Traditional puesteros’ perceptions of biodiversity in semi-arid Southern Mendoza, Argentina

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2021.104553Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Social practices of the inhabitants of the semiarid zone of southern Argentina.

  • We used ethnotaxonomic knowledge of traditional puesteros.

  • Makes visible the link between traditional land use practices and cultural identity.

  • This community is threatened with exile by the construction of a dam.

  • This area should be a cultural keystone place.

Abstract

The relationship between nature and culture is conceived as a dialogue, not as a dichotomy. Sociocultural and ecological systems are linked, in which language encodes the foundations of collective knowledge in a way that is often untranslatable but inextricably links its speakers to their landscape and each other. We describe the social practices and ethnotaxonomic knowledge of traditional people living in the semi-arid south of Mendoza, Argentina (locally called puesteros) in order to understand their adaptations and resilience strategies and clarify the fundamental link between past and present traditional land use practices and cultural identity. We detail the dynamics that link inhabitants and the biophysical environment, partly because this community is threatened with exile by a large hydroelectric project. If it is built, it would significantly alter the biocultural ecosystem and reduce the cultural heritage of the puesteros. This case study combines participant observation and 12 in-depth interviews. The results show knowledge of 39 plant speciesused as construction, firewood, medicine, and toxins. The community shows a close attachment to this place, past and present, in terms of identity, cultural practices, and local knowledge of biodiversity and geographic features. Given the interaction between puesteros and the landscape, we refer to the place and interactions as an ecocultural keystone landscape. This deserves particular consideration in the face of large construction projects.

Introduction

Archaeological and ethnographic data increasingly show that landscapes are not static (Levis et al., 2017). Most modern landscapes are anthropogenic because they have been modified by human activities, directly or indirectly (Pretty et al., 2009; Armstrong and Veteto, 2015). Even seemingly pristine landscapes have been significantly shaped by humans and reflect a multiplicity of symbols, traditional uses, and social practices (Barabas, 2010). Human communities and the landscapes they interact with can be understood as a dialectically structured unity conditioned by nature that emerge from diverse interpenetrations that bind its constituent parts together (Balée, 1986). The simultaneous emergence of the social-ecological systems concept and recognition of these systems' value in conservation and restoration practices has highlighted the unique benefits of recognizing the interconnectedness of social and ecological spheres. Accordingly, biocultural approaches to conservation can serve as powerful tools to address the rapid global loss of biological and cultural diversity (Gavin et al., 2015). These approaches include lessons from the past and elsewhere, perpetuated and strengthened through oral history such as lessons from animals: migration and population cycles, predator effects, and social dynamics. This supports monitoring resources and human effects on resources (positive and negative) and observing ecosystem changes and natural disturbances (Turner and Berkes, 2006). Currently, there is an emerging recognition that the diversity comprises both living beings and human beliefs, values, worldviews and cosmologies (Berkes et al., 2000; Ludwig and El-Hani, 2020; Wolverton et al., 2014). The socio-ecological complexity approach requires integrative concepts that examine geographical space from historical, ecological, and social perspectives to understand the development of human groups' relationships with their environments (Wiens et al., 2007). Along this line of thinking, several studies argue that environmental and social systems co-evolve to the point that 1) the environment reflects social knowledge, values, organization, and technologies) and 2) social systems reflect the environment's spatial and temporal variation, productivity, and resilience (Armstrong and Veteto, 2015; Balée, 1986, 2006; Crumley, 2004; Norgaard, 1981; Wyndham, 2009). Hence this dynamic approach allows us to understand how cultural practices promote fluidity or fragment the landscape, and conversely, how those practices are shaped by ecological dynamics. This is where the socio-ecological systems concept and biocultural heritage meet.

Knowledge of nature is accumulated within a society and transferred through cultural modes of transmission such as stories, narratives, observations, and informal word-of-mouth sources such as ancestors, parents, and friends, rather than formal schooling (Turner et al., 2000). Key memories exist as “communitarian historical consciences”, which allow societies to take advantage of the particularities of aspect of a local landscapes based on their material and spiritual needs (Toledo and Barrera Bassols, 2008). This knowledge is an active compilation of understandings from social memory that is polysemic, multidimensional, and polyvalent, in an effort to make sense of the world. Societies use this knowledge to guide their actions in the natural world. Berkes (2008) describes this as a knowledge–belief–practice complex that is fundamental to linking nature and culture. Cultural understanding of the environment can lead not only to sustainable management practices, but also to an in-depth knowledge of species requirements, ecosystem dynamics, sustainable harvest levels, and ecological interactions (Pilgrim et al., 2007). Humans transform the natural environment into cultural landscapes through symbols that give different meanings to the same objects or physical conditions. These symbols and meanings are social constructions (Armstrong and Veteto, 2015). A confluence of such constructions can drive the emergence of a cultural keystone place, which shapes the environment from a historically and culturally particular filter of beliefs (sensu Currier et al., 2015; Lepofsky et al., 2017). Cultural keystone places reflect the transformations of the physical environment through cultural symbols that extend into the past through archaeological objects, oral history, and memory. The symbols are tied to local vocabulary, spiritual and ceremonial values, the transmission of cultural knowledge, and ecology.

