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Presentation short abstract

The aggravated forest fires in the Bolivian Chiquitania shapes the life of the Chiquitano communities in onto-epistemological, economic, political as well as mental spheres. Thus, fighting the fires expanding the commodity frontier becomes a body-territorial decolonial struggle.

Presentation long abstract

In the South-East Bolivian Chiquitania, the aggravated forest fires have been connected with the expansive agroindustry and climate change. The states toleration of the fire-use with its “leyes incendiarias”; a packet of laws advancing forest burning, is being contested by diverse civic and community actors, who defend the life and water from the extractivist forest fire politics and practices.

This presentation discusses the colonizing effects of the forest fire disasters among the rural Chiquitano communities, drafting emphasis into onto-epistemological, economic, political and mental colonizing. The authors PhD project explores the civic and community action resisting the Bolivian Chiquitanian forest fires since 2019, and the multi-sited ethnography grounds on the nine months of fieldwork in Bolivia.

Among the Chiquitano communities the socio-ecological disasters have impeded the traditional subsistence agriculture, which have increased emigration from the villages, weakening the traditional structures and value systems. The fire management capacitation provided by the NGO`s have been vital, yet increased the communities’ responsibilities, while the dependence on the states support in the emergency has limited the possibilities of autonomous Indigenous politics.

The communitarian volunteer forest fire brigades ground on the ancestral connection with the lived nature, yet this ecological love and care are being exploited to serve the extractivist agroproduction. This problematic connects the studied case with the wide feminist research on the exploitation of the care work. Due the colonizing aspects, fighting the forest fires becomes a body-territorial decolonial struggle.