Charrúas

Warrior CharrúaOne of the two prints painted by Jean-Baptiste Debret in 1823.

The charrúas were a Native American people, who in the XVI century were located between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers and which had as their center the current province of Santa Fe, Argentine Republic. Later they moved to other points, especially to the south of the Queguay Grande River, in what is now Uruguay. In the 18th century, the Charrúas expanded their territory in their war against the Guarani missionaries, advancing on the northern Banda Oriental, in the south of the current Brazilian state of Río Grande do Sul and the Argentine province of Entre Ríos, occasionally also reaching Corrientes and abandoning, by action of the colonial authority, the Santa Fe region. As a result of this advance, they mixed with other peoples that occupied those territories, such as the Chanás, Minuanes, Cáingangs, Yaros and Bohanes. Commonly, it began to be called "charrúa" this group of peoples, which is why today these tribes are often mistakenly referred to as charrúa complex or charrúa nation.

Charrua Complex

The Charrúas, of pampas origin, have been popularized, culturally or ethnically, in the so-called charrúa complex together with the yaros, bohanes, guenoas (or güenoas), chanás and minuanes. The chanás or chanaes are also included as part of the chaná-timbú complex, and thus they are confused with the Guarani tapes, considered by them as their opposites and most of the time, their enemies. On the relations between these groups there are different opinions:

For Samuel Lafone Quevedo (1897 and 1900) the Charrúas were a "nation" pámpida member of the guaycurú type and the other mentioned towns were "partialidades" from the same nation.

For Samuel Lothrop (1932 and 1946) the Charrúa and the others were "different tribes" culturally related and physically and linguistically similar to the Guaycurúes of the north.

For Antonio Serrano (1936 and 1946) the Charrúas were a "nation" with their own cultural characteristics, the rest being "tribes" mentioned part of the "charrúa nation".

There are various estimates of the population of Charrúas and related ethnic groups at the time of the arrival of the Spanish. They vary between 8,000 (5,000 in Uruguay) and 100,000 people or more. In 1828, when Uruguay became independent, the indigenous population was 30,000 people and the white population was 70,000. According to some historical studies, the number of indigenous people and their descendants in Uruguayan territory was higher than at the time of the conquest. This is due to the fact that the territory received an important immigration of Guarani who had fled from the destroyed Jesuit missions and who settled north of the Negro River.

Territory

At the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the Río de la Plata in the XVI century, the Charrúas themselves occupied the band between the Paraná river and the Uruguay river. Later, persecuted in their settlements in Santa Fe, they moved towards the Banda Oriental and they are associated as tribes of present-day Uruguay.

Félix de Azara in his Description and history of Paraguay and the Río de la Plata (published in 1847, 26 years after his death) described the territory the conquest ran along the northern coast of the Río de la Plata from Maldonado to near the mouth of the Uruguay River, extending through the fields about thirty leagues to the north, are the Yaros, mediating a large desert until some divisions or towns of Tapes or Guarani Indians enter from the north.

• Yaros: When the Spaniards discovered the Rio de la Plata, they lived the parrots, the fishing and hunting, on the eastern coast of the Uruguay River between the Black and San Salvador rivers, interning little in the fields, and not approaching those that ran the charrúas.
• Bohanes: Inhabited the eastern coast of the Uruguay River to the north of the parros.
• Chana: At the top of the first Spaniards, a nation inhabited the islands of the Uruguay River in front of the mouth of the Black River, and when the Spaniards depopulated the city of San Salvador, they passed the chanás to settle on the eastern coast of Uruguay below the coast of the San Salvador River. Afterwards, they returned to their islands, relying mainly on the call of the Vizcaínos.
• Minuan: In the time of the discovery, this nation lived in the fields of the north of Paraná, without departing from this river but as thirty leagues, and extending from where Uruguay joins the river to the front of the city of Santa Fe de la Vera-Cruz. By the Midday he confined with the Guaranis that inhabited the islands of Paraná: by the North he had great deserts; and by the Levant he mediated Uruguay between the Minuan and the nations already described.

Azara did not mention the guenoas, who were in the area of the departments of Tacuarembó, Treinta y Tres and Cerro Largo, also extending along the Ibicuy river in southern Brazil. Guenoas and minuanes are usually considered to be in the same group, sometimes called guinuanes.

Features

Culture

The Charrúas were related to the Pámpidos, a group of aboriginal ethnic groups that inhabited the Chacopampean plain and extra-Andean Patagonia. They had physiotypes and material culture similar to the subethnic groups of the ancient Puelches or Pampas, the Tehuelches or Patagonians, the Tobas and the Caduveos. However, around the XV century they seem to have received important Guarani Amazonian cultural influences, whose southern branch -the Chandules- roamed both banks of the upper Río de la Plata from their settlements in the Paraná delta.

Different sources disagree about the practice of music among the Charrúas, while some deny its existence, others cite its use for warlike purposes using shells and shouts. Undoubtedly, the most exemplary case is that of the musical bow made by Tacuabé in France, which is currently known as the Tacuabé bow.

