India Juliana

Juliana is one of the few Cario women to be referred to in colonial sources with a (Christian) name. The first Spanish expeditions to establish settlements in Paraguay were motivated by the mistaken belief that it was a region of mineral wealth, particularly gold. In 1537, the military fort Nuestra Señora de la Asunción was founded by Juan de Salazar y Espinoza on the coast of the Paraguay River. After their encounter with the local Guaraní people, the Spanish established pacts with the caciques sealed with the delivery of women. Initially, giving women to the colonists was done under the framework of cuñadazgo, a concept through which Guaraní leaders created pacts of peace and mutual benefit, as it transformed the recipient in brother-in-law or son-in-law. Since the Spanish treatment of the Guaraní was not one of reciprocity but domination, these initial exchanges were soon followed by indigenous uprisings, with at least three violent situations recorded in 1538–1539, 1542–1543, and 1545–1546. In an account from 1541, colonist Domingo Martínez de Irala detailed that 300 indigenous women lived in Asunción, who were handed over by the Cario people to serve the Spanish. In 1541, the initial Spanish settlement of Buenos Aires—built on the coast of the Río de la Plata—was abandoned in the face of attacks from indigenous peoples, and its inhabitants moved to Asunción, which was officially founded as a city by Irala on what was once the fort. When the news of Ayolas' probable death reached the Spanish Court, explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was named second adelantado of the Governorate, arriving to Asunción on March 11, 1542, and taking power from Irala. The practice of rancheadas became widespread with Irala's second government, with researcher Guillaume Candela describing them as: "without any doubt the most effective acculturation phenomenon of the conquest. Entire villages were emptied of their procreative forces, thus marking an evident trauma in the lives of the affected [indigenous people]." ==Original account==

'' Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who introduced the India Juliana in a 1545 account presented to the Council of the Indies. Although the historical references about the India Juliana are brief, they establish a strong counterpoint with the more usual representations of Guaraní women in the early-colonial sources of the Río de la Plata region. known as Comentarios. The text was actually written by Cabeza de Vaca's scribe Pero Hernández, at the former's request. Returning to Spain as a prisoner in 1545, Cabeza de Vaca entered into a legal dispute with the Council of the Indies that lasted almost eight years, in which he received a harsh sentence. In 1555, after resolving his legal problems and cleaning up his image, and upon receiving the pertinent royal authorization, Cabeza de Vaca published La relación y comentarios del gobernador Álvar Núñez cabeza de vaca de lo acaecido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias, which compiled the Comentarios along with a previous account from 1542 known as Naufragios. Section "XLII" of the original 1545 Comentarios read: At the time I arrived in [Asunción], I was informed that an Indian named Juliana, a native of said land, had poisoned a Christian named Ñuño de Cabrera, and that Domingo de Irala had held her prisoner and had prosecuted her, and having verified the crime by confession of said Juliana, saying that out of jealousy she had of said Nuño de Cabrera, she had given him poison by which he died, and at the time [the men of Asunción] learned that I was coming they released her and said Juliana left, and to all the other Indian women who served the Christians she told that only she was the brave one who had killed her husband; which after coming to my notice I ordered to search for and arrest the said Juliana, and imprisoned, she again proceeded to confess the crime, and the said Domingo de Irala came to beg me to release her at the request of a Sancho de Salinas, his friend, first cousin of said Nuño de Cabrera, who was fond of said Juliana; I decried and reprimanded him, as well as the said Domingo de Irala as well as the said Sancho de Salinas, and by virtue of the process my mayor did justice to it, because in addition to deserving it, he agreed to remove the audacity that [other women] did not dare to such cases. An earlier reference to Juliana's case—albeit without mentioning her name—is an account authored by Hernández, Cabeza de Vaca's account of the India Juliana intended to expose the "chaos" that Irala's policies had caused in the colony, especially the promiscuity of the Spaniards with indigenous women, and to sanction these behaviors, demonstrating his "moral superiority and civilizing capacity". According to researcher Gabriela Schvartzman, the "argument of jealousy and the alleged love relationship that Juliana had with a cousin of her husband who was also close friends with Irala are the plot that allows this interpretation." Schvartzman also noted that the story has a "second moral" related to the disrespect of women to the sexual system imposed by the colonists. By writing that the India Juliana told the other women that she had been the only brave one to have dared to kill her master, Cabeza de Vaca implied that this made her proud and affirmed, and that she urged others to do the same. In this sense, researcher Silvia Tieffemberg felt that her revenge "crossed ethnic and gender barriers simultaneously." ==Historian views==

