Social Context
Politics in course
Human Settlement politics has as a priority relationships with rural and urban populations, owners and original people presents in Protected Natural Spaces (ENP) or in contiguous areas, contributing to impulse sustainable uses and activities.
In this way, Human Settlement makes attractive the conservation for local actors, so that they adopt it and include it as a fundamental crux inside their development projects.
These politics are trying to modify the poverty and marginalization of some Protected Natural Spaces (ENP) promoting mechanisms that give opportunities to a local sustainable development; without forgetting the environmental conservation objectives.

Lanín National Park
POLITICS AND ACTORS DESCRIPTIONActors: Lanin National Park houses in its jurisdiction a meaningful quantity of a variety population: mapuche communities, private owners, creole population, and the Argentinean Army. The land that is out of National State domination is divided in the following way: seven mapuche communities that occupy 24.000 hectares; twelve creole population settlement; twelve private owners farms that cover a 24.323 hectares surface; 1.871private owners lots that add 26.865 hectares; and the Army has 4.000 hectares in charge. Creole population: At the beginning of the 20 th Century small groups of creole populations, which dedicate to cattle farming, had already settled in small zones. They arrived to the region after the national occupation promotion, with geopolitical and productive objectives. When the Park was created and they get included in it, they received the PPOP (Precarious Permissions for Occupation and Shepherding. This inhabited take part of an original population integration strategy that was subdued to the Republic conformation project of the Dessert Campaign.
Nowadays the creole populations –no belonged to native communities- are twelve. Four of them are settled in a village near Paimun Lake and other next to Hua-Hum Lake.
Most of the them dedicate to sheep breeding and firewood exploitation.

Politics in course: On the whole with rural populations, our institution works on the voluntary substitution politics for no sustainable or no compatibles activities with ENP objectives, so that they will be changed for others that result economically profitable and environmentally tolerate. To foment these changes EPN explores different subsidies, compensations and economic incentives, privileging those mechanism that favour the population economic support.
To regularized the population juridical situation the Administración de Parques Nacionales subscribes occupation contracts to replace the PPOP.Farms: Inside the Park there are 12 farms that occupied a 24.323 hectares surface, which represents the 15 % of the whole protected area. Most of them are situated in the centre of the National Reserve.
The most common productive activities are livestock farmer and forest. Inside the last one predominates the manage of species like pines, and in many establishment also exploits native forests, including the wood and reed use.
In the livestock farmer predominates cattle and –in less way- sheep. In the last years starts also to develop the “ciervo colorado” sport hunt.

Politics in course: The most difficult part of the existence of these private properties is their control. Foresters are only allowed to get inside them if the owner authorized that or by judicial warrant. In consequence, many clandestine activities, like poaching, are very difficult to be controlled. National Park administration works in favour of including as a rules that owners must authorized the control personnel entry into farms to solve this problem. Other important inconvenient, from a conservation point of view, derivate from the existence of private properties like those one is the impact that produces the coniferous forestation y the land's subdivision that originated human settlement density.
Subdivisions are prohibited because APN tend to recover high conservation value pieces of land, in cases that is necessary. Also many active politics are being implemented in order to replace extensive activities that are degrading for the environment, defining management guidelines according to the current ecosystem's state.Argentine Army and “Gendarmeria Nacional”: When Lanin National Park was created they had already existed large private property's zones that the National State gave to the soldiers in compensation for their work during the dessert Campain, or sell to argentines or foreigners companies or people in the ends of 19 th century or at the beginnings of 20 th century. When the borders of the protected area were delimited, in the 30's, lands that were property of the Argentine Army and “Gendarmeria Nacional” kept under the National Parks Administration jurisdiction with a national conservation project. In these cases APN gives then new territory extension in “comodato”. It means that if APN needs those lands, they will be returned.
“Loteos”: The private properties represent more than the 12 % of the 412 thousand hectares of the Lanin National Park. Half of those 51.188 hectares were subdivided for their separate sale. These “loteos” generate a very important fragmentation, which means conservation and management problems in the involucrate zones.
The “loteos” are in the following areas: Quila Quina (46 lots), Chimehuin Valley in Huechulafquen (400 lots), Machonico Lake (2 lots that occupied 1011 hectares), Hermoso Lake (718 lots that occupied 1.118 hectares), Hua Hum (4 lots that sum 9.785 hectares), Quillen (20 lots that occupied 14.650 hectares), Hermoso river (215 lots) and Meliquina Valley (466 lots).
Mapuche communities: In the reserve area of the Park they are allowed economic activities and human settlement, so that there are seven Mapuche communities that occupied 24.000 hectares of the protected area. Most of the families that belong to aborigines groups like the Aigo's, with 50 families nucleated in Rucachoroi; the Cayun's with seven families that occupied an area next to the Lacar Lake; the Lafquenche's and Raquithue's that are 24 populations settled in the Huechulafquen basin.
The mapuche's communities that are settled in the National Park are integrants of the “Pueblo Nacion Mapuche” that originally had occupied in the are a territory that extends from ocean to ocean. Nowadays accommodated 500 families, that represents 2500 people.

