Paposo and the Genealogy of the Changos in the Atacama Desert Coast

Abstract

There is some degree of inaccuracy around the ethnic and kinship categories frequently assigned (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries) to Paposo colonial local groups on the Atacama Desert coast (25°S). Furthermore, the data referring to colonial Paposo does not give a clear insight into the number of settlements that formed it, its exact geographical location, and its occupational frequencies due to how inaccessible this Chango indigenous enclave was to the Spanish crown. This problem has been analyzed with a documented genealogy of the native coastal families and a review of Atacama's Estancia and mining colonization paradigms.

Keywords

genealogy kinship Paposo Changos historical context

Introduction

The inaccuracy regarding the population in the early colonial Paposo on the Atacama Desert coast could be pointing to an overlooked phenomenon related to the imprecise and variable ethnical, genealogical, and kinship descriptions present in the first censuses of the native population, because some of them account for monogamous mestizo families, much in line with the Christian family structure form the Inquisition, whereas in others we see the presence of an indigenous natural filiation together with syndiasmic¹ categories like the “aggregates.”²

From a regional and geographic perspective (Figure 1), this is a fact that probably reflects the nature of these population censuses as written sources in the Atacama Desert coast since the seventeenth century until the implementation of the Civil Registry in 1789,³ in which we know about the variable categories that notaries assigned to ethnic and kinship indigenous attributes, with individuals and families that were indistinctly classified as “Indians,” “mestizos,” or “cholos,” and even some descriptive terms that are hard to interpret, like “coquina” and “cotinti.”⁴ In this regard, in the Libro de Varias Ojas (sic) record from the Chiuchiu parish (1611–1698), we see names from families described as “mestizo” for Cobija, which lies 167.7 miles to the north from Paposo, but in other population records, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at coastal Tarapacá and Antofagasta, we see families with the same surnames described as “Indians.”⁵ These variations in the Atacama coastal population records of localities like Paposo could have been essential for producing this information that contemporary censuses deem contradictory.⁶

Figure 1.

Map of Philippi (1860) for the area of Paposo. (Achieved from https://www.geovirtual2.cl/Desierto-Atacama-1/Atacama-Salitre-materiales-historico-01.htm, November 13, 2022, 0.05 h).

As we have pointed out,⁷ the cause of these inaccuracies is directly related to the inaccuracies in the location of the current Paposo cove, at the coast of Taltal in the Atacama Desert, which partially matches the site and the extension assigned to the colonial Paposo area during the Spanish administration and the emerging republican life of Chile and Bolivia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. According to ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources, the so-called “historical Paposo” or “colonial Paposo” was a population core spread between three settlements and several coves with semi-permanent occupation along the coast of the territory named Estancia de Paposo, a concession of land and encomienda of “Indians” granted by the Spanish crown to the Chileans who were the descendants of Spanish conquistadors. However, its location and population have not been confirmed by any of that time's censuses and ethnographical descriptions (de la Cerda, 1792; Almendares, 1793; Araya and de la Barrera, 1803–1806, and Valdivieso, 1841) (Figure 1).⁸

According to the researchers Lazo and Téllez,⁹ what caused this population scattering in Paposo was the high mobility adopted by the Changos or native coastal groups due to the colonization and the mining boom, especially among the male adults (a behavior also seen in other native cultures of the Atacama Desert region, like the Likanantai and the Aymara, among whom there are even categories of absence¹⁰), which lead to highly variable colonial censuses. Thus, the censuses carried out in Paposo since 1782 and onward do not give accurate numbers for the population in that Andean enclave, which was around 140–150 inhabitants according to Governor Avilés in 1782, 152 according to Almendares in the report to Governor O'Higgins of 1793, 232 for Araya and de la Barrera at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 400 for Mellet in 1824, 200 for Fitz Roy in 1832–1833, 190 for Valdivieso in 1841, and 500 for Philippi in 1853.¹¹

This research seeks to explore ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and ecclesiastical primary and secondary sources that discuss aspects tied to the confusion over the population estimations written down by notaries and travelers until the nineteenth century and confirm the potential relationship with the imprecise location of Paposo and the reasons which could have led to this. And above all, the goal of this study is to comment on the demographic context of colonial Paposo and other neighboring localities regarding the scattering and the genealogical roots of the southern native coastal groups in the Andes region, first classified as Camanchacas, Proanches, or tributary Indians, and, since the eighteenth century, treated homogeneously as Changos, which adds to the discussion data about the genealogies of the native families.

The Coastal Population at the Beginning of the Colonial era in the Andes Region

It seems that “Camanchacas,” or “Camanchas,” was a widely spread ethnonym in chronicles and public documents used to speak about native groups located between Arequipa and Cobija until the seventeenth century, as it is stated in the Pleito de Ocurica from 1572 in Arica, the Probanza de Méritos by Francisco de Otal (1622–1652), the Libro de Varias Ojas (LVO) record since 1611, and the Tasa de Santillán of 1558,¹² among other documents. South of this coastal territory, at Cobija, the LVO from 1646 to 1662 also accounts for individuals categorized as “Proanches.” All of them were indigenous peoples from the southern Andean coast between Cobija and Caldera.¹³ In this coastal stretch, some native groups began to be called “Chiangos” in the seventeenth century,¹⁴ which later became a widespread denomination, as “Changos” in the documentation of the eighteenth century.¹⁵

Some of these first depictions of the native coastal groups date from the sixteenth century with Geronimo de Bibar and corsairs like Drake, Cavendish, and Hawkins.¹⁶ However, it was not until 1605 that they were described in more detail and called “camanchacas” for the first time by the Spanish Dominican priest Reginaldo de Lizárraga in his work Descripción breve de toda la tierra del Perú, Tucumán, Río de la Plata y Chile. For Lizárraga, “From here [Atacama] one enters the big Despoblado of 120 leagues ranging from here to Copiapó, which is the first repartimiento of the Realm of Chile (…) in this stretch of land there are some small coves with a small amount of salty water, where some Indian fishermen have retreated, poor and almost naked (…) These Indians are called Camanchacas because their faces and the leathers they wear have turned into some sort of red and hard crust.”¹⁷

However, significant information about the Camanchacas is provided in the Tasa de Santillán document of 1559.¹⁸ According to his visit to the Chilean north in 1558, Hernando de Santillán describes the caciques who led Indian towns in the Copiapó Valley, who in turn were under the jurisdiction of the encomienda of Francisco de Aguirre. There were six caciques or principales, Francisco, Don Diego, Tiquitiqui, Don Alonso, Hernando, and Ticalcañaca, all with indigenous people ready to work in mining, agriculture, home care, textiles, and fishing. Nevertheless, only two of these had groups of Camanchacas under their control: Francisco with a group of Camanchacas fishermen on the coast of Copiapó and another on the north coast of the Atacama, and the cacique Don Diego with a group of Camanchacas in the port (probably Caldera or Morro Moreno). According to other sources, from Cobija the cacique Pedro Liquitai also commanded, around the year 1591, a group of Atacamas and Camanchacas settled in Atacama Desert coast region, the latter engaged in the exchange of dried fish (charquecillo).¹⁹

