Overview

Documents how initial Mapuche-Spanish alliances were built and how they were destroyed by increasingly powerful slave-trading elites operating like organized crime families The history of Spanish presence in the Americas is usually viewed as a one-sided conquest. In Mapuche Resistance to Spanish Enslavement, 1598–1687, Eugene C. Berger provides a major corrective in the case of Chile. For example, in the south, indigenous populations were persistent in their resistance against Spanish settlement. By the end of the sixteenth century, Spanish aspirations to conquer the entire Pacific Coast were dashed at least twice by armed resistance from the Mapuche peoples. By 1600, the Mapuche had killed two Spanish governors and occupied more than a dozen Spanish towns. Chile’s colonial future was quite uncertain. As Berger documents, for much of the seventeenth century it seemed that there could be peace along the Spanish-Mapuche frontier. Through trade, intermarriage, and even mutual distrust of Dutch and English pirates, the Mapuche and the Spanish began to construct a colonial entente. However, this growing alliance was obliterated by the “incurable evil,” an ever-expanding enslavement of Mapuches, and one which prompted a new generation of Mapuche resistance. This trade saw Mapuche rivals, neutrals, and even friends placed in irons and forced to board ships in Valdivia and ConcepciÓn or to march northward along the Andes. The Mapuche labored in the gold mines of La Serena, in urban workshops in Lima, in the silver mines of PotosÍ, or on the thousands of haciendas in between and would never return to their homes. With this tragic betrayal, Chile was left a more corrupt, violent, and polarized place, which would cause deep wounds for centuries.

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9780817321581

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This Incurable Evil examines a topic of great importance, yet one barely treated by scholars: the enslavement of Indigenous Chileans across a considerable stretch of the colonial period but centered on the seventeenth century. This rich and important book recovers and chronicles the 'lost worlds' of the Mapuche and their neighbors. The material is compelling, and the story is compellingly told. --Kris Lane, author of Potosi The Silver City That Changed the World

Author Information

Eugene C. Berger is associate professor of history at Georgia Gwinnett College. He is coauthor of World History: Cultures, States and Societies to 1500.

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