On February 14, 2024, CLAS hosted our next installment of the Latin American Research Seminar (LARS) featuring Professor Jenny Guardado, Assistant Professor with CLAS. Professor Guardado presented a paper that shows that while European colonialism in the Americas entailed a host of ethnically targeted exactions, this burden was unequally distributed within indigenous communities themselves. Professor Guardado argues that poorer and lower status members of such communities bore more of the brunt of colonialism than did higher-status indigenous. Lower-status community members’ resultant lower fertility, mortality, and (or) out-migration changed the long-term socioeconomic composition of communities in Peru and Bolivia, although it did so less in Guatemala. These results, in turn, contributed to the perpetuation of hierarchies and the replication of power structures within indigenous communities following colonization. CLAS thanks Professor Guardado for sharing her work with the community, and is likewise grateful to all participants for attending and engaging in a productive discussion.
