The many others of past and present

Ana Lucia Camphora

Introduction

In colonial developments, nature does not acquire the same value for everyone. In this sense, recognition of the deep, if not obvious, involvement of non-human species in human enterprises becomes a counterpoint to review arguments, beliefs, and longstanding misconceptions. The progress-oriented logic that evolved into the patriarchal and speciesist machine reinforced the hegemonic scheme based on the instrumentalization of nature that modified native systems of thought and their cultural manifestations, intimately connected to the environment and other non-human beings.^[1] Furthermore, Western concepts of nature undermined native mechanisms of social cohesion, disrupting the indigenous sensitivities that captured other voices. Behind the façade of reason lay a veritable “sowing of death” built into tactics of occupation, deterritorialization, and extermination of “uncivilized beings”. This reality debunks the idealization of a European civilizational model. As Carvalho observed, the colonial biopolitical system has come under scrutiny, revealed as the Western rationale behind asymmetric transatlantic exchanges fueled by power, capital, and nature.^[2]

In this study, I follow the trajectories of some non-human species to provide other perspectives on the colonial dynamics of interspecies encounters in Latin American Southern Cone territories. My starting point is the recognition of the significance and multiple attributes of non-human species. As Kelly argues, colonial thought denies animality, and other living beings appear in history and society only by chance, or as mere commodities.^[3] Esparza also understood that the persistent system of biopower underlying species hierarchies becomes the precarious legacy of capitalism.^[4] On the other hand, Crosby shows how both native and exotic species, plants as well as animals, took part in the wide range of the tangible and intangible consequences of the triumphs and failures of European colonialism. As influential allies or enemies, these beings provide us with remarkable testimonies of the extensive effects of the dichotomous colonial mindset.^[5]

Throughout the history of mentalities, forms of human involvement with other animal species were defined and redefined according to moral principles that demarcated the different worldviews. As highlighted by Acker et al., the concept of nature is not a vague notion, but a locally rooted one, involving the continuity of local communities to a given land and located ecosystem.^[6] The Western interest in using nature is the result of power relations materialized in its exploitation, transformation, and marketization. In this case, more than in most circumstances, some “natures” are more valuable than others. This “epistemological operation of coloniality”^[7] also structured the conjunctures that identify the existence of the “others” and the multiplicity of meanings. The Western vision of “nature” established an artificial difference between what is human and what is not. In colonial territories, this conceptualization generated political controversies regarding the interrelations between coloniality, capitalism, and nature. In this respect, attributing agency to non-human actors or agents is a central aspect to uproot the dichotomy of culture and nature.

Coming to the full recognition of non-human beings is a process that presupposes other channels of intersubjectivity. They must be freed from the reification inherent in their roles within the colonial enterprise, wherein they were largely reduced to their motor force, or to the status of commodities circulating through European empires. Following Honneth, this means promoting recognition in its most elementary form.^[8] In this sociologist’s critical social theory, non-human animals are not excluded from the social sphere of altruism and cooperation. Intersubjectivities that do not occur exclusively between humans bring additional ingredients to issues that, albeit silenced, have always been present. Pondering the concept of “multispecies co-authorship”, Cabral and Vital express their conviction that understanding historical processes requires recognizing the sensitivities that come from other voices.^[9]

Seeking a more discerning reading of the hierarchical attitudes toward the non-human species that were part of the colonial enterprise, our attention turns here to other writings, especially those that bring us closer to testimonies that have been scattered and consistently muted. The decolonization of Latin American history demands more attention to be paid to other trajectories, especially those that privilege communication systems that differ from human language. As Kelly concluded, other voices, muted by the modern perspective that stubbornly attributes passivity to nature, should no longer be markedly relegated to the periphery.^[10]

The history of the agency of non-human actors enables us to move forward in our understandings, conjoining oralities, relational coexistence, senses of smell, touch, and other sensibilities. Cabral and Vital pointed out that, despite the limits imposed by textual language, tools have been developed to examine history as more-than-human conviviality.^[11] Barcz discussed some issues dealing with realism in literature on the protection of the natural world, which comes close to historical narrative production. She took Lawrence Buell’s work as a reference to think about realism understood as a non-metaphoric sense. He shows that this realism is not exactly the same as the material reality but is connected with it.^[12] In this sense, writing is understood as intervening in the physical world by creating an alternative world experience that goes beyond stable anthropocentric tradition. Indeed, ecocriticism is not subject to accusations from a naive understanding of the world. In environmental criticism, by which we understand the literal reference to an object for its own sake, Buell stresses “the importance of the aesthetic, conceptual, and ideological meaning of the environment”.^[13]

