Fighting With Wine: Ruin, Resistance And Renewal In A Qom Community Of Northern Argentina

213 Pages·2016·4.4 MB·English

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Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations
2015
FFiigghhttiinngg WWiitthh WWiinnee:: RRuuiinn,, RReessiissttaannccee aanndd RReenneewwaall iinn aa QQoomm
CCoommmmuunniittyy ooff NNoorrtthheerrnn AArrggeennttiinnaa
Christopher A. Golias
University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations
Part of the Indigenous Studies Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Latin
American Studies Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons
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Golias, Christopher A., "Fighting With Wine: Ruin, Resistance and Renewal in a Qom Community of
Northern Argentina" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1741.
https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1741
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1741
For more information, please contact [email protected].
FFiigghhttiinngg WWiitthh WWiinnee:: RRuuiinn,, RReessiissttaannccee aanndd RReenneewwaall iinn aa QQoomm CCoommmmuunniittyy ooff
NNoorrtthheerrnn AArrggeennttiinnaa
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This study examines public binge drinking among the Qom (Toba) ex-foragers of Formosa, northern
Argentina. Based upon 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a peri-urban Qom barrio (Lot 84), this
analysis relates binge drinking to Qom ethnohistory, community life, and interactions with the Argentine
state. The public, performative nature of Qom binge drinking is explored; intoxication is shown to convey
in sometimes violent public spectacle the pathos of their socioeconomic marginality, reinforce non-
indigenous Argentines’ entrenched perceptions of violent “Indians”, and paradoxically provide the Qom
with vehicle for continued colonial resistance. Many Qom view drinking problems as rooted in Lot 84’s
close proximity to the city (Formosa) relative to more rural Qom villages. Thus they reference a continuum
of health that runs from urban, non-indigenous spaces to the rural bush country where foods—including
home-brewed alcohol—are healthful rather than harmful. In kind, the violence and perceived chaos
associated with public binge drinking has led to the development of programs intended to stem alcohol
use in the community. Locally, counseling efforts are woven in the missions of evangelical churches and
the Catholic chapel, while top-down efforts focus upon state-run psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is
explored as a paternalistic form of governmental domination and attempted assimilation. Rather than
relying upon state-run methods for personal and communal re-integration, many Qom centrally position a
period of alcohol use within their personal development narratives, during which alcohol allowed them to
find personal responsibility or an improved relationship with God. On a communal level, fighting against
public alcohol use among youth has led to increased community solidarity and capacity building through
sport, education and indigenous-led program creation. In summary, public binge drinking is manifest in
the Qom community not through acculturation or personal pathology, but rather as a multi-valent,
ritualesque performance that levies resistance against prevailing social conditions and, despite the
profound tax of violence, occasions personal and communal transformation.
DDeeggrreeee TTyyppee
Dissertation
DDeeggrreeee NNaammee
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
GGrraadduuaattee GGrroouupp
Anthropology
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Philippe Bourgois
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alcohol, Gran Chaco, indigenous studies, performance, Qom, Toba
SSuubbjjeecctt CCaatteeggoorriieess
Indigenous Studies | Latin American Languages and Societies | Latin American Studies | Social and
Cultural Anthropology
This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1741
FIGHTING WITH WINE: RUIN, RESISTANCE AND RENEWAL IN A QOM
COMMUNITY OF NORTHERN ARGENTINA
Christopher A. F. Golias
A DISSERTATION
in
Anthropology
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2015

Supervisor of Dissertation

Philippe Bougois, Ph.D.
Richard Perry University Professor of Anthropology & Family and Community Medicine

Graduate Group Chairperson
_______________________
Deborah Thomas, Ph.D. Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies

Dissertation Committee
Greg Urban, Ph.D. Arthur Hobson Quinn Professor, Anthropology
Adriana Petryna, Ph.D. Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in Anthropology
ii

FIGHTING WITH WINE: RUIN, RESISTANCE AND RENEWAL IN A QOM
COMMUNITY OF NORTHERN ARGENTINA
COPYRIGHT
2015
Christopher A. F. Golias
iii

Dedication page
I dedicate this work to my "traveling partner" Cindy; may it serve as a comely stone upon
the cairn marking this waypoint of our life.
iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If it takes a village to raise a child, then indeed both a village and a cadre of
additional support are needed to write a dissertation. I first thank my committee members
for their patience, commentary, and assistance through each stage of the graduate
program, especially the dissertation research process. I am particularly appreciative of the
advice and encouragement offered me by Philippe Bourgois, Ph.D., without whose step-
wise guidance it is unlikely this work would have even come to fruition.
I am additionally thankful for ample funding by the Lisa Brody-Foley Fellowship,
the Brody Fund for Research in the Social Sciences, Francis Johnston Fellowship and
Benjamin Franklin Fellowship through the University of Pennsylvania.
Likewise, I am deeply indebted to the generosity of thought displayed by Mark
Gruber, Ph.D. and Mariann Váczi, Ph.D. who volunteered to read sections of this
manuscript and provided valuable ongoing commentary central to the argument I exposit.
I express my sincere gratitude to Claudia Valeggia, Ph.D. for introducing me to
the Qom and for facilitating the beginnings of relationships when I arrived to Lot 84 in
summer of 2009. It was these meetings that would bloom into the friendships that were
signatures of my time with the Qom. Without Claudia’s established community ties, this
research would have proved both more lengthy and more difficult.
I am immeasurably thankful to the residents of Lot 84 for allowing me to live
among them, all the while asking questions which were sometimes difficult to converse
about. I offer thanks to all those who agreed to speak with me and offer valuable
v

information as I endeavored to understand what proved to be a very multifaceted
phenomenon. I am particularly grateful to members of the Qompí rugby team, who
welcomed and taught a complete novice in summer 2010. Additionally, without the help
of Juan Carlos Caballero and his family, a place to stay in Lot 84 would have been
difficult to secure. Above all others, however, I am forever indebted to Amancio Lopez.
Amancio served as Qom tutor, translator, field assistant, and advocate—often allowing
his reputation to extend to my work. Amancio deserves the gratitude of a friend who will
find it difficult to repay all of the goodwill offered him in advance—all I can do is try!
Last, I thank my wife Cindy. Her contribution has shifted form from field
assistant, to career advisor, to spiritual guru, to editor-consultant, to cheerleader. What
never changed was her remarkable, unwavering support.
ABSTRACT

