, for example, Gerardo Evia, “La Republica de la Soja: Las Alegorias de la Globalizacion,” on Agropecuaria.org: http://www.agropecuaria.org/analisis/EviaRepublicaSoja.htm.

governments in Latin America as part of the IIRSA, are identical to ones that local governments tried to implement in the last decade of the twentieth century during the apogee of neo­liberalism in the region, particularly in Brazil and Argentina. At that time the towns in the regions of Brazil and Argentina affected by these initiatives organized protests against them, as part of a widespread process of public debate and dissent. As a result of these protests they were able to stop, or at least hinder, these initiatives.

How did your work develop over time in relationship to this history?

During the 1990s there was a big shift in the “tradition” of political resistance struggles that had emerged in Argentina since the coup d’etat in the mid­‘70s. That was a very tragic event, especially in our city of La Plata. Do you remember the work at the La Plata City Zoo, which we started in 1991? We re­claimed the library, abandoned for thirty years, as a center for communication, and we brought in other artists to “deconstruct” old jail facilities in the area.

4

This project was designed to recuperate public space and generate an active dialogue that could capture the social gestalt of the community after years characterized by fear of the outside and the deep feelings of apprehension left behind by the dictatorship.

What did this local resistance to the experience of privatized and fragmented life lead to?

4

Ala Plastica, La Plata Zoo Recuperation Project, 1992-2002.

In the mid­‘90s, with the project “Junco: Emerging Species,” (Reeds: Emerging Species) we began to articulate different visions for the region with the communities along the estuary of Río de la Plata.

5

One of these visions involved challenging the “techno­political” mindset of corporations and governmental agencies by exploring new, creative ways to develop and apply alternative social and environmental profiles for coastal development. We reclaimed local community centers as bases of resistance to the mega­construction projects then being imposed on the region (dams, bridges, etc.). A research team composed of civil actors from the area was constituted in response to the Shell oil­spill in the Rio de la Plata delta in 1999. It assessed the spill’s impact through participatory diagnostics, it generated mitigating actions, and it denounced the oil spill and the actions of Shell in the local, national and international media. These actions helped to open up a dialogue on alternative energy and climate change in Argentina.

5

With Junco/Especies Emergentes 1995, [The Reed/Emergent Species] Ala Plástica, begins to articulate various visions of the region by creating communication and cooperation platforms side by side with communities along the Estuary of the La Plata River.

6

From there we arrive at the social explosion that occurred in 2001, in response to the economic crisis following Argentina’s debt default. Across the country people protested and emphatically rejected neo­liberalism. Workers throughout the country took over abandoned factories and many co­operative enterprises were formed. One of these co­operatives was the Costa de Berisso. We collaborated with them in the development of new strategies for the use of wicker, improving production techniques and incorporating new perspectives about sustainability. In all these cases, and in many others we can’t describe here, what we did was part of this broader resistance movement. We operate at a panoramic distance from urban conflicts that, by their nature, demand exemplary and almost theatrical action. Instead, we have ended up working in the outskirts of the mega­city of Buenos Aires, a place where you can feel the encroachment of the concrete mass under your feet. Pressed against the river, we see the soft resistance of the natural order as it challenges the walls that try to contain it and, furthermore, generates new territories of life. It was here that we learned that it is important to resist not only as part of the natural process of survival, but in response to a fundamental obligation to transform reality.

You often use metaphors when you describe your work (rhizomes or root systems, weaving, etc.) that are derived from nature. Do you think it's possible to derive political insights from the natural world?

6

Shell Oil Spill - research with artistic methods 1999

The emergence of a new, historically vital movement first occurs in the form of an imaginative transfiguration of reality, and oftentimes this cannot be defined using a structure of scientific certainty. The organic references that we employ are conceptual tools that begin to establish a web of similarities and reciprocities, but the new system that will ultimately emerge will also be produced through the unpredictable adventure of social processes. We maintain the right to cultivate new senses and new forms of subjectivity in our work in order to contribute to the emergence to a new form of life.

Current proposals circulated by the IIRSA focus primarily on the extraction of natural resources, is that correct?

Yes, the government’s plan is basically to encourage the large­scale extraction of natural resources (through mining, industrial farming, transgenic mono­cultivation, timber, etc.), along with large construction projects associated with transportation, energy, gas, water, etc. Under this mandate the concept of regional integration is reduced to the process of preparing physical territories for the free movement of all those elements that might have a market value, and the streamlining of administrative factors (lifting the bureaucratic or regulatory restrictions of states or territories).

