This talk examines how anthropologists and human biologists used abducted Indigenous children in South America as sources of evidence for a variety of bio-historical research projects during the Cold War. From 1930 to 1970, human scientists studying the Aché — a traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherer group in Paraguay — used evidence derived from measuring, bleeding, and observing children in the service of research projects concerned with reconstructing global human migrations in the Western hemisphere. Through studies of Aché children and families, scientists like the French naturalist Jehan Albert Vellard, the U.S. human geneticist Carleton Gajdusek, and the French structural anthropologists Pierre and Helen Clastres discerned ancient patterns of migration by considering the diffusion of cultural and linguistic traits, the process of genetic drift in populations, and the immunological effects of European conquest. Yet many of the Aché children used in these studies had been abducted and sold as servants to neighboring ranchers. By highlighting the use of stolen Indigenous children as research objects in Cold War human diversity research, my talk uncovers the enduring and violent colonial structures that made this knowledge possible as well as the ethical and legal protocols and forms of Indigenous resistance that emerged in response.
This talk is presented in collaboration with the colloquium of the Center for Cultural Studies and will take place in Humanities 1, Rm. 210 on the UC Santa Cruz campus.
Sebastián Gil-Riaño is an Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Colombia and raised in Canada, he is a historian of science who studies transnational scientific conceptions of race, culture, and indigeneity in the twentieth century. His first book, The Remnants of Race Science: UNESCO and Economic Development in the Global South, will be published by Columbia University Press in August 2023.