Abstract

POSLIGUA, Rosana. Wedding mirages: Salesian representations of the Shuar marriage¸1893-1925. Íconos [online]. 2021, n.70, pp.79-94. ISSN 1390-8065.  https://doi.org/doi.org/10.17141/iconos.70.2021.4668.

This article uses a gender-based approach to study the different representations of Shuar marriage developed by Salesian missionaries. The study covers the 1893-1925 period, which witnessed the earliest arrival of the Salesian missionaries into de Gualaquiza-Mendez Apostolic Vicariate, in what is now the Morona-Santiago province in Ecuador. This territory is located in the ill-defined southern Ecuadorian-Peruvian Amazonian border. It is inhabited by several aents chicham indigenous ethnic groups which include the shuar, achuar, wampis, awajún y shiwiar peoples. This article is based in a previous qualitative and historical investigation of the written accounts made by the Salesian priests in the period under study. The article makes the assumption that gender is a historically flexible category, which is expressed differently according to the specific contexts where it operates. It becomes evident that the ways in which the Salesian missionaries understood men and women, the place of women throughout their lifecycle, and the stereotypes through they comprehend gender are directly derived from a binary and androcentric standpoint. This approach is closely connected with the main objective of the missionaries in the period under study: provide a legitimate rationale for their efforts to evangelize the local population.

Keywords : Amazonia; stereotypes; gender; marriage; religious mission; shuar..

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