This article analyses how the Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the stigmatisation and economic, social and cultural exclusion of indigenous groups in Argentina. Using the example of Qom/Toba in the northern province of Chaco and its capital Resistencia, the authors argue that the control of the pandemic regarding ‘space’ and ‘movement’ has considerably intensified practices of spatialised marginalisation of indigenous (non-white) persons, triggering also new strategies of self-empowerment and resistance. It shows how the ‘governance of Covid-19’ contributes to the perpetuation of power structures within the affective and geographical project of a ‘White Argentina’.
During his fieldwork Mönch (2020) met members of the group who referred to it either as ‘Pueblo Qom’ or ‘Pueblo Toba’ and who explained that both names are used for the same indigenous group. In their language Qom’laqtac ‘Qom’ means ‘mankind’, while ‘Toba’ was sometimes explained as an external designation used by other indigenous groups, see T. L. Mönch, ‘Qadhuoqte: Die Basis unserer Kämpfe. Radio Comunitaria als Praxis der Verräumlichung von Indigenität in Rosario’, Masters Thesis, Technical University of Berlin, 2020.
2.
GordilloG., ‘The savage outside of White Argentina’, in AlbertoP.EduardoE., eds, Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 243.
3.
Gordillo, ‘The savage outside of White Argentina’, p. 243.
4.
Ethnographic practices are currently being reshaped by the impact of Covid-19. Hence, Günel et al. recently demanded the conceptualisation of a new methodological and theoretical approach to ethnography, which they call patchwork ethnography. The approach ‘begins with the acknowledgement that recombinations of “home” and “field” have now become necessities – more so in the face of the current pandemic’. GünelG.VarmaS.WatanabeC., A Manifesto for Patchwork Ethnography, 2020, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-manifesto-for-patchwork-ethnography.
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VivaldiA., ‘“Ending up in Buenos Aires”: affective mobilities of urban Toba indigenous people’, Simons Papers in Security and Development63 (2018), p. 10.
AchilliE., ‘Los Tobas en la Ciudad: memorias y construcción de comunidad’, in AchilliE.CámporaE.GiampaniL., eds, Memorias y experiencias urbanas (Rosario: Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario, 2006), pp. 185–202.
Gordillo, ‘The savage outside of White Argentina’, p. 262.
23.
VivaldiA., ‘Indigeneidades urbanas: formaciones espacializadas de raza y experiencia Toba (Qom) en Buenos Aires’, Quid 16: Revista del área estudios urbanos 11 (2019), pp. 151–74; Gordillo, ‘The savage outside of White Argentina’, p. 254.
24.
Gordillo, ‘The savage outside of White Argentina’, p. 254.
25.
La Nación, ‘Violencia policial y discriminación en Chaco’.
Martínez, ‘Pandemia en Chaco’, author’s own translation.
28.
CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) et al., ‘Informe ampliado: efectos socioeconómicos y culturales de la pandemia COVID-19 y del aislamiento social, preventivo y obligatorio en los Pueblos Indígenas en Argentina, Segunda etapa, junio 2020’ (collective report by 100 researchers and 12 national universities and departments of CONICET), https://ihucso.conicet.gov.ar/informe-nacional/.
Gordillo, ‘The savage outside of White Argentina’, p. 254.
33.
Noticiero 9, Resistencia – Barrio Toba Bloqueado, 11 May 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWCu_FxiLG0; Futurock FM, El barrio Gran Toba de Resistencia; Martínez, ‘Pandemia en Chaco’; La Nación, ‘Violencia policial y discriminación en Chaco’.
34.
FuturockFM, El barrio Gran Toba de Resistencia.
35.
C5N, Chaco: Brutal golpiza de policías a una familia QOM, 2 June 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om07V5f9RMI; La Nación, Violencia policial y discriminación en Chaco.
36.
CONICET, ‘Informe ampliado’, p. 8.
37.
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Interview with José Orquera, 17 August 2020, author’s own translation.
46.
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Arizpeet al., ‘An analysis of the metabolic patterns’, p. 3.
55.
Vivaldi, ‘Indigeneidades urbanas’, p. 169, author’s own translation.
56.
Junta Unida de Misiones inter alia has been accompanying local communities of the Qom/Toba in the region of El Impenetrable forest for decades. Currently, JUM’s main programme is ‘Access to justice and indigenous rights’, which has a 24/7 telephone hotline offering legal advice to indigenous people. Other projects offer the means for agricultural self-sufficiency to families living in rural areas and for supporting them in obtaining all necessary goods to maintain community gardens, or providing information for forty indigenous pastors in the Chaco region, with the aim of accompanying them in their support of rural communities, primarily in the understanding and fulfilment of necessary hygiene measures (interview with Washington Raúl Romero, co-ordinator of JUM, 17 August 2020).
