The nation stories of a fort that was made city

Por Arturo Peña, arturo.Pena@group.com.Py

PHOTOS: Gentileness/Archive

Today Asunción celebrates its 484 years of life.In the central streets, the color and heat of people sharing the party Sunday.Serenades in the squares, speeches in the boxes.And from our pages, a history contribution, thanks to the collaboration of the historian Guillaume Candela, who tells some not -so -known data of the "mother of cities".

Generations We have grown up in our imaginary that image of the arrival of the Spaniards to the Bay of Asunción, headed by Juan de Salazar and Espinosa, and their encounter with Native Guarani who receive them meekly on the coast of the Bay.Undoubtedly, the school and secondary manuals are extremely short when reflecting and dimensioning the historical relevance of an event such as the installation of the fort of Our Lady of the Assumption, a founding stone of the future capital of the province of the riverof La Plata and "mother" of around 70 cities in Paraguayan territory, in Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia.

Happily, many researchers have immersed themselves in the history of the Paraguayan capital to find revealing data on the city's foundation and growth process.One of these historians is Dr. Guillaume Candela, a member of the Paraguay Social History Research Center (CIHSP), a member of the Paraguayan Committee of Historical Sciences (CPCH) and currentdedicated all his research work to the colonial era, especially the period of the conquest.

As soon as the dialogue started, Candela already reveals a fairly striking fact and perhaps little known, at least in the "official" story in which we were instructed.This is a document dated April 16, 1541 (four years after the Fuerte Foundation) and signed - and here is the striking - in Brazil.The same, according to the historian, is currently preserved in Spain, in the General Archive of the Indies, and it is the oldest available document, which refers to the creation of the Cabildo in the province of Río de la Plata.The document, written on the island of Santa Catalina, current Florianopolis, Brazil, is the first to describe the existence of the Cabildo del Río de la Plata and, therefore, of Paraguay at this time.

The document of April 16, 1541 also tries that it is the second advance of the province of the Río de la Plata, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who establishes the institutions such as the Cabildo and the first archive in the province of the Río de la Plata.That is, the creation of the Cabildo of the Province of Río de la Plata took place on the island of Santa Catalina, to later settle in Asunción with the arrival of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.“Florianopolis, the place where some Paraguayans usually go to spend the summer, there is decided the creation of the Cabildo of the province of the Río de la Plata, which with the arrival of the head of a cow will be installed to Asunción, officially going from strong to the quality of the quality ofProvincial City and Capital, ”says the historian.This event and the designation undoubtedly determined a different look towards the new population that was born on the banks of the Bay of Asunción.

THE 15TH OF AUGUST

But what does it mean then, the date of August 15, 1537?Candela explains: “The first names of American cities respond largely to the liturgical calendar.We are facing a highly overturned society towards the Catholic religion ”.He adds that the date was in coincidence with the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, so the fort built by the conquerors is baptized Our Lady of the Assumption.That is, the date with the first arrival of the Spaniards in this place by the Paraguay River is not related.

Also, in the popular imaginary, there is the idea of a kind of "discovery" about the arrival of Juan de Salazar and Espinosa de los Monteros to the territory that would be the capital of Paraguay.“It was not the first time that the Spaniards passed through these regions or crossed the bay.They had even had contacts with Natives from the Paraguay River a decade before, ”says Candela.

It indicates that there are records that indicate that the Venetian navigator Sebastián Gaboto had surrounded by the waters of the Paraguay River around 1525, “a long time before Salazar.But they (Gaboto and their crew) the Guarani attacked them, then the Paraguay River and the Bay of Asunción remain in the registry as a dangerous territory.I have a hypothesis in this regard, and this expedition was carrying only sailors and military, I did not carry religious, and that is very important.My doctoral thesis affirms that the installation of the Fort of Asunción could be realized thanks to the presence of the religious.The way of dressing and tonsure as distinctive brands surely attracted attention to the Guarani peoples of the area.Possibly the Carios saw in these men some interests.That also changes a lot from traditional history, which points out that the Guarani received the Spaniards because they had axes, had metals, that is, a very materialistic and reductive vision.But why didn't this happen with Gaboto, why do they reject them?There are even people injured in the first exchanges with the Guarani on the Paraguay River.So, I believe that the Carios.

The first city

Questioning that image to which we referred to the beginning - of the encounter of Spanish with the Guaraní before a cross -, Candela adds here another interesting fact: “In the place where the fort is installed there was no Guaraní town.I was not sure of that at first, but I recently found a 1542 document that explains that the Spaniards installed the fort and then the city, outside the territory of a Teko’a, Guaraní people, for security reasons ”.Obviously, over time this contact between the two cultures occurred, already in the population growth process.“Within the existing documentation, indigenous.In the colonial source the domestic space of the conqueror always appears separate the case of the European and the space inhabited by the indigenous people.There is a colonial space that is well identified from the first foundation of the city, with the house of the governor, the accountant and the other royal officers and captains, who should be close to spaces of power, such as the Cathedral and the Cabildo ”,Explain Candela.

In Asunción, great archaeological prospecting works were never done that help determine and give certainty to several theories about the foundation and growth of Asunción at birth.For Candela, the settlement of the Fort of Our Lady of the Assumption should have been in the vicinity of the former Cabildo - today Cultural Center of the Cabildo - and perhaps in the field that goes down to the Bay of the Bay.The current Metropolitan Cathedral also responds to that layout that had to do with colonial power.

Always according to the data provided by the historian Guillaume Candela, an estimate of the number of inhabitants around 1542 is from around 500 Europeans, based on documents called “memories” that were deposited in the Cabildo Archive and were sent to Spain.The documentation preserved at the local level, in the National Archive of Asunción, provides a lot of information about the daily life of these colonizers.From one document to another, data that have to do with gambling, “such as the cards, and the consistent debts of this activity, also of violence events, references to prostitution activities.Traditionally it is thought that very few Spanish women passed in the first expeditions to Paraguay.But it is not the case, we find in the documentation names of several women who accompanied the two expeditions between 1536 and 1541 and that is also putting together the urban structure ”.

Some documents mention the name of "women in love", "which is a very specific term to describe a prostitution situation.He referred in Spain to sex workers who exercised their profession in a private and exclusive sphere, and not women who worked in the brothels of the cities, ”explains Candela.“Those same years (1541/1542) appears a lifetime that I believe that at the moment few (historians) have demonstrated it.One tends to think that in the first moments only the farmers, the soldiers, the religious and authorities that in the name of the king will install the colony arrived, but it was not so, the installation of the colony was also with the implementation of smuggling, the arrivalof people without real permission like some French and English, etc..As the first churches, the game houses and the places of prostitution were growing, they were growing up.In the documents one also sees a reality very different from the existence of a peaceful and harmonious relationship between the conquerors and the Guarani, and even among the conquerors themselves that are often insulted within the cathedral, they are hurt in street fighting, ”adds.

The Raudales

A growing population begins to generate all kinds of conflicts and many of them, although it sounds incredible, we continue to suffer until today.Candela continues to refer to some of them: “I also found very interesting documents that speak of great problems with water, documents of 1544 and 1550 in which the presence in the streets of large banks is described causing floods and drainage problem.In this same documentation there are disputes between neighbors on the closure of streets without permission, constructions of houses in the garden of the other, agricultural production without authorization, etc..All these documents are in the National Archive of Asunción available to historians and the general public.It is very important to build the social history of the early days of the provincial capital, a tool that acts as a time machine facilitating the connection between real and present realities, ”concludes the historian.