The 1593 Requerimiento of Martín Garcia Óñez de Loyola to the Indians of Quilacoya, Rere, Taruchina y Maquegua, an official testimony of early Hispano-Mapuche parlamentos

Abstract

In 1593, the Governor of Chile, Martín García Óñez de Loyola held four diplomatic encounters with Mapuche groups in Quilacoya, Rere, Taruchina and the city of Imperial. Even though the document registeringthese encounters identifies them as acts of “Requerimiento” from the Governor to the indigenous populations, we propose that they are in fact peace treaties in which the forms of protocol and negotiation policies characterizing the Hispano-Mapuche parlamentos -a sui generis modality of relationship between colonizer and indigenous peoples- are already under way. We undertake an ethno-historic reading of the document contrasting it with a series of ethno-historic, archaeological and linguistic evidence related to the Colonial Spanish-Mapuche treaties, paying special attention to four aspects: locations of the encounters,characteristics of the Spanish and Mapuche participants, organization and development of the meetings, and the agreements reached.