Omaguas: representations and trajectories of a population group in the High Amazon XVI-XVIII centuries

• Grant number: 11/12573-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: November 01, 2011
• End date: September 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Torres Londono
• Grantee: Rosemeire de Oliveira Souza
• Host Institution: Pró-Reitoria de Pós-Graduação (PRPG). Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The current Brazilian indigenous history has been the subject of a series of discussions and reinterpretations on which it aims to establish a new perspective on the universe of Brazilian indians. The Brazilian Amazon is one of the main focuses of this debate because, among other factors, to population characteristics that have been raised through surveys that put populations as colonial Amazonian complex societies. Using the documentation available both as printed manuscript produced in the region during the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, we will seek to contribute to this discussion by analyzing the populations Omaguas, who lived in the upper Amazon and that raised so much discussion among European travelers who were in the region during the period cited above. Thus, we will seek to highght the elements in the construction of the category Omagua and all the implications present in this configuration as a population group. Thus, one of the main points of this research will analyze the European presence in the Amazon and was instrumetal as the invention of categories of indigenous peoples to the colonial project viable. Everthing indicates that the populations Omaguas underwent a series of idealizations and these denote the focus of the interests of Europeans. (AU)