Bude uncommon: extractivist endings and the unthinkable politics of conservation in Lafkenche territory

Abstract

Tubul-Raqui, in the Lafkenche territory of Arauco, southern Chile, is a wetland for conservation scientists and state officials, but a bude for Lafkenche people. Wetland and bude sometimes coincide, but they are also radically divergent. This paper, a collaboration between two scholars and a Lafkenche longko, is about the existential and political consequences of this disjuncture for Lafkenche life projects and struggles for self-determination. By chronicling two recent events in Tubul-Raqui – the implementation of a sustainable plan for wetland conservation and the 2010 tsunami – we argue that liberal conservation programs under the rubric of “sustainability,” or what we call convivial conservation, only reinforce Indigenous disspossesion and extenuates Lafkenche lives. We show, as well, that the decolonization of conservation entails accounting for the plural meanings, practices, and temporalities of extinction – since death in Tubul-Raqui was not brought by the tsunami but by the extreme latency of extractivism, or what we call extractivist endings. We conclude by reflecting on the political trap faced by Lafkenche communities in Tubul-Raqui – the impossibilty to save the bude without converting it into a wetland – and to what extent this situation demands for a mode of politics that inhabits at the intersection between the plausible and the unconceivable – or what we call an unthinkable politics.

Keywords

• conservation
• decolonization
• extinction
• indigenous politics
• chile