The Mataco Indians are members of the Mataco-Mataguayo family which included several different groups that to some extent were related culturally speaking. According to the National Indigenous Census, there are 21,800 Mataco in Argentina today. The six Mataco settlements, situated in the land belt which extends from Pozo del Mortero to Laguna Yema on the north down to the Teuco River on the south, are El Castor, Los Esteros, Sol de Mayo, Morteritos, Charata, and Pozo del Mortero. These villages have a subsistence economy. The communal work done by the Mataco settlements in order to survive includes food gathering, fishing, hunting, agriculture, and woodcutting for the "obraje" (timber establishments). This paper discusses the friction between white and indigenous people in the area which is influenced by agriculture (the land problem) and the "obraje" (the exploitation problem). Concrete cases of aggression between whites and Indians in each of the six settlements are described and the violence in its different forms (non-physical and physical) is systematized. The appendices include a discussion of the deficiencies of the National Indigenous Census statistics and a short newspaper article titled "Extremists' Refuge in an Aborigine Cooperative in the Chaco". (Author/NQ)