Xamãs e jesuítas na terra do deus Jaguar: história indígena de longa duração na Amazônia boliviana

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand alterity as a form of agency that connects the pre-colonial history of the Bolivian Amazon, specifically the region known as Llanos de Moxos, to the pre-republican period of Bolivia. To achieve this, it employs a historiological methodology that integrates data from archaeology, ethnography, and historical documentation, adopting a long-term perspective. The central hypothesis suggests that in the Llanos de Moxos, different Indigenous peoples engaged in various ways to preserve their ethnic particularities. This preservation manifested both in their anthropogenic relationship with the Amazonian landscape—through agroforestry management and the construction of roads, dikes, earthworks, and ponds over a thousand years ago—and in the maintenance of elements of their original worldviews and societal organizations during the colonial period. These efforts also resulted in a wide range of adaptations, encompassing both the reception of and opposition to Jesuit missionaries and, later, Enlightenment reformers. The histories of these peoples interestingly reveal points of convergence, suggesting the existence of a “pristine Amazonian history.” However, they also highlight divergences that delineate the specificities of each ethnicity’s alterity. These diverse strategies demonstrate that the peoples of Moxos not only maintained their cultural and social distinctions over time but also charted their own paths and made strategic decisions within the possibilities available to them. This occurred even in the face of repeated colonial attempts to homogenize them and subordinate them to Western logic.