The many frontiers of South America: alliances and conflicts with infidels in the 18th century

Frontiers integrate the spatial and political constitution of South America. In this region, the conflicts generated by the struggle for territory and the maintenance of its control tend to escalate as the colonial project is developed, causing other cultural interfaces to arise in such frontiers. The label of infidel Natives, as opposed to Christianized Native Americans, is recurrent in colonial documents, becoming an ambiguous identifying category of the former. The purpose of this text is to discuss the possibilities of alliances and conflicts on the basis of the link that is established between the concepts of frontier and infidel, in the first fifteen years of the 18th century.