THE OTHER AS A MIRROR: IMAGINARY AND ALTERITY IN THE IBERO-AMERICAN COLONIZATION (16TH–17TH CENTURIES)

Resumen

This article analyzes the Ibero-American colonization process in the 16th and 17th centuries from the perspective of the notions of imaginary and alterity, drawing on the theoretical contributions of Adone Agnolin (2007), Tzvetan Todorov (2010), Guillermo Giucci (1992), Laura de Mello e Souza (1986), among others, understanding the encounter between Europeans and indigenous peoples as a profoundly symbolic, cultural, and epistemological phenomenon. It argues that America was not perceived as an empty space, but as a territory inhabited by complex societies that challenged the traditional categories of European thought. In the face of this confrontation, the indigenous people were frequently represented as barbaric, bestial, or monstrous, functioning as an inverted mirror in which Europeans projected their own religious, cultural, and political conflicts, intensified by the context of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The actions of the Society of Jesus are examined as a central element of this process, since the missionaries produced catechetical narratives and practices that, while seeking conversion, legitimized the subjugation and domination of native peoples. Through the analysis of Jesuit accounts, letters, and interpretations, especially regarding practices such as cannibalism and war rituals, the study demonstrates that indigenous otherness was constructed from European categories that hierarchized cultures and justified the expansion of Christianity and imperial power. It concludes that colonization must be understood as a process in which identity and otherness mutually constitute each other, revealing both the violence of cultural imposition and the crisis of meaning experienced by Europe itself in the face of the encounter with the other.