Indigenous Peoples of the Gran Chaco

According to the specialists² who first narrated the story of this struggle for a wider audience, the meetings to discuss the issue of land (re) possession among the Indigenous peoples of the region began in the mid-60s, but it was only shortly after the return of democracy to Argentina that, in 1984, different groups united to conform what in 1991 would be recognized as a civil organization. At this point, we are talking of numerous Indigenous groups, descendants of hunter-gathering, nomad and semi-nomad groups. In the present, these groups live in permanent settlements but have kept numerous practices from their hunter-gathering and fishing tradition, among many other material, symbolic and spiritual ties with their ancestors and the members of their communities, with whom they inhabit a large portion of what is today the province of Salta, in Argentina. This province is part of the Great Chaco region, a space of huge importance for Indigenous peoples and their long- standing resistance³.

The Chaco was one of the last spaces to be conquered by force and violence in the late 19th century by the Argentine state, after centuries of relative Indigenous autonomy and counted acts of Indigenous insurgency. Numerous groups occupied these plains, and for many, their modes of existence were based on nomad and semi nomad practices: moving along the terrains, and utilizing the resources in a seasonal way. For them and their descendants, the forced settlement of the groups into religious reductions and other institutions of the State represent an ongoing act of dispossession that not only separated them from their traditional lands, but also prevents them to reproduce, modify and actualize meaningful experiences for their ethnic identity to this day. When referring to dispossession, is common to think about property rights, and while that is without doubt a necessary asset to thrive as a community, there are other material and symbolic assets that we must consider if we want to grasp the full scope of the processes of dispossession inflicted upon Indigenous peoples. When a group is forced to abandon and neglect their traditional ways of living, believing, speaking, educating, and reproducing themselves as an ethnic group, they are denied the possibility of choosing their own cultural terms. Simply put, they could not choose to conduct their lives as their ancestors did, or actualize, change, and re-signify any given aspect in their own terms, since they were forced into structured changes without being consulted. Among many other things, this means they could not choose to reproduce the ways in which their ancestors had moved through that land, creating, and re-creating social, economic, and spiritual bonds with their environments, non-human beings, and with other groups.

Despite processes of assimilation into the Nation-State that intended to dilute Indigenous identity into a white Argentine citizenship,⁴ the existence and resistance of Indigenous peoples in the Chaco region is and has always been undeniable. The political organization of these communities, together scholars who worked along and against the grain of archival documents dating back to the 16^th century, have achieved an important milestone: They managed to elevate their claim to a higher authority than the Argentine highest court, because they argued that Indigenous peoples preexist the formation of the Argentine State, and hence this state is not competent to judge them. Considering that some Latin American countries have yet to acknowledge the preexistence of Indigenous peoples to their State (such is the case of Uruguay to this date), this recognition is one of the many collective takeaways on this legal and political struggles.

“Our Land” is not “My Land”: Communal Strategies to Claim the Land.

Their initial claim was for the province of Salta to delimit and deliver a single and indivisible title of community property to all communities, for the 400 thousand hectares ancestrally inhabited. This is one of the features that makes this story so unique: the communities were fighting for communal possession of their territories, and had refused to conduct the claim in individual terms, which was the initial intention of the provincial authorities**.** Since the political efforts to make ends meet were insufficient, Lhaka Honhat looked to go over the national government inaction: in 1998 it turned to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. While doing so, they initiated a conversation with a local creole association, which gathered people who, while not necessarily having Indigenous ancestry, recognized themselves as mestizos and claimed rights over the former 55 and 14 lots of the Rivadavia Department, where the disputed land was located. As told by the leader of Lakha Honhat, the process of meeting and discussing common issues with the creole organization was extended in time, since prior to reaching any agreements, these groups of people had to know each other and remove or reduce mutual prejudices. More often than not, these prejudices carried on the shoulders the weight of a national discourse that based the incorporation of the Indigenous peoples to a white citizenship on the erasure of their Indigenous identity and territorial rights. The result of many discussions and understandings was a historic agreement for the distribution of the territory, which in 2007 urged the provincial government to recognize its owners: Indigenous and Creoles.

A Rocky Road to Repossession

From 2007 to 2014, members of the community and scholars who documented the process declare that there was a lack of governmental will to carry out the necessary actions to issue a territorial title. Instances of technical measurement, documentation, and legal advancement were often delayed or suspended due to political instability in the province. The change of local government’s political party every four years disrupted the continuity of the efforts, or rather, facilitated the abandonment of the cause, since the communities believed there was always a resistance from the province to grant a land title to Indigenous and Creole groups. After many years of navigating the practices of local authorities and programs who claimed that a lack of resources inhibited them from delivering the results that they had committed to, the Inter American Human Rights Commission decided to intervene once more. In 2012, the Commission issued a report in which they documented the existence of violations of communal rights, which was practically ignored by the State. The communities maintained their organization, territorial and political presence, and because of their persistence, in 2018 the case was elevated to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the highest instance of supra-national authority that can be summoned to arbitrate these types of claims. There are many requisites needed for a case to reach the instance of the Inter-American Court, since this is a step only taken after decades of long battles with the local and national authorities, and even so, most cases do not ever reach the Court competence. Among others, the issue of originary competence is one that particularly affects the cases of Indigenous peoples, whose existence precedes the nation-states and hence, if their claim can be traced to this originary competence, as is the case with some territorial conflicts, their disputes need to be solved by a higher authority. After two years of analysis, in 2020 the Court recognized that by not completing the process of territorial adjudication, the province of Salta violated the rights of these communities to their cultural identity, to a healthy environment, as well as their rights to food and water. Because of the layers of jurisprudence that tie different organizations, the Court’s ruling is binding, which means that the Salta province and the Argentine State are obligated to comply.