Their history: the National Parks' creation occurred as an effective control process of the Waimapu- territory of the “Pueblo Originario Mapuche”- with economical, political and military objectives of the young Argentine State.
The creation of the National Park generate a violent politic of expulsion of hundreds of Mapuche survivors to the Dessert Campaign savagery. At the beginning they were located in the expropriated Pulmari Farm.
National Parks, specially the south ones, were created to transform the nominal sovereignty in territorial occupation of a “cordillerana” strip that occupied the 30 % of the patagonic frontier with Chile. The violent National Parks' arrival to Mapuche territory was a “national heritage” defence strategy, understanding the “national” as the legitimacy of territorial property in benefit of big landowner, the urban, commercial, touristy and industrial (local forests exploitation, for example) development advance.
The domination relationship was proposed to replace culture, language, socio-political organizations and sacred belief systems, trying to close Mapuche identity. The directly consequences were visible: the communitarian life was disintegrated; the Mapuche lost their ancestral lands and were confined in many places; their religious and political authorities were chased; their institutionalisation denied; and their community divided by the “Cordillera de los Andes”, imposed as an international limit.

Politics in course
Community Property Titles Delivery:
When the Park was created they were sent precarious permissions for occupation and shepherding (PPOP) to population that was included inside the protected area. The permission was personal, untransferable and expired when the owner died, but in fact the owner's descendants continued occupying and using authorized zones to their ancestors. Given that there are many difficulties to change the situation,Administración de Parques Nacionales recognized formally these settlements in 1991, admitting the permanency of the population that carry out with many conditions (20 years residence in the area, a pre-existed PPOP, for example).
For more than 10 years the National State, through the recognition of the origin populations pre-existence in the National Constitution, has been handed in property titles of the lands that aborigines communities have demanded. These lands are established in the “Carta Magna” as untransferable and indivisible for ever.
In Lanin National Park there are lands that were transferred to Mapuche Communities, which were restrained to communitarian property regimen. Nowadays 10.500 hectares located in the oriental zone of the Lanin National Reserve- Lacar Zone are under this regimen. They were given by law to the Curruhuinca Mapuche Community, and 1.300 hectares to the Cayun Community; besides there are in transference process portions of the occupied territories for Raquithue and Ñorquinco Communities.
There are no difference in the use between members of the Association and the control that makes Administración de Parques Nacionales. However, the sent of lands to the Curruhuinca and Cayun Communities derivate in the entrance to the area of new families. Although those lands can't be subdivided, settlements can be multiplied and that generate many impacts associated to them.

Co-management
The origin and the existence of mapuche populations inside the Park are previous to the creation of the protected area and the National State. After many years of conflicts, expulsions and repression, the present allowed a group work and a shared responsibility about social and environmental problems. So that, the old claimant figures (Pueblo Mapuche) and defendant (national state) were replaced by a co-management table that in a local and general way make decisions about politics that were applied in Mapuche territories. This situation had a point of inflection in 2001, after a workshop about Protected Aborigine Territory, when the State handed over lands to the Pueblo Mapuche, recognizing the native territory as an space where they develop their culture.
The co-management is a politic instance of group decision between Lanin National Park, Administración de Parques Nacionales (APN), Mapuche communities that live in the Park and the “Confederación Mapuche Neuquina” (CMN) about the management of the territory and resources of the communities in this Park's jurisdiction. It is the first experience of this type in the whole Protected Areas National System (SINAP). Co-management supposed the deliver of responsibilities and competences and a clear definition of the public authority practice, and guidelines of use and management of resources that came out from the ancestral knowledge of the communities. Administración de Parques Nacionales points to fortify the link with original populations in themes like legislation, territory and use of natural resources, related with the current rules framework.
That experience is a tool to undertake a new institutional relationship based on the mutual recognition of the genuine rights of the parts. Firstly the state understood that the unilateral decision of declared protected areas over native territories affects fundamental rights of the populations and doesn't guarantee the conservation for a long time. Other conclusion was that the native experiences and practices must be considered as a basement for a grouped management planning of the areas.