They venerated the moon, which they called Guidaí and practiced an animist religion, from the Guarani they took their belief in Tupá, the Gualicho and El Maligno.

Regarding their customs, they were a warrior and hunting people, however, they showed a marked aversion to death that led them to cut a phalanx for each dead relative, as well as self-inflicting lacerations all over their bodies, such was their aversion that Within this ritual it was common for the injured person to spend several days in a pit away from the tibu without water or food.

Society

The Charrúas were not peaceful, they had a very strong social organization centered on chiefdoms headed by a cacique, a chief who, although he used to belong to a lineage, had to be permanently elected and agreed upon by the group, where interpersonal ties were very important and kept the polygamous affiliation.

They maintained a conflictive coexistence with the Spanish, during which attacks, looting and raids were common. Until on March 22, 1732 they agree to peace with Montevideo through Juan Antonio de Artigas. The agreement equally recognizes the rights and laws of the Charrúas, while the Charrúas agreed to recognize the case of the Spaniards. Peace would continue until the Guaranítica war and after it, they would be loyal to José Artigas and his lieutenants and then to Fructuoso Rivera and the Eastern State until the combat of Salsipuedes.

Economy

At the time of the Spanish conquest, their mode of production was hunter-gatherer, they were a nomadic ethnic group -as were almost all the other Pampids-, therefore the only material vestiges of their civilization are small clay pots as well as part of their typical weapons, spears, arrows and balls, the latter was one of the most typical objects of the region. They were made up of two or three stone balls, joined by a piece of leather of approximately one meter, in a common knot. They were used to hunt mainly the ñandú, a typical bird of most of the Southern Cone.

During the Spanish times, they used to trade with these weapons and horses that were sometimes the result of looting, since they did not have a proper sense of property.

Language

The Charrúa language itself became extinct almost without being documented, according to Azara it was: a very narigal language, guttural and different from all of them. Azara mentions the languages of the Yaros, Bohanes, Chanás and Minuanes as different languages. The language of the Yaros and that of the Bohans may have been from the Káingang group, belonging to the Ye language family. Teodoro Vilardebó compiled two groups of Charrúa words in 1841 and 1842, although from two indirect sources. This compendium of about 70 words is known as Códice Vilardebó.

As for the relationship of the Charrúa languages with those of other linguistic groups in South America, there are different theories. These languages have been studied by Amerindologists such as Mauricio Swadesh and Terrence Kaufman. It has been proposed that the Charrúa languages could be related to the Arawak languages (Perea and Alonso, 1937), with the Matacoan languages (Ferrario), with the Lule-Vilela languages (Rona, 1964) and the Guaicurú languages (Suárez, 1974).).

The death of Juan Díaz de Solís

Drawing from the attack on Juan Díaz de Solís in 1526. Work of Czech Ulpiano (1860-1916).

The Charrúas put up tenacious resistance to Spanish colonization, the first known episode being attributed to them being the death of Juan Díaz de Solís during his expedition to the Río de la Plata in 1516. Chroniclers such as the Jesuit Pedro Lozano in Historia de la conquista del Paraguay, Río de la Plata y Tucumán (published in 1755) accused the Charrúas of having killed and eaten Díaz de Solís and his companions:

Before arriving in Montevideo you will find the river of Solis, whose name is a perpetual memory of the tragic end that along with him had the famous discoverer of the Rio de la Plata Juan Diaz de Solis, who again demarcated him became aware of the barbarity of the charrúas that along this river gave him a heavy death, and that is why they call him some Rio de la Traicion authors.

Although, according to Spanish chroniclers such as Pedro Mártir de Anglería Solís, he perished before a Caribbean man-eating tribe, that is, of Amazonian lineage:

I feel that what happened to Juan Solís should not be silent (...) when he met the evil and anthropophagus of the Caribbean, of whom in other parts we have spoken loathly.

Mártir de Anglería wrote his Decade III, Book X of the Decades of Orbe Novo the same year that Solís died. Since anthropophagy is unknown in the Charrúa ethnic group, historians assume that Solís's death may have been due to the Guaraní chandules who were at that time prowling the banks of La Plata.

Félix de Azara in his Description and history of Paraguay and the Río de la Plata published 26 years after his death in 1821 agrees that it was Charrúas who killed Solís, but rejects the account of cannibalism:

The aforementioned writers Lopez and Lozano ibid, and Antonio Leon Pinelo in their representation made in 1623 to the Council of Indias, add that the charrúas ate roasts to the dead Spaniards; but I do not believe them, because there is no thing as durable as the customs among the barbarians, if they had done so and it is not so, nor do they keep the memory of such food. This voice was undoubtedly spread by a brother of the Solís and his brother-in-law Francisco Torres, who went from pilots and witnessed the unfortunate event, of which they were so frightened, that they immediately took the turn of Spain, where they made the case and the country the painting so sad and ugly, that for some years they removed others the temptation to repeat the recognition of that river, to which they so much called Rio de Solís (...) The charrúas killed Juan Diaz de Solís, the first discoverer of the Rio de la Plata, without eating him as Lozano mistakenly says, lib. 2, chap. 1. With this fact they began a war, which still lasts today without truce, and has cost countless deaths.

