Abstract

This article analyses settler encroachment on Indigenous peoples’ lands in the Chaco region of Eastern Bolivia. It is an understudied story, rarely interpreted from a perspective inspired by settler colonial studies. My analysis explores policies promoted by the emerging Bolivian state to address its ‘Toba problem’ along the Pilcomayo River, where for three centuries hunter-gatherers ignored the colonial authority and continually defied the power of the new nation. The story is situated in the mid-to-late nineteenth century when administrators of the Republic distributed small tracts of land along the river with the intention of expanding ranching and consolidating the country’s international border. My analysis focuses on the contentious interactions between Toba and ranchers in a marginal area of Bolivia. Describing ‘settling’ from a non-Anglophone perspective, this approach expands the framework of settler colonial theory, offering innovative ways to read Indigenous dispossession and extermination in the Bolivian Chaco. 

Keywords

Settler Colonialism, Bolivian Chaco Region, Pilcomayo River

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