Are there other plans or proposals being developed to challenge this vision?

Nothing that can compete on that scale. In the territory of the Plata Basin there are significant operational differences in terms of the resources available to those who are working to support an integrated model of neo­liberal globalization and those who support the territorial integrity of communities in the region, who face significant challenges. In 2005 we began holding a series of meetings with a groups and organizations from Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina that are active at several levels, in the emblematic city of Asunción.

This followed an initiative by “SOBREVIVENCIA­ AT – Paraguay” (Survival at Paraguay). In these meetings we discovered that we had a common interest in monitoring the actions of IIRSA in the region, and in confronting its vision with an alternative model of integration based on emergent conceptions generated by the local people and on activities that preserve and nourish the network of life in the region. We want to strengthen the argument against the IIRSA from a socio­ecological perspective, in order to counter the unilateral techno/political descriptions of the area’s reality being put forward by the government and corporate sector. This collaboration was established in order to develop, implement, interpret and publicize new and creative social and environmental models for the Rio de la Plata basin, based on the systematic collection of information regarding sustainable practices in local communities (micro experiences, life stories, existing initiatives, flows of ideas, artistic creation, etc.). Our goal was the creation of spaces and platforms for sharing information and generating ideas, with different, complementary, levels of collaboration with those groups and individuals that had already begun to devise models of integration based on the positive evolution of the basin’s territorial identity.

7

I know you’ve developed a number of different projects and initiatives over the years. Can you give us a rough chronology?

In response to this question we created a graphic timeline of our initiatives. We also added a sketch of a mental map that we hope can illustrate our working dynamic, its continuities and relationships. As this map suggests, we understand our work at three levels or scales: Hidroamérica, Basin and Estuary. Until 2005 our work focused on the delta and the Rio de la Plata estuary. Later it expanded, as we began to form relationships with other organizations working in the basin, which were interested in our work. They in turn began sharing their contacts with us, so that we could foster connections between problems and possible solutions at the bioregional level. Currently, all of our projects are developing simultaneously. They are like a web that is constantly being woven. Our status as an NGO operating in the basin, and internationally at different levels of discussion and action, gives us a very active and diversified public profile.

7

GIS-Rhizome Initiative. Paraguay 2005

8

Are the various projects located in different areas? Or do you always involve same group of participants?

Actually we don’t consider all of our all activities within the category of "projects." The idea of "projecting" (in Spanish the verb “proyectar” means “to plan”) presupposes a fixed objective or goal defined beforehand. This would constrain the potential of our interaction with the social groups that we engage, as well as the unexpected developments generated by the interchange itself. We prefer to speak of "initiatives," and within them of various "exercises" that multiply, involving people and groups with whom we establish dialogues and develop actions based on principles of reciprocity. With some groups we build lasting relationships and stay connected through new stages of collaboration. Ala Plastica consists of an “otros­nosotros” (literally: “others­us”), which is, in turn, part of an emerging movement in the community. While participants vary, at this point we can say that there is a fairly large trans­disciplinary network that understands and shares the heuristic form of our work, and with whom we regularly share and build our practice9.

8

Map of relations Hidroamérica, Basin and Estuary.

These practices adopt an interdisciplinary and trans-cultural perspective, intermingling ethics and aesthetics.

We encourage dialogues between knowledge and power within different social and artistic groups. In this “Living-Together,” the concepts of idiolect and idiorrythmics, suggest the possibility that the individual can find his or her personal rhythm within a larger group. This insight could be extremely useful in artistic practices centered around inter-subjective exchanges across the boundaries of different languages and cultures. See Alicia 9

11. How were your projects and ideas presented to communities in the region?

And how were you perceived by these communities?

We have never felt, nor were we ever perceived, like intruders in the places that we carry out our work. Our attitude does not arouse suspicion or lack of trust, but rather interest and curiosity. There are times when we must approach a situation in an indirect manner, for example installing an apparently decontextualized object in a public place, as in the case of the “white table” we placed in a park in Hamburg. The most interesting aspect of this exercise was the fact that we didn’t know a word of German. Nevertheless, we had previously undertaken a thorough investigation of community sensibilities along the river Wandse in Hamburg, which gave us a certain perspective that made the sincerity of our interest in the area evident. Our method of working is characterized by a distinct and important element. Simply put, we identify ourselves as emerging from the community, as developers of a self­organizing dynamic, and not as therapists who “descend” upon the community. We share the experiences of the community with a profound interest, we learn from the experiences of others and we respect the diversity of the community’s singularities.