One could think that the obtention of a ruling by a supra-state entity is the happy ending of the story, but truly this major break was just a new beginning, one that would still entail lots of work (and patience) on the community’s side to achieve its full potential. For instance, the Salta province was intimated to solve the problem of access to water in a six-month period, and failed to do so, even under a binding rule. Again, one should also keep in mind that while all these legal and political scenarios have slow-paced movements, the everyday lives of many Indigenous individuals and families were at risk due to their impossibility to access basic human rights. Under these pressing circumstances, the communities stayed organized and never stopped defending their territorial rights and the execution of the Court’s ruling. It is worth noting that legal rulings alone can be dead writing if they are not accompanied by the organization and everyday action of local communities. This is valid even for the case of the Inter-American Commission and Court, which are instances of difficult access. There is only so much they do to implement their verdicts in solitude. In 2021, the national government and the province of Salta created a special unit to execute the points that were outlined by the Court. Primarily, the process of delimitation and demarcation of the over 600 hectares and the subdivision for both Indigenous and Creole communities. Additionally, the Unit is urged to attend to other pressing issues such as access to water, food, and overall quality of life.

The Ruling and its Aftermath

The situation with water exceeds the local reality of Santa Victoria Este, in the Rivadavia department, where the disputed lands are located. Along with Orán and San Martín, these departments have been in a state of socio-sanitary emergency since 2020, after record numbers of deaths of Wichí children due to malnutrition. Access to water, food, and health are key elements that need to be addressed to change this state of emergency, and they are fundamentally related to the relationship that Indigenous peoples have with their territories. At the same time, communities raise their voices to note that oftentimes, provincial, and national efforts to mitigate these situations fail due to the lack of consultation with and participation of the local communities. Particularly in the case of Indigenous peoples who have been traditionally excluded from State institutions, and who continue to face discrimination in schools, hospitals, and municipalities, the ideas and projects of local non-indigenous authorities often lack a perspective that considers their unique points of view and respects their opinion on topics that directly interest them. In practice, this might look like the installment of a well – a necessary, sought after resource - in a location that is not convenient to the local communities, because they were not consulted in processes who are supposed to center their wellbeing. When authorities neglect the long history of violence and exclusion, they expose members of the community to be discriminated upon again by their non-indigenous neighbors. For instance, local authorities may employ a bilingual Indigenous teacher for a local school, but fail to prevent, contain, and act on the daily acts of discrimination that these teachers are often the target of, such as being redirected to cleaning the schools instead of teaching the children. In the health system (see Copruduction of Prenatal Care for Indigenous Women in the Great Chaco ), local and national authorities still fail to consider and respect any type of Indigenous knowledge related to their wellbeing and health, and actively discriminate upon the people who practice any other type of medicine that is not Western. Even if hospitals are funded, failing to engage in a conversation about traditional concepts and instruments of health and healing results in Indigenous people feeling expelled from centers of health. Lastly, although this is not an exhaustive list, there are still many Indigenous individuals who do not have access to their Argentine national identity cards, which prevents them from accessing any other service of the State as a rightful citizen. While Indigenous peoples organize and claim for autonomy in the possession of their traditional lands based on their ethnic identity, the long history of exclusion should not be perpetuated in present-day exclusion from the services that the State should provide to them as citizens. The politics of recognition that create a space for collective, Indigenous demands should not suppose the exclusion from other individual and basic human rights.

In 2023, in a meeting that gathered the National Special Unit (under the direction of the Secretary of Human Rights); the province of Salta; and the Lhaka Honhat Association an agreement was signed to define the modality for the delivery of their communal Indigenous title. This agreement states that, once the processes of measurement and delimitation are finalized, the title will be granted under the name of all the Indigenous communities that reside in the former fiscal lots 55 and 14 of the Rivadavia Department, and to the rest of the communities that descend from those in the future. With this title, the activities of planning and execution of the Court’s sentence, started in 2021, would have ended.

To conclude, and after reviewing the key points of a process that as of 2024 is ongoing, it is worth highlighting that territory does not only refer to a portion of land or terrain, even when land titling is part of the Indigenous peoples’ resistance objective. For Indigenous peoples, the territory also entails the rights and resources that a community should have access to thrive on their own cultural terms. For this reason, matters of prior, free, and informed consultation or consent and participation (see ABOUT THE LIST OF PEOPLES ) are at the heart of the international legislation, and are usually one of the areas in which local and national authorities fail to respect Indigenous communities. With the rise of extractivism in the 21^st century, we also face the rise of discrimination against Indigenous peoples and their traditional practices and modes of existence, hence these matters are as urgent as ever. The long road that took Lakha Honhat to organize and sustain a claim for over 20 years is not over. It is, however, a magnificent example of Indigenous organization and resistance to achieve territorial re-possession, and it has set the stage for many other territorial claims that were raised to the Argentine state in the 1990s and 2000s.

For more information on this case, you can visit the official website.

References:

IWGIA Report (2006). INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS CASE OF THE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES OF THE LHAKA HONHAT (OUR LAND) ASSOCIATION V. ARGENTINA. JUDGMENT OF FEBRUARY 6, 2020 (Merits, reparations and costs)

In the case of the Indigenous Communities of the Lhaka Honhat (Our Land) Association

v. Argentina. https://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_400_ing.pdf