Mergenthaler 266​

The River Will Cry Out: Jesuit Politics and Mapuche Diplomacy, or The Spiritual Conquest across the Biobio River (1612-1626)​

Ignacio Veraguas, MLL – Spanish & Portuguese (JHU)

The so-called “defensive war” was an evangelization strategy, primarily promoted by the Jesuit Luis de Valdivia, which officially began at 1612 and ended in 1626. It proposed establishing the Biobío River as a geographical and political boundary between the Chilean Kingdom and Mapuche territory—an arrangement that endured until the nineteenth century—thereby promoting a pacific approach to colonization within the evangelical enterprise. Thus, the defensive war positioned the Jesuits in an exclusive, intermediary role between the territories divided by the river.

To facilitate this evangelization mission Luis de Valdivia published three crucial bilingual books: Arte y gramática general de la lengua que corre en todo el Reyno de Chile (1606); Confessionario breve (1616); and Sermón en lengua de Chile (1621). These works were designed to decipher the Mapuche language and customs. While direct sources from Mapuche voices are lacking, these multilingual texts provide direct and indirect insight into Mapuche practices and political realities.

This presentation focuses on the process of ‘fronterization’ (Sheridan 2015) in southern Chile through an analysis of the Jesuit intermediary role and the concurrent Mapuche role within this process. This research seeks, on one hand, to identify the Jesuit strategy in this local context and, on the other, to recognize Indigenous diplomacy, thereby challenging a historiographic tradition that reduces border-making to a function of Mapuche belligerence.