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When histories and ontologies compose multiples worlds. The past among the Toba people of the Argentinean Chaco
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Celeste Medrano
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When histories and ontologies compose multiples worlds. The past among the Toba people of the Argentinean Chaco
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                                            América Crítica 4(1), 25–34, 2020, ISSN: 2532-6724, doi: 10.13125/americacritica/3999




       When histories and ontologies compose multiples worlds.
       The past among the Toba people of the Argentinean Chaco
                                                  Florencia Tola1 and Celeste Medrano1
                             1   CONICET, Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

                                                                   Received: 31/01/2020
                                                                   Accepted: 26/02/2020




 Abstract —For the Toba people (Qom), an indigenous group of the Argentinean Chaco, the world is composed of a
great diversity of entities (human and non-human) that communicate with one another. The ability of communication
is rooted in a so distant past. In this paper, we will focus on some stories we were told by elders of Central Chaco.
These stories refer to key moments of the conquest, colonization, and current indigenous claims. We are interested in
the articulation between historicity and ontology, by showing the reconstruction that the Qom people make of their
past is rooted in the idea that society and human history cannot be understood aside from some non-human agencies
— anthropology; history; ethnology; ontology.
 Resumen—Para el pueblo Toba (Qom), un grupo indígena del Chaco argentino, el mundo está compuesto por una
gran diversidad de entidades (humanas y no humanas) que se comunican entre sí. La capacidad de comunicación tiene
sus raíces en un pasado lejano. En este artículo nos centraremos en algunas historias que nos contaron los ancianos
del Chaco Central. Estas historias se refieren a momentos clave de la conquista, la colonización y las reivindicaciones
indígenas actuales. Nos interesa la articulación entre la historicidad y la ontología, mostrando cómo la reconstrucción
que el pueblo Qom hace de su pasado está enraizada en la idea de que la sociedad y la historia humana no pueden ser
entendidas como separadas de algunas agencias no humanas. — antropología, historia; etnología; ontología.


                                                                                toricity and agency are human and more-than-human issues.
                                                                                    Over the past decades, some branches of French, Brazil-
I NTRODUCTION                                                                   ian, English, and American anthropology have become in-
                                                                                terested in ontologies in an attempt to assert the diversity of
   n the present article, we intend to mingle the Toba (Qom)                    ways of composing the world (worlding, mondier).2 The so-
I    notions of agency and person with the concern for tem-
porality and the past. From this point of view, an ontological
                                                                                called ontological turn in anthropology is inspired, among
                                                                                other things, in Amerindian ontologies such as perspec-
approach could nurture the debates about the ways in which                      tivism (Viveiros de Castro 1996) and animism (Descola 1986,
an indigenous group experiences and narrates past events and                    2005).3 Although this turn comprises a diversity of defini-
defines the active agents of change. The ascription of abilities
similar to one’s own to non-human entities, together with the                       the Amazon and Pacific tropical rainforests in Colombia and Ecuador. Its
                                                                                    more than 1,000,000 km 2 stretch along four countries (Argentina, Bolivia,
kind of relationships that the Qom people establish with them                       Paraguay, and Brazil) being the area in Argentina the largest (Morello, Ro-
lead us, at least, to question our own categories of agency,                        dríguez, and Silva 2009). The Qom or Toba belong – together with other
person, and history upon noticing the limits of these concepts                      Chaco groups such as the Pilagá and the Mocoví – to the Guaicuruan lin-
                                                                                    guistic family, and constitute one of the largest indigenous societies in the
when confronted with different ontological principles that are
                                                                                    Gran Chaco.
not governed by the Great Divide. Our selection of stories                      2   See Descola (2005, 2014), Latour (2012), Holbraad (2007, 2010), Kohn
intends to account for the fact that, in the Chaco region,1 his-                    (2015), Keck, Regehr and Walentowits (2015), Horton, among others.