In addition, just as Liquitai, the cacique Don Alonso reportedly had three indigenous people called “fishermen” or “challwacamayos” under his control, who are not classified as Camanchacas. Could this differentiation have its origin in differentiated taxation? Without a doubt, this is a point that should be further explored in the future.²⁰

As a part of the southern Andean coast and according to the Chilean civil records, the settlement of the Paposo area carried out by the Spanish Crown started with an encomienda and a land grant of a coastal stretch to Francisco Cisternas Villalobos, an influential creole from Copiapó that later became chief magistrate.²¹

The encomienda of Paposo was paid with fourteen media anata pesos by Cisternas Villalobos to the general captain of the Crown, Juan Henríquez, in 1679. His descendants imposed on the local population an Estancia system based on farming and mining. The document of the encomienda to Cisternas notes that “he obtained it in the 4th of July of 1679, with an extension of one thousand and five hundred blocks distributed by equal quantities at the points called Guanillo, Quebrada de Camarones and Lomas de Llampi [Llompi], and its boundaries are the seas and the mountain range from West to East, the Miguel Díaz gorge to the North, and the Guanillo gorge to the South.”²² A pioneering group of Spaniards and creoles from the Copiapó valley settled in a small estate at the Llompi hills, next to the Junquillar aguada, and established the administrative center of the Estancia Paposo (Figure 2).²³

Figure 2.

Historical/pre-modern toponymy for Paposo and its surroundings (data from Castelleti and Torres, “Territorio y genealogía,” 2023).

The settlement of Paposo was the result of an active coastal network. As many authors point out,²⁴ the growth of the mining industry in the Atacama Desert during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century entailed a sprawl of pirquineros (independent miners), and a high mobility and settlement in the region, especially among the adult males, which is written down in various civil and ecclesiastical records from their population centers.²⁵ However, before the mining boom and the development of the modern cities of Antofagasta and Taltal, and prior to the nineteenth century, the locality of Paposo and its town was one of the most important settlements on the southern Andean coast. In this context, and as we will explore later: What happened, genealogically speaking, with the traditional population centers like Paposo since the expansion of the mining industry in the Atacama Desert, or even before that time?²⁶

After the independence from the Spanish crown in 1813, the First Government Junta of Chile commanded an official census for the entire country, which revealed a population of 570 inhabitants in the cove of Paposo, one of the few villages with a native population in the Atacama Desert.²⁷ Between 1808 and 1820, the French citizen Julian Mellet depicted the nineteenth-century Paposo in his journal Viajes por el interior de la América meridional as a “village inhabited by tributary Indians that is governed by a subdelegate and a cacique (…) The population of Paposo is approximately 400 inhabitants.”²⁸

Other documents from that era are more specific than the journal from Mellet. For instance, Captain Robert Fitz Roy, in his second reconnaissance trip for the English crown in 1835, depicts Paposo in the following way:

…at a latitude of 25.02° S, we find Paposo, the northernmost village on the shores of Chile. This is a miserable place with around 200 inhabitants, with a mayor; the huts are scattered and are not easy to distinguish from the hills in the background because they have the same color. (…) The mines are 7 or 8 leagues away to the south, but only a few have been exploited. Timber and water can be obtained in reasonable amounts (…). The ships heading this way will enter the parallel 25.01, and when they are 2 or 3 leagues away, they will see the white islet in front of Punta Rincon and, afterward, the white hill of Paposo.²⁹

This location and ethnic pattern of Paposo was indeed confirmed around 1840 by the French engineer André Bresson, the consul of Bolivia in France, who, in his book Bolivia sept années d'explorations, de voyages et de séjours dans l'Amérique Australe, published in 1886, referred to the indigenous inhabitants of these shores as Changos:

At Paposo, we had the chance to observe the Indians from the Chango tribe, a peculiar remainder of the primitive population. All the Changos are fishermen; they ask the sea to provide the food they cannot get from the desert, which starts at the beach and extends indefinitely.³⁰

However, it was Philippi, in 1853, who consistently depicted the administrative Estancia Paposo (24°57′), a walled bastion located approximately 700 m away from the Junquillar water body, where the administrators and other settlers lived, and which featured the warehouse where a room for the parish was built; there also was an “Atracadero” (quay) for boats located at 25°0′2'’, about 1.9 miles to the south of the Estancia and closer to the Paposo ravine, and in this last place, according to Philippi, there were around twenty Chango houses next to the aguada.³¹ That quay or “atracadero” was probably the area that captain Fitz Roy described between 1834 and 1835 as “Paposo” (25°02′), with around 200 inhabitants.³²

The mining boom at the Estancia Paposo was the direct result of its lease to the Copiapó resident José Antonio Moreno in 1853, who performed the first mining requests for the area of Paposo and Caleta el Cobre, thus laying the foundations for the current port of Taltal, 33.5 miles to the south from the Paposo cove.³³ Between 1853 and 1854, Rodulfo Amando Philippi systematized the information about the coastal section of the desert or “Despoblado de Atacama” inhabited by native settlers gathered around Paposo, an area that he visited himself:

The amount of people living on the coast is about 500. Men and women live apart most of the year; the former devote themselves to fishing or mining jobs, and the latter keep themselves busy feeding the goats and constantly moving from one place to another as they find pasture and water. When the raging sea does not allow fishing, men go hunt guanacos in winter. There are no true marriages between these people (…). Children stay with their mothers until the males are old enough to perform men's jobs.³⁴

For Philippi, the Paposo area of 1853 consisted of a group of about twenty Chango houses located in a plain next to the quay, plus the Estancia with its perimetral mining grounds a few miles to the north, where the administrators José María and Mariano Zuleta lived (Figures 1 and 2). Some houses were used as a parish and a warehouse, and there were also Chango ranches at the Junquillar aguada next to it.³⁵

Regarding the Christian evangelization on the coast of Paposo, the early missions, all of questionable nature,³⁶ precede the first missionary Rafael Andreu Guerrero who stayed in Paposo for short periods between 1796 and 1799, followed by Araya and de la Barrera during 1803–1804,³⁷ and Rafael Valdivieso in 1841.³⁸ This situation only changed by the end of the nineteenth century when the vice-parish of Taltal was established.³⁹

Lazo and Téllez (1984) suggest that in 1806, for about two months, the priests Tomás Araya and Isidoro de la Barrera went to the parish in Paposo to convert their 233 mestizos who lived within sixty leagues.⁴⁰

Subsequently, Santiago Rafael Valdivieso, the priest from the diocese of Santiago, arrived in 1841 to carry out an evangelizing mission for a month with the military chaplain Joaquín Vera and José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre. The report from Valdivieso in 1841 accounts for the location of Paposo in detail, at 25°03′ and 70°30′.⁴¹ Valdivieso mentions that the total population in the territory of this Estancia was 190 people in twenty families (Zuleta, Almendarez, Velásquez, Castillo, Díaz, Maldonado, Aracena, Sandoval, Maturana, Cotaypi, and Contreras, among others).⁴²

According to this author, in the half of the nineteenth century, “Junquillar” is at the center of the entire Paposo estate, and here is where the houses of the administrator are.⁴³ However, he also mentions that the accommodations for priest Rafael Andreu Guerrero were not at Junquillar nor by the quay but at the “Estancia Vieja,” three leagues (12.4 miles) to the south from Junquillar, which was another known coastal settlement in the area.

