Abstract

This paper studies governors’ entrances in seventeenth-century colonial Asunción. These ceremonies helped integrate a particular colonial society and its identity into the Spanish Empire. This identity appears to have been part of a relational process in which certain cultural practices, like receptions, were established at the local level while forming part of imperial dynamics. For this purpose, the entrance made by Governor Luis Céspedes de Xeria in 1628-1629 to take possession of the Paraguayan territory is analysed through the reading of letters and reports. This event was to set the “trend” for subsequent entrances into Asunción.