The Invisible Women: Nameless and Forgotten Stories of the Rubber Boom (Bolivian Amazonia, 19-20th centuries)

Project Information

NAMELESS-STORIES

Grant agreement ID: 101022640

DOI

10.3030/101022640

Project closed

EC signature date 19 April 2021

Start date 1 December 2021

End date 30 November 2023

Funded under

EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 183 473,28

EU contribution

€ 183 473,28

183 473,28

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NAMELESS-STORIES (The Invisible Women: Nameless and Forgotten Stories of the Rubber Boom (Bolivian Amazonia, 19-20th centuries))

Reporting period: 2021-12-01 to 2023-11-30

‘Nameless-Stories’ aims to reconstruct and revalue female agency during the ‘Rubber Boom’ in Bolivian Amazonia (1880-1920). The goal is to rescue the participation of women neglected by the historical sources (immigrant settlers), rendered invisible on the account of their ethnic condition (Indigenous workers), or even ‘silenced’ by the sexist bias of regional historiography (Creole or European workers). The project proposes an alternative reading that sheds light on female agencies that not only played a decisive role during the period but were rather heterogeneous and diverse: the overall goal is to reconstruct female agency by repositioning ‘rubber women’ in a more visible place within the local archives and regional history, and rescuing from oblivion the voices, experiences, and perspectives of and about indigenous women (rubber-tappers, cooks, maids, seamstresses, washers, ‘bush wives’) and the Creole or European women who also worked in the industry or simply joined their parents or husbands in the great rubber adventure.
The multidisciplinary approach aimed at two specific objectives: 1) The creation of an open access web archive that rendered information accessible to the general public: historical archives, documentary sources, ethnographic data, unpublished texts, and little-known pictures of ‘rubber women’. 2) A critical re-reading of the historical, journalistic and literary sources that revalued the multiple modalities of female involvement in the extractive endeavour. The aim was to articulate archive data with an updated ethnographic perspective that reconstructed the oral memories and life-stories of ‘rubber women’ through a varied continuum of relations that ranged from barter to wage labour, from marriage alliance to ‘compadrazgo’ (fictive kinship), and from commerce to sexual violence, kidnapping and even enslavement.
Reconstructing, contextualising and disseminating the histories of these ‘rubber women’ not only is crucial to render their testimony visible in the historical archive, but also to empower their descendants. In this way, the reconstruction of female agency allows to contribute updated elements of reflection to gender studies and, at the same, time to open the way towards a fairer, more inclusive and comprehensive view of a crucial period in Amazonian, Bolivian and South American history.

Several activities have been carried out during the 24 months of the action. In addition to standard academic publication (books, book chapters, articles in peer-reviewed journals), I have aimed to obtain public visibility by building an open access web site (https://pric.unive.it/projects/nameless-stories/home) of visual, oral and textual memories of female agency during the rubber boom, which offers access to rare or previously unknown photographic, oral and textual materials. I have also made use of newly acquired techniques on digital humanities to develop an Open Data Repository linked with the base site that currently includes more than 300 images, and operates within a larger digital CNRS-managed site called ‘Capricorne’ (https://heurist.huma-num.fr/heurist/?db=ATACAMA_SHS&website&id=45575&pageid=45320). Entitled ‘Images of rubber in the Bolivian Amazon’, the repository is being constantly updated with fresh data (https://heurist.huma-num.fr/heurist/?db=ATACAMA_SHS&website&id=45575&pageid=53149).
During the action I carried on successfully two periods of ethnographic fieldwork in Bolivia with Indigenous, Creole and Immigrant groups, and also ethnohistorical research in several private and public archives. At the same time, I have been involved in teaching and advising activities in Venice, Buenos Aires and Cochabamba at high school, graduate and postdoctoral levels. I have also acquired transferable skills such as digital repository design and above all knowledge of Italian language thanks to continuous training at the Ca’ Foscari School for International Education, where after 24 months I reached a C2 competence level.
During February 2022 I coordinated an international seminar in Venice (‘Radiography of Extractive Spaces’) that involved anthropologists, historians and geographers from Italy, France, USA, Argentina and Spain, and in February 2023 a second international workshop (‘The South American Lowlands as Anthropological Object: A look from Extractivism and Mechanisation’) with colleagues from Italy, France and USA. During May 2023, I organized as well a third Workshop in France entitled ‘Gérer ses données avec le logiciel heurist et l’entrepot Nakala’ at Rennes University.

The research outcomes have exceeded the expectations planned in the original Description of the Action. All the open access results (scientific publication, conferences, workshops, outreach activities, website and social media dissemination) have aimed to target multiple audiences: academy, general public, prospective MSC candidates. The results include two books, a thematic dossier in a peer-reviewed journal (introduction and article as unique author), four book chapters, and oral presentations in nine international seminars:
- February 2022: ‘Radiography of Extractive Spaces’. Ca’ Foscari University. Paper: ‘Storie dimenticate: le donne del tempo del caucciù (1880-1920)’.
- February 2022: ‘Antropologia al singolare: storie minori nelle terre basse sudamericane’, Bologna University. Paper: ‘La reina del Orthon: una dama europea en el imperio gomero’.
- May 2022: ‘Il Silenzio delle Ragazze. Leggere le donne’, Bologna University. Paper: ‘An Ethnographic Case: Invisible Women in the History of Elastic Rubber’.
- June 2022: ‘Presentazione progetti Marie Curie 2019-2020’, Ca’ Foscari University. Paper: ‘Nameless-Stories: Invisible and Forgotten Stories of the Rubber Boom (Bolivian Amazonia)’.
- January 2023: ‘La velocidad de los mundos lentos: accidentes, máquinas y sociedades en América del Sur’, Maison de Sciences de l’homme de Bretagne. Paper: ‘La tragedia del Adolfito, o de cómo un naufragio cambió la historia amazónica’.
- February 2023: ‘Las Tierras Bajas Sudamericanas como objeto antropológico: una mirada desde el extractivismo y la mecanización’, Ca’ Foscari University. Paper: ‘The Invisible Women’.
- May 2023: ‘Atelier Humanités Numériques’, Rennes Univesity. Presentation: ‘Gérer ses données avec le logiciel heurist et l’entrepot Nakala’.
- June 2023: ‘II International Congress of Digital Humanities’, Catholic University of Ávila. Paper: ‘De la investigación antropológica al repositorio abierto de materiales científicos’.
By reconstructing the agency and experiences of ‘rubber women’, the project outcomes not only offer updated comparative insight to the contemporary analysis of intersectional relations between gender, ethnicity, class, and personal, collective or regional affiliation, but also render ‘rubber women’s testimony visible in the historical record and help to empower their descendants and groups of origin, thus contributing to forge the path towards a more fair and inclusive history of Bolivia, Amazonia, and South America.

Course Anthropology of development...

International Symposium - University of Rennes - CNRS France

Course Anthropology of development...

Seminar MA Students, Bolivia

International Seminar - University of Venice

International Symposium - University of Bologna

Interdisciplinary Seminar - University of Bologna

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NAMELESS-STORIES (The Invisible Women: Nameless and Forgotten Stories of the Rubber Boom (Bolivian Amazonia, 19-20th centuries))

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