                                                                                3   It is not our intention to delve into the differences between the authors
                                                                                    grouped under this turn. We are aware of the heated debates between an-
    Contact data: Florencia Tola, tobatola1@gmail.com                               thropologists of the English, French, and American tradition and even be-
                                                                                    tween three of the pillars of this turn: Descola, Ingold, and Viveiros de
1   The Gran Chaco is the third greatest biogeographic and morphostructural         Castro (see Viveiros de Castro 2009; Descola and Ingold 2014; Charbon-
    region in Latin America after the Amazon and the South American Sa-             nier, Salmon, and Skafish 2016). The English tradition, greatly influenced
    vannah System, and the second in terms of area covered by forests after         by the developments of Viveiros de Castro, emphasizes the methodologi-
26                                                                                                                         América Crítica 4(1): 25–34


tions of ontology, ontological anthropology has a renewed                         the point of view of ethnocide or acculturation, but from the
outlook on the relationship between empirical evidence and                        construction of original forms of ethnicity and political ex-
concepts and on the idea about the existence of a single iden-                    pression” (1993: 21). Particularly, one of the main points of
tical external reality to be represented differently by each cul-                 the dossier titled History, histories gathers articles that deal
ture.4                                                                            with the incidence of history in the relationship of the indige-
    The questioning of the universality of categories and con-                    nous groups with the social and natural environment (1993:
cepts that are at the core of Euro-American thought led most                      24). This special issue of L’Homme accounts for the renewal
branches of the ontological turn to cast doubt on notions such                    of Amerindian ethnographic studies and the new approaches
as politics, agency, and subject. The approaches to onto-                         to historicity, trans-formation, the relationships between the
logical conflicts have concentrated mainly on the territorial                     indigenous peoples and the States, and political economy.
disputes and misunderstandings that arise when indigenous                             In the Gran Chaco, the anthropological studies that dealt
peoples put forward claims and negotiations to governments                        with the issue of history were interested in analysing the influ-
and non-governmental organizations (Blaser 2009; Schavel-                         ence of capitalism on the indigenous peoples6 or the history of
zon 2012; Di Giminiani 2013). However, the ‘misunder-                             the interethnic relationships from the perspective of the State
standings’ or ‘uncontrolled equivocations’ in the sense given                     and History.7 Over the past decades, the anthropology of the
by Blaser to the expression of Viveiros De Castro (2004)                          region has renewed its interest in the historical dimensions of
also occur in other scenarios where, for example, the indige-                     the indigenous societies and in ethnohistorical research,8 and
nous narratives of the past question the supremacy of the his-                    was also interested in the identity and land claims which ac-
toriographic narrative or history of historians’ (Lévi-Strauss                    counted for the active role played by the indigenous peoples
1962). This is the theme we have chosen to concentrate on in                      (see Carrasco 2009; Salamanca 2011).
the present article. Specifically, we try to address the question                     Likewise, classic and contemporary Chaco ethnography
of agency and temporality by asking ourselves what subjects                       makes reference to non-human entities at various moments
the Qom people consider that have had an influence on their                       and in relation to several practices in the historical develop-
historical development, from the Conquest of Chaco to the                         ment of the region (in wars, the Conquest, evangelization,
present day, through specific actions and the changes entailed                    shamanism, and hunting).9 However, these studies either ig-
by them. In order to do so, we have selected a series of stories                  nored the weight of ontology and cosmology in the historical
that some adults and elderly Toba people from central For-                        development of the Qom or considered non-human personas
mosa told us, stories which are part of a wider corpus of oral                    as part of the backdrop on which the true protagonists of His-
narratives recorded by us.                                                        tory (indigenous people, military men, missionaries, and col-
    Lévi-Strauss’s reflections on Amerindian history gave rise                    onizers) carried out their interactions (Tola and Suarez 2016).
to quite different readings: some question the formal syn-                        The narratives that we selected show that, for the Qom, inter-
chronic analyses of structuralism in order to rethink historical                  subjectivity includes not only human people but several ratio-
and political action (Hill 1988) while others distance them-                      nal and sentient subjects (owners of animals, plants, thunder,
selves from African-English approaches to time in order to re-                    lightning, stones, birds, and dead people) that exert influence
think the regimes of historicity developed by the Amerindian                      on them.