10

Romero and Marcelo Giménez, “Arqueología de lo Sensible: Artes Comunitarias, Colectivas y Participativas Contemporáneas en Argentina”. Available at: ww.deartesypasiones.com.ar/03/docartef/2006-VIII%20IHAAL-1.doc.

10

River Wandse Bypass Attitude. Galerie für Landschaftkunst 2004. For more information see http://alaplastica.mwsysteme.de/

12. Is there ever any suspicion or distrust of your intentions?

The distrust exists primarily between us and the ”men in grey” who look askance at us for operating in discursive and institutional spaces that, while ostensibly “public,” they are used to treating as their own private domain.11 They don’t trust us because they see that we have placed ourselves in a critical relationship to a zone of conflict, or because they don’t like people who intrude into or investigate spaces that they have been accustomed to controlling. Fortunately this is not the situation with people in general. Our presence generally makes people in positions of power uncomfortable, no matter what type of power we are talking about. It made the representatives of the Shell Company uncomfortable on the coast of the Magdalena. It made the Secretaries of Mining—who wanted to disrupt the formation of a co­operative of salt workers in the Andean plateau, privatize ancestral lands, and destroy local economies—uncomfortable. It made the corrupt municipal representatives, with whom we publically debated the need to develop systems of participatory budgeting, uncomfortable. In all these situations Ala Plastica is annoying, and if they could make us disappear today they would. In fact they try to disappear us all the time, from the media, from the spaces we occupy, from the opinion of the community. As Eduardo Molinari writes, "The long shadows of state totalitarianism and terrorism still cast themselves on the streets of the neighborhoods.”12

13. How did you negotiate your relationships with indigenous groups? How did you earn their trust?

To give one example, our introduction to the members of the Kolla community and their representative institutions (the Aboriginal Community Council) came through the Network of Health and Plants of Argentina (the Red de Salud y Plantas of Argentina) and the experimental plant nursery El Albardón, with which we share a long friendship thanks to our work in the estuary. The Kolla live in the area of the western headwaters of the Rio de la Plata Basin, in the Andes.

11

We take this phrase from Eduardo Molinari’s 2008 essay “Tras los Pasos del Hombre de Maíz” (“Following in the Footsteps of the Corn Man”). See: http://archivocaminante.blogspot.com.

12 Ibid.

13

We wanted to work with them to recover ancient trails in the region. The plan was to re­draw these paths through an intense walking experience, in order to create a new understanding of the chaotic space/time juxtapositions that have characterized northern Argentina for the past five hundred years. This work was intended to generate a new, more harmonious, cognitive itinerary, and to explore the contradictions of these places, providing guidance to the young who don’t know the land of their ancestors. It also facilitated dialogue at various nodal points along the re­discovered trails. These are key events in the production of subjectivity, aimed at preserving the spirituality of life. They are also useful tools for exploring, step by step, the territorial strategies of the State.

In the case of our connection with the Ayoreo culture from the northern Paraguayan Chaco, this was facilitated by the Amotocodie Initiative.14 This is an organization that unites anthropologists, geographers and philosopers. It was born out of the rapid expansion of the borders of western civilization and the concrete threat that expansion has posed to both the “silvicola” groups of the Ayoreo ethnic group, one of the last communities in the Americas to remain in voluntary isolation from modern society, as well as for the still extensive forests with which they co­exist. 15 Iniciativa Amotocodie is one of the organizations that form the 13

Salt Trail performance. 2005 For more information see http://www.iniciativa-amotocodie.org 15 The term “Silvicola” refers to indigenous groups that have consciously sought to avoid contact with modern society. It is estimated that there are around one hundred surviving Ayorea families living today in the mountain interior, preserving their nomadic style of life and traditions.

14

Walamba Group. The Walamba Group is a forum for the continuous production of synergies and the exchange of experiences among groups that are working to support the sustainability of the Gran Chaco.