Pedro de Angelis in his Collection of Works and Documents relating to the Ancient and Modern History of the Provinces of the Río de la Plata, published in 1836, rejected Azara's argument:

If there is a country where it is not allowed to doubt anthropophagia, it is precisely the Rio de la Plata. His first discoverer, the unfortunate Juan Díaz de Solís, was devoured by the Charrúas, in the sight of his companions, and a brother. This fact is unquestionable. Azara's argument is so weak, it hardly deserves to be answered.

Martín del Barco Centenera in his historical poem La Argentina published in 1602, accused the Timbúes for the death of Solís:

gave Juan Díaz de Solís the sail to the wind;
To the Paranah he brought, to do deceptions
of Timbu caused him to be fined,
in a small river of great fame
that because of your betrayal is called.

The Drake Squad

Around the end of 1570, the English pirate, Francis Drake, was sailing on the Río de la Plata, when in the territory of the current department of Colonia, a ship from the squadron was lost, falling as a prisoner of native charrúas, a nephew or brother of Francis whose name was John Drake, who is kept as a slave by said Indians for several months. At the end of 1580, John Drake, a French and an English sailor, took an indigenous canoe and rowed across the Río de la Plata towards the recently founded Buenos Aires. The arrival must have been a gruesome scene, these three barefoot men, with their clothes completely worn out, half naked and after having lived with hunter-gatherers from present-day Uruguay, they decide to turn themselves in to the authorities of the Spanish Empire. The slave life that they would lead must have been very painful for them to decide to give themselves up, knowing what would happen, since these corsairs were quickly imprisoned and later sent to the court of the inquisition in Peru.

Historical testimonies about the Charrúas

Diego Garcia de Moguer

The first document that appears identifying the Charrúa nation with a name (chaurruaes) is the Relation that Diego García de Moguer wrote about the trip he made along the river Paraná in 1528:

... more then onwards a generation called the Chaurruaes, who don't eat human flesh; eat fish and hunt; do something they don't eat (...) The first generation at the entrance of the river to the North Bank which the Charruases call; these eat fish and dacá thing, and they have no other holding...

Ulrich Schmidl

The soldier of the expedition of Adelantado Pedro de Mendoza, Ulrico Schmidl, described the Charrúas they encountered when they arrived at the Río de la Plata in 1536 in his work Voyage to the Río de la Plata (published in 1567), calling them zechuruass, zechurg and zechuruas:

There we met a village of Indians called zechuruass which consisted of about 2,000 men, and who had no more food than fish and meat. These, when we arrived, had left the people fleeing with women and children, so that we could not give with them. This nation of Indians walks in live leathers, while their women cover the shames with a cloth of cotton that covers them from the navel to the knee (...) and their dress was like the zechurg of the navel to the knees (...) consisted of four nations called, lambndies, barenis, zechuruas, and zechenais diembus...

Domingo Martinez de Irala

Domingo Martínez de Irala in his Relation of April 1541 called them charruas:

Asy mesmo sy per case no truxere tablazon para hazer Vergantynes runs this coast of the rry above and finds wood of sabze and asy mesmo on the mysma coast hazia san gabriel and the ligazon can cut in the yslas and this with much Recaudo porq. the ynds of the part until agora is not an umbrella given by enemies ny amygos

Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo

The Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y tierra firme del mar océano was published by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in parts between 1535 and 1557 with an extensive account of the Charrúas that he called jacroas:

And at the mouth of the river are the jacroas, which is a people who hold themselves of the mountain of venados and of ostriches and of other animals called mates, the quales in New Spain and in the other parts of Spain call cuts; and also these people have many and good fish of that river and coast. There are in that land some çebolletas debaxos de tierra, which is good to decorate for the natural and even for the Spanish, and there are other rayçes that are as a form of joy: there are raposo é corzas a manner of lebreles, as bare lions. These people have no respite and no çonosçido people: they go from one side to another running the caça, and carry with them their mugeres and sons, and the mugeres are loaded with all that they have, and the men follow their bush and kill the çiervos and ostriches, throwing them some stone balls with trayllasó earrings of a rope, as has already in another part They also use some arches and clubs on their mountain range. These Indians are from the coast to the North, and later on in the mesma coast, passing the river Nero, there are other people who diçe chanastinbus...

Francisco Ortiz de Vergara

Francisco Ortiz de Vergara in his Relation to D. Juan de Ovando of January 1573, refers to the Charrúas as follows:

Entering through the mouth of the big rye ay a nation of ynds that call charruaes.

Martín del Barco Centenera

Martín del Barco Centenera in his historical poem Argentina and the conquest of the Río de la Plata with other events in the kingdoms of Peru, Tucumán and the State of Brazil (La Argentina) published in 1602 made several references to the Charrúas, among which:

The people here inhabit this part
Charruahas are said, of great brio,
to whom the fiero Mars has distributed
his strength, his courage and might.
It carries among these people the standard
in front of the Cacique, which is his uncle
Abayubá, mancebo very lozano
and the Cacique is named Zapicano
They're very grown and animosous people.
But without tears and seed.
On lands and battles, belicosa
bold and daring in a great way.
It's getting them the cold part.
do they live, the discard,
the house is only manufactured
And so presto do want to be moved.

