Becoming Chiquitano: Crafting Identities in the Broader Paraguayan River Basin

This project poses two basic conceptual problems: How do ethnic and communal identities emerge and how are their meanings expressed by diverse groups of historical actors? To address these problems, my research focuses on indigenous communities who inhabited Catholic missions in the colonial Spanish province of Chiquitos located in portions of present-day southeastern Bolivia and southwestern Brazil. It provides a deeper understanding of the ways in which these native peoples bestowed meaning upon the public dimensions of their reconstituted communities and transformed, articulated, maintained, and defended ethnic, linguistic and communal identities. My full temporal scope extends from the late sixteenth century through the Jesuit mission regime (1691-1767) and into the early nineteenth century, but I place special emphasis on post-Jesuit historical processes. By focusing on these understudied years, I reveal how native resistance to late eighteenth and early nineteenth century imperial developments impacted the evolution of identities that began to emerge a century earlier. During this period of mission secularization, indigenous peoples continually mediated administrative and sociocultural changes to construct and articulate ethnolinguistic and communal identities. My interdisciplinary research provides an innovative model for the examination of indigenous and imperial borderlands centered on the themes of ethnicity, community, colonial conflict, and intercultural exchange.Doctor of Philosoph