Date sent: 20 Jan 2006

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by HistGeog@h-net.msu.edu (January 2006)

Gastón R. Gordillo. _Landscapes of Devils: Tensions of Place and Memory in the
Argentinean Chaco_. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. 325 pp. Notes,
references, index. $84.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8223-3380-5, $23.95 (paper)
0-8223-3391-0.

Reviewed for H-HistGeog by David J. Keeling, Department of Geography and
Geology, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green

Contemporary historical geographies of non-Europeans in Latin America's
Southern Cone are few, especially analyses of how places and spaces are created
in both memory and reality. Afro-Argentines have received some attention in
recent years, primarily in terms of understanding their acculturation into
mainstream, mostly urban, society and their "disappearance" as a distinct
culture group. Pre-Spanish cultures have been the focus of significant
analysis, yet there remains a lacuna of knowledge about indigenous cultures
from the nineteenth century onwards. Of particular interest to Argentina
specialists is how indigenous groups engaged with post 1880s modernization, how
their landscapes changed as a consequence of greater engagement with the
European oriented economy, and what impacts the process of nation building had
on remote, isolated communities. Gastón Gordillo's _Landscapes of Devils_
offers some answers to these broader research questions in his ethnography of
the Western Toba of northern Argentina's Gran Chaco region.

Gordillo's thesis is structured around the often-conflictual relationships
between local places and regional spaces. He argues that the tensions or
conflicts that help to create places are the product of "other geographies" (p.
3), or external forces, and that the spatialization of memory lends tangibility
to these tensions. Through the eyes and memories of the Western Toba, he aims
to shed light on the histories and geographies of the Toba in a way that
facilitates a more detailed understanding of how the Gran Chaco emerged as a
contested social space. The book draws from general anthropological theories of
social memory and merges an examination of the materiality of memory with a
Gramscian-influenced, spatially based approach to the social construction of
place. The study purports to draw on recent scholarship in both anthropology
and geography, yet is on much more solid footing with the former discipline.
Many of the pioneering and ground-breaking geographical works that have
re-examined the way we think about place and society are not mentioned by
Gordillo. Spatial theorists such as Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Relph, Dennis Cosgrove,
and Alexander Murphy, to mention just a few of the more renowned scholars in
this area, have provided significant insights into how we might understand both
regions and locales as social constructs.

Gordillo's study results from seven months of field work among the Toba
conducted between 1987 and 1993, and almost two years of field work and
archival research between 1996 and 2000. The Toba's story unfolds with the
merging of historical and present-day memories that set the stage for a more
detailed analysis of how the Toba engaged with, and were shaped by, the sugar
economy of Salta province. In the final third of the book, the author examines
how the memories created and lived by the Toba coalesced in the Chaco's
political and cultural geography. He concludes by discussing how the Toba and
their geographies are being shaped by the forces of economic modernization and
by the reality of a political system that sees the boundary between Paraguay
and Argentina, straddling the Toba's historic lands, as divisive rather than
integrative. The study focuses on the Toba, as is expected of an ethnographic
study, rather than on their region or locales and thus will be of less interest
to anyone seeking a more detailed understanding of the Gran Chaco region or of
the broader forces shaping cultural change in Argentina. However, for those
readers desirous of an in-depth analysis of a little known indigenous group
living in a remote corner of the Southern Cone, this is a detailed, richly
sourced, and well-written study. Historical geographers in particular will
benefit from engaging with this study, as it provides a very workable template
for how to link lived experiences to landscapes in order to tease out the
complexities of socio-economic growth and change and their meaning for people
and places.

My primary criticism of this book centers on the way that maps and graphics are
presented and used in the study. Although Gordillo goes to great lengths to
argue that geographical analysis lies at the heart of this study, there is, in
fact, very little explicit spatial analysis taking place. To be sure, the
author talks a great deal about place, landscapes, journeys, and spaces, but
geographical analysis is more than a one-dimensional explication of locale-it
is supposed to peel back the layers of relationships between people and their
landscapes and to map those relationships, explaining why here and not there,
why this way and not that. The maps presented in Landscapes of Devils are
lifeless and they are marred by silly cartographic mistakes; for example, maps
1 and 4 have printing errors in the names of the provinces, map 3 is missing
the "a" in Tucumán, and map 6 fails to use the accepted symbol to denote a
railroad line, thus confusing it with a nearby road. All of the maps are simply
dropped onto a page with no explicit reference to them in the accompanying
text--what do the maps tell us, why are they important, how do they help to
explain the spatiality of Toba experiences? Similarly, the photographs, while
visually interesting in their own right, are disembodied and not mentioned
explicitly in the text; they just appear on a page with a caption. In photo 2
(p. 28), for example, we see a picture of a man standing in a Toba village.
However, there is no context for the village, the man, the landscape, or the
cultural artifacts seen in the picture. What do they mean? Why are they
important?

In the chapters that discuss the Toba experiences in the sugar ingenios of
Tabacal, there are no maps to provide the reader with a sense of place. What
were the spaces like in Tabacal that helped to shape the Toba's memories how
did they move through the landscape, where did they eat and sleep relative to
the workplace? Similarly, in the discussions on the Toba's relationship with
the Río Pilcomayo and the landscapes of Paraguay, there is little spatial
grounding to help the reader create a visual framework for the Toba hunting
networks. How did the river's changed course as a consequence of massive
flooding alter practical geographies? What was the spatial relationship between
Toba villages, the border, the river, and the traditional hunting grounds? Also
lacking is a more detailed discussion about how the Argentine process of nation
building changed the physical and political geographies of the Toba. What
impact did state development policies that were completely homogenous in their
conception of national territory have on local political, social, and economic
practices in the heterogeneous landscapes of the Toba?

These quibbles aside, however, I enjoyed this book immensely, not just because
I have an abiding love of all that is Argentina but because Gordillo has
provided a window on the Toba world that heretofore did not exist. His
well-researched and detailed ethnography of the Western Toba provides a solid
overview of a society that is alien in its own land and suggests that, despite
their many accomplishments, the Toba's future as a distinct culture group
cannot be taken for granted. Of course, this is true of many indigenous
societies around this region and the world, and their plight argues for more
research in the vein of this book in order to understand how modernization and
globalization are rapidly changing local peoples in local places.


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