Ontological politics and the struggle for the Guarani-Kaiowa world

Indigenous politics is crucial for rethinking some of the most serious contemporary dilemmas, as in the case of pressing discussions of development, democracy and justice. Those debates are particularly poignant today given the mounting disruptive interventions committed in the name of economic growth and resource management. The article examines the political perspective of Indigenous peoples in their effort to resist aggression and reclaim back land and opportunities lost to development. The discussion is based on an investigation into how the Guarani-Kaiowa of South America have been able to maintain a socio-spatial identity, react to specific socio-spatial injustices and at the same time associate their struggle with the campaign of other subaltern groups. This concrete example is instrumental for demonstrating the application of political ontology as a tool for interrogating the impacts of Western modernity and the advance of agrarian capitalism. Results suggest that, on the one hand, it is important to account for the political ontology of Indigenous peoples beyond generic categorisations that end up perpetuating abstract descriptors divested of protagonism and initiative. On the other, the idiosyncrasies of each individual experience also share commonalities with other socio-economic trajectories and related processes of control and exploitation