Reclaim life in the wreckage, Guarani ways of inhabiting forests in Misiones, Argentina

Abstract

This paper is based on a field research carried out with the Mbya Guarani who live on the edges of the forest of the Iguazú National Park in Misiones, Argentina. I describe how the touristcs understandings and interests on forest uses tries to enclosure and fram the Guarani on the tourism regime, who react by constituting a daily routine of strategies that make life in the woods possible. I argue that the Guarani way of inhabiting and relating to forests takes multiplicity as a starting point, contrasting with pristine ecological conceptions of actors in the tourist economy. I present how the recovery carried out in the ruins of a golf course supports understandings about ways of existing and relating to the landscape that take into account the people in each place. I explain how these contrasts involve correlations between politics and nature that consist of ways of conceiving relationships that are also ways of making worlds.

Keywords:
Mbya Guarani landscapes and forests; memory spaces; aesthetics of invisibility; tourism