Sounds of domination and reaction: coercion against the indegenous women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

• Grant number: 17/23046-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2018
• End date: December 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Denise Aparecida Soares de Moura
• Grantee: Julia Pizardo Micheletto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project look for to inventory in Jesuit's religious and moral texts coercion actions committed against the indigenous women as well as the possibility of a diagnostic discourse of these acts in the indigenous legislation. The chronological cut refers to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period in which the Company of Jesus was one of the forces of Iberian America of social organization. It is intended to identify the contexts that indigenous women were involved and were seen by the priests as the target of coercion and observe the reactions of these woman with these acts. The project idea originated with the previous reading and research in the historiography and in the priests' stories. It was noticed that biggest part of the historiography is dedicated to the research of black women, free or slaves and about the elite women. In the preliminary reading of Jesuit stories it was also found that the priests referred to indigenous women beyond moral judgments, but also focused on what they understood as coercions committed against this segment. This problem mapping in the Jesuit sources, therefore, promises to contribute to identify in the modern era Iberian society the specific contexts of violence experienced by a particular segment, the indigenous women, and to identify the emergence of a defensive discourse of these women already in those times.