Demo-Cartographic Imaginaries: Dilemmas of Data, Erasure, and the Threat of Latent Authoritarianism to Indigenous Land Rights in Paraguay

Abstract

This article assesses the state of Indigenous rights in Paraguay through the year 2022 to show how latent authoritarianism and agrarian oligarchies threaten to roll back ongoing efforts to support the country's democratic transition. Recent civil society efforts to map Indigenous lands and make georeferenced data about those lands free to access online presuppose that greater transparency about the location and extent of titled and claimed lands will protect communities from dispossession and violence. Mapping efforts like these create demo-cartographic imaginaries—attempts to envision democratic futures through the promise of transparency captured in counter-mapping practices. Combining a case study with observations from field research, it is argued that tensions between the demo-cartographic promise and the resurgent authoritarianism evident in open violence against Indigenous peoples reveal much about how land is simultaneously a site of oligarchic power and the seed of social discontent to challenge that power.