MUA, KA'A IARY AND KA'A: etiological legends of rescue of indigenous Paraguayan identity

Abstract

During the centuries in which North, South and Central America were under the rule of Europeans, such as Spain and Portugal, the original ethnicities, and everything that surrounds them, were subjugated, dominated by European peoples. however, the Spanish Empire was unable to completely supplant the Inca, Mayan and Aztec Empires, which resisted the ravages of time, domination and inevitable miscegenation. Their knowledge remained, especially those that rescue and memorize the relationships of thèse peoples with nature, in this way, the etiological narratives, that is, the legends, myths and reports of the original peoples that show the causes, reasons, foundations, and bases of the existence of some element of their cultures, serve as oral documentation that attests to and justifies the existence of any anthropocultural or natural element. That said, we propose to show how, in the Paraguayan (Argentine/Brazilian) etiological legends Muä, Ka'a and Ka'a lary, explain the existence of polytheism/religious syncretism (Caipora, Tupà), the elements of fauna (vagalume) , flora (yerba mate) and anthropocultural aspects of the original peoples with the Guaranis who inhabited these parts here. To develop our bibliographic and qualitative research, we based it on studies by Montesino (2019), Campbell (1949, 1991), Eliade (1972), Bayard (2002), Thompson (1992), among others that deal with the literature of Peoples originating from Latin America. The preliminary results obtained from the analysis of the etiological elements of the aforementioned legends show us that the worldview of the original ethnicities was different from ours, as in addition to being in-depth knowledge of nature, they respected it, as they considered themselves an integral part of it.