The forms of dispossession in the mountain region of Río Negro: about the trajectories of two forestry companies

Abstract

Afforestation with exotic conifers in the mountainous strip of the southwestern province of Río Negro (department Bariloche) has been promoted since the seventies by the national and provincial states and carried out by private and mixed capitals. For their part, indigenous Mapuche people have pointed to forestry as a means of appropriation, privatization and concentration of land. With this problematic background, the objective of this work is to approach the relationship between the practices of capital applied to forest production, the pattern of distribution of land delineated by the state and ways of their occupation, possession and use by indigenous people in the production of a particular social space, in the period that extends from the 1970s to the present. To do this, we deploy the expression of the process of capital accumulation in the mountain chain of Río Negro in the evolution followed by: a) the afforested area at the provincial level regarding policies promoting afforestation, and b) privatization of public land and the concentration of its surface through the policies for its administration. We go, then, in the paths of two forestry companies, while emblematic cases of the role of private and mixed capitals in the appropriation, privatization and concentration of land through afforestation. Finally, we will formulate some conclusions that synthesize our argument.