The study of the Chaco War is dominated by military and political histories that frame the conflict in national terms in an effort to explain the root causes of the war and its outcome. Why did the war start in the first place, and how was Paraguay able to defeat the more powerful Bolivian army? This volume offers no conclusive answers to these questions. Instead, as Bridget María Chesterton points out in the introduction, the goal of the volume is to “come to an understanding of the war in a broad transnational context” that moves beyond nationalist historiography to uncover “lesser-known narratives of the Chaco War” (pp. 13, 17). While several contributors engage with traditional debates, this volume examines not simply the war itself but its impact on people from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds in both Bolivia and Paraguay.

A major theme of the book is its focus on...

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