Ruy Diaz de Guzman

Ruy Díaz de Guzmán in his work Historia Argentina del descubrimiento, población y conquista de las provincias del Río de la Plata (La Argentina manuscrita) finished in 1612 described as Yaros and Charrúas killed Captain Juan Álvarez Ramón sent by Sebastián Caboto to explore the Uruguay River in 1527:

... with this shipwreck the captain Ramon cast his people into a batel, and as he could go out with her to the ground, and the people saw by the Indians of the region called Chayos and Charrúas, they began walking along the coast, so that they could not go all in the batel; and fighting with them, they killed Captain Ramon and some soldiers, and those who remained came to the batel where Gabo was...

Francisco de Cespedes

In 1624, Governor Francisco de Céspedes agreed to create the Charrúa reduction of San Francisco de Olivares located on an island at the mouth of the Negro River in the Uruguay River. That is why that governor wrote to the king on August 30, 1631, expressing to him:

... all the other ynos desta prouincia and particularly the Charruas that inhabit the other band of this great river are still and peaceful and come to beir to this city but acceleras great lack the parents of their Reducciones that are Franciscos...

Diego de Boroa

Once the Franciscan attempt to reduce the Charrúas in San Francisco de Olivares had failed, the Jesuit Diego de Boroa in his Carta anua corresponding to 1635-1637, dated August 13, 1637, expresses referring to the reduction of Yapeyú:

Of all the reductions in this province is perhaps the most difficult, because it is so far away from the others, and located between the parros and charrúas, tribes completely barbarous and wild, to which, for living exclusively from fishing and hunting is the same as impossible to reduce them.

Pedro Lozano

The Jesuit Pedro Lozano in History of the conquest of Paraguay, Río de la Plata and Tucumán (1755) stated:

The Charrúa nation was formerly very numerous; it spread from the coast of the northern Paraná, to the shores of the North Sea; very bellicose, grown and animosa people, who were the stepfather who always found the Spaniards, when they arrived or defeated or because of their own arbit, at their shores. He has been preserved up to this time with his native value, holding his boldness against all, without anyone daring to slander them; neither do they profess another recognition to the Spaniards, but a costly friendship, for they execute, more in their salvation, enormous iniquities. Today they do not occupy so much land, because they are contained within the natural limits of the two great rivers Paraná and Uruguay, being in reality, sautéers of both coasts; by the Paraná, on the real road that leads from Santa Fe to the Corrientes; and in the Uruguay, on the boats that arrive at their margins.

Spanish campaigns against the Charrúas

In the successive campaigns of the governors of Buenos Aires to "civilize" in the Banda Oriental there were combats with the indigenous people. The expeditions of Juan Ortiz de Zárate, Juan de Garay and Hernandarias fought successively with indigenous people, causing hundreds of deaths. The foundations of Colonia del Sacramento and Montevideo were also the cause of conflict with the indigenous people, deepening the mortality.

On February 6, 1702, the Charrúas and their allies faced 2,000 Guarani missionaries in the battle of Yi and were defeated, suffering 300 deaths and 500 prisoners, mostly women and children. The Charrúas had only 200 warriors with which to face them. The Spanish commander expressed in this regard:

... to the punishment of the infidel Indian Yaros Moxanes Charruas and his confederates who claimed to have said exercite that it consisted of two thousand Indians well armed of varngaries, arrows and stones and other weapons in the paraje and Rio called Ibicuí...

In the following years some 4,000 Guarani from the Jesuit missions came under Spanish rule to attack the Charrúas.

After the punitive campaign that Francisco García de Piedrabuena carried out in 1715 from the reduction of Yapeyú to Entre Ríos with Guarani missionaries against yaros and bohanes, the Jesuit Policarpo Dufó refers in the report to his superior on February 9, 1716 that:

... the next day we come to the parage where the people of the Chanas were, and now they are inhabited by the Machados, which is the most numerous partiality of the Charrúas, and we find no one (...) The Machados for being peaceful people were told to retire.

According to Salvador Canals Frau, the Mbeguaes of the Chaná-Timbú group lasted until the XVIII century in the Paraná delta and when they merged into the Charrúa ensemble they received the name spotted or machados.

In Montevideo, peace with the Charrúas was achieved without sacrifices after years of invasion and raids. On March 22, 1732, the Charrúas agreed with Juan Antonio de Artigas that they would recognize Spanish laws, while they recognized those of the Charrúas, thus achieving a lasting peace.

By order of Governor José de Andonaegui in November 1749, the lieutenant governor of Santa Fe, Francisco Antonio de Vera Mujica apprehended 339 Charrúas who had escaped from the Banda Oriental, among them the chiefs Maigualen, Gleubilbe and Dóienalnaegc, who were moved to the vicinity of the Salado River in Santa Fe, giving rise to the town of "Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de Cayastá" founded on September 17, 1750 in the place where the primitive city of Santa Fe was located. This reduction disappeared around 1820. Another expedition of Vera Mujica in January 1752 on Entre Ríos, took prisoners 53 charrúas who were distributed among the expedition members for your servitude.

