Indigenous Languages, Politics, and Authority in Latin America by Alan Durston Bruce Mannheim

Author:Alan Durston, Bruce Mannheim [Alan Durston, Bruce Mannheim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780268103699
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2018-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

STAGE 1: GUARANI TRANSLANGUAGE (1585–1684)

The early colonial Guarani or translanguage created first by Franciscans and then by Jesuits in Paraguay has been the object of study for more than fifty years since Melià’s doctoral thesis.33 The corpus consists of prayers, catechisms, and confession manuals, as well as metalinguistic tools—grammars and dictionaries. The monumental linguistic works of the Jesuit Antonio Ruiz de Montoya have attracted particular attention: Antonio Caballos and Graciela Chamorro, for instance, have studied the non-Christianized words and ethnographic data contained in Montoya’s dictionary, Tesoro de la lengua guaraní.34 While Melià focused on the creation of a Christian language, he opened the path for others to shed light on what remains un-Westernized in Montoya’s linguistic tools. There is also a very singular and interesting text in Guarani from this period that presents political vocabulary in context. It is a 1630 petition by Guarani caciques, denouncing the exploitation they were subjected to and claiming their rights.35 A Jesuit wrote it on their behalf “in their own language, as they expressed it,” and provided a Spanish translation.

Research on this first-stage corpus (Catholic, metalinguistic, and political) shows that it is possible to reach some precolonial meanings and early colonial uses, not completely consolidated. Ava was a generic word for “man” and possibly for “person.” At this stage, it began to be used as an equivalent for “Indian,” but it was not yet consolidated. Indeed, in the 1630 document above quoted, when the caciques used ava to refer to the male members of their communities (as opposed to the female ones), the Jesuit did not translate ava by “indio” (Indian) but by “nuestro vasallo” (our vassal). Why? Probably because he needed, for strategic reasons, to make clear that Indian leaders were truly lords, ruling over their vassals.

Karai was a lexical root (potentially noun, adjective, and verb) applied to some divinities and to some ritual leaders in precolonial times. Gods were not different by nature or separated from humans. And there was a continuity between political and ritual, shamanistic functions. In the terms of Viveiros de Castro, their ontology was profoundly different from the European one: body, kinship, nature, and culture were not conceptualized or organized under the same paradigms as in Europe at that time. Montoya explains in his Tesoro: “They use this word to always honor their wizards, and they applied it to Spaniards, and very inappropriately to the Christian denomination and holy things, so we do not use it for these meanings.”36 Despite Montoya’s wish, all through the corpus karai would be used with a meaning equivalent to “Spaniard” and “Christian.”

Voja (adjective) meant “medium-sized”: yga voja, “medium-sized canoe”; che arakuaa voja, “I have average understanding”; ava voja, “medium-sized man.” It could also mean “smaller” and “moderate”: che voja, “the one who is smaller than me”; che juru voja, “moderate mouth.” Montoya also chose to make an equivalence between voja and “vassal,” nominalizing it: ava voja, “vassal”; che voja, “my vassal, my servant (siervo), my subject (súbdito)”; Tupã voja, “God’s servants or the Saints”; Añã voja, “Evil’s servants.

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