peoples themselves. (Fausto and Heckenberger 2007) Re-
search on History-histories, temporality, myth-history, and                       A N ONLY- HUMAN HISTORY
historicity in native terms began to proliferate in Amerindian
anthropology in the 1990s. In particular, the dossier published                   As we know from historiography, in 1862 Chaco became part
in L’Homme (1993), edited by Philippe Descola and Anne                            of the national territory and was thus governed from Buenos
Christine Taylor, is dedicated to the Amazonia, and compiles                      Aires. General Julio A. Roca consolidated and carried out the
articles by the most outstanding Americanists who, in Europe,                     project of expansion of the southern border, “liberating” the
renewed the studies on indigenous societies with great “dy-                       territories from indigenous control, thus allowing their subse-
namism” and “theoretical inventiveness” (Descola and Taylor                       quent colonization. In 1884, President Roca ordered the divi-
1993: 22).5 In the introduction, Descola and Taylor highlight                     sion of the Governorship into two federal territories separated
some categories and domains disregarded until then, among                         by the Bermejo River: the national territory of Formosa and
which we find the issue of change, no longer thought “from                        the national territory of Chaco. That year marks the begin-
                                                                                  ning of the military campaign known as the Conquest of the
                                                                                  6   See Iñigo Carrera (1979, 1983); Trinchero, Piccinini and Gordillo (1992);
    cal dimension of ontologies (see the ontographic method of Holbraad) and
    their strong political content. The French tradition, on the other hand, is       Gordillo (2004, 2006); Renshaw (2002).
    more interested in the elaboration of models of intelligibility of the uses   7   See Iñigo Carrera (2008); Cardin (2009, 2013).
    of the world (Descola 2005). Recently, the compilation Non-human in           8   See Métraux (1946); Cordeu et al. (1969-1970); Combès (2005); Write
    amerindian South America as well as the works of Brabec de Mori (2019)            (2008); Ceriani Cernadas (2008a); Richard (2008; 2011); Salamanca
    invoke debates about ontologies and perspectivism and propose original            (2010); Tola, Medrano and Cardin (Tola2013a); Sendón and Villar (2013);
    readings of these approaches.                                                     Messineo (2014); Córdoba, Bossert and Richard (2015), among others.
4   On conceptual renewal and the notion of worlds rather than represen-          9   See Cordeu (1969-1970); Tomasini (1969-1970, 1978-1979); Miller
    tations, see Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell (2007), Viveiros de Castro             (1979); Write (2008); Gordillo (2006); Ceriani Cernadas (2008a, 2008b);
    (2009), Descola (2010), Venkatesan (2010).                                        Citro (2009); López (2007 2013), López and Giménez Benítez (2008,
5   All the translations are ours.                                                    2009a, 2009b); Medrano (2012); Tola and Suárez (2013), among others.
Florencia Tola and Celeste Medrano, When histories and ontologies compose multiple worlds                                                    27


Chaco Desert led by General Victorica to “pacify” the indige-                  and conclude with the present time, more out of an interest to
nous peoples of Chaco by attacking them on various fronts. In                  show the continuity of the human-non-human assembly in the
this context, the army first occupied the territories south of the             narratives of the past than by an intention to project our own
Bermejo River. The indigenous people who refused to sign a                     way of conceiving the passage of time onto Qom historicity.
peace treaty moved across the river to the national territory of               We intend to account for the way in which Qom stories assim-
Formosa, where the war continued.                                              ilate the official reading while at the same time integrating the
     From then on, the strategy to colonize the conquered ter-                 non-human beings that for them also compose the world.
ritory was to reinforce the military outposts, the punitive ex-
peditions, the religious missions, and the distribution of the                 N ON - HUMANS IN THE WAR
conquered lands among the settlers. At the same time, the
“civilizing” action became materialized in the economic de-                    What are the central milestones in their accounts of the past,
velopment of the region. The criollos settled around the mili-                 especially regarding the military occupation and coloniza-
tary units, giving rise to the towns and cities of Formosa. By                 tion? When some leaders narrate the “indigenous history” by
the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century,                   reorganizing elements of the elders’ memory according to a
the main economic activities of the region were the tannin                     chronological order, they attempt – as Menget (1999) reflects
industry and cotton production, for which the indigenous sea-                  for the Brazilian case – to avoid misunderstandings and en-
sonal labour force was of utmost importance.10                                 gage in dialogue with non-indigenous people. This strategy,
     The military campaign of Rostagno, carried out in 1911,                   as well as our selection of stories, does not reflect the way in
permanently re-established the military outposts along the                     which the Qom organize their understanding of past events.