Here we demonstrate that giving due recognition to cultural keystone places is vital to our study of ecological and social systems. This paper provides an ethnoecological perspective on the importance of place-based knowledge in the lifeways of the people of Las Loicas, Mendoza, Argentina (Fig. 1). Southern Mendoza has a semi-arid climate and transverse valleys, where access to water strongly conditions human settlement (Montaña, 2008). In Malargüe (southwestern Mendoza), rural communities include pastoralists of European, indigenous, or mixed descent (collectively referred to by community members as “puesteros”). Families raise mostly goats (Capra spp.), also sheep (Ovis aries), horse (Equus caballus), and cattle (Bos taurus), they take their animals to pasture in the summer. This is a traditional practice that involves seasonal movements of herds to grazing on lush highland grasses in the summer and during the winter, return them to the warmer lowlands, following routes and routines that have remained unchanged for centuries (Baid, 1989; Dong et al., 2011). This transhumant mobility patterns is a clear example of a social system developing based on interactions with the environment. All puesteros have thorough knowledge on sustainable practices in arid environments such as herding livestock, living on wild plant and animal resources, and managing water resources. This knowledge comes from an adaptive learning process that has been built and rebuilt over generations and has produced “landscapes of transhumance” (Herzog et al., 2005). The entire culture is embedded within these landscapes and the markedly different summer and winter practices.

We suggest treating these transhumant cultural landscapes as cultural keystone places (CKP) (Cuerrier et al., 2015; Lepofsky et al., 2017) that need particular consideration before any large construction projects such as the proposed hydroelectric dam. For the community of Las Loicas, the practice of transhumance involves gives names to the landscape and the elements of nature they interact with. This breathes life into the bond between past and present land-use practices and cultural identity. Some places would be severely affected by the hydroelectric dam, which would flood about 10,000 ha. Such threats are today perhaps more discouraging than ever and the loss of this people's identity is imminent. This uncertainty puts Las Loicas at the forefront efforts to collaborate in the conservation of biocultural knowledge. This project recognizes that there are particular places, for any cultural group, that are critically important to their lifeways and identity. These keystone places need special attention for effective biocultural protection, conservation, and restoration.

This paper's goal is to clarify local adaptative strategies that stem from culture–nature interactions. This case study underscores the relevance of human–environment interactions and how they shape contemporary landscapes. We demonstrate the value of deploying an interdisciplinary dataset that unites archaeology, paleoecology, written and oral histories, and ethnography. We first present an overview of cultural landscapes and biocultural diversity. We then propose Las Loicas is a cultural keystone place and a reservoir of biocultural knowledge. To ground the concept, we present the toponymy of different places and key resources. Finally, we discuss the potential utility of the cultural keystone place concept in biocultural conservation, restoration, and land-use planning. Our approach is based on understanding human representations as an elaborate and socially shared form of knowledge that is constituted from experience, knowledge, and concepts transmitted by tradition and social communication (Jodelet, 2000). The practice of naming plants, animals, specific places on the landscape, and climatic phenomena is intended to represent, organize, and legitimize actions of the individual and group. Hence the study of vocabulary sheds light on the community's convention for understand their natural world. Language encodes collective knowledge in a way that is often not translatable but inextricably links speakers to their landscapes.

Geographically, southern Mendoza Province is composed of two large morphostructural units: the eastern plains and western mountain range, which extends up to 4049 masl (Campanario Hill; Fig. 1). The Andes function as a topographic wall that blocks prevailing westerly storm tracks, which strongly conditions the patterns of atmospheric circulation and creates a steep west–east gradient of precipitation and effective moisture (Garreaud et al., 2009). The rainfall regime is Mediterranean, with predominant winter precipitation (primarily snow in the mountains) and dry summers (Capitanelli, 1972). The floristic composition changes with latitude, altitude, and the local edaphic characteristics and history of disturbance, which makes it a heterogeneous system with significant variation in species composition over very short distances. The floristic–ecological relationship between phytogeographic environments and life forms generates three vegetation communities: 1) thickets of Neosparton ephedroides, Larrea nitida, Colliguaja integerrima and Fabiana imbricata, 2) thickets of Adesmia volckmannii, Chuquiraga oppositifolia, Adesmia pinifolia and Adesmia obovata, and 3) steppe with Azorella monantha, Nassauvia revoluta, Empetrum rubrum and Ochetophila nana (Méndez, 2014). Zoogeographically (Ringuelet, 1961), southern Mendoza is part of Patagonia and has a steppe environment, following the ecological and geographical criteria proposed by Roig (1972). There are many endemic species of lizards (Liolaemus, Phymaturus, Homonota), matuastos, Andean toads, four-eyed frogs and Pehuenche frogs, birds that are scavengers and birds of prey such as condors, jotes, black eagles, chimangos, and numerous species of small birds. Several species of mammals form the vertebrate community: piches, European hares, mara hares, vizcachas, chinchillones, zorrinos, huroncitos, and various rodent genera (Ctenomys, Akodon, among others). The guanaco (Lama guanicoe) is the most important wild camelid in the Andes. In Mendoza, the largest population is in Payunia, with lower densities in other areas of southern Mendoza, including the study area. Carnivores have a significant impact on domestic livestock, which provokes strong responses from puesteros. They include pumas, wildcats, and red and gray foxes.

