Pilagá is a Guaicuruan language spoken by 4,000 people in the Bermejo and Pilcomayo River valleys, western Formosa Province, in northeastern Argentina.
Hunting is exclusively the domain of men, while gathering of wild fruits, palm hearts, mesquite (prosopis sp.)
With the advancement of European contact since the conquest, and with the establishment at different times of colonies, farms and missions, Chaco groups, including the Pilagá, began losing their territories.
Today, with sedentarization, Pilagá people combine traditional practices with land-cultivation and cattle-raising at a small scale, and the commerce of basketry, tapestry and wooden artifacts.
The Gran Chaco covers an area of about 1 million square kilometers, of which 50% is on Argentinian land, and the other half distributed between Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil (Karlin et alt.
Even though Pilagá use in daily communication between adults connotes solidarity, younger speakers use code-switching apparently to fill gaps in their knowledge of the vernacular language.