Who Killed Jules Crevaux?: Murder in the Bolivian Chaco - Paperback

by Isabelle Comb?s (Author)

The first book to explore the deaths of explorer Jules Crevaux and his crew from an Indigenous perspective.

In 1882, the celebrated French explorer Jules Crevaux and his crew were killed by Indigenous people in the Bolivian Chaco, a fiercely contested region on the border between Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay. The event sparked an international uproar. The scene of the crime was embroiled in clashes among various Indigenous peoples, rubber tappers, and missionaries. Official investigators sent from France and competing newspapers ended up mired in a morass of equivocal, ambiguous, false, and contradictory information.

To make sense of this event, Isabelle Comb?s is the first researcher to consult the local archives and to include the perspective of Indigenous peoples. In search of who killed Crevaux and why, Comb?s unearths the power struggles and social imaginaries behind the incident and its aftermath. Readers will find not only an engrossing story in these pages but also an exemplar of historical inquiry that questions the very nature of truth-telling.

Author Biography

Isabelle Comb?s is an associate researcher with the Institut Fran?ais d'?tudes Andines and coordinator of the Centro de Investigaciones Hist?ricas y Antropol?gicas of the History Museum of the'Universit? Gabriel Ren? Moreno, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.