Patagonian Precarity: Extractive Tourism and Subaltern Activism in El Chaltén, Argentina

This thesis examines the relationship between extractive tourism and social activism in Southern Andean Patagonia. Its central goal is to unpack the systems that structurally marginalize subaltern populations and inspire their resistance. Through ethnographic attention to El Chaltén, Argentina, I investigate how extractive tourism generates various forms of social activism that manifest in social dimensions such as class and gender. In El Chaltén’s ecotourism terrain, feminine and dissident experiences have been historically devalued. I argue that El Chaltén is a crucible for subaltern, structurally marginalized activism. The extractive tourism industry—tied to housing/land inequality and gender violence—generates and catalyzes various forms of activism (e.g., socioterritorial, gender-based, artistic, environmental). Qualitative data, such as 32 ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and visual mapping, reinforce this argument. This thesis contributes to emerging literature in Latin America about the relationship between extractive tourism, activism, and rurality. I highlight how extractive tourism leads to activism (e.g., socioterritorial, environmental, gender, and art-based) in a rural conservation context and draw attention to issues of housing precarity in tourism literature. This project’s significance also lies in its emphasis on land-tenure conflicts, displacement-in-place, uneven spatial experiences, precarity, and the extractive dimensions of tourism, particularly in the low season. It calls attention to ecotourism’s inequitable implications and intersections with gender, class, sexuality, and race. I underscore how localized resistances and debates are dialogic to wider social movements (regional, national, and international). Overall, I characterize El Chaltén as a complex mosaic of conflict and community activism.