14. Can you give specific examples of the "communication programs" you create in your work and how they function?

Initially we get some indication of which issues will awaken our sense of commitment to a topic through a political analysis of the territorial and social situation, and by reading social policy and planning documents related to the area. We also approach local actors and discuss with them the historical reality, the climate changes and the topography, hydrology, and productive modes of the areas in which they live. From there, over the span of several conversations, we explore the utopian visions of the inhabitants and the potential of the different areas of the region, something emerges which we define as the "vocation of the place" or a “local calling” (vocación del lugar). Then we develop workshops to engage local residents, who deeply value resources that give them a sense of their “power to do” (su poder hacer).16 From that point on, we begin to share images, model for the photographs, or otherwise integrate ourselves into the situation; this is only the first step.

Our documentation and recording equipment is very low­tech; we don’t define our creative strategies through it. In contrast to these technical "limitations" the material itself is the product of a thorough investigation that crosses diverse areas of knowledge and precisely defined concepts. This material is aimed at elaborating the situation of a particular community in relation to the conflicts, threats and potentialities that confront it. After we establish the context of a given public space we propose some kind of re­functioning or re­disposition. In each case we work collaboratively to help improve the place, and thus begins the sharing of more intimate experiences. Once we are more aware of the reality and the utopias, libraries are organized, videos and magazines are edited, public lectures are offered, and workshops are held, as well as fairs, exhibitions, presentations and projects in which, by now, we are co­participants. From that moment on new forms of collective action and creativity are mobilized which challenge unidirectional visions of reality. At this point we can say that community is being created.

15. What effects do these workshops and other events have on your collaborators? In what way were they transformative?

The first thing that is transformed is ourselves. Our perceptions change every time we enter into contact with others with whom we develop activities. The result is not an invention over which Ala Plástica could or would want to claim copyright, but something that we consciously help to catalyze. Another effect involves the development of a diversity of actions that involve natural, cultural and economic processes, and that publicize and give This concept comes from John Holloway’s work. See Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (London: Pluto Press, 2002). In Holloway's words "doing" means creating or building.

16

visibility to local forms of knowledge. For example: the improvement of crop production techniques for forests; new uses for wicker and non­standardized designs to develop sustainable strategies based on renewable coastal resources; the installation of thirty two solar panels obtained in an unorthodox way, etc. The final effect involves our participation in the creation of fronts or alliances of civil resistance that challenge mega­engineering projects, such as the planned Punta Lara­Colonia bridge and dams, and which seek to revalorize territories in the basin and enhance connectivity among various groups there, leading to new and independent actions.

17

16. Can you talk in more detail about your work with the Kolla (The Salt Trail/Camino de la Sal)? What occurred during the actual walks along the trail?

The participants were Severiano Lamas, Narciso Gutierrez, Carlos Gustavo Gutierrez, Mario Felipe Mendez, Jesús Cari, Carlos Salas, Jesús Corimayo, Matilde Zucaro, Ivonne Galatoire, Marcelo Miranda and Alejandro Meitin of the Vivero Experimental El Albardón and of Ala Plástica, respectively. We gathered very early in the morning in the Community Center of the Hornaditas locality in the Quebrada de Humahuaca (Humahuaca Ravine).

The entire town helped in the preparations. Before we departed we carried out prayers to the Pachamama, asking for good fortune for the walkers and their families who stayed 17

Alternative energy for Paulino island 2000

behind. After this the rock of the walker’s faith was raised.18 The journey began by climbing trails that extend in a southeast direction along the Andean Salto­Jujeña foothills with the Salinas Grandes (a salt desert in the Argentinian Sierras de Córdoba), beyond the administrative reach of the state. Crossing slopes, clearings, and ravines the walkers immerse themselves in the world around them, and were welcomed in the villages along the way by women, men, children and young people. This initial greeting would be followed by long conversations with community members relating to themes of common interest.

The conversations were focused on communal organization and production, issues associated with water access and mining, and the maintenance of community health practices in their ecological, hygienic, legal, spiritual and botanical dimensions. The walkers would often reflect on the importance of interconnections among peasant community organizations. Before our departure certain Humahuaca products like quinoa and dried fruit were left behind in exchange for the lunch we received during our stay. After this the march was resumed.

