Abstract

SARRA, Sonia Elizabeth. From the Predation of the Devil to the End of this Humanity: Cosmopolitics in the Sugar Harvest of Northwest Argentina. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2020, n.41, pp.79-102. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda41.2020.04.

This text explores the cosmopolitical dimension of capitalism in Northwest Argentina. During the sugarcane harvest, the devil (the non-human owner of the whites) must feed on human workers to start up the agro-industrial production of the Ledesma Company. This more-than-human extractivism will accelerate the intervention of demonic entities (demon bats or a blue jaguar) that will devour the human species at the dawn of the end of this world. The article is part of a long term ethnographic study conducted with Guaranis -and local non-Guarani people- from Jujuy, between 2015 and 2019. It follows the thread of the conversations held with Jacinto Pïkïtü Aceri, a Guarani thinker, who led me from extractivism to the rebellion of objects and the end of this humanity. The predation of the devil contains profound reflections about otherness and the destiny of humanity; in the indigenous worlds, inhabited by multiple people, the non-humanity of some of them - like the devil, dehumanized businessmen, and mythical demons - does not place them outside the cosmopolitical negotiations. Beyond metaphorical evocations or symbolic appropriation of capitalist exploitation, the predation of the devil and the socio-cosmological consequences of extractivism are as real, evident and verifiable in native terms, as the material dimension of capitalism. In keeping with contemporary Amerindian anthropology, to take seriously the non-human dimension of extractivism indicates the pluralization of politics.

Keywords : Cosmopolitics; devil; ethnography; Guaraní; predation; sugar harvest.

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