Session Abstract

This panel examines the ways in which indigenous peoples of Spanish and Portuguese America claimed, created, and performed authority in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.  Both the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns envisioned Indian leaders as invaluable intermediaries in their governance of the native peoples of the Americas. In this effort, the Spanish and Portuguese instituted formal new leadership roles that sometimes built on and manipulated pre-existing native leadership structures.  Native lords, now known as caciques, were to be the indigenous equivalent of the hereditary dukes and counts of the Iberian Peninsula. Cabildos (town councils), sometimes made up of non-noble Indians, were to share rule with caciques in the newly established towns and missions.  As part of the Iberian Christianizing effort, cofradias (religious confraternities) were also introduced and become important avenues for defining indigenous leadership.

How did indigenous people turn these authority structures to their own ends, to create legitimate authority within towns and missions? This panel approaches that question from Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Guaraní sources. Creating and manipulating histories were frequently key to maintaining authority. Whether through letter writing or the performativity of architecture and wardrobe, indigenous authorities created the stories that justified their rule. But their rule was not over an abstract territory, but rather over the tangible places of towns and missions. What gave these places meaning so that caciques’ or cabildos’ claims to authority over a town or mission mattered? Case studies are drawn from the Andes, the missions of Río de la Plata, and colonial Brazil.