Neoliberal Conservation in Southern Patagonia: A Mise en Scène of Tompkins Conservation

In recent decades, conservation initiatives in the Global South have progressively adopted a neoliberal orientation, heavily influenced by international philanthropic foundations. This article analyzes how this orientation materializes in southern Patagonia, Argentina, and the forms of resistance it provokes. It focuses on three cases located in the provinces of Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands, where the Tompkins Conservation Foundation has been active. Using a critical and comparative approach, the territorialization of these initiatives is interpreted as the opening of a new frontier, staged through a model we have termed a mise en scène that combines audiovisual productions, flawed land titles, experimental rewilding practices, the use of camera traps, the promotion of ecotourism by tour operators, and hybrid governance for the transnationalization of conservation. While protected areas were created, local resistance limited their development and forced the foundation to adapt—demonstrating a chameleon-like capacity to continue operating—thus reinforcing the region’s peripheral status.