LOS GRUPOS YUMANOS DE BAJA CALIFORNIA: ¿INDIOS DE PAZ O INDIOS DE GUERRA? UNA APROXIMACIÓN DESDE LA TEORÍA DE LA RESISTENCIA PASIVA

For the prestigious Mexican historian, Miguel León-Portilla, the Yumans of Baja California were not Indians of warfare, but rather Indians of peace. In the opinion of this researcher, it was because living in the stage of fossilized-paleolithic, these Indigenous groups did not present any kind of resistance against the European colonization, making possible their easy domination and afterwards diminishment or assimilation. This paper questions these advancements not only because of their lack of technical precision, but also because they obscure the role of agency that these Indians played during the missionary period. On the contrary, this paper endorses Edward Spicer (1962) thought about resistance as present even among those groups who were not seriously engaged in significant fights against the Spanish conquerors. In the particular case of the Yuman people, this is a resistance challenging the Pueblo Indio project and its related implications in terms of sedentary lifestyle, agricultural economy and the adoption of a scheme of central authority. As we know, these patterns were opposed to those observed among the Yumans as nomads, hunters and gatherers, organized into a segmentary lineage system. Moreover, the kind of resistance described in this paper constitute what James C. Scott (1990) refers as the hidden and daily life transcripts, such as ingenuity, intelligence simulating ignorance, and irony, as well as, those economic and social practices studied by Jan Rus (1995), which include mobility and appropriation of the missionary site. All of these acts with the intention of perpetuating the presence of these Indigenous people and make possible their social reproduction. Para el prestigiado historiador Miguel León-Portilla, los yumanos de Baja California no eran indios de guerra, sino indios de paz. En la opinión de este investigador, esto obedeció a que viviendo en un paleolítico fosilizado, estos grupos indígenas no presentaron mayor resistencia a la colonización europea y permitieron su dominación y posterior exterminio o asimilación. El presente trabajo cuestiona estas afirmaciones, no solo por su imprecisión técnica, sino por el desconocimiento del papel de agencia que jugaron los yumanos durante el periodo misional. Por el contrario, este artículo coincide con la afirmación de Edward Spicer (1962) en el sentido de que la resistencia tuvo lugar incluso entre aquellos grupos que no se vieron comprometidos en combates significativos en contra de l