Presentation short abstract

In this paper I frame the Bolivian Chiquitanian forest fires being fuelled by extractivist development. I discuss how the repeating disasters fosters emotional -, onto-epistemological -, economical - and political colonizing among the Indigenous Chiquitano communities.

Presentation long abstract

In Chiquitania, in the South-East of Bolivia, the aggravated forest fires have been connected with the regional agroindustry and climate change. The temperatures are raising rapidly due the deforestation at the expanding agricultural frontier. The intensified forest fires around the highway carretera bioceanico in the South Chiquitania, demonstrates the predicted socio-ecological harms of the infrastructure project. In addition, the state tolerates the fire-use with the “leyes incendiarias”; contested by Bolivian civic actors.

In this paper I frame the forest fires being fuelled by extractivist development and I discuss on colonizing impact of the forest fire disasters among the Chiquitano communities, finding emotional, onto-epistemological, economical and political colonizing impacts touching the Chiquitano communities. This paper grounds on the authors PhD project in environmental policy. The primary data for the multi-sited ethnography was collected during eight months of fieldwork between 2022 and 2024 in Bolivia.

Among the Chiquitano communities the forest fires have appeared as disasters producing mental crisis. The following droughts have endangered the traditional subsistence agriculture, rising waves of emigration from the villages to labour work; weakening the traditional structures and value systems in the villages. The fire management capacitation provided by NGO`s have been vital for the communities, yet increased the communities responsibilities and provoked conflicts, while the dependence on the states support in the emergency has limited the possibilities of autonomous Indigenous politics. Thus, I claim that the forests fires nourish emotional colonization, political colonization, economical colonization and onto-epistemological colonization.