Motoboom: The Impact of the Current Dissemination of Motorcycles in Indigenous Lowland South America

During the last century, the indigenous South American lowlands (Amazonia, Chaco, Patagonia) have been colonized by steamboats, railways, trucks, and even chainsaws, fire-weapons and electric generators introduced by missionaries, extractive endeavors, armies, development projects, and NGOs. However, anthropological and historical studies have largely neglected this mechanic colonization of indigenous life by focusing on topics such as ideologies of personhood, kinship, cosmology, and culturally-inflected relations with animals, religious missions and non-human spirits.