A justiça privativa dos rústicos: os índios e uma nova ordem jurídica nas Américas ibéricas

Abstract

In the Iberian societies in the First Modernity, the subjects occupied an order in a social and legal structure established over traditions that have been consolidated since the medieval period. Based on this statement, we discuss the accommodation of individuals in the statutory frameworks of an order constituted no longer exclusively by medieval principles, but by new legal concepts constituted in the encounter with the “New World”. With this event, the American Indian represented a new subject for the Iberian systems and it is in this perspective that we seek to reflect, investigate, discuss, among other elements, about the conditioned institutes for this subject, such as slavery and guardianship. To this end, our discussion follows a path through a history of justice and the history of law that privileges political and legal rhetoric as a method of analysis. Our work also reflected on justice as an element that was not surrounded by an exceptionality, but that was revealed daily in society and in our investigation, perceived especially in two circumstances. The first of these is in conflicts of jurisdiction related to the causes of indigenous freedom, and the second can be seen in land disputes between Indians and non-Indians. Both situations involved by the rhetorical arguments of several actors who sought to achieve their goals in the captaincy of Pernambuco in the 18th century.