Unraveling Colonized Thinking: Europeans and “Others” in La Saladilla, Jesuit Estancia de La Rioja – Argentina

Abstract

This paper deals with the inter-ethnic relations between Europeans and blacks based on the analysis of
the archaeological landscape of La Saladilla, one of the estancias created in La Rioja by the Jesuits. It
is argued that it was part of the devices of power and domination implemented by the colonial society,
and from where policies of correction of the social dynamics were put into practice, with the objective of
exaction. based on the data collected, the vision of coloniality as constitutive of modernity, with the
emergence of the concept of otherness, and the insertion of the Jesuit Order in the implementation.
To arrive at that statement, using the methodology of landscape archaeology, the morphological
aspects, transit, visibility, use, and occupation of the land, were analyzed in order to deconstruct the
space and existing surface structures, and contrast the model with the hypothesis of coloniality.
The conclusion reached interrogates the coloniality devices that operated as mechanisms of social
control during the Jesuit occupation of the place, identifying the interethnic relations that were
promoted/discouraged. The Jesuits thus contributed to shaping the current image of Western
Civilization, Christianized, based on capitalism and modernity/coloniality. They did not destroy but put
into production with a new logic, where coloniality is not perceived as something that oppresses,
because it produces the material and immaterial conditions of existence.