Abstract

CUTRERA, María Laura. “A Bare Title of all Authority to Command.” The Chaco Chiefs and the Tucumano-salteña Reduction Experience (18th and 19th Centuries). Anu.hist.reg.front. [online]. 2022, vol.27, n.1, pp.153-181.  Epub Dec 23, 2021. ISSN 0122-2066.  https://doi.org/10.18273/revanu.v27n1-2022005.

This article is located on the tucumano-salteña frontier of today’s Argentine Chaco, between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. It has a double purpose. On the one hand, it seeks to advance in the characterization of indigenous leadership among the autonomous groups of the Chaco, based on what has been suggested by some existing studies and from the information constructed in this research. On the other hand, it researches the impact that the experience of life in the Jesuit and Franciscan reductions could have had on the authority of the native chiefs. It works with edited documentation - stories of explorers and religious who went into the Chaco - and unpublished - kept in the General Archive of the Argentine Nation and some archives of the city of San Salvador de Jujuy.

The caciques in question are shown to be leaders, whose authority was built on the mastery of certain skills weighted by their followers and held by consensus. The incorporation of the Spanish-Creole missions and peoples did not produce, in this sense, any modification. On the contrary, the latter ended up adjusting to the existing forms of political organization among the Indians. After all, the ones who taught the Cristian doctrine had to build their leadership most of the time.

Keywords : Thesaurus: Political leadership; Frontier; Amerindians; Reducciones; Chaco.

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