Based on Cabeza de Vaca's original account, several different and contradictory versions of the India Juliana's story have emerged over time, some of them through history works and others through literary works. The rebellion of the India Juliana can thus be regarded as one of the earliest recorded indigenous uprisings against the Spanish rule. Several of these interpretations describe the India Juliana as the daughter of a cacique, as were the women who were handed over as part of the initial pacts between natives and conquerors. Paraguayan women's historian Idalia Flores de Zarza also described the uprising and execution of the India Juliana in her 1987 work La mujer paraguaya: protagonista de la historia, 1537-1870. Tomo I, although she claimed that she died by hanging. ==Later versions==

The story of the India Juliana has been the subject of numerous historical fiction works. In his short story "Primeras Letras. Jueves Santo, 1539", Helio Vera portrays the India Juliana as a naive girl that falls in love with Juan de Salazar and reveals a 1539 indigenous rebellion planned for Maundy Thursday, betraying her people. This vision of the India Juliana has been described as a "Guaraní Malinche". Nevertheless, these claims have been dismissed, as the contemporary writings of Cabeza de Vaca and Hernández account for her existence. Reflecting on this, Schvartzman wrote: The discourse that affirms the real non-existence of the India Juliana, or that questions this fact based on the non-existence or ignorance of reliable historical documents or records, is presented as a pretext for the invisibility of indigenous resistance, especially of women. It reinforces the idea that the relations between Spaniards and indigenous people, during the conquest and colonization, were relations without conflict, peaceful and even loving. (...) Juliana's story as a traitor to her people or in love with her oppressor seems to have no supporting historical sources, so it would become a fiction that carries a colonialist and patriarchal discourse. Not looking for the India Juliana, or not looking for her enough, are indicators that measure the interest in finding her, in making her visible, they finally constitute a political position both for those who act in the field of historical and social research, as well as for those who act from the women's movements and feminism. ==Legacy==

women's organization named after the Guaraní rebel. Her figure has been claimed by modern feminist activists and academics. Today, the figure of the India Juliana is claimed both as a historical defender of the indigenous peoples, as well as a symbol of the emancipation of women. and several feminist groups, schools, libraries and centers for the promotion of indigenous women in Paraguay are named after her. Writer Andrés Colmán Gutiérrez of Última Hora noted that the she is "carried as a banner" in the annual demonstrations of International Women's Day and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and described her as "perhaps the first feminist indigenous Guaraní heroine, a rebel against the macho and patriarchal culture, who denies the sugarcoated official story about the Spanish conquest in Paraguay". The same has happened in Ecuador with Dolores Cacuango and Tránsito Amaguaña; in the central Andes region with Bartolina Sisa and Micaela Bastidas; and in Argentina with María Remedios del Valle and Juana Azurduy. It is one of the few streets in the city named after an indigenous individual rather than an entire community, along with other figures such as the caciques Arecayá and Lambaré, and the servant Indio Francisco. the image of India Juliana has been invoked in consumer products such as T-shirts or beers. In 2020, her story was adapted into a comic book released by Paraguayan publishing house Servilibro, as part of the collection "Mundo guaraní". Written by professor María Gloria Pereira and illustrated by Daniel Ayala Medina, the comic portrays her as a Guaraní heroine against Spanish domination, and uses the name Arapy as her original native name, Paraguayan singer-songwriter Claudia Miranda included a song about the India Juliana in her 2020 debut studio album Las brujas, which was made with the support of the organization Centro de Documentación y Estudios (Spanish for "Center for Documentation and Studies" [CDE]). ==See also==