The Wild Side: Hunting Guanacos in Patagonia

Abstract

This article examines the twentieth-century history of guanaco hunting in southern Patagonia in order to call attention to the significance of commercial hunting in the industrial age. Guanacos, an American camelid related to llamas, are the largest herbivore inhabiting the semi-arid steppe lands of Patagonia. In the nineteenth-century, indigenous Aónikenks traded quillangos, a cape-like garment made from the soft fur of juvenile guanacos, with colonial settlers. The rapid expansion of export-oriented sheep ranching beginning in the 1880s gave rise to a new social ecology based on the violent displacement of Aónikenk and Selk'nam forager/hunters, the introduction of an exotic ungulate and the use of seasonal, migrant labor. I trace the transformation of commercial guanaco hunting from an Aónikenk-dominated activity to one carried out by migrant hunters and small-scale traders who exported guanaquitos, the undressed furs of juvenile guanacos. Drawing on evidence from both Argentina and the United States, I document the hunting and export of millions of guanaquitos between the 1920s and the 1980s. I conclude by suggesting that the persistence of guanacos today is largely due to a decline in sheep ranching in addition to changes in fashion, and Argentina's participation in international conventions to protect wildlife. The recent history of guanacos suggests that rather than thinking of hunting, habitat loss and consumption as separate threats to wildlife, they are best thought of as entangled components that together have shaped modern histories of people and animals.