Landscapes of Devils: Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco

Abstract

The dialectic . . . is a logical absurdity as long as there is talk of the change of one ''thing'' into another ''thing.'' . . . That is to say, its premise is that things should be shown to be aspects of processes. . . . Thus the knowledge that social facts are not objects but relations between men is intensified to the point where facts are wholly dissolved into processes.-Georg Lukács, History and Class ConsciousnessThe western Argentinean Chaco is dominated by a landscape that is flat, monotonous, and often overwhelming: el monte, the bush. The dirt roads that cut through the region are surrounded by forest and often look like frail marks of human presence trying to prevent nature from fully taking over. Wherever one looks, the thick succession of hardwoods, cacti, and shrubs, six to twelve meters high, extends like a mantle over a dry, dusty soil. In the northwest of the province of Formosa, one of the hinterland roads ends near the border with Paraguay, where a dozenToba villages are scattered south of the marshlands formed by the Pilcomayo River. These hamlets momentarily break the dominance of the bush yet are also subordinated to its unyielding presence. From every household, while chatting next to a fire, making handicrafts, or preparing food, women and men can see the mass of vegetation surrounding them. Most of them enter the bush often to gather honey, wild fruits, or firewood, to hunt, visit their fields, or go fishing in the marshes. And many of their memories, anecdotes, and conversations hinge in one way or another on this place. Yet despite its sheer presence, people remember that the bush did not exist in the past.When they refer to their ancestors, who roamed those same lands in foraging bands prior to their defeat by the Argentinean army and the arrival of Criollo settlers in the 1910s, they emphasize that they inhabited a world of wide grasslands, free of forest.These memories remind many Toba that the bush is not simply a

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