Patagonia: nature and territories

Abstract

Patagonia has been, since the late 19th Century, a natural resource provision space. National and provincial policies for this region have led to significant uneven geographical development, in general with scarcely inhabited regions. The primary-export model hand in hand with Neo-extractivism bleeds into the present and is accentuated, accompanied by the State’s desire to take part in subsoil, soil and coastline exploitation income distribution.
This paper analyzes the place occupied by Patagonia in today’s fin de siècle scenario of commodities, hegemony crisis and multi-polar world emergence concurring with the convergence of consumerist guidelines, all of which would apparently lead to an in-depth socio-ecological crisis as well as to an accelerated dispute over nature and territory sense.