Introducción. Mujeres indígenas y el trabajo asalariado en las tierras bajas sudamericanas, siglos XIX y XX

From the mid-19th century onwards, the acceleration of capitalist expansion in indigenous South America was driven by a series of extractive endeavors such as the rubber industry in the Bolivian Amazon, the dairy, meat and tannin industries in the Chaco, or the sugar and cotton industries in northern Argentina. These industrial enterprises advanced on indigenous territories that until then had been considered “frontiers”, “deserts” or “empty spaces”, and became key players in the final phase of their colonization. By relying on an interdisciplinary approach, the investigations gathered in this dossier aim to document and analyze the role of female wage labor in these macro-processes, aiming at questioning the hyper-masculinization of the industry’s canonical imaginary, restoring indigenous women’s agency in the extractive worlds, and to reposition it within the broader framework of South America’s general history.