THREE - ARAUCANIAN PREHISTORY AND HISTORY: OLD BIASES AND NEW VIEWS

Summary

Historically, from pre-Columbian times to the present, all of Latin America passed through colonial and frontier stages of kaleidoscopic variety, each shaped by a particular combination of physical and human environments. Some regions within Latin America experienced several types of colonial politics, ranging from total defeat and decimation of the indigenous population in the Caribbean to passive mutualism and peaceful change in most of Paraguay to strong, prolonged resistance to all outsiders in south-central Chile. These experiences led to many transformations along geopolitical frontiers, where different modes of organizing societies competed with one another. It was the power of colonial frontiers to transform cultures as well as themselves that give them special interest (Comaroff 1998; Cooper 2005). In some places the actions of frontier peoples transformed political and economic institutions well beyond the frontier itself, contributing to national cultures and shaping a people's understanding of their identity. Larger historical processes also shaped the lives of frontier peoples, often as a result of decisions made by policymakers in distant centers of political, economic, or cultural power such as Spain and Portugal. Relatively peaceful accommodation and mutual acculturation characterized Spanish–Indian relations along some frontiers; a state of ongoing, low-intensity warfare typified other frontiers (Ribeiro 1973). One of those war zones was the Araucanian–Spanish frontier, which was the longest standing and most resistant political frontier in American colonial history.