Fort Bella Esperanza: A Little-Known Story of Toba Peoples and Soldiers in the Bolivian Chaco, 1863–1867

Abstract In the 1860s, the Republic of Bolivia was consolidating its institutions and defining its southern border on the Chaco plains. The Republics of Argentina and Paraguay had territorial claims to the same area, for the most part still under control of the Indigenous Peoples. In 1863, aiming at preventing the advance of Argentine ranchers and to expand cattle ranching for the Bolivian fronterizos, the state and residents of Tarija financed the construction of Fort Bella Esperanza on the right margin of Pilcomayo River, on the territory of Toba Peoples. A Franciscan mission-station for Weenhayek Peoples was built near the fort. Indigenous laborers worked in construction of the fort and mission. In 1867, a coalition of Toba warriors allied with two disgruntled soldiers destroyed the fort and soon after burned the mission. The article describes the events of the history of the early Republican period, arguing that Toba men and women pursued their own agenda. Their alliance with the discontented soldiers empowered the Toba and delayed the fronterizos’ occupation of valuable pastureland for more than a decade. The argument offers a nuanced interpretation of an understudied nineteenth-century incident in the context of settler colonialism and international geopolitical disputes.