Unstable borders and changing alliances: the colonial occupation of Guaira and the relations between Villa Rica del Espiritu Santo and Sao Paulo de Piratininga between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

This article seeks to situate the colonial occupation of the region of Guaira, part of the Province of Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata in the debates about frontiers, expansion and colonial disputes in the platinum space between the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth. It seeks to understand the dynamics of the creation of cities and towns, the settlement of Jesuit reductions of the Guarani, relations with the Indians and the region's exchanges with Portuguese America, specifically with the town of Silo Paulo, analysing the relationships between the various agents involved in that regional context. By so doing, it looks to break away from a vision marked only by conflict, Iberian rivalries and geographical emptiness, and to understand Guairci in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a dynamic space, in which indigenous, Portuguese, Spanish and missionaries groups interacted by means of significant and shifting deals and alliances.