Overcoming our blindness to the central role of other species for certain human societies may contribute to weaving a more fluid net of coexistence with them. Their connections to the socio-environmental universe evoke coexisting worlds, as well as cognitive and affective dimensions of tangible and intangible realities. Jacques-Coper et al. adopted the concept of “biocultural diversity” in reference to a cumulative and intergenerational body of knowledge, practices, and beliefs that form a “biocultural memory”.^[14] In the interconnectedness of the distinct biomes of the Latin American Southern Cone, biodiversity and cultural diversity, together with individual experiences, are accumulated as part of a memory reservoir passed on over generations. The presence of the Andean condor, the impact of the North American beaver, and the economic significance of cattle — all three discussed below — depict the historical influence of non-human species in several cultural domains, as demonstrated by Ibarra et al.^[15] Both in the past and the present, each of these species has participated in the indissociable bonds between colonialism and capitalism, and its socio-environmental consequences in the Southern Cone territories.

The ancestral flight of the condor

Restricted high-altitude areas are the extensive home of the Andean condor (Vultur gryphus). These birds inhabit the Andes, from Venezuela in the north to the Cape Horn Archipelago in the south of Chile, as well as the coastal areas of Peru, Chile, and Argentina. Capable of flying at an altitude of around 6,500 meters, the condor’s lifestyle is distinguished by its smooth and constant gliding.^[16] Living far from the dynamics of the earthly world, this species has witnessed the slow and constant advance and retreat of the glaciers, as well the ancestral trajectories of several human groups. Flying over numerous glaciers in the massive and remote mountain landscape of the Patagonian Andes, the condor is deeply familiar with the cold Andean-Patagonian Forest, the Patagonian Steppe, and the very specialized high-altitude ecosystems, as well as with huge freshwater reservoirs.

Moving across the Holocene and into the Anthropocene, the Andean Condor is a powerful icon of pre-Columbian Andean societies. The species, which lends its identity to a celestial constellation, is attested in archaeological records of the Atacama desert, in Chile’s Arica y Parinacota region, and in the lowlands.^[17] The condor’s remarkable significance for many traditional societies of South America^[18] is expressed in its connection to the sophisticated agriculture developed by the Aymara people, as well as through a wide range of symbolic meanings. Examining Aymara folktales, Weston La Barre collected some original stories which include the condor’s presence in traditional fables, interacting with the Oasis hummingbird (Rhodopis vesper): “Condor, in the guise of a tall man, steals the chief’s daughter. Hummingbird bargains his aid to bring her back; henceforth Condor never comes down from Illimani to where Hummingbird flies among the crops”.^[19]

In La Barre’s collection of fables, the condor also interacts with other animals, such as the fox (Lycalopex sp.):

Fox, starving, goes to the mountain to seek food. He meets Condor, and bethinking himself of his own bushy tail and Condor’s naked feet, he gets Condor to agree that the one who can sit longest in the cold snow will eat the other; but in the end it is Fox who is eaten.^[20]

As examined by Ibarra et al., for the Aymara people, the powerful condor’s sacred nature is recognized as the Mallku, the magnificent spirit of the mountains and the waters. The spiritual and political authority of Mallku also influences Aymara cosmology, which encompasses time, space, and the general forces of life. In traditional Aymara healing, the condor’s meat was seen as a medicine that slowed aging through its regenerative power. The ashes of burning feathers were considered curative and useful to stop bleeding from the nose or mouth, and their smoke was inhaled in cleansing ceremonies. The absolute power of the condor was also perceived as a threat to young women and children, changing form and transforming into a powerful well-dressed man. They were believed to cry red or blood tears, as a sign of the great pain of solitary flight. The sighting of a condor was thought to bring good luck, as long as the birds were greeted with a wave of the hand or by removing one’s hat, to welcome serendipity or fulfillment of an important decision. Nonetheless, a similar sighting might also mean bad luck or be seen as an omen of death.^[21]

The huge ancestral legacy of the Andean Condor has lost meaning in our times. Its cultural relevance has become a part of the Aymara memory, its significance blurred by changing circumstances. Jacques-Coper et al. also argue that the main factors underlying the weakening symbolic value of the condor are the dramatic depopulation of the Andean foothills and mountains, the political and cultural homogenization of the Chilean territories, and the fast rise of Pentecostalism.^[22] Migration from the countryside to the city, and from the mountains to the coast, led to a dramatic depopulation of the foothills and mountains, influencing all aspects of indigenous culture, including beliefs, knowledge, and production practices. As of the 19th century, political and cultural standardization of the territories annexed by Chile promoted extensive modification of traditional forms of life. This “Chilenization” introduced a new order which was both political and administrative. The presence of government officials and military personnel transformed both environment and tradition. National flags and new colors were subtly incorporated into religious festivals and schools, and the street names were changed.

As of the 1950s, the introduction of Pentecostalism in the Aymara communities of the foothills and the Andean plateau represented a critical rupture with traditional beliefs, which are gradually waning. Attributing divine qualities to the condor runs contrary to Evangelical faith. As registered by Jacques-Coper et al., an Aymara man claimed that the Mallku is controlled by the devil, and elderly people living in Andean plateau settlements have denied having any relationship or identification with the condor. At different levels, the species is under threat due to environmental degradation, hunting, poisoning, and food scarcity.^[23] In Chile, the condor is considered a threatened species and is critically endangered in the north of South America.^[24] The species is rarely seen in Venezuela.^[25] Around the 1970s and 1980s, the decline in the number of specimens reduced their threat to people and to livestock ranching. According to older residents, condors were sighted most frequently during livestock’s calving months. The condor is a scavenger and an occasional hunter of young livestock or dying animals, so their thinning population could also be attributed to the reduction of ungulates, as well as to climate change.

People who live in the Andean foothills are unable to identify the places where condors live, and the new generations, who for the most part live in different socio-environmental contexts, have lost these cultural references as well. By now, according to Jacques-Coper et al., the condor’s presence has become scarce and limited within Aymara cultural manifestations, such as saint’s day festivals, music, and agricultural rituals. Even so, the Andean Condor is Chile’s national symbol, and the mere idea of its existence is enough to uphold it.^[26]

A “Pandora’s box”: conflictive connections with “others”

The Columbian exchange inaugurated times of circulation of species between the Americas and Europe. Since early colonial times, it occurred in different conjunctures underestimating and ignoring potential hazards. In this regard, Acker et al. note that it is not like a historical period but the ongoing field of force of coloniality. In 1946, a new exotic species came to Tierra del Fuego Island, Argentina. A paradigmatic case of environmental devastation, the introduction of the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) to South America resulted in the largest landscape alteration in subantarctic forests since the last ice age.^[27] Anderson et al. investigated the extended consequences of the defiant power of this intruder and its socioenvironmental consequences by the end of the 20th century. The intentional but unofficial one-off introduction of 25 mating pairs of beavers into the Claro River near Fagnano Lake was meant to promote the fur industry. However, beaver hunting was not authorized in Argentina until 1981.^[28]

The significance of this case derives from the beavers’ massive ability to influence their environment, whether negatively or positively. The role of the North American beaver can be equally relevant as a ‘native ecosystem engineer’ in some environmental conditions, as well as a potential damage factor owing to their capacity to cause physical state changes in biotic or abiotic materials.^[29] Nummi and Hahtola examined the beavers’ positive interactions as important for communities in boreal areas, as a species makes the environment more favorable for others. Although their presence may have a beneficial impact on other species, their action is habitat-altering. The authors reviewed several studies that have developed evaluation models for the consequences and benefits of introduced species considered as ecosystem engineers. These effects are strongly determined by the environmental context in which they are embedded. Insights can be predicted by dimensioning changes in resource availability or quality, food-web dynamics, disturbance regimes, and alteration of the physical structure of the ecosystem. Such species’ positive effects are associated with improved habitat heterogeneity and productivity. The effects generated by beavers in subantarctic ecosystems present diversified magnitudes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. They promote the replication of natural lentic features of the post-glacial landscape, as well as flooding and herbivory in the region’s riparian vegetation. In the boreal watershed in Southern Finland, beavers’ presence generated healthy outcomes of resource enhancement and habitat amelioration.^[30]

