CALAS

Delia Ramírez

Delia Ramírez holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology (PPAS). National University of Misiones (UNaM). Master in Social Sciences, by the Institute of Economic and Social Development (IDES) - National University of General Sarmiento (UNGS). Bachelor's Degree in Social Communication, Universidad Nacional de Misiones (UNaM) Honors Diploma, class of 2005.

Researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) at the Interdisciplinary School of Advanced Studies (IDAES), National University of San Martin (UNSAM). She is a member of the Rural Studies and Globalization Program (PERyG), at the Center for Socio-territorial, Identities and Environmental Studies (CESIA).

Research topics: dynamics of agrarian change; globalization of agriculture; consequences of forestry modernization processes; social reproduction and political organization strategies of family and peasant agriculture. In the last year she has been working on the study of the resistance of Mbya communities in the Alto Paraná region of Misiones and on research on sexual division and social organization of rural labor.

 

Recent publications

2023. Tierra, trabajo y reciprocidad. Acerca de la experiencia organizativa de Productores Independientes de Piray (PIP). Misiones, Argentina. Revista Debates en Sociología, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), https://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/debatesensociologia/issue/view/1904

2023. Coproduction with Sosa Varrotti, Andrea and Serpe, Paula. Land grabbing and agribusiness in Argentina: five critical dimensions for analysing corporate strategies and its impacts over unequal actors. Revista Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, INRAE and Springer-Verlag France SAS, part of Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41130-022-00182-2

2023. “Plantaciones forestales en Misiones: un ejército en llamas”, en Wertheimer, M. & Fernández Bouzo, S., Argentina en llamas. Voces urgentes para una ecología política del fuego. Buenos Aires: Editorial El Colectivo, con apoyo de la Fundación Rosa Luxembugo.

2021. Coproduction with Serpe, Paula C. Respuestas frente al acaparamiento: estrategias reproductivas y formas contemporáneas de organización de los productores familiares en las localidades de Las Palmas y La Leonesa (Chaco) y la colonia Piray km 18 (Misiones). Revista de Estudios Rurales, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes.

 

Research project at CALAS (Knowledge Laboratory: Strategic Identities and Crisis. Axis: Identity mutations and ruptures in the context of economic crisis)

Title: The dispossession of the Tekoa: identity reconfigurations and resistances of the Mbya-Guarani indigenous people in the face of the 21st century hoarding (Argentina).

Abstract: The Mbya ethnic group is part of the Guarani people settled in Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. The expansion of a new forestry production model in the Alto Paraná region of Misiones in the 1990s implied quantitative changes (with a notable growth of the forested area) and qualitative changes (insertion into global value chains, changes in the organization of production and in the articulation of small and medium-sized farms) (Ramírez, 2017), giving rise to processes of land grabbing, foreignization, internal migration, cornering, among other dynamics. Indigenous territory has thus been enclosed as a result of land clearing, expansion of the agricultural and forestry frontier. This has greatly affected the Mbya's way of life and subsistence conditions, limiting their possibilities of access to the forest and thus to water and food. The impact has also been symbolic, as capitalist economic processes have had an impact on the Mbya's tekoha/tekoa.

In the last two decades, it is possible to observe a change in the economic strategies - production and social reproduction - of family and peasant agriculture in Misiones (Schiavoni, 2022) and also of the indigenous communities of Alto Paraná, focusing on the production of food for sale in an associative way, in articulation with networks of social organizations. This opens questions about the identity reconfiguration of the Mbya people based on the changes in the economic practices of these populations.

By identifying how contemporary processes of dispossession operate in the Alto Paraná region of Misiones and which are the economic and political strategies in defense of the tekoa, we will seek to understand the identity configurations and reconfigurations of the Mbya, taking into account the narratives and symbolic systems located in the territory.

Area: 
Fellows
Headquarters: 
México