After many days of walking, late­night conversations, and sleeping under the open sky, we arrived at Salinas Grandes, a unique ecosystem and an important ancestral center of life, culture and history. Here we met with the inhabitants of the Tres Pozos Sanctuary, the last settlement before arriving at the salt mines themselves. The “Cambalache” is also held here. This is a meeting where family farmers exchange products from various regions and where the customs of their ancestors are practiced and celebrated. Afterwards, the Assembly of the Tres Pozos Sanctuary Indigenous Community Council takes place, among both men and women. Here the walkers were recognized for their role in mobilizing interest in the cultural practices and politics of the Kolla community. As a result of all these meetings and conversations there was growing interest in the formation of a new indigenous cooperative. Later on representatives of the Mining and the Environment offices for the province of Jujuy participated in a public meeting and were questioned about provincial projects geared towards the privatization of the salt mines, and about delays in the awarding of community land titles by the state. Afterwards, an important group that included the walkers and neighbors headed toward Salinas Grandes, where prayers were offered and the rock of the walker’s faith was deposited on an “apacheta” or rock formation.19 The next morning the walkers begin their return trip to the Quebrada de Humahuaca.

17. How did the walks affect the Kolla community and the young people in that community?

18

The Aymara and Quechua nations believe that everything in the world, all forms of existence, derive from two sources: Pachakama o Pachatata (Father Cosmos, cosmic force or energy) and Pachamama (Mother Earth, terrestrial energy or force).

19 These are artificial mounds of different sized rocks, more or less conical in shape, erected in honor of the Pachamama. They are often situated on the sides of paths and roads in the Andean mountain range. Travellers will offer prayers at these sites to remove misfortunes (chiknis) from the path, and for a healthy journey. The apachetas are dynamic objects, as they grow by the addition of rocks from other walkers. As a result, their size is directly related to the level of traffic in a given area.

The native Andean Quechua and Aymara communities are committed to the idea of a multi­dimensional encounter with the world, sustained through principles of respect, harmony and equilibrium with all that exists. This equilibrium must be produced through practice, through the creativity of action. In this respect, the Salt Trail/Camino de la Sal walk produced an experience of integration. “Man is a part of the earth that walks,” according to a Kolla proverb. Thus walking is related to a communitarian pedagogy in which everyone, especially the youth, understands the multi­dimensional nature of life, and the sacred nature of quotidian experience. Everything related to walking is part of a single action, through which you begin to develop a unique sense of communication between ritual and politics.

The act of walking has the effect of re­activating life. Dignity, sovereignty and the cosmos combine to promote one of the most ancient insights of the high Andean communities: the communitarian paradigm of culture and a life that is well­lived.

18. Can you talk in more detail about your work with the Ayoreo in the Gran Chaco in Paraguay? What kinds of initiatives have you developed there?

The Ayoreo travel from one place to another along the old meandering trails or through ancient river­beds that still carry some water.20 Despite the fact that people rarely have contact with them, their presence can be felt in the landscape, and in some cases they will suddenly appear from afar amongst the low, brushy forests.

The name Ayoreo (Ayoréode) can be roughly translated as “true men”. It refers to the culture and way of life of hunters and gatherers. Thus, the Ayoreo refer to other hunting and gathering communities “other true men.” They refer to sedentary populations, whether or not they are indigenous, as cojñone (“people without a correct way of thinking”). See Bernardo Fischermann, La Cosmovisión del Pueblo Ayoréode del Chaco Boreal (in publication).

20

21

The first contact between the Ayoreo and the surrounding society began around 1945 in Bolivia and around 1960 in Paraguay. These contacts were traumatic and often fatal. In many cases the Ayoreo of the mountains were hunted and forcibly removed from their natural spaces, deported to missionary settlements, where they became sedentary and where they experienced some of the worst economic, sanitary, educational and environmental conditions in Paraguay. Over two thousand of them were forced to abandon their mountain home against their will. Modernization also affected their habitat. The long, meandering trails, which had been the vertebral column of their way of life, were destroyed 21

Meandering trails and expansion of the border.

or interrupted by new agricultural roads and the leveling and clearing of the ground. Today more and more of the ecosystems of the Chaqueño mountains are being destroyed, condemning the descendants of the Ayoreo community to a silent holocaust. Our goal in working in this area was to reveal some aspects of a culture and an environment that is truly magical and worthy of preservation, but which faces a profound threat to it’s survival.

We decided to not make direct contact with the Ayoreo groups, which have deliberately chosen to remain isolated. We sought instead to identify signs of their presence in the countryside and to monitor the ways in which encroaching society had begun to alter the spaces of Ayoreo life and culture in the Amotocodie zone, occupied by the local Ayoreo group known as the “Totobiegosode”. This work was carried our through a variety of different methods, including the use of satellite imagery.

