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This story is focused on the Tapietes, an Latin
American ethnic group who live divided in three countries. They had
lived together in a community in Bolivia for many centuries, but during
the Chaco War (1932-1935) they have been displaced, to settle in three
different communities: the biggest one in Paraguay (2,000 people), the
other in Argentina (480) and a small one in Bolivia (190), close to the
place their ancestor had lived before.
I have been living in a
Tapiete community alongside Tartagal, a northern city in Argentina,
documenting their lives. Despite one or two generations that have been
living in this suburban context from their born, most of the them don't
feel the place theirs, and they miss living in the country areas, like
their ancestor used to live. This has been involving social consequences
such as massive unemployment and drug and alcohol addiction. During
last years, a phenomenon has been occurring though: after years of
struggle with the government to get lands to work them, they got some
hectares in an area close to their community. Now, many of them are not
only working there, but also moving to the rural areas again and
building small houses there.
However, at the same time, some
young and adolescent Tapietes want to keep living along the city or in
it, growing inside the youngest an integration feeling, provoking a
great challenge for the society and the community itself: to live within
the tension between the integration of the indigenous with the rest of
the society, while maintaining the culture, the language and some of
their ancestral ways of living.Historically, most of indigenous peoples
have been historically occupying rural areas, and therefore their means
of life have been attached to land development and the use of natural
resources. As a consequence of a historical marginalization and a
prevalent agricultural model in most Latin American countries, with the
soy exportation as the main source of income, the indigenous peoples
have been progressively displaced from their lands, not only forcing
them to live in a different place, but also facing them to adapt
themselves to different ways of life, in both urban and suburban
contexts.
The Tapiete situation represents in many different
levels one of the main conflicts with the indigenous peoples today in
Latin America, not only in cultural and anthropological aspects, but
also with social and political issues. Besides the tension between the
conservation of a culture and the integration with the rest of the
society, many issues like the use of the lands by the government are
controversial and affect directly to the indigenous.
