Oro bianco, oro nero: un esercito di donne nelle piantagioni (Chaco & Amazzonia)

Abstract

In this essay, the authors offer the reader some photographs. These are images portraying women in the Bolivian Amazon in the early 20th century and in the contemporary Indigenous Chaco (Argentina), respectively. The images enable an analysis of the two extractive contexts (rubber in the Amazon and cotton in the Chaco) through the unseen gaze of Indigenous, European-white, Immigrant and Creole women. They have been completely marginalised and erased from ethnographic and historical sources. The photographs offer an unusual interpretation of the intersectional dynamics of class, gender and race. Keywords: Rubber boom; Cotton; Women; Amazonia; Chaco.