As a graduate student in the Latin American Studies Program, my academic interests have taken me through an interdisciplinary journey mapped by a series of courses on race, class, gender, indigeneity, globalization, transnational migration, and the intersectionality of all these social formations. However, I was struck by the persistent absence of disability in all these courses. For the most part, research and theories about disability derive mainly from the global North. As a result, The links between disability and colonialism, imperialism, and globalization are rarely discussed from a Global South standpoint. By infusing a disability lens into the familiar frameworks that inform the existing scholarship on Latin American Studies, in this thesis, I examine cultural representations of disability in which figures of otherness have been manufactured within a Latin American context. There is compelling archival documentation to support the argument that disability was a critical tool of social othering and extermination of bodies deemed a threat to the social order throughout Latin America history. However, with the exception of a very limited number of published texts, this history has yet to be unearthed. My aim is to move the concept of disability to the forefront of analysis as a way to rethink the field of Latin American Studies. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]