Araucaria Program- Liwenmapu
In the context of a co-management politic it is integrated the integral project Liwenmapu Lanin National Park, financed by the Spanish International Cooperation (AECI) and compensation of Administración de Parques Nacionales (APN).
This initiative tries to increase the environment conservation, socio-economic and like quality levels of mapuche population that lives in Lanin Park, through the co-management instances.
The central objectives of Liwenmapu are: motivate a sustainable management of the natural resources that exist in the areas where mapuche community live; control these sectors' biodiversity; improve the environmental management adapting the production conditions and other type of legal interventions.

Productive Activities Restructuring
During the last years local people -from the organization of each community or working together with the Confederación Mapuche Neuquina- undertakes projects related with the provision of infrastructure or tourist services accompanied by Lanin National Park and Administración de Parques Nacionales through the reconstructing of productive activities.

Sierra de las Quijadas National Park
POLITICS AND ACTORS DESCRIPTION
Sierra de las Quijadas National Park is a dessert zone where people is distributed in small populations and in isolated places, considered as rural population by the National Census.
These populations don't have more than 200 inhabitants and most of them are situated over the Rivers Mendoza and Desaguadero banks. That location allowed them to use the sporadic flows that those rivers contribute, that are added to the subterranean waters and the rain's catch through rudimentary dams.
Those spread settlements dedicate fundamentally to the stockbreeding. They are subsistence economies orientated to domestic units reproduction, where the link with the market is poor and discontinuous.
Since the end of 19 th century, these populations had been living in these lands and suffer the lack of regional integration and a gradual aggravation of their conditions of social and productive marginalization.Social Actors connected to the National Park
Lavalle department, and specially the Guanacache Little Lakes System, were historically the settlement place of an important nucleus of Huarpe civilization, whose survival based on hunting, fishing and agriculture. As a consequence of the Spanish invasion the local population started being force for the work in Chile mines and, lately, for the first farming activities in the north side of Mendoza. Also, the Guanacache Little Lakes System, constitute the principal fresh fish supplying source of Mendoza city.
During the 20 th century the desert plain zones registered a gradual loss of utility because of the new development management that abandoned the traditional and diversify farming and agricultural activities, and promote at the same time the business vine growing. It was produced a progressive decrease of the flows from the plain -which generated an exhaustion of the little lakes system and temporary overflows- and of the vine growing and agriculture of the zone. The extractive logic increase the over-exploitation of the “algarrobo” forests, used for the vineyard's laying of the new industry.
The structural adjustment and the reduction of government's participation politics –in benefit of financial sectors- cause the virtual destruction of local economies: thousands of little producers were excluded from many markets. That situation obliged the forced massive migration of rural actors, and the adoption of life strategies that became “survival strategies”. The malnutrition levels increased and the marginalization condition took local population to degrade the environment through the unsustainable use of the natural resources.

El Forzudo locality
At El Forzudo locality –situated in the west side of the National Park- there are many factors that make difficult the community development. One of them is the isolation caused –between many reasons- by the bad state of the roads that join this locality with Encon and Las Catitas localities. That situation was aggravated by the close of internal ways that used to communicate El Forzudo with the adjacent communities because of the creation of the protected area.
These group of situations makes hard difficult the communication to both San Luis and Mendoza city, and contributes to the fall of the economical activity -livestock sell- affecting the life's quality of El Forzudo's population.
The principal economic resources sources come from the livestock sell to “chivateros” and other people that come from La Paz, Lavalle and Cordoba. There is a small percent of population that diversify the productive activity, alternating with other activities different to the livestock. The bad state of the pastures and the water shortage contribute to the bad situation and make the social context precarious and vulnerable.
The lack of pastures for the livestock is a big problem for El Forzudo zone and neighbours areas, and affects the population life strategies. Nowadays they are conscious that the reason of that situation is the luck of rains and the little lakes drying.
Between the inhabitants of the region, there is a remarkable expectation in the possibilities that offer the National Park to sell their handcrafts. The handmade activity, made by wool and wood, it is a complementary economical activity and express the local culture. But in the two cases there aren't physical places where they can show and sell handcrafts and typical food. So that many inhabitants think that the national Park would be an adequate place to develop this activity.
The luck of genuine employment sources makes more vulnerable the communities, in front of economical contingencies. The resources' management that carry out the population of these zones is conditioned by the particularities of the land, which promote the extensive use of the resources.
There aren't physical limits that make people to regulate the neither animal charge nor intensification productive practices, so that people tend to make up for the low productivity increasing the number of livestock's stocks and the shepherding areas. Besides, there is a progressive degradation of the forages -because of the over-shepherding-, and also there is a water shortage because of the kind of use that develop the intensive agriculture from Lavalle and the departments from the Mendoza's oasis. This situation makes rodeos pressure the shepherding areas until their maxim and possible limit.

