Production, Development, and Environmental Policies: Paradoxical Landscapes in Colonia Aborigen Chaco (Ex-Aboriginal Reserve of Napalpí, Argentina)

This article examines the experience of an Indigenous development plan carried out between 2005 and 2010 in Colonia Aborigen Chaco, an Indigenous settlement located in Chaco province, Argentina, originally established in 1911 as the Aboriginal Reserve of Napalpí. On the reserve, inhabitants were forced to settle down as the State appropriated their traditional territories. Here, I propose a critical analysis of this experience with ethnographic description pertaining to the long historical processes that inhabitants of Colonia Aborigen endured, which systematically subjected them to alimentary, educational, productive, and religious routines aimed at transforming them culturally. I intend to demonstrate that it is necessary to review a series of assumptions, which are quite prevalent in Indigenous policies, about what an Indigenous person, an Indigenous territory, and an Indigenous development are supposed to be. I emphatically assert that it is necessary to have a critical approach towards these historical processes of constitution in order to better understand Indigenous rights and development within Indigenous territories.