Vilas de indios no Ceara Grande : dinamicas locais sob o Diretorio Pombalino

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2003

RESUMO

This thesis contributes to the recent anthropological and historical scholarship, which focuses on the relationship between European expansion and indigenous populations in colonial Brazil. In reevaluating the perspective that proposes a radical opposition between conquerors and Indians, these studies have emphasized the role of Indians as political and social actors within the colonial sphere, albeit under the strain of domination. A much more complex picture emerges, showing that the process of constructing colonial hegemony and the subsequent nation state involved not only impositions, but also negotiations and adjustments between the diverse social segments and agents that shaped the colonial world (governors, administrators, magistrates, priests, colonists, slaves, Indians, among others). In analyzing the ways in which the Indian Directorate - a legislative code governing Indian policy, implemented by the future Marquis of Pombal in the mid-eighteenth century - was reengaged as social practice, we find that certain interpretations of colonial Brazilian history are subject to revision. The transformation of mission villages into towns (vilas) led to the incorporation of indigenous peoples within the new order, rather than to their exclusion or isolation, as the prevailing argument suggests. Reviewing this situation at the local level, this thesis contends that the Indians developed new forms of action within the vilas de índios created by the Directorate. Research allowed us to identify a significant social dynamic in which the Indians played a crucial role as actors directly involved in the development of colonial structures and institutions. At the same time, the colonizers also proved to be quite flexible, even within the institutional constraints of the Directorate project. A second common hypothesis that this thesis contests has to do with the supposed spurious and informal manner in which Portuguese towns were established in colonial Brazil. Our research shows a quite different situation, in which incipient urban planning was applied to the vilas during this period. The thesis argues that the vilas de índios constituted open systems, whose origins obeyed centralized determinations, but whose development was shaped by local conflicts and interests, including those of the indigenous peoples

ASSUNTO(S)

cidades e vilas indios da america do sul - brasil - condições sociais brasil - historia

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