This article analyzes the context surrounding the authorship and initial circulation of Indoamericanismo y raza india (Indo-Americanism and the Indian Race), published in Chile by Alejandro Lipschütz in 1937. The book marked the beginning of his long-standing influence in the fields of Latin American anthropology and indigenism. The article examines Lipschütz’s creative appropriation of Indo-Americanism, as well as the global political and personal context in which the work was conceived and first circulated. During the 1930s, Lipschütz was deeply concerned about the rise of racism, the Spanish Civil War, and the uncertainty of his professional future. In 1936, the founders of the journal La Voz de Indoamérica invited him to write a text on Indo-American issues. Although he completed the manuscript, he decided not to publish it because of his precarious professional situation. Instead, he presented it at the Universidad de Chile in 1937. The lecture sparked a public debate on racism in Chile and was later delivered in Bolivia in 1939 and in other Latin American countries during the early 1940s. In 1944, Lipschütz published a substantially expanded second edition of nearly five hundred pages, whereas the original publication had been only a pamphlet.
