Labor, Resistance, and Politics: Indigenous Agency in the Bolivian Rubber Boom

From 1880 to 1920, the economic boom produced by the extractive exploitation of wild rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) reshaped Bolivian Amazonia at multiple levels. Geographically, it drew borders that have been immovable ever since. Socially, it led to the rise and positioning of various local actors, and it involved national and European immigration. Economically, it installed the machinery of rubber extractivism. And politically, the period brought jurisdictional changes, the imple￾mentation of citizenship rights, and new legislation. This chapter offers an ethno￾historical analysis of the multiple ways in which the Indigenous populations of the Llanos de Mojos and northern Bolivian Amazonia interacted with a thriving col￾onizing machinery that included rubber tappers, officials, businessmen, travelers, explorers, and missionaries. It explores the heterogeneous adaptations, practices, and strategies that the native peoples implemented to insert themselves in—or interact with—the national society.