The Guaranítica war between 1754 and 1756, where the Spanish and Portuguese joined forces to fight the "infidel", had devastating effects. Even towards the end of the 18th century, the soft Spanish began a campaign called the "charrúa war", where The then Sergeant Major José Artigas participated. On October 4, 1800, Viceroy Avilés sent Captain Jorge Pacheco to an expedition against the Charrúas located in the northwest of Uruguay. Pacheco made 3 expeditions and founded Belén on June 16, 1801.

A few years later, many indigenous people, Guarani tapes, would fight in the armies of José Gervasio Artigas, Fructuoso Rivera, Manuel Oribe and Juan Antonio Lavalleja. By that time, the Charrúas had practically been exterminated due to the pre-revolutionary confrontations and their fusion with the other tribes of Guarani origin, which were commonly called "tapes". In addition to war actions, European diseases such as influenza, smallpox, and syphilis decimated defenseless populations for centuries.

Salsipuedes massacre

On April 11, 1831, in Puntas del Queguay, the massacre known as the Salsipuedes Massacre took place. On the banks of the Salsipuedes stream, between Tacuarembó and Río Negro, President Fructuoso Rivera had his headquarters. The first president summoned the main Charrúa caciques, called Polidoro, Rondeau, Brown, Juan Pedro and Venado, together with all their tribes, to a meeting telling them that the Uruguayan Army needed them to guard the borders of the State. According to the stories, entertained and drunk, they were attacked by a troop of 1,200 men under the command of Bernabé Rivera. It is said that Rivera himself gave the signal to start the attack, firing on the chief Venado, after asking him to hand over his knife to chop tobacco. More recent opinions maintain that this version originates from the novel "La boca del Tigre", by Eduardo Acevedo Díaz and lacks historical value.

The balance, according to the official historiography, was 40 dead Indians and 300 prisoners, some of whom managed to flee being pursued by Bernabé Rivera. Among the troops there were 9 wounded and one dead.

The persecution of the "charrúas" (who in reality were indigenous people from different tribes, who did not adapt to peaceful coexistence, which was demanded by citizens of different ethnic groups, who inhabited rural Uruguay, of the nascent republic), did not end in the Salsipuedes confrontation. Bernabé Rivera, pursued the rebels who managed to escape. On August 17, 1831, he surprised in Mataojo, near the mouth of the Arapey River, a group of the persecuted, commanded by the chiefs El Adivino and Juan Pedro, whom he attacked, resulting in the episode with 15 deaths and more than 80 prisoners. He reported that 18 men had managed to escape, including chief Polidoro, the only surviving chief. On June 16, 1832, he located a group of them, in a hollow called Yacaré-Cururú. In an ambush, those who had fled and others killed the head of the government command, Bernabé Rivera, two officers, and nine soldiers.

According to Professor Lincoln Maiztegui Casas, "the disappearance of the Charrúas was a gradual process that took more than 200 years and was generated from the occupation of the territory by Europeans". According to Maiztegui, the Guaraníes adapted and the Charrúas did not and, therefore, gradually became extinct. Thousands died, thousands more fled to the northwest to Brazil, thousands more mixed, either by kidnapping women from other tribes, or white women, and with these causes, brought as a consequence, that through time, they were losing their culture, being a minority group of residents.

Exhibition of charrúas in France

The Vaimaca Pirú puddle at 1822. Drawing of Delaunois, 1833.

The director of the Colegio Oriental de Montevideo, the Frenchman François De Curel, considered that direct contact with survivors of a race close to extinction would arouse the interest of the public and French scientists, and he asked the Uruguayan government for authorization to transfer four of them to Paris. A company was organized for the occasion to exhibit and study them in a human zoo.

In De Curel's power, there was a woman named María Micaela Guyunusa and two men: the shaman Senacua Senaqué and the cacique Vaimaca Pirú. The young warrior Laureano Tacuavé Martínez was chosen by the government from among those who were in prison. The group is known in Uruguay as "los últimos charrúas" and left by ship for France on February 25, 1833 with Guyunusa two months pregnant.

The exhibition in an alleyway near the Champs-Élysées met with little success, and three of them died that same year, 1833. Their skeletons were preserved, as were their organs in jars and fragments of skin and teeth from the three bodies, for 170 years in the basements of the Biological Anthropology Laboratory located in the Palacio de Chaillot. Guyunusa's French-born daughter died the following year, while Tacuabé managed to escape and his trail was lost. Unfortunately, De Curel did not comply with his request, granted by the national government of the time and on July 17, 2002, after the official procedures carried out with France, the remains of Vaimaca Pirú were repatriated to Uruguay and buried two days later. in the National Pantheon of the Central Cemetery of Montevideo, in the government of Jorge Batlle Ibáñez.

