Cross-cultural Interactions, Indigenous Agency, and Resistance in the Borderlands of the Upper Paraguay Basin

This chapter delves into Indigenous resistance in the borderlands of the Iberian empires during the late eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the symbolic and everyday forms of resistance deployed by autonomous Indigenous groups in the fluvial borderlands of the Upper Paraguay River Basin, which they combined with violent resistance. I argue that the Mbayá (also known as Guaycurú) peoples found opportunities to use to their advantage the Hispano-Portuguese competition for control over the frontier. Additionally, the cultural exchanges that took place in the frontier region fueled Indigenous’ symbolic resistance, which appropriated and reverted European discourses about civilization, and expressed Indigenous assertions of superiority and territorial dominance.