Societies “against” and “in ” the state – from exiwa to the retakings: Territory, autonomy and hierarchy in the history of the indigenous peoples of chaco-pantanal

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to conduct an exercise in historic anthropology and an anthropology of territory, based on an ethnography of the experiences of domination and resistance experienced by the indigenous peoples of Pantanal, in particular the Terena, within the processes of colonization, formation of nation states and capitalist development in South America. We will analyze experiences of indigenous autonomy against and in the state, and their dialectical territorial expression in the colonial world and in the contemporary dynamics of territorial and interethnic conflict in twenty-first century Brazil.