Appropriating "modernization" – indigenous anti-hegemonic resistance in the Argentine Chaco

Abstract. The incorporation of indigenous territories into the Argentine Republic must be considered as a complex process of colonization which encompassed space, the word and the body. It enabled the dominant settler society to establish socioeconomic and sociocultural hegemony. The example of the Toba community in Clorinda elucidates the extent to which hegemonic worldviews have infiltrated their self-perception and produced the barrio (urban district) and the campo (rural area), as two places infiltrated with symbolisms and ideology. Through a postcolonial perspective, this article aims to examine the way the community deals with this "modernization", as the Toba themselves call the process. It is pointed out that, by appropriating the hegemony's logic, the Toba actively create spaces of resistance in order to maintain or regain self-determination. Discussing indigenous alternative concepts of modernity, this article advocates a greater consideration of those diverse social realities in the scope of Western development geography.