Un Sistema de Equivalencias: El Ritual del Sacrificio En La Cultura Reche-mapuche de Tiempos Coloniales (Siglos XVI y XVII)

Abstract

This article is an ethnohistoric approximation, supported by the theoretical fundamentals of anthropology, with which we look to provide an interpretive framework of sacrificial practices in the reche-mapucheculture during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Supported by an analysis of chronicles and unpublished documents, the objective of this paper is to understand the role that the diverse procedures played in giving a meaning to the sacrificial practice, but also the combination of symbolic systems that permitted the equivalencies and replacements of those beings (humans and animals) that would be sacrificed.