Narco-cultural interactions in indigenous communities of the Paraguayan Chaco: historical reconfigurations and social implications

Abstract

Introduction: Although drug trafficking has been a historical practice in the Paraguayan Chaco, social dynamics have changed in recent years, generating a hybrid social order in which drug traffickers have gained power, indigenous groups have been left unprotected and at the mercy of traffickers, and politics has disengaged from the community and freed up areas to facilitate and protect the illegal business. Objective: Against this backdrop, the article describes social perceptions of drug trafficking and politics in indigenous communities in the Department of Alto Paraguay. Methodology: The research is based on a qualitative multi-method approach that includes documentation, ethnography and key informant interviews. Conclusions: The paper demonstrates how the delegitimization of formal politics and legality create areas of risk not only for the expansion and social tolerance of criminality, but also for the legitimization of illegality as a means to achieve a (more) dignified life. In this sense, the article questions that the literature on criminal governance and narcopolitics has focused more on adjectives than on nouns. It is the previous inefficiency of governance and politics that creates the conditions for the emergence of unwanted adjectives (such as criminal or narco). The challenge is not so much to fight crime as to promote revalorized governance and policy.