Abstract
This article aims to understand the role of territorial practices in the interaction between human and nonhuman animals. It focuses on the Iguazú and Iguaçu national parks, established by Argentina and Brazil in the 1930s as nature reserves bisected by an international boundary. In a setting where human-made boundaries overlay natural boundaries, qualitatively different spatial practices clash in the territorial encounters between cougars, jaguars, and humans. The article demonstrates how changes in the border practices of park officials, hunters, and big cats reshuffled the terms of these encounters. The article assesses when, where, and how these encounters between rangers, poachers, and big cats took place, showing how felids challenged the spatial placement and taxonomical categories attributed to them by humans.
Highlights
This article aims to understand the role of territorial practices in the interaction between human and nonhuman animals
In the case of a national park, for example, park officials and legislation define a spatial perimeter to be protected and limit the categories of people and kinds of behaviors they allow within those boundaries
The three cases help us understand how, when establishing the two Iguazu national parks as nature preservation spaces, humans had to contend with the overlapping territories created by nonhuman animals
Summary
Geographer Robert D. Sack (1986), in his book Human territoriality, proposes territoriality as a human strategy for deploying power. The boundaries found inside the two national parks complicate a view of protected areas as homogenous spaces of pristine nature Zoning defines these internal territories, separating park sections open for visitation from those where tourism is banned. If one accepts Edward Casey’s (2007) proposition that boundaries are the primary vehicle of historical action – where the relationship between place and event intensifies – one can use the case of the Iguazu parks to reveal a different dimension in the relationship between space and history This new dimension can be found in the multiple territories established by the individuals of the several animal species that inhabit the parklands, which exist in a tense relationship with the overlapping, human-made territories. The three cases help us understand how, when establishing the two Iguazu national parks as nature preservation spaces, humans had to contend with the overlapping territories created by nonhuman animals
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