India Juliana

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 warriors. Nevertheless, these claims have been dismissed, as the contemporary writings of Cabeza de Vaca and Hernández account for her existence. and several feminist groups, schools, libraries and centers for the promotion of indigenous women in Paraguay are named after her. Writer Andrés Colmán Gutiérrez of Última Hora noted that the she is "carried as a banner" in the annual demonstrations of International Women's Day and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and described her as "perhaps the first feminist indigenous Guaraní heroine, a rebel against the macho and patriarchal culture, who denies the sugarcoated official story about the Spanish conquest in Paraguay". The same has happened in Ecuador with Dolores Cacuango and Tránsito Amaguaña; in the central Andes region with Bartolina Sisa and Micaela Bastidas; and in Argentina with María Remedios del Valle and Juana Azurduy. It is one of the few streets in the city named after an indigenous individual rather than an entire community, along with other figures such as the caciques Arecayá and Lambaré, and the servant Indio Francisco. the image of India Juliana has been invoked in consumer products such as T-shirts or beers. In 2020, her story was adapted into a comic book released by Paraguayan publishing house Servilibro, as part of the collection "Mundo guaraní". Written by professor María Gloria Pereira and illustrated by Daniel Ayala Medina, the comic portrays her as a Guaraní heroine against Spanish domination, and uses the name Arapy as her original native name, Paraguayan singer-songwriter Claudia Miranda included a song about the India Juliana in her 2020 debut studio album Las brujas, which was made with the support of the organization Centro de Documentación y Estudios (Spanish for "Center for Documentation and Studies" [CDE]).