Origin of the name Charrúa

After the word "charrúa", different versions of its origin have been postulated, most of them derogatory: “los arrebatados”, “los destructores”, “los jaguares”, “los mutilados” and others a little more romantic such as “los acuáticos” or “los pintados”. The truth is that epithets were not lacking on the part of foreigners, regarding how to identify them. However, nothing is yet known regarding how the members of this native family called themselves.

Pedro de Angelis in his Collection of Works and Documents relating to the Ancient and Modern History of the Provinces of the Río de la Plata (1836) stated:

The Charrúas, constant in their attack and looting system, did not cease to alarm the inhabitants of the East Bank, from the border of Brazil, where they had recently set themselves between the heads of the Cuareheim and Ibirapuitá-mini rivers. They were persecuted and exterminated by an Eastern force, led by General Fructuoso Rivera in 1831. Only then could the neighbouring State be rid of such awkward inhabitants. In the day it would be perhaps difficult to gather thirty individuals from a tribe, which was so formidable in past times. In his name is encrypted all his story -Charrúa, in Guaraní, means, We are turbulent and revolting (Chaus, and rruI'm angry.

Other hypotheses were formulated by:

• Vicente Fidel López (en Historical Geography of the Argentine Territory1869): Guaraní Chara ("the aquatic", "the coastal" or "the coastal"). He also proposes that he could come from Guaraní Char - huba ("the locusts")
• Francisco Bauzá (in History of Spanish domination in Uruguay1895-1897): he argued that it comes from Guaraní and means "the furious" or "we are destroyers."
• Rodolfo Schuller Prologue to the Physical and Spherical Geography of the Provinces of Paraguay and Guaraní Missions of Félix de Azara1904) proposed that the name would mean "the painted", "the stained" or "the mutilated".
• Julio Estavillo (in Land-based indigenous peoples, 1950), said it is the name of the snake totem: Char, chanor kanwhich would also use other peoples such as the chanás, and which would have given rise to the word yarará (It'll be fine.).
• César López Monfiglio (en Totemism among the Charrúas, 1962) made a deduction by which the term would mean "we the jaguars".

In 2001, the anthropologist Daniel Vidart carried out an etymological analysis of the term "charrúa". According to Vidart, "charrúa" It is a word from the Galician language, which designates a wooden mask used as a disguise. The origin of these masks would go back to prehistoric times, probably to be used in popular festivals, such as carnival. Those who used these masks in Galicia, called charrúas, dressed up and painted themselves in a striking way, while gesturing with some aggressiveness. According to this hypothesis, the colorful clothing of the natives of the eastern coast of the Río de la Plata, as well as their faces painted as masks along with strange gestures, reminded Spanish sailors of those Galicians who dressed up at their parties with their masks called charrúas, taking into account that the expedition of Diego García de Moguer left the Galician port of La Coruña.

Fate of yaros, bohanes, chanás and minuanes

As for the fate of the yaros, Azara refers:

In the 16th century the Yaros were exterminated by the charrúas; but they kept, as the wild Indians used to women and boys who are mixed today without being able to distinguish themselves.

About the bohans he said:

... a part of it I believe was led to Paraguay by the Spaniards who abandoned San Salvador, and the rest exterminated by the Charrúas when the Yaros and at the same time.

About the chanás:

Afterwards, they returned to their islands, relying mainly on the call of the Vizcaínos. But fearing to suffer the extermination of the Yaros and Bohanes that was recent, they requested that the Spaniards of Buenos Aires defend them, offering to be Christians. In fact the governor of that city brought them out of the islands, formed them the people of Santo Domingo Soriano, and gave them a guard letting them live with the same freedom that the Spaniards had without subjecting them to commission or the government in community. Of this it has naturally been that these Indians have lived happy, and that they have been civilized to the Spanish, losing their language, customs, etc. and blending with the Spanish, so that almost all pass by such today.

Regarding the Minuanes, he says that they made an alliance with the Charrúas:

... made alliance and close friendship with them to support and attack the Spaniards who had just begun the works of Montevideo (...) Lately a portion of charrúas and minuanes forced by the Spaniards, has been incorporated into the most central villages of the Missions of Uruguay, and another is today quiet in the Caiasta Reduction. But another portion which is free by the thirty-thirty and a degree of latitude, makes war in blood and fire at times Portuguese and always the Spanish (...) When the Charrúas entered the North, they adjusted with them the closest alliance and friendship living together many seasons, passing through and reviewing the Uruguay River and committing accords to the Spanish of Montevideo and their campaigns (...) The Jesuit Father Francisco García tried to form on the Ybicui river, the doctrine or people of Jesus Mary by fixing the Minuan; but these returned to their wandering and free life, less very few that could be added to the Guaraní people called San Borja.

Descendants

Various estimates say that in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay there are between 160,000 and 300,000 people with some Charrúa ancestry, some of whom seek to be recognized as part of said people, although today they are mostly an integral part of general Western culture and they preserve only vestiges of the charrúa culture that became extinct in the XIX century.

In Uruguay

The Association of Descendants of the Charrúa Nation (ADENCH) was created in the city of Trinidad on August 19, 1989 with the aim of rescuing, conserving and disseminating indigenous issues in Uruguay.