Three leagues to the south from Junquillar, at the place called Estancia Vieja, are the remains of the house inhabited by the distinguished Mr. Rafael Andreu Guerrero before he became the Bishop of Epifanía […] It is said that there were plans for creating a village here.⁴⁴

Non-Consanguineous “Aggregates” among the Coastal Families in Paposo

Several ethnohistoric data allow us to discuss essential aspects from the daily life of the families in Paposo during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to contextualize them regionally (Tables 1 and 2). Although the first Western depictions of the Atacama Desert coast region were made for Cobija, 167.7 miles to the north from Paposo, besides the brief descriptions of the Chango groups made here by Bauver in 1707, Feuilleé in 1709 and d'Orbigny in 1828,⁴⁵ the most detailed depictions of the native coastal families appeared in 1825, in the journal Voyages aux îles du grand Océan by the French-Belgian diplomat and explorer Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout. Moerenhout hands essential data about the traditional family organization of these groups, which was usually structured as a nucleus joined by marriage and with some potential “aggregates”:

In our journey through the coastline, outside the locality called Cobija, we encountered several Indian families whose houses had sea dog hides hanging on four sticks […] One of these families was formed by two men of middle age, two women, and several children, and they all slept in the same hut with nothing more than two covers in bad shape.⁴⁶

About the data above, Lazo and Téllez in 1984 state that the population records of the parish of Paposo, written down by Araya and de la Barrera (1803–1806), directly mention the presence of “aggregates” among the local families. According to the manuscript discovered by Lazo and Téllez, among the 233 inhabitants registered in Paposo, the family group of Clemencia Almendares was formed by sons, grandsons, and five “aggregates,” and the creole groups of Francisco and Andrea Suleta also included servants besides the children and grandchildren⁴⁷ (Table 2). Lazo and Téllez point out that many coastal families from Paposo at the start of the nineteenth century could have been characterized according to the cohabitation of their blood relatives, “aggregates,” and “servants.” The latter could have contributed knowledge, capital, or labor to the activities at the shore. This configuration and the addition of natural children would explain the structure of these coastal families for the most part.⁴⁸ According to Araya and de la Barrera, besides Almendares and Suleta, other common surnames in the native Paposo at the beginning of the nineteenth century were Maturano, Díaz, Castillo, González, Chiguillapo, Maldonado, Caruncho, Carrasan, Cotaypi, Arezena (Arazena), Sajaya, and Contreras.⁴⁹

Table 1.

Population Record for Paposo According to Araya and de la Barrera (Data from Lazo and Téllez, “Los Changos,” 1984).

N° fam	Head of family	Marital status	Partner	Sons	Daughter	Servants	Slaves	Grandsons	Granddaughters	Aggregate
1	Francisco Suleta	Married	Toribia Saesiga	(2) Manuel and Mariano Suleta	(3) Tadea, Agueda, Lucía and María Candelaria Suleta	(7) Bicenta and José Dionicio Almendares, Polinario Aros, Jose Rios, Juan Chiguillapo, Juan Gonzalez and Polinario Sasmendes	(1) Manuel Suleta
2	Andrea Suleta	Single?			(4) Feliciana, Francisca, Juana and María Suleta	(1) Meletrona Castillo
3	Tomas Almendares	Married	Maria Gonzales	(2) Raymundo and Fermin Almendares	(3) Barbara, Serafina and Josefa Almendares			(2) Fecundo and Mauricio Almendares	(2) Candida and Juana Almendares
4	Jose Almendares	Married	María Catalina Maturano	(4) Jose, Jose Antonio, Martin and Gregorio Almendares	(2) Maria and Manuela Almendares
5	Bartola Almendares	Single?		(2) Bonifacio and Manuel Almendares	(1) Maria Rosa Almendares
6	Bartolo Dias	Married	Josefa Maldonado	(2 motheŕs son) Francisco and Saturnino Barastain	(1 mother's daughter) Juana Barastain				(1 Juana daughter) Maria Almendares
7	Juana Castillo	Single?						(2 Juliana sons) Jose Maria and Jose Domingo Almendares	(1 Juliana daughter) Maria Josefa Castillo
8	Francisco Velasquez	Married	Josefa Carrasan	(1) Pedro Alexos Velasquez	(1) Francisca Velasquez			(2 Francisca sons) Isidro and Juan de Dios Valdivieso	(1 Francisca daughter) Petrona Valdivieso
9	Asencio Caruncho	Married	Maria Valdivieso	(5) Silvestre, Saturnino, Jose María Jose Pio and Toribio Caruncho	(5) María Jesus, Tomasa, Josefa, Teresa and Florenciana Caruncho
10	Jose Maldonado	Married	María Martina Maturano	(2) Juan Jose and Bernardino Maldonado	(2) María Momia y María Sinforosa Maldonado
11	Juan Jose Almendares	Married	María Chiguillapo	(3) Jose Felisa, Jose María y Jose Mariano Almendares	(3) María Fila, María Marta y María Rosa Almendares
12	Paula Almendares	Widow		(4) Juan, Manuel, Pablo and Crissostomo Cotaypi	(1) María Manuela Cotaypi
13	Bartola Almendares	Single?		(2) Bonifacio and Teodoro Almendares
14	(7) Lazaro y Estanislao Arezena; Toribio, Rafael, Laureano, Bitoria y Loreto Arazena	Siblings?		(3 Loreto sons) Custodio Arazena, Gregorio and Felipe Suleta
15	Alberto Caruncho	Married	María Rita Almendares	(3) Jose, Pedro Pasqual and Tomas Caruncho	(2) María Josefa and Petrona Caruncho
16	Francisco Almendares	Married	Santos Nasgo	(3) Ambrocio, Juan Jose and Pasqual Almendares	(2) Maria and María Olivia Almendares
17	Antonio Almendares	Married	María Donicia Torres	(1) Bentura Almendares	(5) María Buenaventura, María Josefa, Francisca, Juana and Lucia Almendares			(2) Facundo and Gabriel Fieroa (sic)	(3) Bentura and Tomasa Suleta and Agueda Fieroa (sic)
18	Antonio Maturano	Married	Flora Dias	(2) Juan and Bernardo Maturano
19	Paulino Cotaypi	Married	Marsela Copa		(1) Micaela Cotaypi
20	Juan Maturano	Married	Rosa Copa		(1) Tomasa Maturano
21	Asencio Dias	Married	Maria Barastain		(2) Maria and María Manuela Dias
22	Pasqual Almendares	Married	Lorenza Almendaris	(3) Jose María, Julian and Celestino Almendares	(1) Fortunata Almendares
23	Juan Jose Sandoval	Married	Paula Almendares	(1) Jose Sandoval
24	Jose Maturano	Married	Candelaria Maldonado
25	Maria Almendares	Widow		(1) Raymundo Almendares
26	(7) Ramón, Feliciano and Ylaria Almendares; Mariano and Juan Jose Fieroa (sic); Jose Chiguillapo and Agustin Baca	Cohabitants?
27	Casimiro Maldonado	Married	Rosa Almendares	(6) Marcelino, Sabelino, Jose Leon, Eusebio, Saturnino and Pasqual Maldonado	(1) Eldifonsa Maldonado
28	(7) Jose Santos, Jose Ursula, Juan Jose, María de los Santos, María Josefa, Juana and María Manuela Contreras	Siblings?
29	Clemencia Almendares	Widow?		(2) Jose Antonio and Juan Valladolid	(1) María Valladolid			(2 María sons) Jose María and Bonifacio Sajaya	(2 María sons) Rosa and Josefa Sajaya	(5) Manuel Almendares, Profirio and Jose Maturano, Cosme and Francisca Arenas
30	(6) Ynocencio Sajaya; María, Sebastiana, Manuela, Pedro and Nicolas Almendares	Cohabitants?