Bermejo and a lowed the military occupation mission to con-                    They seem to be more the result of the interrelated swaying
clude in 1915 (Altamirano, Sbardella, and Dellamea de Prieto                   of indigenous people, military men, toads, storms, captive
1987). Many specialists agree that the current location of the                 women, and elephants of the sky than a linear sequence of
Qom is the result of the advance of the troops from the east                   actions perpetrated by exclusively human actors.
of Formosa. In the same period, several confrontations be-                         The selection of stories which took place during the con-
tween the Qom and the criollos settlers arose as a result of                   quest, colonization and land claims reflects our interest in
the advance of cattle, which caused the reduction of available                 showing that, at crucial moments in the conflictive relations
territories as well as ecological changes that affected the in-                with the “whites” (blancos), the Qom way of dealing with vi-
digenous people.                                                               olent events did not exist outside their ontology, because the
     After the successive military attacks, cattle penetration,                ontology does not operate at an essential level and aside from
reduction of vital spaces, and exploitation to which the in-                   history and politics. Quite the opposite, the ancestors of the
digenous peoples of Chaco were subjected to in the mills and                   Qom and the contemporary Qom faced traumatic and politi-
textile plants, a period of proliferation of evangelism and mis-               cally significant events by making use of their ontological and
sions began around 1920 (Cordeu and Siffredi 1971; Miller                      cosmopolitical presuppositions.
1979; Wright 1992, 2008; Ceriani Cernadas 2017). Thus, the                         The Campaign of the Gran Chaco, and the succession of
sedentarisation of these hunter-gatherers took place not only                  events which took place during it, is remembered by the Qom
around agricultural colonies located on the margins of the ter-                elders, who refer to it as The War. During The War, sev-
ritories colonized by the criollos for agricultural and cotton                 eral indigenous peoples were taken captive, killed, tortured,
exploitation, but also around the missions that promoted the                   or moved away from their territories in order to be used for
development of agriculture.                                                    domestic work and slave labour. Their experience during The
     At present, the Qom live in rural communities in the Gran                 War, led by the huataxanatpi (military men, the police), was
Chaco or in settlements surrounding big urban areas (Buenos                    transmitted from generation to generation up to the present.
Aires, Santa Fe, Rosario, Resistencia, Formosa). Those who                     Many adults refer to events that their ancestors told them ei-
still dwell in the regions of their ancient territory do not live              ther because they had lived them or heard them from others.
entirely off the forest and its resources since the plundering of              Anywhere in Chaco it is possible to record stories of The War
the land, the sedentarisation, and the colonization restricted                 and reconstruct the experiences lived by the sub-groups or
their access to former areas of hunting, fishing, and gather-                  factions that populated the region in the years before and im-
ing. Several recovery processes have recently led the indige-                  mediately after the Conquest. These stories that describe trau-
nous groups to renew their claims over these territories, which                matic moments for them are also plagued with non-human be-
were formerly interconnected by seasonal routes.                               ings who played an important role in the historical develop-
     The following sections are devoted to three moments in                    ment of the Qom. Many episodes describe the way in which
the history of Chaco (conquest, colonization, and land claims)                 the indigenous people managed to escape and defeat their en-
in relation to certain episodes recalled by the elders. Although               emies thanks to the communication with entities that, despite
the way in which the Toba narrate past events does not fol-                    not being human, helped them and allied with them against
low a chronological order, we will begin with the Conquest                     their enemies.
                                                                                   There are several stories that account for the way in which
10   See Osuna (1977); Altamirano, Sbardella, and Dellamea de Prieto (1987);   non-humans influenced the historical development of Chaco
     Gordillo and Leguizamón (2002).                                           by helping, allying with, advising, or guiding the Toba who
28                                                                                                                          América Crítica 4(1): 25–34


were persecuted. On one occasion, according to what Rachiyi                        defeat the army and keep the Qom alive.
