The Making of the Indian Internal Enemy: Calchaquí Valleyes, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

• In Event: Massacre and Genocide in the Early Modern World I

Abstract

In 1562, in response to increasing colonial pressure, a large Indian confederation chased all the Spanish colonists from the Southernmost frontier of the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Andean fringe of the young and chaotic province of Tucumán –today’s North-Western Argentina. Four of the five precarious cities founded over the previous years in the area were destroyed and their inhabitants fled to the Tucumán lowlands, Perú and Chile, or were slayed and enslaved in what Colonial authorities deemed a general Indian plot involving not only the Tucumán Diaguita Indians, but the Chiriguano and even the Vilcabamba Incas. This paper intends to follow up the crystallization of Calchaquí as the figure of the Tucumán internal enemy, from the 1562 war up to the first half of 17th century, when, in spite of the general progression of colonization, the Diaguita groups succeeded in maintaining their political and territorial autonomy.

Author

• Christophe Giudicelli, Université Rennes 3