Table 2.

Detail from the Indian Census by Eduardo De la Cerda in Paposo, 1792 (Data from Cortés Larravide, “Algunos datos,” 2019).

Fam. N°.	Head of the family	Marital status	Partner	Single sons	Single daughters	Small sons	Small daughters	Single granddaughters	Single grandsons	Small granddaughters	Small grandsons	Handicapped children	Old sister
1	Gregorio Almendares	Married	His wife	1 single son	1 single daughter					1 granddaughter	2 grandsons
2	Francisco Almendares	Married	His wife	1 single son	2 single daughters	2 sons	2 daughters				1 grandson
3	Jossé Almendares	Married	His wife		2 single daughters		1 daughter
4	Dionisio Almendares	Married	His wife		1 single daughter	3 sons	1 daughter
5	Nicolas Anazena	Married	His wife			2 sons	1 daughter
6	Jossé Almendares	Married	His wife		1 single daughter	2 sons	1 daughter
7	Thomas Almendaris	Married	His wife			1 son	1 daughter
8	Antonio Maturano	Married	His wife
9	Casimiro Maldonado	Married	His wife			1 son	2 daughters
10	Francisco Velazquez	Married	His wife			1 son	1 daughter
11	Juan de Dios Almendares, José Almendares and Ynosencio Morales	Single
12	Pedro Almendaris	Married	His wife	2 single sons	3 single daughters		1 daughter			1 granddaughter	2 grandsons
13	María Ríos	Widow		4 single sons				2 single granddaughters
14	Clemencia Almendares	Widow		2 single sons			1 daughter
15	Thomasa Almendares	Widow		2 single sons	3 single daughters					2 granddaughters	2 grandsons
16	Dominga Anazena	Widow		1 single son	2 single daughters			1 single granddaughter	2 single grandsons	3 granddaughters	1 grandson	1 handicapped child
17	Andrea Maturano	Single				2 sons	1 daughter
18	Josefa Chillimaco (tributaria)	Widow		1 single son	1 single daughter					1 granddaughter	2 grandsons
19	Maria Maldonado (tributaria)	Widow		3 single sons		2 sons	1 daughter
20	Francisca Maturano (tributaria)	Widow		1 single son									1 sister
21	Juan de Dios Chivillapo (tributaria)	Widow
22	Eugenio Cotaypi (tributario)	Married	His wife	1 single son		1 son
23	Jose Chivillapo (tributario)	Married	His wife

Nevertheless, another recently published ethnohistoric document states that in 1792 the Royal Sub delegation of Copiapó commended the census of Paposo to Eduardo de la Cerda, who informed seventeen families and six tributary groups, with 106 individuals in the first group and twenty-three in the second one⁵⁰ (Table 1). This registry does not account for the non-consanguineous family categories that Araya and de la Barrera describe ten years later⁵¹ (Table 2), thus opening the controversy around this problem in the studies of Chango kinship.

Discussion

The review of ethnohistorical and census records for the Estancia de Paposo points out a lack of accuracy in explaining the difference in population frequencies from the different primary sources and the disparity of the information in each census for this locality, in addition to the unsystematic genealogical records in which we see some surnames with variable spelling, different ethnic categories, and complex definitions for kinship relations among the native families. This could be the result of the poorly described populated cores, in terms of location, and the extension of the boundaries of Paposo during the Colonial and early Republican periods.⁵²

The scarcity of documentary records about genealogical aspects in Paposo drove us to search for other primary sources to characterize the kinship structure from these groups, allowing us to track specific surnames. Although population frequencies in Paposo grew from 1792 until now, it would be feasible to associate these evident statistical variations with the high mobility, migration, and dispersal among the native families triggered by the Estancia system since the seventeenth century and the mining industry starting from the nineteenth century. Those documents show us that, while the records about the families in Paposo account for the insertion of non-consanguineous members into the local families, these families maintained their traditional matrilineal kinship structure during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and this led to more complex marriage strategies and parental filiation, which included consanguinity, patrifocality and the addition of external individuals.⁵³

A basic element to discuss regarding the settling of Paposo is the ethnic affiliation of its native population. The variables used for the censuses starting in 1792 leave some questions about the assigned categories of “Indian,” “mestizo,” or others. However, some of the data is meaningful. In the first place, the six “tributary Indians” in the report from de la Cerda in 1792, which had surnames of the native families of Paposo like Maturano and Maldonado, is a key aspect, especially if we consider that 100% of the ethnographic descriptions for the local groups in this period identify them as “Indians” or “Changos,” as it is confirmed by Mellet (1824), Bresson (1840), and Espinoza (1897) in the nineteenth century, and by Latcham and Capdeville in the twentieth century.⁵⁴

So, what could have been the territory of Paposo, in which the censuses were carried out, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? In this regard, the accounts of Philippi (1860), Matte Varas (1981) and Hanisch (1984)⁵⁵ clearly state that the Estancia Paposo was a land and an encomienda of Indians granted in 1679 by the Spanish crown to Francisco Cisternas Villalobos and his descendants.⁵⁶ However, besides the Llompi hills, the administration houses of the Estancia, and the quay 3.7 miles to the south, the rest of the local population centers seem to be highly variable in number and permanence, as stated by the civil workers and travelers in their reports. In 1794, the seafarer Alejandro Malaspina confirmed this dispersion that occurred before the mining industry boom in the nineteenth century. He counted forty-nine groups of native fishermen in Paposo, nineteen in Cachinaldo,⁵⁷ 146 between Caldera, Morro, and Obispo, and thirty-seven in Huasco.⁵⁸ Later on, in 1828, Willian Bollaert sailed to the coast of the Atacama Desert, visiting Cobija at 22°28'S, where he visited native groups he called Changos, also fishermen who settled in the coves around Paposo. In addition to Cobija, Bollaert also encountered native groups in the open sea, where he tells us that three Changos “came off in a seal-skin balsa out of Caleta de Cordon, bartering their dried conger fish for flour and coca. On the twelfth day, three more Changos came off from El Rincon (a fishing cove), and on that day, I anchored in Paposo, where I found a few families, people of Copiapo, who were here to barter for dried fish with the Changos. (…) At Punta Grande were three or four families of Changos, and at Agua Dulce, half a dozen more, who had a few goats and asses. Having traversed the dangerous Mal Paso, I came to Hueso Parado, 25°30′ (this spot was shown to me as the divisional point with Bolivia). At Salinas, I found four or five families of Changos.”⁵⁹

This account seems to indicate that, before the mining industry boom in the area, which started in 1853 when the Estancia Paposo was leased to Juan Antonio Moreno, not only the western population nuclei were scattered between two or even three places which were 13.6 miles away from each other. To the usual (mostly male) mobility among the Chango groups, we must add that the Chango households also followed a mobility pattern, which could be a direct cause of why many of these encampments were not registered or just partially accounted for by the civil or religious officials.