told his grandson Valentín Suárez – current leader of the cen-                         This is also read in another narrative that refers to this
tral area of Formosa –, all his “race” (band) was saved thanks                     same period and was told to us by an elder of the community
to the action of a woman who could communicate with the                            Dañalec lachiugue (Riacho de Oro). The story narrates how
toad. When Rachiyi was still a child, the army carried women                       several Toba women, captured by the army, fled helped by an
and children on a boat along the Bermejo River, while the                          entity from the sky. According to the narrator, an elderly lady
men were taken along the river bank by the side of the boat                        and five young women who had left the community to collect
guarded by a military man. Rachiyi narrated that the indige-                       carob fruit (Prosopis spp.) disappeared. Later it transpired
nous people walked for several days until arriving, as Valentín                    that they had been kidnapped by the military men, who held
says, at a “concentration camp” located on the banks of the                        them captive, tied them up, and made them walk to the south.
river and called, in Toba, Qaiuaxa’añi. The elders locate this                     The soldiers, mounted on donkeys or on horseback, forced
place near the current site of El Espinillo (province of Chaco),                   them to march “three qa’agoxoic [moons]” until arriving at
whose name refers to the sticks nailed to the ground where,                        a new “concentration camp,” in the words of our collabora-
upon arriving, the captives were moored after suffering from                       tor Valentín. When they arrived, there was a wooden con-
hunger, thirst, and various forms of mistreatment.                                 struction and a stock to which the prisoners were tied. How-
    This situation changed due to the action of a woman who                        ever, one of the women had the ability to “communicate with
was a well-known conaxanaxae; a term that, in spite of being                       Qasoxonaxa,” and it was thanks to this relationship that the
usually translated as “witch,” refers more particularly to the                     story could be told. Qasoxonaxa is the name given to a non-
“holder” (the one who performs the action referred to by the                       human being of the sky who has the ability to control weather
verbal root -cona-: ‘to take hold’). That is to say that although                  events, mainly rain, thunder, and lightning.12 One morning,
the term is translated as witch, in Toba it refers to the action                   the woman got a message from this entity telling her that they
commonly attributed to the conaxanaxae, the one who holds                          had to escape that night. This ability to interact with animals,
objects that were in intimate contact with the body of whom                        plants, and weather events that “holders” and other people in
one desires to attack through these actions.11 They usually                        the past had was also a typical attribute of the ancient leaders
take place in the deep forest and consist of associating parts                     called oiquiaxai. They were chiefs in times of war and played
of the body or belongings of the victim with elements of ani-                      a leading role during the military Conquest. In fact, thanks
mal bodies or the dead. In the story narrated by Valentín, the                     to the dialogues of the oiquiaxai with the birds and the stars,
conaxanaxae suggested that the Qom collected the cigarette                         they succeeded, in the words of a Qom leader, in leading “the
butts smoked by the military men. They did so and, once the                        tribe in times of war.” In this regard, Francisco Segundo, from
butts were gathered, in the words of Valentín:                                     the neighbourhood of La Paz, told us that the ancient chieftain
                                                                                   Taigoye was accompanied by
        [They] gave them to her. Then, there was a moment dur-
        ing the night when the soldiers rested and they [the Qom]                        angels that moved with him [...], at night, [they were] like
        were free to make a fire. And she tells the people to make                       the radio, so he knows how the community lives. Some-
        a fire and, at that moment, a toad appears, a big, giant                         times the villen comes [a bird, Euphonia chlorotica] and
        toad. That toad worked with her. She took hold of it [...]                       speaks. The pitogüe [a bird, Pitangus sulphuratus] some-
        and put the cigarette butts inside that toad’s mouth [...].                      times comes, the pitogüe tells him [...]. All the bugs,
        So she put them in its mouth until everything went to the                        the birds that there are, he knows, listens to, and already
        toad’s belly. And [...] she said that she was going to throw                     knows what news they bring. Very powerful.13
        that toad into the fire with all the cigarette butts [inside].
        Then she says, ‘if the toad bursts [it is] because some-                   Military men and indigenous peoples were not the only pro-
        thing will happen,’ revenge against the soldiers, against                  tagonists who fought, resisted, or attacked and thus gave rise
        those who smoked those cigarettes.                                         to the contemporary ethnic, historical, and territorial scenario.