Anderson et al. argue that, in the American continent, studies revealed significant differences in the impacts of beaver invasion on North and South America. Their negative impacts on Latin American Southern Cone ecosystems were enormous. Over two decades after they were introduced, beavers spread almost instantaneously. They crossed the Beagle Channel to Chile, designated today as the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve, to occupy the islands of Navarino, Hoste, Picton, Nueva, and Lennox. From there they reached the Chilean islands south of the Beagle Channel and mainland Chile. In this country, in 1993, the beaver was declared a harmful species, and hunting was authorized. Over time, the beavers’ expansive damage to subantarctic ecosystems triggered bi-national initiatives involving scientists, authorities, and civil society in both Chile and Argentina. There is a consensus amongst Chilean and Argentine scientists and authorities that the eradication program of North American beavers should protect the region’s integrity, singularity, and identity. The authors concluded that the magnitude of the damages to the riparian vegetation of the Fuegian Archipelago is unparalleled, as is the novel mode of binational cooperation that Argentina and Chile have implemented in putting together a beaver eradication program. The beavers’ impacts on habitats, communities, and different ecosystems can now be discussed, compared, and contextualized in terms of effects on time and space. However, when reflecting on the perceived need for exotic species eradication and subsequent ecosystem restoration in the austral archipelago, it should be kept in mind that the introduction of species by humans is a global process that has been occurring for many centuries.^[31]

In this regard, Anderson et al. remind us that the processes to restore the region’s integrity and identity should be also contextualized as part of an ongoing global process over many centuries. We must acknowledge that the majority of introduced species either do not become permanently established or cause little effect on the recipient ecosystems and biota. In this approach to interactions between “others”, and the power relations that are played out, historical characteristics are taken into account to understand how ecosystems adapt, regenerate, or undergo degradation in the face of an invasive species.^[32]

Today we have a clearer understanding of the harmful effects of introduced species, based on assessments of their impact on resource availability and/or quality, disruptions in the food chain, disturbance events, and effects on habitat heterogeneity and the physical structure of the ecosystem itself.^[33] Contemporary perceptions of the wide range of impacts beavers have had as introduced species may be illustrative of the other agencies that have been ignored. Terms such as ecosystem “productivity” or “disturbance event”^[34] reveal a new approach to interactions between “others”, and the power relations that are played out.

The utility of the “invasion” metaphor was also questioned by Larson.^[35] It could generate an inaccurate perception of introduced species and their impact, a social misunderstanding and loss of scientific credibility, and the reinforcement of a militaristic outlook that is counterproductive to conservation itself. A comparison of the socio-environmental impacts arising from the introduction of the two species, beaver and cattle, into Southern Cone territories is useful here. Beavers produced visually evident damage which was not coupled with relevant economic results. Cattle, on the other hand, demonstrated integrative, pertinent, and economically effective adaptation, including hiding or minimizing the socio-environmental damage that came with them, as will be explained below.

The political power of intruders

Among the best grazing lands in the world, the extensive fields of the Southern Cone form a mosaic of more than 500 species of grasses.^[36] Livestock’s massive presence within this natural continuum comprised an economic landscape. Cattle multiplied as immense herds that wandered over more than 100 million hectares of sub-humid pasturelands in the Rio de la Plata basin. The indisputable usefulness of these pastures is no longer considered an impact on biodiversity but rather as an activity that is potentially aligned with environmental conservation.^[37] From this angle, Brailovski observed that the introduction of large herbivores generated a rapid enrichment of soils, attracting indigenous peoples and, with them, the use of fire.^[38]

Throughout the colonial period, there was a vague but noticeable perception of the magnitude of environmental changes caused by the spread of livestock in the Southern Cone. In the 1830s, Charles Darwin recorded his concerns regarding the unavoidable alteration of the flora and fauna caused by the continuous impact of livestock on the natural grasslands.^[39] At that time, the native vegetation of the Pampas was undergoing continuous modification, while native species, such as the guanaco, deer, and ostrich, were vanishing. The exponential increase of carcasses strewn about led to a corresponding rise in carrion vulture population. Extensive herds of cattle and horses succumbed to long periods of drought, often becoming stuck in the mud while searching for water or forced to drink salt water in the absence of freshwater options.^[40]

Rucovsky examined the cow as a foundational figure and recurrent icon of the Latin American imaginary, a constellation-picture that denotes a tangle of multiple connections, like land and water.^[41] The prominent presence of livestock denotes the rampant agrarian colonization of space based on the overexploitation of nature. Cattle had a clear civilizing role, linked to the disciplining of people and bodies, through territorial planning and occupation. The Industrial Revolution that maximized the colonial trade of commodities renewed and enhanced that colonial machine of flesh and bones. The cow is the matrix of a strategic asset at the core of capitalism, where livestock are portrayed as non-political entities who must be sacrificed on the altar of modern politics.

