En lo alto de una pica. Manipulación ritual, transaccional y política de las cabezas de los vencidos en las fronteras indígenas de América meridional (Araucanía y las pampas, siglos XVI-XIX)

Abstract

Since the beginning of European expansion, the colonial armies – by themselves or vicariously – ‘hunted’ heads, a practice which often converged with the natives’. In the particular case of Araucania and the pampas, from the 16th century on two different cultural traditions related to the manipulation of the enemy´s body converged. On one side, the European, in which decapitation and even dismemberment confirmed the Royal power to unleash a rigorous punishment: a crime which constituted a threat against Royal sovereignty and though against the order and stability of the Kingdom was punished by the brutal laceration and public quartering of the convict, inverting in that way the committed atrocity. On the other side, the Reche and other Indian nations in the panaraucana area operated as well with the massacred body of the enemy, a custom integrated to an extensive tradition which was part of a warrior complex intended to provide the means for the symbolic reproduction of the whole social body. In this article that double recurrence which produced a mixture of changing meanings, extended in the region until the 19th century, is examined.