                                                                                   At certain moments, non-human beings played a role that
    The toad burst and, according to the conaxanaxae, the re-                      the Toba themselves highlight in most of their narratives of
venge was successful: the next day the soldiers began to feel                      12 Qasoxonaxa designates the owner of lightning, thunder, and rain as well
discomfort, pain, and overall weakness. At night, with the                            as the mountains of the west, the Andes (see Tola 2010).
troop devastated by the effects of the action of revenge, the                      13 The reference to the angels hints at the Christian influence on Qom cosmol-

Qom managed to escape and return to their places of origin.                           ogy. In the mid-19th century, the first Protestant missionary attempts were
The conaxanaxae, the fire, and the toad are the actors who,                           carried out in the Gran Chaco. Around 1940, in the province of Chaco,
                                                                                      an American preacher founded another Pentecostal mission called Go Ye.
in this episode, changed the course of history for the Qom.                           Mennonites, Baptists, and other denominations also engaged in missions
This woman who had the power to communicate with other                                (see Miller 1979; Wright 1992; Ceriani Cernadas 2014). The work of all
entities, together with the fire and the toad, were necessary to                      of them was central to the sedentarisation of the indigenous peoples: they
                                                                                      promoted the development of agriculture and family economy and founded
11   Several authors describe the behaviour of the “witches”. Miller (1979), for      colonies on the margins of the territories colonized by criollos and whites
     example, states that the most effective method of the conaxanaxae is to          for agricultural and cotton exploitation. The action of missionaries gave
     burn the captured object alongside animal parts, preferably frogs, vipers,       rise to the indigenous churches created around indigenous leaders who be-
     or cats. Salamanca and Tola (2002: 111) argue that the witchy behaviour          came shepherds. Gospel is how the Qom call this religious expression that
     consists of “expanding the person to be attacked into certain animals, gen-      combines elements of Pentecostal Christianity with elements of shaman-
     erating a fusion between them”.                                                  ism.
Florencia Tola and Celeste Medrano, When histories and ontologies compose multiple worlds                                                                 29


this period. Owners of animals, stars, toads, birds, and fire                    (saq emapec). As Palmira, an old lady of the area who re-
are some of the characters in those stories that constitute the                  cently passed away said:
human-non-human assembly that composes life in common
for the Qom.14                                                                           They gave it that name because the natives were formerly
                                                                                         in that lagoon and water was drawn for drinking. Sur-
                                                                                         rounding it were the little houses made of branches. And
N O - HUMANS DURING COLONIZATION                                                         there was animal leather on the walls. And there was
According to Gordillo and Leguizamón (2002), towards the                                 something [a non-animal] that lived in that lagoon. Some
                                                                                         days it takes its head out of the water and people look at
end of 1930 the cycle of violence deployed by the Argentine
                                                                                         it. It seems strange. And the head of that animal is long.
army to consolidate the borders and occupy the indigenous                                But they say that it had compassion for only one person
territories came to an end in Chaco. As contemporary anthro-                             [a shaman] and it gave him power. That is why it com-
pology and ethnohistory suggest,15 after this period of violent                          municates [with him] during the day. But the man died
conquest began a period aimed at the productive development                              and then, little by little, that lagoon dried up because it is
of capitalist enclaves dedicated to the production of sugar,                             believed that the animal that was there left. That is why
timber, and agriculture, together with the progressive colo-                             that lagoon is called “long-headed being (loxolqai) of the
nization by national and foreign population. In those decades,                           lagoon that never dries up (lapel saq emapec).
the indigenous peoples’ labour as harvesters and craftsmen
generated important social, parental, and territorial reconfig-                       More than a non-human being, this entity of the water is
urations. Amid these rearrangements – also plagued with vi-                      described as an animal, but not just as any animal. It can sym-
olence – various subjects of the Qom sociocosmology carried                      pathize with humans and give them power to heal, and it is
out actions that, on many occasions, helped human beings                         also responsible for the permanence of water in the lagoon: if
survive in a new disadvantageous landscape.                                      it leaves, the water runs out. And that is what happened when,
    According to what the current inhabitants of the commu-                      after the shaman passed away, his non-animal companion left
nity of Km. 503 of Formosa say, during the first years of                        with him.16
its permanent location in the outskirts of the homonymous
criollo village, the provincial State carried out several actions                N ON - HUMANS              IN THE CLAIMS FOR TERRI -
and works to urbanize the area (Tola and Medrano 2014). The                      TORY
criollo village of Km. 503, close to the Bermejo River, consti-
tuted a privileged tourist hub. For that reason, in those years                  At present, Toba communities have limited access to their an-
the government tried to drain the water out of a lagoon and                      cestral territory and are immersed in conflicts over the use of
build a bridge instead. However, the Qom argue that every                        the land with their criollo neighbours or the provincial State.
