Author : Shawn Michael Austin
Publisher : University of New Mexico Press
ISBN 13 : 082636196X
Total Pages : 382 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (263 download)
Book Synopsis Colonial Kinship by : Shawn Michael Austin
Download or read book Colonial Kinship written by Shawn Michael Austin and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 Bandelier/Lavrin Book Prize from the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies 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.