“Resisting by doing”. Socio-community Strategies of the Mesa de Tierras of Jiménez County, Santiago del Estero, Argentina

Abstract

The advance of the agricultural frontier in the province of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, has been a growing problem for local rural communities since the 1970s. Since that time, the emerging conflicts over different forms of appropriation of natural resources gave rise to the creation of spaces for the organization of local communities throughout the province.

In this context, in 2009 the Mesa de Tierras of Jiménez County was created from the confluence of peasant organizations, local communities, the Catholic Church and governmental and non-governmental organizations. This organizational space constitutes a space for discussion, assistance and elaboration of proposals in the face of the emerging conflict over the territory.

The Mesa de Tierras of Jiménez has been developing several resistance actions: monthly meetings to think about the territory, producers' fairs, collective mapping of the communities, workshops to strengthen local production (tanning, cheeses, vegetable gardens, preserves, carob derivatives, etc.), survey of land conflicts and fumigations, among others.

In this context, this work seeks to systematize these actions in order to analize the Mesa's socio-community strategies through the construction of a matrix. The methodology used is qualitative, and uses the following techniques: data recording and analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews.

The contribution of this work is based on making visible other forms of life and resistance in the territory, mainly through the articulations with other territorial actors.