Chapter 8: Emancipation and the Construction of New Development Models: The Experience of Andean Peasants in Argentina

The Department of Molinos, in the Province of Salta (Fig. 8.1), and more precisely in the Calchaquí Valleys, was constituted as the old encomienda of San Pedro Nolasco de Los Molinos, lands that were donated by the King of Spain to a receiver who had to populate, evangelise and domesticate its inhabitants within a determined period of time (Fig. 8.2). This encomienda became latifundios, large private estates, inhabited by peasant and indigenous communities under different regimes of domination.

This system of life and production was maintained for centuries, with traditional forms of domination that can be considered as a functional situation for its subjugation or disappearance. It can be affirmed that it is a complex, unequal and inequitable rural world that is naturalised by a large part of the population, with clear complicity at the different levels of the national state, which contributed to consolidating these rural structures, and which has also favoured the advance of land concentration. However, 10 years ago, a team of extensionists from INTA and a local NGO, Red Valles de Altura, began to develop an experience that allowed them to generate new conditions for the autonomy of the population and the construction of their own development project. From the outset, the technicians introduced the concept of community, with a strong sense of identity, solidarity and reciprocity. The intervention process has meant that, 16 years later, young people from these areas do not hesitate to call their places communities. The change of identity and the work between technicians and peasant communities made it possible to build a new social territory that encouraged the inhabitants to leave the limits of the farm, the employer, the place, and turn a common place into a territory to fight for. In this way, from the approach to communities, work was done on the creation of new irrigation infrastructures, improvement of animal production, creation of rural housing, creation of new marketing mechanisms, creation of a local brand image, training, among many other actions for local improvement.