The context described above could have been why many Changos were not registered as “Indians” or “tributaries.” As Bollaert pointed out in 1828, “the Changos move from one cove to another; they told me they belonged to the district of Copiapo but paid no tribute. (…) I saw about one hundred, I allow fifty more fishing north of Cobija, and another hundred traveling in the interior would make two hundred and fifty souls.”⁶⁰

The European colonization scenario in Paposo first entailed the establishment of a cattle farm to provide charquecillo to Potosi (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and later the mining industry boom in the nineteenth century.⁶¹ This resulted in a sprawl of encampments for mining exploitation and processing, in addition to the majadas that were part of a complementary crop and livestock production, as indicated by the historical pattern of exploitation in the Atacama Desert.⁶² Thus, a single-product production system was imposed on the native families. This context for the local groups encouraged the development of new mobility strategies to avoid being registered and paying tribute altogether, as well as new kinship alliance strategies that could ensure necessary resources for the families, which included the addition of non-consanguineous members to the families of Paposo along with a potential cohabitation due to marriage between groups of non-related brothers and polygamous practices while keeping the traditional matrilineal structure.⁶³

With the foundation of the Estancia Paposo in 1679, it is possible that the practice of passing down the surname was imposed on the native Changos in the area.⁶⁴ This was, without a doubt, one of the objectives of the first visits recorded for the diocese of Copiapó, to which Paposo belonged, carried out by the bishop Juan Bravo de Rivera in 1743 and by Alday in 1757.⁶⁵ Among the first census records for the population of the Estancia Paposo, in 1792, 1793, 1803/1806, and 1813, we see high frequencies for families with the names Almendares, Maturano, Castillo, and Caruncho (Tables 1 and 2), which Mellet (1808), Bollaert (1828), Bresson (1840), and Philippi (1853) would describe culturally and ethnically as “Changos” or native inhabitants.⁶⁶ This cultural identity remained alive even at the beginning of the twentieth century, as stated by Latcham y Capdeville.⁶⁷

This recorded pattern of continuity and high frequencies among the Almendares, and, to a lesser extent, other families with Spanish and indigenous names that appear in the early documents about Paposo, before and during the mining boom in the Atacama Desert, suggests that this surname could be related to other groups registered as Almendares (Almendariz) at Cobija from 1622 to 1698 in the Libro de varias ojas of the Chiuchiu parish. These documents also contain Spanish surnames of groups that were apparently mestizo and related to the Almendares, like the Acosta, Castillo, Díaz, Gutiérrez, Mondaca de Cisternas, Mundaca, and Morales, as well as other names belonging to indigenous or native families like the Jaguaña, Sajaña, and Cotaypi.⁶⁸ In this context, coastal family names like Maturano, Maldonado, and Castillo seem relevant. The Castillo could be found at an ayllu in the port of Yqueyque (Iquique) and was explicitly described as “camanchaco” in the Baptisms and marriages Book 1 of San Lorenzo de Tarapacá parish (1689), in association with the native surname Camachí: “María Rosa, [from] Camanchaca ayllu (…) the legitimate daughter of Juan Castillo and María Camachi,” and “María Camanchaca, (…) natural daughter of María Castillo.”⁶⁹

A relevant aspect of the Camanchaco ayllu found in Yqueyque since the seventeenth century, as stated in the baptismal records of the parishes of San Lorenzo de Tarapacá (1685–1706) and Santo Tomás de Camiña (1653–1695),⁷⁰ is that their marriage alliances have the same “aggregates” structure recorded in Paposo and probably in Cobija, with individuals that arrive at the coast from the interior, showing that the camanchaco local families like Chocoi, Usinco, Caiona, Pacoma, Sillai, and Castillo, who pass down their surname preferably through female lines, integrate a masculine element from the inner altiplano with surnames like Caio, Choque, Mamani, Saplau, Gualchar, Guaitari, and Quispe, who probably were drawn to Iquique due to work on the silver mines of Huantajaya, 7.4 miles to the interior from the port.

The situation for the Caruncho families is more complex. According to some recent genealogical studies, this name could have arrived at the Valley of Pica in Tarapacá with the Galician subject Francisco Caruncho Rey in 1660, who in 1665 married Micaela de Aller, who would later change her surname to Díaz. Thus, the Caruncho established marital bonds in Pica before the nineteenth century with families of Spanish names like Morales, Capetillo, Salazar, Ramírez, Hidalgo, Elgueta, and Ríos, among others, as well as with indigenous families like Huarcaya, Colquema, Cayo, and Payta.⁷¹ The lack of earlier genealogical records for the Caruncho in the study of Roa y Ursúa (1535–1810) and the LVO from the seventeenth century support this hypothesis.⁷² According to the genealogical tree for the Caruncho in Pica, we could suppose that there was some crossbreeding when this family moved to other areas of the Atacama Desert-like Paposo, where the earliest record for Caruncho appears between 1803 and 1806.⁷³ As we can see in the records, at Paposo, the Caruncho, and the Almendares had a close family relationship since the beginning of the civil and ecclesiastical registries in the nineteenth century.⁷⁴ Some recent ethnographic accounts⁷⁵ describe Humberto Almendares, an inhabitant of the Estancia Vieja until he died in 2018, and Mario Caruncho Almendares, an inhabitant of Taltal, who stated that the gorges of El Hueso and Los Loros were colonized by Pasqual Caruncho Almendares, the renowned sea otter hunter (chungunguero)⁷⁶ whose descendants were called the “Pascualucho,” a family dedicated to horticulture and raising goats in that area for almost two centuries. It can be seen in the first baptismal records between July 14 and August 24 of 1879 from the parish of Taltal (Table 3)⁷⁷ in which, among the fifty-three children baptized in Paposo that year, plus a dozen at the majadas, seven were Caruncho and twenty were Almendares, with natural filiation in all cases but for one Caruncho-Camplanchai alliance, and two Caruncho-Almendares unions that were then crossed out and their offspring registered as natural children.

Table 3.