San Antonio locality
Water is a fundamental and very important aspect, with different levels of demands depending on the population. For San Antonio community, located in the east side next to the National Park, the water shortage is a very big problem and they have still waited for the arrival of an aqueduct that will provide this vital element for the population.
At this moment tankers that come from San Luis city are providing the water, and it is being stored in huge water tanks (one of them is located at San Lorenzo school). Although it is quite clear that the potable water demand is weaker than in El Forzudo, however it is a very big problem here too because the water supply decreases some times or is interrupted. There are some perforations of 162 metres deep, like in Santa Rita, but they are insufficient to provide the whole zone.
In the health aspect, San Antonio has a First Aid Ward where a doctor attends patients ones a week, but in case of emergency people have to go to La Calera hospital, the top of the department. To this First Aid Ward go people from Santa Rita, Hualtaran, La Chañarienta and Santa Rosa.
Nowadays they don't have an ambulance, so many times the National Park's van move patients to the hospital.
In the educative ambit, there is an important deficiency in the educative establishments that offer specialization courses, because there are a few of them and in general students must travel long distances to attend courses. According to preliminary information that was collected in San Antonio and in El Forzudo, there is a high percentage of students that don't start or abandoned “Polimodal” or the last “EGB” years.

Retamo locality
Like in El Forzudo locality, which is located in the west side next to the National Park, the people that live there are small farming producers that have a subordinate position in the social pyramid.
They produce scarce structural resources (land, work and capital) and in a social vulnerable condition, both for the difficulties that have to get goods and basic services and for the asymmetrical contacts that have with the markets. These conditions, which hinder the resource's access, affects the development of sustainable like strategies of the people that live in the communities located in the west side of the protected area.
Because of the agro-ecological restrictions of the area, its survival's strategy is based on survival stockbreeding. In that sense there is a lost of productive activities related to vegetables. This situation limits the possibilities of productive diversification and affects their salaries and their adequate nutrition.
Inside a social logic of maximization of the global money entry, there are productive areas that are oriented both to self-consumption of domestic units and to the sell to local markets or to middlemen that travel around the zone.
The farmyard birds rising, for example, it is exclusively oriented to the self-consumption. The units also try to get additional resources from handcrafts, offering their work to the grapes harvest in Mendoza and in San Juan, and selling “guano” and their services to other domestic units. But the possibility of work's sell depends on the familiar labour's surplus and on the temporary job vacancies.
The stockbreeding management is absolutely extensive and it depends on the water access. This population shows by its productive characteristic a big external dependence and on the monetary entry for fresh fruits and vegetables provides that would balance their diet.
NATIONAL PARK´S ACTION
The new work context that was generated in Centre Regional Delegation (DRC) and in Sierra de las Quijadas national Park, allowed putting new territorial politics into practice related to the Park's neighbouring communities. These actions had created a participation framework that hasn't ever been thinking to be developed in that zone.
This project was originated in the necessity of tackling a conflictive relation with the neighbouring communities, mostly because of the horses, cattle and goats unrestricted admission to the protected area. That problematic –which has been depth since the last years because of a huge drought- stimulated an rapprochement to the Delegation technical equipment in order to understand more clearly this phenomenon.

So that, it was drawn a project with the following objectives:
-To integrate the natural and cultural heritage of the protected area with the development plans of the communities and their influence areas.
- To expand and improve the offer, exploitation and reserve of renewable and no renewable resources, in order to improve the life quality of populations, minimizing the damage or negative environmental impact process.
-To promote the participation and responsibility of many social and institutional actors in conservation matters, understudied as rational, profitable and sustainable use of cultural and natural resources.

Many meetings and workshops had been developed with populations, which had showed problematic situations –different for each community- that affects the social and environmental situation of the area. From one hand, the livestock productive activities of many communities –inserted in a structural impoverishment historical process with essential services lucks like drinkable water, electricity and communications- produce a meaningful environmental damage. And from the other hand, there is an organization debility that makes difficult the development of group activities with the National Park.

Two work lines
Nowadays, and after the diagnosis that was done, the specialists had been elaborated two work lines between the National Park maintenance and Centre Regional Delegation.
From one hand, an indirect intervention mark based on the work with governmental and non-governmental organizations from San Luis and Mendoza, in order to solve productive problems and non-satisfied basic needs (health and drinkable water, for example).
And from the other hand, a direct intervention of the National Park Administration (APN) personnel in situations that involves the community, like: handcrafts sell through the creation of a local craftsmen organization, get a solution to the livestock management inside the protected area, and advising teacher in environmental education.
Both work lines are really important to the development of conservation strategies that tend to the population well-being, making possible a sustainable development in the region that includes Sierras de las Quijadas national Park and its neighbouring communities.