Prestigio indígena y nobleza peninsular: La invención de linajes guaraníes en las misiones del Paraguay

Resumen:

This article studies the construction of power in the Jesuit missions, focusing on the existing tensions between the Jesuit vision of the inheritance of privileges (based on the concepts of primogeniture and kinship) and indigenous modalities of authority legitimization (based on a more dynamic conception of personally acquired prestige). In the first part, the concepts of power and lineage are approached in the wider context of the imposition of Iberian cultural categories in the Americas. In the second, we analyze the Jesuit discourse and practice of inventing Guarani-lineages as well as their reaffirmation through symbolic and ritual mechanisms. In the last part, some of the conflicts caused by the collision between the two views on power and kinship are analyzed, and we reconstruct the unique Indian view about kinship and affinity.