Abstract

TOLA, Florencia. Non-humans making history, the environment and the body in the Argentinean Chaco. Etnográfica [online]. 2019, vol.23, n.2, pp.489-513. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.6913.

The article explores the effects of certain non-human entities (atmospheric phenomena, dead beings, masters of animals, birds) on everyday life, the history and the body of the Toba (Qom) native people in the Chaco region, Argentina. Native narratives are analyzed, regarding the State’s takeover of their territories in the late 19^th century and how such entities impacted on the life of the ancient Qom and their displacements while fleeing conquest and colonization fronts. Likewise, the environment, in addition to being a lived space carrying intentionality and agency, presents certain features as a result of the mobilization of non-human entities. These leave traces that are read by humans in their constant transits throughout their territory. Finally, everyday-life situations observed during fieldwork (since 1997) show effects of “other” intentionalities (besides the human ones) on the body. Ethnography carried out in central Chaco is the basis for inquiring the human-non-human relationship and how history, the environment and the body among this native people are not detached from the human-non-human assemblage, but rather co-produced by it.

Keywords : Gran Chaco; Toba people; body; historicity; cosmology.

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