19. Do you feel that there is a danger that you will romanticize your collaborators, when you work with indigenous communities like the Kolla or Ayoreo? Is it possible that you will overlook your own power and authority in relationship to relatively less empowered communities in this work?

If we approached our work with the intention of romanticizing these communities our practice would be paralyzed and it would be impossible to approach them in a productive manner. Native communities like the Quechua and Aymara are characterized by a level of organization, thought, spirituality, economic wisdom and culture that have allowed them to resist processes of extermination and de­valorization for more than 500 years. Their cultures have evolved in response to, and in spite of, a history of displacement and disconnection at the bioregional scale. Our involvement with them came about in reaction to the specific forms of territorial identity created by these communities, which provide an important model for the harmonious interconnection of nature and culture. In regards to our encounter with the Ayoreo world, the objective of the project was to support the activities of the Amotocodie Initiative, which sought to maintain the spiritual energies and the integrity of their way of life and their traditional spaces, which include the natural hydrologic resources of the dry Chaco and the forest paths and trails. As a result of the process of displacement, and the role of the state in supporting “modernization” efforts in these areas, many of these indigenous groups have been unable to defend their rights and their territorial autonomy.

20. How did the nation­wide protests and actions in 2001 surrounding the debt crisis in Argentina affect native peoples? Were these protests and actions primarily urban or were there rural actions as well?

The events of December 2001 occurred after a long journey that began in the periphery and moved to the center of Argentine society. Along the way it acquired a more urban and more visible character but it didn’t begin that way. The Movimiento Piquetero (“Picketer” Movement), for example, had its origins in the provinces of Neuquen (in the Plaza Huincul of the city of Cutral Có) and Salta (in the General Mosconi area of the city of Tartagal). The demonstrators were made up primarily of descendants of the native communities who had become salaried workers in these areas. They led a series of unpublicized strikes in the

mountainous zones of the north and in the Patagonian desert in the early 1990s, due to the growth of unemployment and the deterioration of living conditions in those areas, where conventional industries were at the center of community life. This was the first movement that dared to confront entrenched local power and shatter the illusion of progress associated with neo­liberalism. Other groups organized themselves in the mid­‘90s in the urban peripheries and rural areas, defying the limitations of the system and generating moments of strategic resistance which differed radically from prevailing models in Argentine society. These protests came in response to the absence of any legal protections and the dismembering of the state by the banks and corporate sectors.

Notwithstanding the extreme experiences of the time, they generated highly creative states of freedom and autonomy as people began to take new positions in the face of an existential crisis. When in 2001 the middle class took to the streets of the major cities, primarily motivated by the “corralito,” it was able to join forces with all of these pre­existing actions, which had been developing on the periphery, but that did not yet have a global reach.22 It was at this moment that a new, heterogeneous subject emerged in Argentine politics, which would demonstrate to the world the crisis of capitalism in our country, and the failure of the political class to address it. This is epitomized by the phrases popular at the time: “piquete y cacerola la lucha es una sola” (“picket, pots and pans, there is only one struggle”) and “que se vayan todos” (“everyone out” or ”everyone must leave,” i.e., all the corrupt politicians, bankers etc. must go).23

In Argentina the term “Corralito” referred to policy introduced by Argentina’s Economic Minister Domingo Cavallo in December 2001, which froze bank accounts and cash withdrawals in order to prevent a bank run.

These measures severely limited any type of economic activity by abruptly restricting the movement of money, paralyzing commerce and credit and asphyxiating the “formal or informal economy” upon which the daily subsistence of a significant portion of the population depended.

23 At this time people across Argentina would bang pots and pans (“cacerolas”) on the corners of their neighborhoods and carry out pickets (“piquetes”) in the streets and avenues. As Naomi Klein has noted, “their message was simple enough”: You—politicians and CEOs huddled at some trade summit—are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of course, we didn't know the half of it). We—the rabble outside—are like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks.

What made Argentina's 2001-02 uprising unique was that it wasn't directed at a particular political party or even at corruption in the abstract. The target was the dominant economic model—this was the first national revolt against contemporary deregulated capitalism.

Naomi Klein, “All Of Them Must Go,” The Nation (February 5, 2009). See: http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/02/all-them-must-go.

22