Description
Winner of the 2021 Bandelier/Lavrin Book Prize from the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies
2021 Ermine Wheeler-Voegelin Award Honorable Mention from the American Society for Ethnohistory
In Colonial Kinship: Guaraní, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay, historian Shawn Michael Austin traces the history of conquest and colonization in Paraguay during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Emphasizing the social and cultural agency of Guaraní--one of the primary indigenous peoples of Paraguay--not only in Jesuit missions but also in colonial settlements and Indian pueblos scattered in and around the Spanish city of Asunción, Austin argues that interethnic relations and cultural change in Paraguay can only be properly understood through the Guaraní logic of kinship. In the colonial backwater of Paraguay, conquistadors were forced to marry into Guaraní families in order to acquire indigenous tributaries, thereby becoming "brothers-in-law" (tovajá) to Guaraní chieftains. This pattern of interethnic exchange infused colonial relations and institutions with Guaraní social meanings and expectations of reciprocity that forever changed Spaniards, African slaves, and their descendants. Austin demonstrates that Guaraní of diverse social and political positions actively shaped colonial society along indigenous lines.
Author: Shawn Michael Austin
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 12/15/2022
Pages: 382
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.85d
ISBN13: 9780826364401
ISBN10: 0826364403
BISAC Categories:
- History | Latin America | South America
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | Native American Studies
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social