Forestry extractivism in the Arauco commune (Chile): internalization and forms of resistance

Abstract

This document provides a critical analysis of the ongoing forestry extractivism in the Arauco commune, located in the Biobio region of Chile, a process that began over 40 years ago as a public policy aimed at combating soil erosion, supplying coal-mining companies, building railroads, and reducing poverty indexes. However, because this activity is currently affecting the landscapes, economy, and daily life in the territory, forestry extractivism has become a sociocultural content with different meanings that circulate simultaneously in local social life and generate diverse forms of resistance to the impacts of the extractivist forestry model. The data analyzed show that this model is present not only in the territory's natural and productive spaces, but also in the everyday cultural constructions of its inhabitants, especially in internalized, shared understandings. Different forms of resistance through which the inhabitants seek to limit forestry extractivism have arisen from those understandings. This analysis is based on an ethnographic project carried out in 2016. The main methodologies employed were participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and revision of documents, aimed at highlighting the importance of the discourses and practices of diverse actors in the territory regarding the way in which the extractivist forestry model is internalized. Some of the main results were the identification of positive assessments, critiques, and modes of coexistence, as well as of forms of resistance, critical discourses, and conflict situations with regards to forestry activities. Thus, we present a way of understanding forestry extractivism, which goes beyond the environmental or social impacts of this activity and takes into account the influence of this model on the relations that the inhabitants establish with their territory. Keywords. Author Keywords:ethnography; expressions of resistance; forestry extractivism; internalization of extractivism; political ecology; sociocultural understandings