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.