Lorena Isabel CORDOBA

Bolivian Amazonia comprises 43% of a country traditionally thought of as Andean Highlands. The region not only holds an enormous amount of biodiversity and ethnolinguistic variation, but has also been the locus of one of the largest extractive industries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: rubber or caoutchouc. The exploitation and commodification of rubber was a regional breaking point that led to the foundation of cities, national and international immigration, land-granting legislation, and even a frontier war with Brazil (1899-1903). The conventional understanding of the process seems nevertheless male biased, and portrayed rubber tappers as heroic pioneers of progress that conquered the wild jungle and “civilized” the natives. However, a closer review of the historical data reveals the coexistence of other relevant social actors whose experiences have often been relegated, forgotten and even suppressed: the Creole, Indigenous and European Women. What was the impact of the different roles and categories of women during the rubber era? And why are they not visible in official history? By developing an innovative and multidisciplinary approach that combines ethno-history, ethnography, gender studies, and visual and digital humanities, the project aims to reconstruct and revalue female agency during the Bolivian rubber boom.