ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the discursive transformation of the islands into a theatrical performance of violence in which the Chamorros were defined as implacable warriors induced by the devil, while Jesuit missionaries turned into victims of the treason and vengeance of their recently converted "children". It explores how the fear of native uprisings coupled with the desire to extend the mission's area of influence coexisted as constitutive elements in the socio-spatial organization project imposed by the colonizers. The legal and political condition of the Mariana natives was finally defined, with the Viceroy of New Spain declaring them subjects of the Spanish King. After Second Spanish-Chamorro War (1683-86), the Jesuit missionaries assumed the political and religious leadership of the islands, becoming the founders of a "missional ethnogenesis". According to this, martyrs acted as permanent symbols of an "ideal social body" in which the Chamorros, conveniently grouped in the so-called reducciones, became subjects of the Spanish king.
