Colonial Kinship: Guaraní, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay by Shawn Michael Austin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Colonial Kinship: Guaraní, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay by Shawn Michael Austin Barbara A. Ganson Colonial Kinship: Guaraní, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay. By Shawn Michael Austin. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2020. Pp. xvi, 382. $85.00. ISBN: 9780826361967.) Shawn Michael Austin in his exciting new book provides an insightful analysis into the everyday lives of the Guaraní through the study of colonial kinship in Paraguay. His focus is on those Native peoples who were subjected to labor demands and other obligations under the Spanish institution of the encomienda, as well as the African peoples and those of mixed descent who interacted with Spanish society, especially in Asuncion and its satellite communities during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These Native peoples were generally under the control of Franciscan missionaries, although the author provides details on the Guaraní from the Jesuit missions to elucidate the divergent patterns of Native resistance and colonial practices. In contrast to previous works, Austin draws upon rich archival documents with emphasis on 350 judicial records, which have been underutilized, and often contain the testimonies of the Guaraní. The author uses a broad framework to demonstrate how ethnic soldiering first began with the Spanish expeditions into the Chaco region in search of precious metals in the sixteenth century, rather than with the arming of the Guaraní by the Jesuits to combat Indian slavery in the early seventeenth century. The Franciscans were also the first to evangelize among the Guaraní in Guairá in southeastern Brazil prior to the arrival of the first Jesuits in 1609 who became a major evangelical force in the region. Austin builds on the pioneering works (1954) of anthropologist Elman R. Service for his analysis on kinship to demonstrate how the Guaraní shaped Paraguayan colonial society. Spanish conquistadors relied on and exploited the kinship relations they established with the Guaraní before and well beyond the introduction of the encomienda and a tributary system in 1556. The author states that the Guaraní term mborayhu (loving) is a complex word that describes the Natives’ relationship with their encomenderos (grantees of Indian laborers), which implied reciprocal benefits and a sense of community. Austin further discusses how religious orders but especially the Jesuits were the major purchasers of African slaves in the Rio de la Plata who put their slaves to work on their ranches, farms, convents, and colleges. In 1682, he notes, Africans, whether enslaved or free, comprised [End Page 620] 15 percent of Asuncion’s population. Africans, the author convincingly argues, must be viewed within the context of indigenous society. The author mentions an absence of church records in Paraguay; however, a few original baptismal and marriage records from the colonial period, such as those of Mission Santa Rosa, remain in the archives of the churches themselves, rather than in Asuncion. Accordingly, one wonders about the extent to which grandparenthood ties took place between the Guaraní and African slaves, a pattern that was present in baptismal records in the church records of small towns in southeastern Brazil. The author’s analysis of African slavery in Paraguay is a major achievement, but perhaps he could have examined slavery in greater detail in other parts of the Rio de la Plata, such as Uruguay, to cast a broader framework to strengthen his analysis. Aside from these minor points, Austin’s work represents a major contribution to the history of the Guaraní and Spanish relations during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This informative book will be useful for scholars who study Spanish borderlands, ethnohistory, race mixture, and colonial Latin American history. Barbara A. Ganson Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press