Caminhos, mudanças, alianças e resistências indígenas: identidade e territorialidade dos índios da Aldeia de Itaguaí – Século XIX.

Abstract

This work aims to contribute to understanding the history of the Village of São Francisco of Itaguaí in the nineteenth century. Firstly, it is proposed to discuss and consider supposed process of extinction of Itaguaí village which has been defended by the discourse of certain political and intellectual authorities, who argued about the "mixing" and "degradation" of indigenous groups. Also intends to show that this speech intensified the expropriation of indigenous lands and the speech been deconstructing their right to land. Thus, in accordance of that discourse the Indians were treated as if there they did not exist, producing a type discursive of "invisibility" and / or "disappearance". In Itaguaí, the settlement went through successive attempts to extinction, while the Indigenous continued resisting and building different ways of staying with their lands, even after Itaguaí change to the village in 1818, or of the declaration of extintion of Itaguaí Village in 1834. Despite the political and social environment less and less favorable to the Indians, sources such as correspondence, requirements, offices, ordinances, floor plan chorography and population map of the village indicate that, although the village has been declared extinct by local authorities, the Indians recognized their territory as "Village", at the same time they were recognized by other (local) residents as "Indigenous of settlement" in the region. Still in 1860, as were demonstrated in this study, the Indigenous continuous having land in the region and building a sociocultural and political space, which interacted with the local society and made choices, negotiations and resisted the territorial expropriation proceedings. (Lastly), with this study, we seek to deconstruct the idea that the Indians disappeared from the (so-called village’s extinction in the year of 1834) supposed extinction of the village 1834, making them "visible" through research in historical sources still little visited by the history of the Indians, as the baptism records as well as and death inventories. We also searched the parish registers of land.