Amerindians in the construction of modern Brazil: tensions and interconnections in societies of encounter. The role of Brazilian women

Abstract

To explain the construction of modern Brazil, it is necessary to consider native and European societies in dialogue and interconnection. Since the discovery of the territory by the Portuguese, there have been testimonies about the Amerindians, views that have taken on new forms with the phased processes of colonisation and Christianisation. Strategies of political domination and Catholicisation, expansion of settlement and objectives of economic exploitation necessarily materialised with the cooperation of the natives. Historiography has emphasised the customs and organisation of different Amerindian tribes, as well as the process of European domination of the indigenous workforce and the role of the Jesuits in particular in missionary work. In this article, we seek to provide an updated and, above all, complementary review of the interconnection
of societies, the cooperation of Amerindians and mamelucos in the demographic development of a mestizo society, new family structures, the role of women, tensions over the acquisition and exploitation of indigenous labour, the objectives and limits of European norms, the demarcation and transposition of cultural boundaries, phenomena that contributed to the construction of modern Brazil.