Libro I (1879) de Bautismos, San Francisco Javier de Taltal parish (Data from ACDEAA [Archivo Central del Arzobispado de Antofagasta], 1879, Baptisms Book 1, San Francisco Javier de Taltal parish).

n°	Record date	Registered	Age	Category	Mother	Father
1	7-11-1879	Buenaventura Campos	1 day	Natural child	Carmen Campos
2	7-11-1879	Jacinto Caruncho	5 years	Natural child	Amalia Caruncho
3	7-17-1789	Alejo Aspee	6 months	Natural child	Concepción Aspee
4	7-17-1879	José Luis Almendares	1 year and 6 months	Natural child	Tadea Almendares
5	7-17-1879	Alfredo Almendares	3 years	Natural child	Tadea Almendares
6	7-18-1879	Rosa Godoy	21 days	Natural child	María Godoi
7	7-18-1879	Carlos Benítez Opazo	9 months	Legitimate child	Priscila? Opazo	Franco Benítez
8	7-19-1879	Rosalinda Soto	1 year and 7 months	Natural child	Elcira Soto
9	7-19-1879	José Manuel Sandoval	1 year	Natural child	Lorenza Sandoval
10	7-19-1879	Moisés Caruncho	2 years	Natural child (his father is crossed out)	Fresia? Caruncho	Ignacio Almendares
11	7-19-1879	Zulema Aguayo	no info	Legitimate child	Sonia Cerezo	Bernardino Aguayo
12	7-19-1879	Pedro Juan Caruncho	7 months	Natural child (his father is crossed out)	María Caruncho	? Almendares
13	7-20-1879	Trinidad Maldonado Aracena	1 year and 2 months	Legitimate child	Carmen Aracena	Manuel Maldonado
14	7-20-1879	Rosalina Caceres Gutiérres	2 months	Legitimate child	Clorinda Gutiérres	Daniel Cáceres
15	7-20-1879	Adela Aracena	2 years	Natural child	Adela Aracena
16	7-21-1879	María Morales Arcos	8 months	Legitimate child	María Arcos	Liborio Morales
17	7-21-1879	Ema Cubillo Cáceres	13 days	Legitimate child	Jacinta Cáceres	? Cubillo
18	7-21-1879	Hortencio Paredes	1 year and a half	n/i	n/i	n/i
19	7-22-1879	Julio Camplanchai Caruncho	1 year and 6 months	Legitimate child	Camila Caruncho	Eugenio Camplanchai
20	7-22-1879	Natalia Caruncho	4 years and a half	Natural child (his father is crossed out)	Clara Caruncho	? Troncoso
21	7-23-1879	María Anatibia	3 years and a half	Natural child	Dorotea Anatibia
22	7-26-1879	Úrsula Caruncho	5 years	Natural child	María Caruncho
23	7-26-1879	María Caruncho	2 years and 2 months	Natural child	Candelaria Caruncho
24	7-26-1879	Jorge Almendares	?	Natural child	Amalia Almendares
25	7-26-1879	Manuel Lajaña	1 year and 3 months	Natural child	Juana Lajaña
26	7-28-1879	Buenaventura Carmona Puebla	19 days	Legitimate child	María Puebla	Ignacio Carmona
27	7-28-1879	Isabel Olivares	20 days	Natural child	Tránsito Olivares
28	8-1-1879	José Ollanedel Olivares	8 months	Legitimate child	? Molinares	Bartolo Ollanedel
29	8-8-1879	Eladia Farías	3 days	Natural child	Clara Farías
30	8-10-1879	Genoveva Diaz	8 months	Natural child	Carmen Diaz
31	8-15-1879	Juana Bandera Zuleta	3 years	Legitimate child	María Josefa Zuleta	n/i
32	8-15-1879	Antonia Hidalgo Zuleta	7 months	Legitimate child	Isidora Zuleta	Juan Hidalgo
33	8-16-1879	Inés Caruncho	8 months	Natural child	Rita Caruncho
34	8-16-1879	Jacinto Diaz	1 year and 9 months	Legitimate child	Catalina Figueroa	Antonino Diaz
35	8-16-1879	Norberta Almendares	3 months	Natural child	Juliana Almendares
36	8-16-1879	Margarita Silva	?	Natural child	? Silva
37	8-16-1879	Zeocadio? Aracena	8 years	Natural child	Marciana? Aracena
38	8-16-1879	Adelaida Almendares	1 year	Natural child	Francisca Almendares
39	8-16-1879	Macario Almendares	8 months	Natural child	Irene Almendares
40	8-16-1879	Manuel Almendares	4 years	Natural child	María Nieves Almendares
41	8-17-1879	Gertrudis Contreras Salinas	8 months	Legitimate child	Griselda Salinas	Pedro Contreras
42	8-17-1879	Delia Caseres	11 months	Natural child	Clarisa Caseres
43	8-17-1879	Cristina Soto	3 years	Natural child (his father is crossed out)	Carmen Soto	?
44	8-17-1879	Lázaro Rojas	2 years	Natural child	Nicolasa Rojas
45	8-17-1879	Pedro Contreras Salinas	3 years	Legitimate child	Griselda Salinas	Pedro Contreras
46	8-17-1879	Manuel Bravo Erazo	8 months	Legitimate child	Rosa Erazo	Juan Bravo
47	8-18-1879	Ana Maturana	4 years	Natural child	Hipólita Maturana
48	8-18-1879	José Báes Pérez	3 years	Legitimate child	Juana Peres	Ruperto Baes
49	8-18-1879	Sara Pérez	Adult	Child of adultery	Juana Perez
50	8-18-1879	Isidora Idalgo Zuleta	3 years and a half	Legitimate child	Isidora Zuleta	Juan Idalgo
51	8-18-1879	Arturo Peñaloza	8 years	Natural child	Manuela Peñaloza
52	8-18-1879	Mariana Salas Zuleta	2 years	Legitimate child	Cecilia Zuleta	Matias Salas
53	8-19-1879	Angela Almendares	3 years	Natural child	Irene Almendares
54	8-19-1879	Adelaida Salas Zuleta	7 months	Legitimate child	Cecilia Zuleta	Matias Salas
55	8-19-1879	Tomasa Zuleta	3 years	Natural child	Emilia Zuleta
56	8-19-1879	Lucía Zaguar	7 months	Natural child	Damiana Jaguar (J over Z)
57	8-22-1879	Roberto Zuleta	2 years	Natural child	Carmen? Zuleta
58	8-22-1879	Eloisa Almendares	3 years	Natural child	Angela Almendares
59	8-23-1879	María Mercedes Almendares	6 years	Natural child	Angela Almendares
60	8-23-1879	Natalia Almendares	8 years	Natural child	? Almendares
61	24-8-1879	Ezequiel Tejo Sánchez	2 years	Legitimate child	Clotilde Sanchez	José Tejo

n/i: no information.

