The Current Impact of Motorcycle Motorisation on Amazonian Indigenous Peoples

DIEGO VILLAR

Venecia

Seminario; Laboratorio demo-etno-antropologico; 2023

Laboratorio demo-etno-antropologico, Departamento de Humanidades, UNIVE

During the last century, the indigenous South American Lowlands have been colonized by steamboats, railways, trucks, chainsaws, fire-weapons and electric generators introduced by missionaries, extractive industries, armies, development projects, and NGOs. However, anthropological and historical research has largely neglected this mechanical colonisation of indigenous life by focusing on topics such as ideologies of personhood, kinship, cosmology, and relations with animals, religious missions and non-human spirits. Aiming at understanding social change, some studies have dealt with some of the new materialities that model everyday experience: t-shirts, outboard motors, solar panels, and cell phones. Nevertheless, there is virtually no research on a conspicuous fact of the modernisation of these marginal territories: the current tide of motorcycles that during the last few decades altered dramatically the interethnic landscape, and its social, economic and environmental repercussions which are significantly reshaping current indigenous reality. Therefore, the goal is to develop a ground breaking and interdisciplinary analysis of the effects of motorcycle dissemination among the indigenous peoples of Bolivian Amazonia, and to achieve practical impact regarding public policies on road safety and prevention of accidents in marginal contexts.