Fences in the borderland: technique, landscape and the architectures of domestication in the Brazilian-Uruguayan Pampa

Caetano Sordi

doi:10.1590/1809-43412019v16d600

Abstract

Abstract Recent perspectives on domestication have emphasized the importance of technical objects and other environmental elements as mediators of the relations between humans, animals and the many landscapes they inhabit. Using the concept of “architecture of domestication”, proposed by Anderson and others (2017), this article investigates the role of alambrados (wire and wooden fences) in the context of animal husbandry in the Brazilian-Uruguayan Pampa, the technical processes involved in their construction, as well as the new configurations and uses for these structures that have emerged along with the biological invasion of European wild boars (Sus scrofa) in the region. I will show that the alambrados are key elements in the difference between positive direct action and negative indirect action in relation to the animals of the herd within the Pampeano system of domestication.

Highlights

Extending from the confluence of Quaraí and Uruguay rivers to the mouth of the Chuí stream, the border between Brazil and Uruguay extends for some 1000 km in a northwest-southeast direction
In this article I have investigated the role of the alambrados and the alambradores who make them in the context of domestication and extensive herding developed in the Pampas of the Brazil-Uruguay border
I have used the concept of an “architecture of domestication” (Anderson et al 2017) to draw attention to the importance of technical objects and environmental infrastructures in modulating and stabilizing the relations between humans and herd animals

Summary

Introduction

Extending from the confluence of Quaraí and Uruguay rivers to the mouth of the Chuí stream, the border between Brazil and Uruguay extends for some 1000 km in a northwest-southeast direction. It shows two peões conducting a troop of cattle along a rural road (corredor) in the interior of the Ibirapuitã Area, delimited by alambrados on both sides This scene depicts an interaction between positive direct means of dealing with the herd, embodied in the act of conducting the troop on horseback, with a lasso and a whip; and negative indirect modes of relating to the same herd, inscribed in the landscape as restrictions on the autonomous movement of animals afforded by the fences. Just as the alambrados can be considered material resonators of the tension between the sedentary breeding and nomadic capture of cattle that has historically characterized Pampeano husbandry, the corral-traps and other fixed structures introduced by the agents of the ICMBio can be interpreted as resonators of the negotiations between positive direct and negative indirect means of capturing boars, thereby reproducing, in the key of hunting, a set of asymmetrical relations and identity tensions that have long been a part of the pastoral world in the extreme south of Brazil. Through their rejection or mistrust of the corral-traps, they align themselves with a venatic subjectification which sees the boar as an opponent in a game, or as an adversary to be defeated in warfare, more than as a biological species to be managed

Concluding remarks

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