the breath of the devils: memories and places of an experience of terror

Abstract

In this article, I examine how an indigenous group of the Argentine Chaco remembers experiences of exploitation and terror in terms of devil imageries and how, in turn, these memories shape their current senses of place. My analysis focuses on the Toba of the mid‐Pilcomayo River and their memories of work in a sugar plantation in northwestern Argentina. These narratives hinge on different types of devils and cannibals that made the plantation a place of estrangement, disease, death, and terror. In the 1990s, these memories informed the cultural construction of the bush of the Chaco as a place of resilience, relative autonomy, and healing, [devil imagery, terror, place, memory, Toba, Gran Chaco, Argentina]