On 13 January 1750, Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Madrid, redrawing colonial boundaries in South America and assigning the Guarani mission territories of the Seven Peoples to Portugal. The agreement treated inhabited lands as imperial assets and helped provoke Indigenous resistance to forced relocation. In Portuguese America, territorial expansion was tied to the pursuit of labor, cattle, and mineral wealth, including the capture and coerced use of Indigenous people. This event centers the land politics that underpinned enslavement while distinguishing Indigenous resistance to dispossession from a single, uniform response.
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