Abstract
In Tartagal, Salta, in the NW of Argentina, the figure of the “vulnerable body” has become the center of disputes between the local Health System and the Wichí Indigenous communities. What is really at stake are the social imperatives related to what is understood by “vivir bien” (healthy living). In this paper, I will analyze the implications of a visibility regime that supports the idea that only seeing visual marks of a deteriorated body the Health System is able to aid to the Wichí. Within a social space where the living conditions of those Indigenous communities are constantly jeopardized by the growth of agrochemical and oil industries, the body becomes the only source through which the Wichí people can dispute the dominantsanitary discourse. It isthrough their bodies that they remember suffering experiences and those memories are linked to their present. As a result,
memory practices constitute the locus of enunciation through which they try to revert the hegemonic stigma they have to carry.