FIGHTING WITH WINE: RUIN, RESISTANCE AND RENEWAL IN A QOM
COMMUNITY OF NORTHERN ARGENTINA
Christopher A. F. Golias
Philippe Bourgois, Ph.D.
This study examines public binge drinking among the Qom (Toba) ex-foragers of
Formosa, northern Argentina. Based upon 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a peri-
urban Qom barrio (Lot 84), this analysis relates binge drinking to Qom ethnohistory,
community life, and interactions with the Argentine state. The public, performative
nature of Qom binge drinking is explored; intoxication is shown to convey in sometimes
violent public spectacle the pathos of their socioeconomic marginality, reinforce non-
indigenous Argentines’ entrenched perceptions of violent “Indians”, and paradoxically
provide the Qom with vehicle for continued colonial resistance. Many Qom view
drinking problems as rooted in Lot 84’s close proximity to the city (Formosa) relative to
more rural Qom villages. Thus they reference a continuum of health that runs from urban,
non-indigenous spaces to the rural bush country where foods—including home-brewed
alcohol—are healthful rather than harmful. In kind, the violence and perceived chaos
associated with public binge drinking has led to the development of programs intended to
stem alcohol use in the community. Locally, counseling efforts are woven in the missions
of evangelical churches and the Catholic chapel, while top-down efforts focus upon state-
run psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is explored as a paternalistic form of governmental
domination and attempted assimilation. Rather than relying upon state-run methods for
vii

personal and communal re-integration, many Qom centrally position a period of alcohol
use within their personal development narratives, during which alcohol allowed them to
find personal responsibility or an improved relationship with God. On a communal level,
fighting against public alcohol use among youth has led to increased community
solidarity and capacity building through sport, education and indigenous-led program
creation. In summary, public binge drinking is manifest in the Qom community not
through acculturation or personal pathology, but rather as a multi-valent, ritualesque
performance that levies resistance against prevailing social conditions and, despite the
profound tax of violence, occasions personal and communal transformation.
viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... VI
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................................................... X
CHAPTER 1: FIGHTING WITH WINE: RUIN, RESISTANCE AND RENEWAL IN A
QOM COMMUNITY .................................................................................................................... 1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 1
DRINKING WITHIN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: LOCAL BELIEFS AND GLOBAL CONNECTIONS . 6
DRINKING, RITUALS AND CULTURAL CHANGE ......................................................................... 10
FIELDWORK IN FORMOSA ........................................................................................................... 13
SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS ............................................................................................................ 18
CHAPTER 2: FROM EL MONTE TO EL BARRIO : AN ETHNOHISTORY OF LOT 84 23
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 23
A HISTORY OF THE CHACOAN FORAGERS ................................................................................. 25
Geography and Prehistory ..................................................................................................... 25
Traditional Lifeways .............................................................................................................. 26
Early Colonial History (1500-1880) ...................................................................................... 31
War, Subjugation, Sedentarization and Massacre (1880-1920) ............................................ 33
Proletariatization and Pentecostalism (1920 -1980) ............................................................. 38
De-Industrialization, Diaspora and Legal Reform: 1980-2000 ............................................ 39
Current Status ........................................................................................................................ 41
LOT 84 ........................................................................................................................................ 43
Formation ............................................................................................................................... 43
Lot 84 Today .......................................................................................................................... 46
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................. 53
CHAPTER 3: PUBLICITY IN QOM BINGE DRINKING .................................................... 54
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 54
“14 Year old girl dies by throwing herself off antenna” ....................................................... 57
PUBLICITY IN QOM DRINKING ................................................................................................... 59
ANTHROPOLOGY AND PERFORMANCE ....................................................................................... 62
THE TRAGIC, THE QUOTIDIAN .................................................................................................... 64
SUBVERSIVE PROFLIGACY ......................................................................................................... 72
PROTESTANT PARADES, INSURGENT INTOXICATION ................................................................. 75
OF NARRATIVE AND PERCEPTION: LOT 84 AND THE CITY ........................................................ 81
FIGHTING WITH WINE: PARADOXES OF VIOLENCE AND DRINK ................................................ 84
CHAPTER 4: THE CONTAGIOUS CITY: CONCEPTUALIZING COMMUNAL
ILLNESS ....................................................................................................................................... 87
“HERE, WE ARE SICK WITH THE CITY”: ALCOHOL PROBLEMS EXPLAINED .............................. 87
THE INVISIBLE WORLD OF THE QOM ......................................................................................... 91
LEFT-HANDED GIFTS: DRINK IN ARGENTINA .......................................................................... 100
IN THE MONTE, THE ANCIENT ONES WERE HEALTHY… ............................................................ 107
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 112
CHAPTER 5: THE INDIAN ON THE COUCH: THERAPEUTIC DOMINATION ........ 113
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 113
PSYCHOANALYSIS, POWER AND GOVERNMENTALITY ............................................................. 116