Juliana (), better known as the India Juliana (Spanish for "Indian Juliana" or "Juliana the Indian"), is the Christian name of a Guaraní woman who lived in the newly founded Asunción, in early-colonial Paraguay, known for killing a Spanish colonist between 1539 and 1542. She was one of the many indigenous women who were handed over to or stolen by the Spanish, raped, forced to work for them and bear children. Since the area was not rich in minerals as they had anticipated, the colonists generated wealth through the enslavement and forced labor of indigenous people, especially women.
The story of the India Juliana comes from the 1545 accounts of adelantado Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca—who briefly ruled the territory between 1542 and 1544—as well as those of his scribe Pero Hernández. According to these sources, the India Juliana poisoned a Spanish settler named Ñuño de Cabrera—either her husband or her master—with herbs and was released despite having confessed to the crime. Upon his arrival to Asunción, Cabeza de Vaca reportedly found out about her case, and that she even boasted of her actions to her peers. In response, he ordered her execution by dismemberment, as a punishment for the crime and a warning to other indigenous women not to do the same.
The India Juliana is regarded as one of the most prominent figures in the women's history of Paraguay, and her inciting other women to also kill their masters has been considered one of the earliest recorded indigenous uprisings of the era. Numerous versions of her story have emerged with various ideological connotations. Although the core of her story is usually the same, the accounts differ in details such as the date of the events, the way in which she killed Cabrera and the method with which she was executed. Although some have considered the India Juliana a collaborator of the Spanish and a builder of the Paraguayan nation, others claim her as a rebel and a symbol of indigenous resistance to colonization. Several modern interpretations describe her as an early feminist, with her figure being claimed by activists and academics. The story of the India Juliana has been the subject of numerous historical fiction works. A street in Asunción bears her name since 1992, one of the few named after an indigenous individual instead of a community as a whole.
Historical context
Juliana is one of the few Cario women to be referred to in colonial sources with a (Christian) name. The first Spanish expeditions to establish settlements in Paraguay were motivated by the mistaken belief that it was a region of mineral wealth, particularly gold. In 1537, the military fort Nuestra Señora de la Asunción was founded by Juan de Salazar y Espinoza on the coast of the Paraguay River. After their encounter with the local Guaraní people, the Spanish established pacts with the caciques sealed with the delivery of women. Initially, giving women to the colonists was done under the framework of cuñadazgo, a concept through which Guaraní leaders created pacts of peace and mutual benefit, as it transformed the recipient in brother-in-law or son-in-law. Since the Spanish treatment of the Guaraní was not one of reciprocity but domination, these initial exchanges were soon followed by indigenous uprisings, with at least three violent situations recorded in 1538–1539, 1542–1543, and 1545–1546. The context in which the India Juliana's case took place has historically been called "Muhammad's paradise" (Spanish: "Paraíso de Mahoma"), referring to the "promiscuous" regime of sexual slavery to which indigenous women were subjected during the 1540s. In an account from 1541, colonist Domingo Martínez de Irala detailed that 300 indigenous women lived in Asunción, who were handed over by the Cario people to serve the Spanish.
In 1541, the initial Spanish settlement of Buenos Aires—built on the coast of the Río de la Plata—was abandoned in the face of attacks from indigenous peoples, and its inhabitants moved to Asunción, which was officially founded as a city by Irala on what was once the fort. From then on, the settlement received a much larger number of Spaniards and became the center of the Spanish colonization of the southern half of South America. After discovering that the region actually lacked gold, the colonists realized they could generate and accumulate wealth through the forced labor and slavery of indigenous people, especially the sexual exploitation of women of childbearing age. Mass indigenous deportations known as rancheadas took place, in which women were extracted from their communities and forced to work for the colonists. The violent rancheadas began to replace the initial period of cuñadazgo around 1543, and became generalized two years later. The native women, enslaved as servants and mothers of the mestizos, quickly became a piece of merchandise. Asunción then became a center for the deportation of indigenous slaves, supplying a human trafficking market between the city and the Portuguese port of São Vicente on the coast of Brazil.
