Indians and mestiços in Rio de Janeiro: Plural and changing meanings (18th - 19th centuries)

Abstract

Historians and anthropologists have been developing new concepts and theories about the mixing process of Indians in America which allow us to think that identities are plural and that ethnic classifications are historical constructions that have specific meanings according to regions, spaces and social agents in contact. This paper presents a discussion about these meanings, emphasizing the aims of Rio de Janeiro village’s indians, taking into account their relations with other ethnic and social groups with whom they used to interact. The period focused extends specially from Pombal’s reforms to the 19th Century, when the disputes about ethnic classifications comes up more clearly in the sources: while political authorities and intellectuals state mixed condition and dispersion of indian’s villages, these ones argued for collective rights based on their indigenous identities. These disputes about indigenous peoples’classification on different categories can be seen as political and social disputes, which must be associated with land conflicts and indigenous policy...