As the report from the delegate Gregorio Almendares of 1793 states, the people registered in Paposo that year had kinship relations with the inhabitants of Cobija.⁷⁸ This allows us to confirm the relationship between the Almendares, Maturano, Sajaya, and Chivillapo families in several fishing coves from the southern Andean coast, but it also adds new information on the origins of allied groups like the Caruncho, who became a mestizo family in Paposo and other localities.⁷⁹

All this information suggests a very particular phenomenon regarding the relationship between some of the foundational Andean coastal families, like the Sajaya, from the Loa to Cobija, the Almendares, located between Cobija, Paposo, and Caldera, the Aracena, from Taltal to Huasco, and the Alvarez, from Huasco to the south.⁸⁰ For the Almendares, although no records have been found to clarify the prehispanic genealogical background of these coastal families, the historical accounts suggest that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they led the kinship networks of the indigenous families on the shores of Cobija and Paposo and to the south⁸¹ since the eighteenth century within a context of multicultural and multi-ethnic interaction.⁸² In this process, while the coastal families engaged in endogamic practices,⁸³ frequent alliances by marriage, godfatherhood, and probably the addition of non-consanguineous “aggregates,” this was performed in an exogamous context, which until today has produced alliances with foreign and local families while keeping the matrilineality and, with this, their origin tradition.⁸⁴ In the case of Paposo, this fact becomes patent when we check the details of the alliances and kinship affiliation in the civil and ecclesiastical records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where the Almendares and other common groups would usually expand their lineages by natural filiation and by alliances and cohabitation by marriage with members from other families like the Caruncho, Maturano, Gutiérrez, Chivillapo, or Copa (some of them were of indigenous origin). Under this context, they settled new territories with groups formed by the new generations, and this was possible due to the traditional patrifocality.⁸⁵

For Paposo, one of the main triggers of the dynamic historical kinship scenario for the native coastal families was the establishment of the Estancia Paposo in 1679, which was a Western nucleus that imposed a system of tribute and commerce to the local population based on single-product activities like the making of charquecillo, goat and mule farming, and mining.⁸⁶ Due to this, the ancestral territoriality shifted into the modern settlement pattern seen in their families, which includes majadas as shelters of semi-permanent occupation, areas of coastal exploitation, and the permanent settling of a populated center (Paposo and/or Taltal). The Estancia Paposo further developed the dynamic Andean coastal process of social interaction and commerce routes, especially after the mining boom of the nineteenth century defined the geography of the scattering and traditional family alliances present until our days in that territory, with the Almendares representing the main group at Paposo, Estancia Vieja and their surroundings, the Caruncho at El Hueso, the Chirino at Palo Varao, the Castillo and the Gutiérrez at Cachinales, the Contreras at Matancillas, the Díaz at Aguabuena, the Morales at El Guanillo, and the Salas at El Rincón. All these groups merged with other families from the cove of Paposo, the town of Taltal, and several local beaches and coves (Figure 2).⁸⁷

This data seems to be very relevant when we review the available ethnographic and ethnohistoric information from primary sources about the scattering of native family names that now live in the territory of Paposo/Taltal, like the Almendares, Gutiérrez, Morales, Castillo, and Zuleta (Suleta),⁸⁸ as seen in the records of the Chiuchiu and San Lorenzo parishes from the beginning of the seventeenth century.⁸⁹ We also notice this scattering pattern in Cobija, where some Almendares families interacted between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with other groups, like the Maturana, González, Otal, Ligero, Yaychas (Ayta, Aytas), Cotaypy, Saxaya (Sajaia, Sacaia), Chuquina, Chaylli, Chivillapo, and Chacón.⁹⁰ In these parish records, we can see that during the seventeenth century and probably until the beginning of the eighteenth century, some Spanish surnames acquired by the coastal families at Cobija coexisted in a daily multiethnic context with surnames registered as “Camanchaca” (Chucho, Liquena, Cauallolo, Caun, Ycotan, Collama, Chilloco, and Chuquina),⁹¹ and even with some classified as “Proanche,” mainly between 1646 and 1652, who belonged to the coast, between Morro oy Cerro Moreno and Copiapó, like Alaguana or Jaguaña, Chacaguaina, Anchuño, Clapiche (Chalpiche), Cancota, Coimas, Cherepe, Chamalco, Chiquin, Lacmor, Laicor, Maqueta, Quilama, and Sacaya (Sajaya, Sacalla).⁹² What parental relationship led the family groups on the southern Andean coast? Although we do not know, the cause is undoubtedly linked to genealogical regulations.

As Lehnert explains⁹³ in his study about the evolution of surnames in the Libro de Varias Ojas, in this record, we can see an evident graphical instability for names and surnames, especially among the indigenous individuals, in which we see how the indigenous names progressively get replaced by Spanish denominations. For Lehnert, in addition to the ethnic description of some of the registered individuals, one striking aspect of the LVO is the high frequency of certain qualifiers in the seventeenth-century records, like “coquina,” which was added to the name-surname combination. Its meaning is unknown but could refer to productive roles and/or kinship categories.⁹⁴

The above finally resulted in the high territorial dispersion seen in their family groups, which probably was, as we said, connected to the high mobility of some of their familial segments based on the family alliances with local and foreign groups.

The historical context of the Chango groups’ dispersal along the southern Andean coast and the genetic studies of the native population of Paposo carried out by Rothhammer have confirmed a prehispanic genetic footprint as old as the Chinchorro groups (ca. 7000–4000 BP) and later genetic links with the Aymara and Likanantai.⁹⁵ The analysis of the population scattering in Paposo allows us to draw a complex alliances background between coastal native groups and others from the inner Andean regions by means of exogamous and endogamous practices within the estate and mining systems that were implemented in Atacama since the seventeenth century, creating a regional kinship network that in Paposo was sustained by a—consanguineous or not—matrilineality among the traditional families that prevailed over the variable patrifocality or marital cohabitation forms that were changing.⁹⁶

The access to the baptism and marriage records (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) from the Chiuchiu and San Lorenzo parishes in Tarapacá⁹⁷ allows us to see the real nature of these alliances among the indigenous and mestizo coastal groups and thus compare the indigenous branches associated with families like the Almendares. Although we usually see alliances with Spanish ancestors in coastal localities frequently described as multiethnic since first contact, like Cobija, Puerto del Loa, Yqueyque, Guayna Pisagua, and Paposo, if we rule natural filiation out (which is the most frequent kind among the coastal families), certain alliances are key to understand the origins of the Almendares, like the Almendares-Chivillapo, Almendares-Caques, Sajaya-Almendares, and Guacante-Almendares alliances, whose members were classified as “Indians” in parish records. This regional crossbreeding pattern is also noted among the individuals categorized as “Proanche” in Cobija, with mestizo alliances like the Delgado-Cherepe (1618) or Chamaico-Guaita (1662), to which we must add the categories of “coquina,” “cholo,” and the seemingly unknown label of “continti” (cf., Francisco Continti Chacalla “legitimate son of Vicente cholo continti and Magdalena Sacalla, his wife”).⁹⁸