On June 25, 2005, the Council of the Charrúa Nation (CONACHA) was founded, which is made up of ten organizations of descendants of Charrúas (including ADENCH itself) from different parts of Uruguay. This group of descendants of Charrúas -although, according to information from the council itself, there are members who are not descendants and only belong to it because they have decided to self-recognise themselves as Charrúas- even claims 2,000 hectares from the Uruguayan State on the basis of ILO Convention 169, which recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to the territories they have traditionally occupied (but has not been ratified by the Uruguayan State). However, the agreement clarifies that for a group to be recognized as an indigenous people, it is not enough to be a descendant of one or self-recognise as such, but must preserve the social, economic, cultural and political institutions of said people, or part of them.

Regarding scientific and population studies where indigenous ancestry in Uruguay was taken into account, in 1993 ADENCH collaborated with the University of the Republic allowing the taking of blood samples from its members for the investigation of serological markers, which which yielded a result of 13% indigenous genetic contribution within its social mass.^{[citation required]}

On the other hand, the 1996-1997 Continuous Household Survey requested the "explicit declaration of the interviewees about the race to which they believed they belonged", clarifying that it was referring to the self-perception of their " 34;belonging to a particular ethnic/racial group". It was applied to a sample made up of approximately 130,000 inhabitants (40,000 households) from urban areas that, according to the institute's data, were representative of approximately 86% of the total population. The categories used in the analysis, called "races", were the following: white, black, indigenous, yellow, black-white, black-indigenous, black-white-indigenous, and yellow-other. As a result of this survey, 93.2% of people defined themselves as white, 5.9% as black (which, according to the National Institute of Statistics, included the categories of black and all mixed races in which included the black race), 0.4% of the indigenous race (indigenous and indigenous-white), and 0.4% of the yellow race. In the 2006 household survey of the National Institute of Statistics, 115,118 people identified themselves as themselves with indigenous ancestry, representing 4.5% of the population.

Genetic studies from the 1990s and 2000s place the indigenous genetic contribution in the Uruguayan population at 10%, a percentage that rises considerably in the maternal way (31%), while the paternal way is much lower (5 %). Likewise, the department of Tacuarembó registered the highest indigenous genetic contribution in the country, with 20%, while in Cerro Largo it is 8% and in Montevideo 1%. Meanwhile, the maternal contribution in the three cases was 62%, 30% and 20% respectively. It should be noted that the indigenous genetic contribution turned out to be higher than that of the African, but the indigenous people mixed almost completely with the Spanish colonizers and the Creoles (and to a lesser extent, with Africans or their descendants), and their descendants continued to mix mainly with descendants of Europeans, either from colonial times or from the migratory waves of the 19th and 20th centuries, which currently meant that almost all of the descendants of indigenous people present a phenotype similar to that of southern Europeans or closer to that of this than that of the indigenous people of the region (only 0.4% of the population presents a phenotype close to that of the American indigenous peoples), since the European genetic contribution they possess is much greater. Africans, on the other hand, although they also had a strong miscegenation with Europeans and their descendants (and to a much lesser extent with indigenous people and their descendants), it was less, which meant that their phenotype remained current in a much larger percentage of their descendants (currently 5% of the Uruguayan population has a phenotype similar to or closer to that of sub-Saharan Africa than that of any other origin), who were also better able to preserve some rites and traditions from their African ancestors. It should also be clarified that Being a descendant of indigenous peoples does not imply being a descendant of Charrúas, since several indigenous peoples inhabited Uruguay before and during the Spanish colonization. Due to the relatively high number of Christianized Avá-Guarani (especially in comparison to the possible Charrúa population) who populated Uruguayan territory alongside the Spanish in the colonial era, it is possible that today the majority of Uruguayans who have some indigenous ancestry do so. coming from the Avá-Guarani and not from the Charrúas, who in addition to the fact that they would have been much smaller, would also have had much less miscegenation with the Europeans or their descendants due to considering them enemies and rejecting religious conversion.

However, the Uruguayan parliament is considering a bill that declares April 11 as the Day of Resistance of the Charrúa Nation and Indigenous Identity. According to the explanatory statement, on April 11, 1831 the genocide of the Charrúa people took place.

Authors such as Renzo Pi Hugarte and Daniel Vidart have criticized activists who claim to be recognized as charrúas, accusing them of falsifying the historical truth. On the one hand, Vidart thinks that the Charrúa people originally inhabited central and southern Argentine Mesopotamia, and that they migrated to Uruguay in relatively recent times (XVIII), for which he considers that the relevant towns in pre-colonial times of the current Uruguayan territory would be:

• Avá-guaraní: in the time of the arrival of the Europeans they were inhabiting around the Uruguayan river (taking into account only the current Uruguayan territory) in addition to that, later, thousands who had become Christianity in the Jesuit reductions and lived with the Spanish, so that they would be much greater than that of the charrúas themselves, and in fact they would be indigenous ancestors of most of the
• Minuanes: they consider them a people other than the Charrúa (which they would have actually fought alongside the Christianized Ava-guaranis) and as the one that the largest territory of the current Uruguay would have occupied.
• Chanás: Records of the linguist Dámaso Antonio Larrañaga show that they lived both the Argentine province of Entre Ríos and the Uruguayan department of Río Negro.

