The subtle taste: food practices, projects and resistance in the Argentine Chaco

Abstract

Who are the indigenous Wichí people today and what kind of food transition are they experiencing? What does their most recent history tell us and how did they come to a type of diet predominantly based on industrialised products? We will look at the history of the Wichí groups who settled with the franciscan frails at the future mission Nueva Pompeya to reflect on the different economic and nutritional changes. Today, in fact, malnutrition and obesity afflict the Argentine Chaco and especially the indigenous areas. Children, adolescents and adults are equally affected. Through ethnographic data and literature, we will shed light on the socio-cultural consequences of the food transition, bearing in mind that the relationship the Wichí have with their forest is one of close and total interdependence and encompasses the socio-economic system and the symbolic system of shared values. We will focus on some of the Slow Food-related projects in which the NGO, Fundación Gran Chaco, is involved in order to understand whether they respond to some of the urgencies related to the food transition.