The Rio Grande basin has been the focus of archaeological, ethnohistorical and ethnobiological research, which has allowed us to build a deep history of the human societies on this landscape. The region's first inhabitants arrived in the early Holocene around 10,000 cal yrs BP (Durán et al., 2016; Garvey et al., 2016). For millennia, their survival depended on hunting and gathering and following a mobility pattern, at a yet-undefined spatial scale, which incorporated environments of low, medium, and high altitudes as part of annual or multiannual rounds (Gambier, 1980; Durán, 2004). On the eastern slopes of the Andes, wild resources from complementary environments were exploited, with discontinuities and internal variation, until contact with or indirect influence of Hispanic society triggered changes in indigenous societies' economies and socio-political organization (Durán, 1994). Beginning in the seventeenth century, hunter-gatherer groups began to transform into tribal societies, with an incipient hierarchical social organization and economies that included pastoralism and trafficking European livestock and other goods to the western side of the Andes. This situation generated conflicts, forced complex and shifting inter-ethnic alliances, and activated political restructuring processes on both sides of a fluctuating and permeable frontier established between the Spanish State/Spanish-Creole States and indigenous societies (Durán, 1996; Lacoste, 2018; Llano and Durán, 2014). Ethnohistoric information shows that at the end of the eighteenth century, a group of Pehuenches, under the leadership of Ancan Amún, established summer camp at the confluence of the Chico and Grande rivers. This is interpreted as evidence that a pattern of transhumance similar to the current one, with groups spending summers in the highlands and winters in the lowlands. This was necessary for raising cattle and maintaining exchange networks with societies on the other side of the Andes. This pattern of landscape use lasted until the Argentine state achieved control of the region at the end of the nineteenth century, when local groups were replaced by pastoralists from Chile. During the twentieth century, the practices and customs of Malargüe's puesteros were initially recorded by Agüero Blanch (1963, 1965, 1966, 1968), mostly in the late 1940s. As a representative of the mobile civil registry of Bardas Blancas, he began thoroughly documenting practices and beliefs in southwestern Malargüe. These pioneering ethnographies describe the characteristics of transhumant pastoral practices, ways of hunting, gathering and preparing food, technologies, clothing, and health concerns and practices. Due to their remarkable quality, these studies are very useful for tracking continuities and changes to the present. In addition, there are two papers on Andean pastoralist herding and cultural change in western Argentina (Wolverton et al., 2016), and the consumption of fauna by herders, from a zooarchaeological and taphonomic perspective (Otaola et al., 2016).

Currently, this area is considered to be an ecological and cultural transhumant corridor of great importance. In this regard, the puesteros constitute the most stable population in the area. There are currently 46 families whose main occupation in goat herding and their fields and homes would be flooded if the dam is built, which is why we focus on them here. The single-family domestic settlements are dispersed along small ravines and vegas (high-altitude meadows). Some families keep chickens, geese and in a few cases, cattle. Horticulture is essential and provides potatoes, onions, squash, lettuce, carrots and is practiced in small plots near water courses protected by perimeter walls. In this case study, we underscore the importance of integrating data over a long period, in an area where people have been modeling the landscape for millennia.

Section snippets

Methods

During on-site research between 2016 and 2018, we conducted interviews with puesteros families. The study area consists of a broad transect (Bennett and Humprhries, 1981) from Bardas Blancas (1420 masl) to the area of Pehuenche border crossing, specifically the town of Las Loicas, which is located along the area's primary permanent watercourse, the Rio Grande river. Transects were a 2 m wide and 50 km long, along the riverbanks. This allowed us to survey the communities along the river and to

Results

The interviews revealed that the local population has an incredibly detailed knowledge of their environment, organized here in two broad categories: representations of the landscape and ethno-taxonomies of plants and animals.

Discussion

This study of puesteros' conceptualization of their environment reveals an acute awareness of sustainable land management, which impact on the sustainability of their livelihoods. According to Dwyer (1996), the concrete capacity of a community to internalize, understand, and develop a concept of nature is based on the community's understanding of the natural space it occupies. Ethnobiological research has grown more common since the has increased following a number of pioneering studies

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Carina Llano: conceived of the presented idea, Formal analysis, wrote the first draft of the manuscript, Supervision. Víctor Durán: Formal analysis, wrote the first draft of the manuscript, review and final write of the manuscript. Alejandra Gasco: review and final write of the manuscript. Enrique Reynals: Formal analysis. María Sol Zárate: review and final write of the manuscript.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

To the local inhabitants of the study areas who gave us their time, experiences and knowledge, essential elements for the elaboration of this work. The research was funded by the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (SECTyP Project; Resolution No. 3853/2016; Code: M037), ANPCyT (Projects PICT-2014-0940 and PICTO-UNCuyo 2016-0056) and the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (through the work plans of the CONICET researchers involved). We want to give special thanks to Raven

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