“Communities in conflict”: The case of Cerro León touristic project, Chubut, Argentina

Abstract

For the past eight years, the Mapuche communities Cañio and Ñiripil - settled on the hillside of Cerro León, Chubut, Argentina - have been in dispute with the municipality of El Maitén, which started, without asking their permission, the construction of a ski center in their territories. Both families began to pass through this conflict, self-asserting themselves as Mapuche communities, and began a legal case. With these actions, they broke with their historical place of "neighbors" within the local community. At the same time, some neighbors –mainly involved in the project, belonging to the local political and economic elite– confronted the communities for impeding the tourist center from continuing to develop. This work aims to characterizes the progression of this conflict and the development of these two positions: that of the Mapuche communities and the neighbors who defended the Cerro project. In the framework of this characterization, it is also proposed to investigate the disarticulation of the Cañio and Ñiripil families from their place in the "neighborhood" of the town of El Maitén, to identify themselves as a "Mapuche community”.