time the State employees engaged in the drainage, unexpected                     Given the vulnerability of the collective rights, in recent years
misfortunes prevented it. A Toba hunter explained to us that                     they have organized roadblocks, occupied schools, gone on
the cause of these hindrances was linked to the actions and                      hunger strikes, filed administrative complaints and denuncia-
intentions of “the siaxaua [person] of the water”, who did not                   tions within the framework of an independent – and incipient
allow the modification of the habitat of the lagoon where it                     indigenous movement known as “the struggle” (la lucha). In
lived. The employees of the local council, without imagining                     the case of Formosa, this goes against “the politics,” which is
that the cause of their misfortunes was a non-human being,                       often associated with the indigenous insertion into patronage
had to make a detour and build the gate without affecting the                    networks of the State and political parties.
lagoon. That is why the history of the occupation and resis-                         During the different public demonstrations of “the strug-
tance of the Qom of Km. 503 cannot be narrated without                           gle,” the support and participation of animals and other non-
including episodes that account for the fact that their territo-                 humans (owners of animals, weather events, the dead, among
ries were also protected by other inhabitants of the area: the                   others) are also central. Several Qom leaders told us that
siaxaua which, just like humans, live in particular places and                   they used quiyoc (jaguar, Panthera onca) (Medrano 2018) or
express desires and needs.                                                       sauaxaic (puma, Felix concolor) fat when they met or con-
    The Qom name of this community refers, in fact, to this.                     fronted a white politician. One of these leaders said, “when
Km. 503 is, in Toba, Lapel saq emapec loxolqai. This ex-                         I confronted the police, to talk [...] about laws, [it was] as if
pression contains in itself the name of a non-human entity                       everyone fell, they could not answer me. [. . . ] The quiyoc
(loxolqaí) that lives in the lagoon (lapel) that never dries up                  are protectors. If there are mounted police those things are
                                                                                 used, because that cannot [come] close to the horses”. The
14 In the South American lowlands, there are already numerous ethnogra-          horses would perceive these components that come from an-
   phies that during the last decade have developed several aspects of the       imals they fear in the humans. By anointing themselves with
   owners of plants and animals, the relationships that several indigenous so-   tiger or puma fat, human beings would acquire properties of
   cieties establish with them, and the relational schemes that are activated
   around them (see Fausto 2001, 2008, 2012a, 2012b; Kohn 2007; Daillant
                                                                                 those animals, causing in others (humans and animals) the
   2003; Bonilla 2005, 2007; Santos Granero 2009; Cesarino 2010).                same reactions that the tiger and the puma generate.
15 See Richard (2008, 2011), Villar and Combès (2012), Sendón and Villar
                                                                                     In these contexts of struggle, in 2013 the community
   (2013), Messineo (2014), Córdoba, Bossert, and Richard (2015), among
   others .                                                                      16   On the concept of non-animal in Chaco, see Medrano (2016, 2019).
30                                                                                                     América Crítica 4(1): 25–34


Da’añalec lachiugue put forward an educational claim and            one describes sometimes differ (Tola 2016). Further, in the
occupied the school for several days, while returning to their      Qom narrative of the past we find trans-temporal and trans-
homes at night. According to what we were told in the com-          spatial events and characters (such as Taigoye and the posts
munity, after a few days “the provincial government sent the        moved by Qasoxonaxa) that the historiographical narrative
police to repress. There was an eviction order that day sched-      hardly identifies or even locates in a timeline or in a partic-
uled for two pm”. But apparently the hundred policemen              ular place of the Chaco territory.