In Argentina, the walls of the Casa Rosada (Pink House), home to the nation’s government since 1873, acquired its color from a paint made from lime, fat, and ox blood. In both real and symbolic dimensions, the historical significance of animal sacrifice intertwines with the organization of the Southern Cone’s meat-supplying colonies. Those pink walls are very representative of a subaltern structure devised to supply transnational markets. Livestock’s formidable efficiency sustained “greedy elites ready to submit all forms of ‘otherness’ to maximize their profit”.^[42]

There are other demonstrations of the historical proximity between power and slaughtered cattle. In Rio de Janeiro city, the modern slaughterhouse inaugurated in 1881 included “a small wooden pavilion near the area where animals were readied for slaughter, constructed so that His Royal Imperial Highness could take bloodbaths”.^[43]

Examining the cow and its vulnerability within the symbolic universe of the slaughterhouse, Rucovsky explored the implicit hierarchy in the affective closeness of bovine and human bodies, both perceived as precarious lives. The space of the slaughterhouse invokes the radical de-possession, vulnerability, and unprotection of a “biopolitical scanning machine”. ^[44] There is the expanded zone of bodies turned into flesh in this topography of “displaced death”. From Judith Butler’s analysis of Emmanuel Levinas, Rucovsky (op. cit.) understood that the bovine face and precarious life which sustain an implicit hierarchy for the living human shows “a politics of corporeal vulnerability”.^[45] The work in slaughterhouses instructs a knowledge of precarity, by sharing the living vulnerability of “the affective and sensitive dimension that emerges between human and bovine bodies”. ^[46]

Barcz also perceives slaughterhouses as the anchor of human-animal relations that are historically conditioned as the domesticated and vulnerable animality.^[47] In Europe, the first public slaughterhouses were created as part of a set of policies for urban modernization. These novel and rational architectural spaces for animal slaughter were large industrial structures built according to new sanitary measures, located outside major urban centers. More than any other, the slaughterhouse became the very institution that marked the transition from agrarian to industrial systems.^[48]

By the end of the eighteenth century, Argentina had one of the largest markets for beef and mutton that had ever been seen. Carcasses of large animals were processed in meat-salting plants, making meat readily available. At the time, meat exportation was highly dependent on international trade variations linked to tax measures, transportation, and peacetime in the Atlantic. There was also a culture of waste and neglect fostered by the abundance of horses and cattle, as noted by Darwin and Saint-Hilaire as they traveled through regions whose economy was based exclusively on animal husbandry.^[49] This was in the nineteenth century, when the socio-economy centered on salted meat did not encourage the appreciation of these animals as living assets or sources of wealth. Saint-Hilaire found quite the opposite, observing that the joy that preceded the moment in which men killed and quartered cattle sometimes went far beyond the desire to satisfy hunger. Grotesque sacrificial activities were a part of regional economies. In the arreada or vacaria of Southern Brazil, an emblematic ritual that lasted several days, the method employed to slaughter cattle was described as cruel, irregular, and “exquisitely savage”.^[50] First, cattle were thrown to the ground by cutting their tendons with a long stick garnished with a sharp half-moon blade; they were then killed with a pike spear penetrating their entrails, after which the men jumped off their mounts to skin the animals and take them.^[51] The weird scenery of the salting area was described in detail. The meatiest parts of the animal were spread on long poles suspended four meters above the ground while the shredded carcasses were sent to cauldrons where their tallow was extracted. Candles were made from the fat taken from the bone marrow and brains, while bones served as fuel for ovens.^[52] In Argentina, bone fences were built using hundreds of thousands of steer skulls. Skulls were piled on top of each other like stones in several layers with the horns protruding. One might see green grass, vines, and wildflowers sprouting out of the holes in the skulls.^[53]

