Diego Villar

Diego Villar is currently a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Università Ca’ Foscari Venice, a full-time researcher at CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) in Argentina, a member of Centro de Investigaciones Históricas y Antropológicas (Museo de Historia UAGRM, Santa Cruz de la Sierra) and of the Dottorato in Scienze Storiche e Archeologiche: Memoria, Civiltà e Patrimonio (Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà, Università di Bologna). After carrying out fieldwork among the Chacobo (Panoan) of Bolivian Amazonia and the Chané (Guaraní-speaking Arawak) of Argentinian Chaco, he specializes in the ethnology, ethnography, and ethnohistory of the Argentinian Chaco and Bolivian Amazonia.

The project

Title: Motoboom: The Current Impact of Motorcycle Motorization on Amazonian Indigenous Peoples

"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 mechanic 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, not even a single study has analysed a conspicuous fact of the modernization 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 of the project 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."

Hosting institution: UMR 7227 IHEAL-CREDA (Centre de recherche et de documentation sur les Amériques)

Selective Bibliography

• D. Villar, 2023, “From horseback to motorbikes: inside the motorcycle boom in Indigenous South America”, The Conversation, April 2023. 
• D. Villar, 2022, “Amazonia by Steam: Vicissitudes of a Geometric Revolution”, HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory
• D. Villar, 2017, “Les expéditions du docteur Vellard (Amérique du Sud, 1931-1938)”, André Delpuech, Christine Laurière & Carine Peltier-Caroff (eds.), Les Années folles de l’ethnographie. Trocadéro 28-37. Paris: Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (Collection Archives)
• D. Villar, 2016, “Culture matérielle et changement: Alfred Métraux chez les Chiriguanos”, Journal de la Société des Américanistes
• D. Villar, 2015, “Procesos de evangelización en la Amazonía boliviana. Un drama misionero en tres actos”, Boletín Americanista