The Unending Conquest: Indigenous Resistance in the Chilean Borders (1553–1604)

The conquest of southern Chile became, early on, a permanent war against the Spanish Empire. Few years after starting the expansion toward that end of America, the Indians of Arauco rose and killed the first colonial governor (1553). With this, long decades of war and almost permanent hostilities came, in the midst of an unstable and vulnerable Spanish presence. In a context of constant native resistance that manifested the endemic rejection to a Spanish presence that found itself in a clear numeric and geo-political disadvantage. Near the end of the century, a new uprising (1598–1604) took the life of another governor, swept the Spanish presence in the whole south, and confirmed that Chile’s control remained as an unending conquest.