Departamento Guatraché: pasado y presente de la actividad agropecuaria.

The present paper results from a research project of wider scope, Rural Territorial Development. Territorial management in the Guatraché Department, La Pampa, which shows the findings of research carried out in the Guatraché Department, in the Province of La Pampa. The project aims at producing a panorama of the agricultural activity of this area from the beginnings of the process of colonization in 1879 -which marks the occupation of the territory after the clearing of the aborigines, coinciding with the end of the “Desert Campaign"-, until the present time –which is framed by the complexity of globalization. The province of La Pampa, at that time Territory of Central La Pampa, with its East and South East areas showing climate and soil parameters suitable for the above-mentioned activities, turned into the setting of an intense colonization sustained by various railway companies, pillars of the economic system prevailing in the Argentine Republic in late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As part of this territory, the Guatraché Department was the scenario of an important agricultural and stockbreeding activity -this being so at least until the start of severe climate crises which, along with international events (the Second World War) disrupted the model. After the former, the diversification of farming complemented with stockbreeding, where sheep were gradually replaced by cattle, characterized the activity until the nineties. At that time, a new international scenario marked by globalization, with the liberation of the markets and state decentralization, formed part of the neo-liberal politics of the times. The rural sector was also part of the process and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]