The role of alliances between missionaries and natives in the conquest of Apolobamba (XVIth-XVIIIth centuries)

Abstract

This article shows the role accomplished by political alliances between catholic orders and indigenous groups during the Spanish conquest of the Apolobamba high forests. This was an alternative way to set missions positions and power spaces in front of the military State advance. Furthermore, this strategy shows that catholic orders did not form a compact block neither with the State nor with more or less irregular troops which entered to Apolobamba from the middle sixteenth century, as they looked indeed at any moment for their own autonomy based on indigenous consensus.