¿Cómo fue que un Guacamayo se Extravió en la Materia? Una Lectura de la Obra de Mario Payeras desde la Historia Ambiental y Animal

Abstract

The Cruces River estuary in the Region of Los Ríos, southern Chile, has transitioned in recent decades from events of high environmental conflict to reparative processes that seek to give place to modes of multispecies coexistence. A pollution event of industrial origin in the year 2004, dramatically affected the population of black-necked swans, turning it into an emblematic species for social movements and environmental protection. Almost 20 years later the swan is once again threatened, but this time by the unexpected predation of another species: the sea lion. After years of sustained recovery of swans and other estuarine birds, a series of unprecedented predatory attacks are reported and recorded. The alarm of human communities has generated erratic attempts of institutional response, exposing the conflicting visions on how to regulate interspecific coexistence in a protected and in repair ecology. The case calls us to a posthumanist reflection on the interspecific controversies that develop in complex socio-ecologies. As a tentative answer, a sociomaterial history is offered focused on multispecies entanglements and the (im)possibilities of their coexistence.