Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chiefs, known as
caciques
to the Spanish, assumed hereditary power and more prominent
roles among the indigenous tribes of the Pampas after the assimilation of Araucanian culture.
This early 19th-century view shows a chief at the head of well-armed mounted followers.
(Augustus Earle, 1820, courtesy of Emece Editores)
region, and the mestizos, who called themselves
“españoles,”
estab-
lished a familiar social hierarchy with the wealthier landowners and
merchants at the apex and the indigenous laborers at the bottom. That
these mestizo elites spoke the Guaraní language did not prevent them