Both also criticize the fact that the supposed descendants want to be considered indigenous, since descending does not imply being Charrúa, since their culture became extinct (already in the XIX) because the last survivors of that town have not transmitted it to their children, for which reason their current descendants (who also descend from European colonizers and immigrants -mainly Spanish and Italians-) only know about the Charrúa people and culture from bibliographic data and not from family heritage. They also criticize that several of the rituals that the activists currently perform and believe belong to the Charrúa people, were non-existent or belonged to other peoples. Vidart described them as "creole indiophiles" and "inventors of an impossible Charrualandia", while Pi Hugarte classified them as "charrumaniacos". Meanwhile, the anthropologist and sociologist Fernando Klein declared that he considers them "charruístas" members of organizations like CONACHA, but not charrúas.

If I find out that I have a Polish ascendant four generations back, I'm not going to speak Polish. This is the same: having a charrúa ancestor does not make you charrúa.

Regarding the vision of the Charrúas in Uruguayan society, in 1888 the epic poem Tabaré by Juan Zorrilla de San Martín was published, considered the national epic of Uruguay. The poem deals with the love affair of the Charrúa Tabaré and the Spanish Blanca against the background of the war between the Spaniards and the Charrúas at the end of the XVI century.

Over time, the word "charrúa" For Uruguayans it gradually acquired connotations of courage, strength, fierceness, warrior pride and war victory, transferred to a sporting feat. In the Uruguayan subconscious, the indigenous society far from the complexity and development of other pre-Columbian civilizations gradually took on mythical traits. According to journalist and researcher Luis Prats, the expression "garra charrúa" It began to be used after a South American soccer championship played in Lima in 1935, which was won by the Uruguayan national soccer team, despite the fact that it competed with a team of veterans from previous Olympic Games and the Soccer World Cup. of 1930 that won that selection.

In Argentina

In the province of Entre Ríos there are groups of descendants of Charrúas and related peoples who try to carry out a cultural recovery based mainly on the information about said people found in the bibliography and inherited customs. They created the Coordinator of Charrúa Communities of Entre Ríos (Codecha).

Since 1995, the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI) began to recognize legal status to indigenous communities (associations) through registration in the National Registry of Indigenous Communities (Renaci), including 3 Charrúa communities from Entre Ríos:

• Charrúa del Pueblo Jaguar (in the Villaguay department on 28 June 2007)
• Güe Guidaí Berá (in the Tala department, 17 November 2009)
• Naybu Community (in the Federal Colony of the Federal Department, October 9, 2013)

The INAI records the existence of another 14 Charrúa communities without legal status in Entre Ríos: Onkaijumar Community (Paraná), Guidai Community (Victoria), Los Algarrobos Community (Gualeguaychú department), Remajunen Community (from Chaco Chico, between Gobernador Sola and Maciá), Jhuimen Etriek Community (Rosario del Tala and Maciá), Oyendajau Community (Durazno), Itanu Community (Villaguay), Charrúa Etriek Community (Villaguay), Carabi Community (Federal), Sacachispas Community (Chajarí), Inchala Community (Santa Ana), Itú Community or Salto Chico (Concordia), Cepe Community (Concordia), Abayubá Community (Concordia).

Other groups are being formed in Diamante, Federación and Colón.

During the Jordanian Rebellion (1870-1876) some Charrúas participated, who, when defeated, took refuge among the Qom of Chaco, integrating into their culture.

The Complementary Survey of Indigenous Peoples (ECPI) 2004-2005, complementary to the National Census of Population, Households and Housing 2001, resulted in the recognition and/or o 676 people in the province of Entre Ríos descend in the first generation from the Charrúa people, none of whom reside in indigenous communities proper. In all of Argentina, 4,511 charrúas recognized themselves, none living in communities proper.

The 2010 National Population Census in Argentina revealed the existence of 14,649 people who recognized themselves as Charrúas throughout the country, 3,513 of whom live in the province of Entre Ríos, 1,807 in the province of Buenos Aires and 93 in the province of Corrientes.

Since 2008, the Charrúa people of Entre Ríos had a representative on the INAI's Council for Indigenous Participation (CPI), which was renewed on September 17, 2011 through the election of a head and a substitute by an assembly of the communities. In October 2016, 2 representatives were elected for a period of 3 years.

In Brazil

Today there are some 400 descendants of Charrúas in the towns of Santo Ângelo, São Miguel das Missões and Porto Alegre. On November 9, 2007, the Porto Alegre municipal chamber held an act of recognition of the supposedly Charrúa community as a Brazilian indigenous people. Considered extinct by the Fundação Nacional do Índio, the Charrúa people were once again recognized in an official act of the foundation in September 2007 despite the fact that the descendants cannot be part of an already extinct people. The event was jointly organized by the human rights commissions of the Municipal Chamber, the Legislative Assembly and the Federal Senate of Brazil.