Specters of ‘Race War’: Indigenous Confederation, the Federal War of 1899, and the ‘Regeneration’ of Bolivia

Join us for a conversation with historian Forrest Hylton on his current research, an ethno-history of land, property rights, partisan sectarianism, state-making, and political violence in the tributary Bolivian republic, with Brooke Larson (Stony Brook University) as discussant.

Drawing on Incan and Aymara categories of space, time, power, war, and revolution, Hylton revisits the Federal War of 1899, when Indigenous community leaders forged alliances and confederations to defend self-government and collective land tenure, without making claims as citizens. Liberals answered with the specter of “race war” and with collective trials and punishments, widely covered in the press, that criminalized Indigenous leadership and buried the public memory of its project to “regenerate” Bolivia. 

The result cleared the way to dispossess Indigenous communities and exploit their labor in one of Latin America’s most racialized and exclusive “oligarchic republics.”

Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees