Un Folklore Vitivinicola: Exploring Relationships between Indigeneity and Coloniality through High-Altitude Viticulture in Northwest Argentina

Abstract

Traversing the high-altitude landscapes of Northwest Argentina’s Calchaquí Valleys, Salta’s Ruta del Vino weaves through a palimpsest of indigenous, colonial, and viticultural histories, forming a series of extensive landscapes transformed by centuries of human inhabitation. Despite emerging from parallel histories, the viticulture of the region remains independent of indigenous precedents, continuing to draw upon processes and methods that emerged with the grapevine at the time of the region’s colonization while ignoring the local community’s spiritual relationships to the landscapes they occupy. These independent landscape practices have resulted in the fragmented territory that exists today, occupied by patches of productive agricultural lands, forests, and a series of disjointed riparian corridors threatened by unprecedented impacts of climate change. Un Folklore Vitivincola envisions an alternate model through which we can begin decolonizing viticulture, interweaving mono-cultural vineyards with landscape practices of the region to re-establish greater territorial and social integration.