In 1864, the first expression of world capitalism in Latin America was the corned beef factory Société Fray Bentos, built on the banks of the Uruguay River. In consequence, between 1872 and 1908, the volumes of meat and wool produced per hectare in Uruguay more than doubled.^[54] Defined as nothing less than “a colossus”,^[55] the Fray Bentos slaughterhouse brought down 1,549,000 heads of cattle from 1881 to 1890. By the end of the 1860s, the slaughterhouse consumed around six thousand tons of coal per year and dumped around twenty thousand tons of animal waste into the Uruguay River. It is worth emphasizing that, by the early twentieth century, over 40 percent of Britain’s meat products were imported, coming mostly from the Latin American Southern Cone. Such a significant economic relationship could almost be considered an “informal” reconfiguration of the empire.^[56] Shut down in 1979, the plant gained UNESCO recognition as the Fray Bentos Landscape, Cultural and Industrial site in 2015.^[57]

Colonial biopolitics in a capitalist world

The concept of animal agency raises different understandings according to the dominant cultural hegemony of the time, in which the power attributed to animals is part of the dominant discourse around humans. Menzies observed that European Pre-Enlightenment recognized non-human animals as having a level of autonomy that meant they could break the law and be prosecuted just like humans.^[58] So, if an animal can function within prescribed codes of behavior, with enough autonomy to break the law, they can be recognized as possessing agency. Even though such judgments sought to extend networks of social control to the relationships between societies and nature, they attributed a social place to certain creatures seen as interfering with the well-being of society. Lourenço also observed that Renaissance Humanism can never be confused with humanitarianism, since the former prescribes the view that there is nothing in nature more worthy of admiration than man.^[59] Indeed, in the medieval and modern Western world, some intimate bonds kept humans and nonhumans very close. Remarkable pieces of evidence of such proximity are the legal proceedings against non-human animals which took place across Europe and the Americas. In 1713, termites were notified to appear before the ecclesiastical court of Maranhão, a Brazilian state, and had their rights defended, receiving a piece of land in order to maintain themselves without causing further damage to a Franciscan monastery.^[60] In 1474, a rooster accused of laying an egg was condemned to be burned at the stake in Switzerland. In 1522, in France, rats were represented by a lawyer with all procedural guarantees, as they were accused of destroying the grain supply of a region. Several other animals were sentenced to death in public executions or detained in prisons during the proceedings.

As Acker et al. point out, in the late eighteenth century, the idea of American degeneracy described New World species as smaller and weaker than European ones.^[61] The hypothesis of the French naturalist, George Louis Leclerc, was based on unfavorable climate conditions in which a healthy life would be almost impossible. In consequence, the notion of degeneration was also extended to the native people of the Americas, supporting racism from climate-based assumptions. In any case, the incorporation of non-human species, both native and exotic, under the hegemonic logic of world markets was decisive in consolidating the Eurocentric protagonism on the colonial project and capitalism. Scientific rationalism extended the notion of modernity to all beings in nature, which were categorized and identified according to a new order disconnected from native worldviews. Exploratory incursions in the midst of so many “others” sustained the production of scientific knowledge as much as they guaranteed the supply of commodity production for the world market. The fundamental dependence on colonies as a source of countless resources was to some extent disguised under a single Eurocentric system of domination that subjugated and regulated such diverse and heterogeneous identities and cultures. As Quijano observed, regardless of geo-cultural differences, a colonial identity was configured to be coherent and adequate to the hegemonic needs of world capitalism.^[62]

Since native communities have assimilated Western isolation between non-humans and humans, their cosmogonies have seized perspectives like “environment”, and “biodiversity” as a part of their own perception of the world. Acker et al. argue that such violation of the native ontologies of life, values, and beliefs, which represent an essential factor of social cohesion, is associated with a historical background of destruction of non-human life in American contexts.^[63] The incorporation of such diverse and heterogeneous identities and cultures under a single system of domination established a ubiquitous model of intersubjectivity. It was made up of experiences, traditional cosmologies, techniques, knowledge, resources, and products, brought under a single system of production and trade. Repression and violence became an expression of the rationality that guided the European-driven capitalist world system, to use Wallerstein’s term. Examining literature on invasion ecology, Anderson et al. consider that the colonial introduction of exotic species, as well as current issues associated with the role of exotic species, have contributed to biotic homogenization and economic damage as genuine agents of global ecological change.^[64]

The destruction of non-human life in colonial territories was an expression of Western interference in native values and beliefs. This power, established as the dominant logic, was structured as a means of efficient control and biopolitical exploitation of non-human species converted into resources to guarantee the expansion of the colonial project. “Sowing death” is the proximate experience of the fragility of the cow’s gaze facing death in a common space between humans and non-humans. In this adjacent zone, colonial biopolitics became the very core of a civilizing and rational model adopted as a strategy for social development.