Based in Asunción, Irala had been ruling the Governorate of New Andalusia—which was in charge of the colonization of the Río de la Plata Basin—since 1538, being elected by his peers after the appointed governor Juan de Ayolas went missing in an expedition. When the news of Ayolas' probable death reached the Spanish Court, explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was named second adelantado of the Governorate, arriving to Asunción on March 11, 1542, and taking power from Irala. Upon arrival, Cabeza de Vaca "tried to establish order and discipline among the soldiers and settlers of Asunción, declaring himself protector of the [indigenous peoples]." After a failed expedition looking for a route to Peru in 1542, the discontent among the Spanish settlers led to a conspiracy led by Irala against him in 1544, re-electing the latter as governor. Cabeza de Vaca was arrested with the excuse of being too "permissive with the natives", and sent to Spain as a prisoner. The practice of rancheadas became widespread with Irala's second government, with researcher Guillaume Candela describing them as: "without any doubt the most effective acculturation phenomenon of the conquest. Entire villages were emptied of their procreative forces, thus marking an evident trauma in the lives of the affected [indigenous people]."
Original account
Although the historical references about the India Juliana are brief, they establish a strong counterpoint with the more usual representations of Guaraní women in the early-colonial sources of the Río de la Plata region. The main source comes from an account that Cabeza de Vaca presented to the Council of the Indies in December 1545 as judicial evidence, known as Comentarios. The text was actually written by Cabeza de Vaca's scribe Pero Hernández, at the former's request. Returning to Spain as a prisoner in 1545, Cabeza de Vaca entered into a legal dispute with the Council of the Indies that lasted almost eight years, in which he received a harsh sentence. In 1555, after resolving his legal problems and cleaning up his image, and upon receiving the pertinent royal authorization, Cabeza de Vaca published La relación y comentarios del gobernador Álvar Núñez cabeza de vaca de lo acaecido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias, which compiled the Comentarios along with a previous account from 1542 known as Naufragios. However, he chose to omit the India Juliana passage from the book, along with other parts of the account that evidenced his use of violence, so as to "avoid any statement that allows a double reading". Section "XLII" of the original 1545 Comentarios read: At the time I arrived in [Asunción], I was informed that an Indian named Juliana, a native of said land, had poisoned a Christian named Ñuño de Cabrera, and that Domingo de Irala had held her prisoner and had prosecuted her, and having verified the crime by confession of said Juliana, saying that out of jealousy she had of said Nuño de Cabrera, she had given him poison by which he died, and at the time [the men of Asunción] learned that I was coming they released her and said Juliana left, and to all the other Indian women who served the Christians she told that only she was the brave one who had killed her husband; which after coming to my notice I ordered to search for and arrest the said Juliana, and imprisoned, she again proceeded to confess the crime, and the said Domingo de Irala came to beg me to release her at the request of a Sancho de Salinas, his friend, first cousin of said Nuño de Cabrera, who was fond of said Juliana; I decried and reprimanded him, as well as the said Domingo de Irala as well as the said Sancho de Salinas, and by virtue of the process my mayor did justice to it, because in addition to deserving it, he agreed to remove the audacity that [other women] did not dare to such cases.
An earlier reference to Juliana's case—albeit without mentioning her name—is an account authored by Hernández, dated to January 28, 1545, in which he denounced the crimes committed in the Governorate since the disappearance of governor Ayolas. In two sections of the text, Hernández referred to the India Juliana's case: ... a Christian Indian woman killed Nuño Cabrera, her master, Cazalla's neighbor, with herbs, and Pero Díaz, her mayor, arrested her and proceeded; the Indian confessed to the crime, and at the request of Sancho de Salinas, the deceased's cousin, the Indian was released, and she left without punishment. (...)
The Governor proceeded ex officio against the Indian woman who killed her master with herbs and ordered her to be arrested and was imprisoned and by virtue of her confession of what was contained in the first process that was accumulated with the second she was sentenced to death and was quartered.
Cabeza de Vaca's account of the India Juliana intended to expose the "chaos" that Irala's policies had caused in the colony, especially the promiscuity of the Spaniards with indigenous women, and to sanction these behaviors, demonstrating his "moral superiority and civilizing capacity". According to researcher Gabriela Schvartzman, the "argument of jealousy and the alleged love relationship that Juliana had with a cousin of her husband who was also close friends with Irala are the plot that allows this interpretation." Schvartzman also noted that the story has a "second moral" related to the disrespect of women to the sexual system imposed by the colonists. By writing that the India Juliana told the other women that she had been the only brave one to have dared to kill her master, Cabeza de Vaca implied that this made her proud and affirmed, and that she urged others to do the same. In this sense, researcher Silvia Tieffemberg felt that her revenge "crossed ethnic and gender barriers simultaneously."
Historian views