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The Toba or Qom are an ethnic group in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. They are part of a larger group of indigenous inhabitants of the Gran Chaco region, called the ''Guaycurues''. As of 2005, there are 47,951 Toba in Argentina, living in the provinces of Chaco, Formosa and Santa Fe. The Toba name themselves ''Qom-lik'', meaning simply "people". The name ''toba'' is of Guaraní origin and means "big forehead", which is also the name given to them by the first Spanish settlers (''frentones''). This is because the Toba cut their hair short in the front of the head as a sign of mourning. ==History== The Chaco region in the north of Argentina and part of Paraguay was formerly covered with forests. The Toba were originally nomadic hunter-gatherers who, upon the arrival of the Spanish, adopted the horse and resisted colonial encroachment and the establishment of missions for several centuries. In the 1880s the Argentine government began a campaign to occupy new territories, defeating the last organized attempts by the Toba to defend their lands. The Argentine Chaco was divided up in large portions and exploited, especially for the valuable quebracho tree, used for its tannin and its extremely durable timber. This devastated the ecosystem in a relatively short time. The private owners of the Chaco then turned to cotton production, employing the Toba as a cheap seasonal workforce; the conditions did not change substantially for decades. On July 19, 1924, in Napalpí in the Chaco Province of Northern Argentina, 200 Tobas were massacred by the Argentine police and ranchers.〔http://www.adital.com.br/site/noticia2.asp?lang=ES&cod=13136〕 Beginning in 1982, the region suffered unprecedented floods, which caused the crops to be ruined, and in the 1990s, mechanical harvesters imported from Brazil (at very low prices due to Argentina's low fixed exchange rate) left many Toba without jobs. The provincial government of Chaco resorted to offering a one-way ticket to the Toba willing to migrate south, into Santa Fe. The majority of the Toba migrants settled in Rosario, which is a large city in the south of Santa Fe that had seen a previous wave of Toba in the 1950s and 1960s. Communication and family ties were kept in time, so the newcomers found a place; job opportunities and government assistance, even if scarce and of poor quality, were considerably more available in an urban setting than in Chaco. An estimated 10,000 Toba came to Rosario in the 1990s, and settled mostly in slums (''villas miseria''). A current threat to many Toba and other indigenous goups in El Chaco is the loss of their land and livelihood. Soy cultivation has accelerated deforestation. In a lot of cases this also means that the indigenous communities have lost their land to agrobusinesses and suffer under the intense use of fertilizers and pesticides that poison the water they depend on. Since 2008, many indigenous people have joined the "Movimiento Nacional Campesino Indígena" (National Movement of Indigenous Peasants) and fight for the legal right to their land and against agribusiness.〔http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/logging-subtropical-dry-forest-deprives-indigenous-people-argentina-their-livelihood〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Toba people」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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