In this regard, it is appropriate to take into consideration that Oppermann stresses that ecocritical accounts of the Anthropocene demand alternative modes of thinking that recognize the entangled tales of intra-acting embodied beings.^[65] Environmental disruptions are coupled with social dramas and cultural conflicts rather than interactions linked to geophysical phenomena which diminish the human and its dynamic, non-linear, and cross-scale interactions. The concept of Anthropocene, which can contribute to dissociating a proper understanding of ethics and scale, also naturalizes the notion of a universal man that improves the negation of otherness and ontological, biological, and cultural differences.

Final considerations

The notions of “colonizers” and “intruders” have been better suited to depicting the past and the current consequences and unfolding of the worldwide circulation of some non-human species. The dynamic of such interactions and the profound significance of some non-human animals for many societies are validated and transmitted through religion, myth, economy, politics, technique, and science. The importance of these attributes can be dimensioned by a quantitative assessment of specific socioenvironmental variables outlined by the members of a society, as pointed out by Garibaldi and Turner.^[66]

Non-human species were at the core of colonization conflicts over land control, use, and transformation.^[67] Eventually, political concepts regarding qualities, such as wilderness, biodiversity, or habitat, became contradictory perspectives legitimizing the human colonization of nature. Diversified understandings of nature and human interactions with the environment remain topics of negotiation between scientists, governments, and environmental organizations. The significance of some exotic species was defined by their influence over colonial spaces and on native people’s ways of life. As efficient pioneers and settlers, livestock played a key role in (re)defining the logic of territorial occupation, in an unprecedented process of acculturation.^[68] The central role of some species for certain human societies has been condensed in concepts such as “biocultural keystone species”,^[69] and “ethno-biological keystone species”.^[70]

As a counterpart, the colonial rationale could also affect consolidated ethno-biological bounds, as demonstrated in the Jacques-Coper et al. study on the disruption of the symbolic attributes of the Andean Condor in the Southern Cone.^[71] According to Huarachi, colonization, coloniality, and capitalism are elements of a persistent crisis of overlapping values and systems of appreciation.^[72] We argue that this crisis is based on the blindness toward diverse and heterogeneous others, and deafness regarding more than only human intersubjectivities. According to Barcz, we are dealing with queries that overpass our abilities to experience, which is the case with cultural animal studies.^[73] Animals in literature (and in history) may sound “worthless” but “this in no way discredits their needs to present or broaden the meaning of worlds inhabited by nonhuman protagonists”.^[74]

The prevailing logic of coloniality and capitalism, driven by selected and limited privileges, renews and supports an endemic crisis of values.^[75] For the Aymara, a first nation of the Andes and highlands of the Southern Cone, the idea of “cosmo-coexistence” means interactive harmony founded on correspondence, reciprocity, and recognition of the sources of all life in cyclical and non-linear patterns of movement. This article has aimed to discuss the power emanated by these interactive webs, highlighting critical and sometimes irreversible socioenvironmental consequences derived from the role played or attributed to certain non-human animals. Some effects have had repercussions over extended periods of time, indicating that many “others” took part in the chain of developments through which colonialism and capitalism unfolded.

Here, I adopt Weil’s point of view on the limits of the human language, taking inspiration from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke recognizes that human consciousness itself becomes an obstacle to accessing larger knowledge, impairing our understanding of those who live outside our circumscribed rationale.^[76] Derrida came to a similar conclusion, inspired by Lacan: as a speaking animal, the human is a beast fallen prey to language, and as such, “trapped, by his [sic] own words and the world they enforce”.^[77]

At present, we remain trapped within a socio-cultural dynamic of biotic homogenization, pondering from a distance the imaginable energies of different worlds and convivial spaces, as described by Huarachi.^[78] Ongoing negotiations moving toward a decolonial approach to colonial and capitalist mentalities may sharpen our sensitivities. We need to continue (re)telling shared stories.

References

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