sent did not dare to carry out the eviction and waited until            On the other hand, the stories selected show that the Toba
it was dark. At that moment, when the Qom had gone to their         narration of past events linked to non-indigenous actors is fil-
homes, the police began the occupation of the school. Upon          tered by particular ontological presuppositions according to
hearing the news, the inhabitants of Riacho de Oro gathered         which the universe, social life, history, and interethnic rela-
and agreed to set up a double roadblock so that the police          tionships are the result not only of the actions that human be-
would be trapped in the middle. According to what Valentín          ings carry out consciously and intentionally, but also of the
Suárez experienced:                                                 articulations occurring at the core of the human-nonhuman
                                                                    assembly that composes the world in which the Qom and the
     At two o’clock in the morning, in the place of the assem-      whites coexist. In our view, the stories show a particular way
     bly, an electrical storm of thunder and lightning struck,
                                                                    of articulating different temporalities and spatialities and rec-
     and then the young men, some of the elder, and the
                                                                    ognize not only the Qom agency in moments of interethnic
     women were there, in one place, gathered, and then we
     would go together to the place of the roadblock. But the       confrontation, but also the strength of non-human agency.
     rain, thunder, and lightning did not stop. For us [it was] a       Taking the Qom regimes of historicity seriously implies
     protection in the sense that the policemen could not even      accepting that historicity is not limited to History, that the
     think that a person could be walking [outside] at that mo-     “history of the indigenous peoples” does not begin or end in
     ment [...]. But for us it was so good... [It was] a key        their interactions with the State and that there is not one single
     moment to get to the place where we wanted to settle.          and dogmatic “History of the indigenous peoples”, but a mul-
     The rain did not stop until we blocked the road on both        tiplicity of histories or “[. . . ] a plural, heterogeneous mythol-
     sides. And when the policemen woke up, they realized,          ogy [...]” (Boelscher 1988, quoted in Menget 1999: 159).
     but we were already there and they couldn’t do anything            In short, departing from the idea that history for the Qom
     [...].
                                                                    is not a chronologically ordered sequence of objective events
    Qasoxonaxa, again, assists the Qom in times of conflict         but a way to update transtemporal relationships between hu-
with the military. What they see as a natural and neutral           mans and between humans and the non-human beings de-
weather event (a storm) is perceived by the Qom as an in-           ployed in multiple scenarios in which they all connect, sepa-
tentional collaboration of a non-human entity (Qasoxonaxa).         rate, merge, and disarticulate again, when addressing the Qom
In fact, it was due to this help that the Toba of Riacho de         way of referring to past events we could think in terms of ‘on-
Oro managed to surround the police during their claim. Now,         tohistories’. That is, ‘historical ontologies’ not only because
the storm and Qasoxonaxa are far from being two different           of the transformations that the ways of composing worlds un-
terms; one translatable for the other, they are employed in         dergo over time, but because of the importance of including
two different languages to denote the same phenomenon. Qa-          ontologies in historical approaches. The ‘Qom ontohistories’
soxonaxa would not be a cultural representation (the elephant       are the result of the articulated comings and goings of na-
of the sky) of an objective fact (the storm). She is rather,        tives, military men, witches, toads, storms, captive women,
from the point of view of the Qom, a non-human, other-than-         and elephants, as well as the product of a critical reflection
human, or more-than-human person who inhabits the world             that intends to include more-than-human dimensions in the
that the Qom compose and interacts with human beings at             historical development of Chaco. Now, this attempt benefits
special times. She is not a simple storm, just like not every       from and is in dialogue with the witty work of the Qom, which
storm is neither a priori nor always Qasoxonaxa. At spe-            consists in introducing into the dominant onto-history, with-
cific times, in certain interactions, Qasoxonaxa acts – at the      out major contradictions, places, characters, and events of the
request of the shamans or other humans with power – and col-        world described by the elders; a world plagued with not just
laborates with the Qom sending a storm. But at other times –        human agency and intention.
without prayers or shamans – the storm is just a storm.
                                                                    ACKNOWLEDGMENT
M ORE - THAN - HUMAN HISTORIES                                      This article is based on some field notes presented in a previ-
In the field of history it seems to be difficult to argue for       ous article (Medrano and Tola 2017). It constitutes a renew
the existence of a single world (objective events experienced       reading and analysis of that data.
by white and indigenous people) represented differently by
each culture (the Qom/white version of history), as well as
the categorical separation between history and ontology. On
the one hand, in Chaco there are abundant stories and his-
toriographical references that prove that the events that each
Florencia Tola and Celeste Medrano, When histories and ontologies compose multiple worlds                                  31


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