According to Casassas,⁹⁹ the initial Almendares reference dates from 1654, and it belongs to Lorenzo Almendariz, registered as Lorenzo Almendaris the old in 1705 when her widow Magdalena Alicanto was still alive.¹⁰⁰ Since that moment, we find records of alliances between the Almendares (Almendaris) and Spanish and indigenous surnames. We have, for instance, the case of Martina Chivillapo Almendares, whose name was registered in Cobija in 1744. The Chiuchiu parish record indicates that she is the “…legitimate daughter of Pasqual Chivillapo and María Almendares, natural Indians from this port of Covija….”¹⁰¹ Pasqual Chivillapo must have been an interesting individual, as he also appears in the parish record from 1748, which states that he had already baptized María because there was no priest: “…Pasqual Chivillapo, Indian, had already poured the water, and I made him appear before me to testify if he had performed a true sacrament. And being in great doubt, I baptized her, and as it was said, she is the legitimate daughter of Simon Maturano, mestizo.”¹⁰² Chivillapo also poured the baptismal waters on another newborn child registered as María, chola, of one year, who “…is the daughter of Andrea Almendares, mestiza, single, from this port of covija, and Bernardo de Abalos tributary and from San Francisco de Chiuchiu….”¹⁰³ Also, sometime before 1747, at Cobija, he did the same with María chola

…Pasqual Chivillapo, Indian, also poured the water in a situation of need, and not having any certainty of him performing a True Sacrament (…) I baptized her (…) her godparents of oil and water were Joseph Almendaris and Ysidora Maturano [and] she is the legitimate daughter of Pasqual Maldonado mestizo and Josefa Chivillapo Indian from this port…¹⁰⁴

The Sajaya-Almendares alliance that appears in the Chiuchiu records for Cobija at the beginning of the eighteenth century indicates another possible indigenous or mestizo family line for the Almendares. The Sajaya was a native group from Puerto del Loa to Iquique and Cobija in the seventeenth century and was founded in Paposo since 1803 (Table 2). In 1713, according to the Chiuchiu parish records, we see the baptism of Josefa, of four months, the “legitimate daughter of Lorenzo Almendares and Gregoria Sajaya (…) from this port of Cobija.”¹⁰⁵ Also, Lorenzo Almendares is mentioned one year before in his marriage document as the son of Alonso Almendaris and Ines Llapun, another indigenous surname according to the Chiuchiu parish records.¹⁰⁶

Regarding the Almendares-Caques alliance, we see a record from 1719 in the parish of San Lorenzo about Diego, an Indian from Iquique, “of four months, the legitimate son of Domingo Almendares and Josepha Caques, Indians from said port….”¹⁰⁷ In 1732, the Libro 1 de bautismos record from the parish of San Lorenzo de Tarapacá accounts for the birth of “…a creature of fifteen days who I named María [Indian], the legitimate daughter of Lorenzo Almendares and Josepha Caques….”¹⁰⁸ Finally, we have the Almendares-Guacante, who, although registered in 1924 in the parish of Mamiña, to the interior of Iquique, show how far the indigenous alliances with the Almendares from Paposo and Taltal spread. On that occasion, we see the marriage of “Juan Bautista Guacante, from Mamiña, the legitimate son of María Guacante and Vicente García, with María Almendares, born and baptized in Taltal, residing in Mamiña, the legitimate daughter of José Almendares and María Amalia Caruncho….”¹⁰⁹

Conclusions

The historical disaggregated ubiquity of Paposo and its population are two of the elements of the coastal landscape that, since the seventeenth century, strongly defined the features of the inhabited coves and localities of the southern and central-southern Andean shores, which were openly multiethnic, as pointed out by historical accounts¹¹⁰ and suggested by prehistorical sources.¹¹¹

However, it is in the kinship melting pot conformed by the families from the coast of Paposo and its neighboring localities where we clearly see the nature that this process adopted, which characterized the Chango groups scattered along the Atacama Desert coast, and that the various sources show evident discrepancies in its registration.

Notwithstanding these differences, in this area, there are registered families that, from an ethnographic perspective, are the base of the native population of Paposo, like the Almendares, Maturano, Castillo, and Morales, as the contrasted sources show. These groups have widespread roots that link them with well-known indigenous families throughout the region, like the Sajaya-Chillpa from Puerto del Loa, the Chivillapo from Cobija, the Caques, and the Camachí from Yqueyque, and the Cotaypi from Pisagua. All of them were matrilineal and resorted to natural filiation, and until today they are categorized as Changos, who, during the early colonial era, were related to families classified as Camanchacas and Proanches.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

José Castelleti Dellepiane

Notes

Author Biographies

José Castelleti Dellepiane has a doctorate in Archaeological Studies from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH), México city. He is a professor and researcher in the Departamento de Antropología, Universidad de Tarapacá, Chile. His current research concerns Andean coastal landscapes, rock painting, and prehistoric aldeanism in Andean western valleys. His main recent publications include: Gogitchaichvili, Avto, Juan Morales, Jaime Urrutia-Fucugauchi, Ana María Soler Arechalde, Guillermo Acosta and José Castelleti, “The use of pictorial remanent magnetization as a dating tool: State of the art and perspectives,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 8 (2016), 15–21; Castelleti, José. Los hijos de la Camanchaca: la “otra” historia-prehistoria de la costa del Desierto de Atacama, Thesis for the degree of Doctor in Archaeological Studies, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Ciudad de México: INAH, 2017; Castelleti, José, Omar Reyes, Valentina Trejo, Carola Flores and Maximino Villarroel, “Funebria y paisaje local durante la transición arcaico-formativa en Taltal. El caso del Portezuelo Choluto,” Revista Taltalia 11 (2018), 37–60; Castelleti, José, Maximino Villarroel, Humberto Almendares and Pedro Mercado, “Historia del paisaje rural entre las familias de Paposo y Taltal,” Diálogo Andino 58 (2019), 77–88; and Castelleti, José, “Continuidad cultural entre las familias camanchaco-chango paposinas durante los siglos XVIII y XIX, a través del análisis de la categoría social del ‘agregado’,” Estudios Atacameños (2019).

Jose Alflorino Torres has a Diploma in Genealogy, Heraldry and Nobility from the Institute of Nobility Studies of the Hidalgos Foundation of Madrid, Spain, and he graduated from the Archeology program, University of Tarapacá, 2023. He has been an associate researcher at the University of Tarapacá, researching the genealogy of the indigenous communities of the Quebrada de Tarapacá, Western Andean Valley. Currently he is an Assistant Researcher in genealogy of the saltpeter mining period with the team of Dr. Sergio González Miranda, High Research Institute, University of Tarapacá, Arica, Chile. His publications include: Founding Families of Pica and Matilla 1590–2016, volumes I and II. (Arica: Editions University of Tarapacá, 2017); (with González Miranda, Sergio G. Alflorino Torres), Characters of integration and words of friendship between Peru and Chile. Antonio Gutiérrez de la Fuente and his family networks: approaches to his Tarapacan origin and his mysterious link with Chile (Santiago: RIL, 2021); and J. Castelleti and J.A. Torres, “Territory and genealogy of the historical Paposo,” Diálogo Andino (in press).