Limits to Decolonization by Penelope Anthias

Author:Penelope Anthias [Anthias, Penelope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781501714368
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2018-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Accounts differ as to the degree of agency the Guaraní exercised in these labor arrangements; some people (such as Armando’s brother-in-law Hermes) suggested they were entered into voluntarily and not everyone in Tarairí worked for the patrones, while others (including Fausto) claimed that work was “obligatory” and patrones exercised “total control” over their workers. In the context of APG IG efforts to distance themselves from NGOs amidst hydrocarbon negotiations (see chapters 5 and 6), such debates have become highly politicized. By 2011, some APG IG leaders (such as Román) strongly rejected the victimized position constructed by NGO narratives of empatronamiento, insisting that the Guaraní “have always been autonomous” and denouncing NGOs as the “new patrones.” My ethnographic engagements have led me to view empatronamiento as a set of complex and heterogeneous relationships that were not devoid of indigenous agency (see also Killick 2008), but were, in most cases, highly exploitative and culturally degrading. As chapter 1 details, memories of “suffering” under empatronamiento give meaning to the recent land struggle for many community members. As Alcides, mburuvicha of the neighboring community of Itikirenda, recounted:

[A karai landowner] took ownership of everything, so then they, our grandfathers, worked as employees, but he didn’t pay them. He ordered them around, said what they had to do, so they suffered more than us … and then our captains met, the mburuvicha guasu, those who are highest; they saw that … that we always suffered—so they said: “Enough! Enough working, enough!” … We started then to work on our own.

As this highlights, empatronamiento marked the Guaraní’s loss of control over their land and labor, preventing them from producing territory according to their own cultural practices and needs. It is in this context that “reclaiming territory” gains meaning for many Guaraní people.

Yet even in the days of empatronamiento, households in Tarairí continued to practice some subsistence farming—something they achieved through a combination of stealth and informal negotiation with the Mendez family (introduced in the previous chapter), whose estate (now partitioned) surrounds the community. According to Armando’s elderly mother, it was women who took charge of growing maize during this period. If this illustrates Guaraní resilience in the face of racialized dispossession, then the situation was hardly ideal. Not only were many community members forced, whether by coercion or circumstance, to work long hours for no wage far from their homes, but also their community itself was the property of a karai landowner. In this context, it is easy to see why the idea of “reclaiming territory” resonated with community members in Tarairí. As Pablo, the community’s nurse, put it, “When we speak of the TCO, our hope is … to live better, without anyone being able to tell us, ‘Hey, that’s my land, you have to work for free.’ ”

Today, land use practices in Tarairí combine traditional norms with more recent influences. As in the past, household plots remain an important form of informal land tenancy, although, as I will elaborate, not all households have their own plot, owing to the limited land available.

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