Frontier Missions in South America: Impositions, Adaptations, and Appropriations

Abstract

This article examines the establishment of frontier missions in South America, with emphasis on the strategies used in the interactions between Jesuit missionaries and indigenous peoples. It explores three foundational aspects of the organization of the missions: impositions, adaptations, and appropriations. Imposition refers to actions undertaken by missionaries within the framework of colonial regulations, in collaboration with members of the indigenous elite. Adaptation refers to adjustments made to the models that were imposed on local settings, through the incorporation of native elements that did not threaten the imposed structure of the reductions. Appropriation refers to indigenous responses to colonial impositions and the development of autonomous native practices. These three factors contributed to the development of new perceptions of space and time, as well as subjectivities that were specific to the frontier missions of South America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.