Abstract

How are injurious pasts redeployed by the dispossessed? This talk explores how agrarian engineers, Indigenous farmers, Mestizo mining bosses, and rural workers navigate racial hierarchies rooted in histories of forced agrarian labor. In the rural Bolivian province of Ayopaya, where the liberatory promises of property remain elusive, Quechua people address such hierarchies by demanding aid from Mestizo elites and, when that fails, through acts of labor militancy. By tracing their active efforts to contend with servitude’s long shadow, the talk will illuminate the challenges that property confronts as both an extractive paradigm and a means of historical redress.

Join us for this talk and continue the conversation during the apero following the event hosted in the 7th floor kitchen, petal 2. If you can’t join in person, use the password Kh6StBNJw86 to connect via Webex.