Jesuit missions among the Guaraní

Map of the modern state of Paraná, Brazil, showing the Spanish Guayrá in brown. Jesuit missions are marked with crosses. All the missions were abandoned by 1638 and their inhabitants moved southwestward after the raids

In 1609 three Jesuits began the first reduction in San Ignacio Guazú in present-day Paraguay. For the next 22 years the Jesuits focused on founding 15 missions in the province of Guayrá, corresponding to the western two-thirds of present-day Paraná state of Brazil, spread over an area of more than 100,000 square kilometres (39,000 sq mi).[15] The total Native population of this area was probably about 100,000.[16]

The establishment of these missions was not without difficulty and danger. The Guaraní shamans resisted the imposition of a new religion and up to 7 Jesuits were killed by Indians during the first few years after the missions were established.[17] In 1618 the first of a series of epidemics spread among the missions and killed thousands of the Guaraní. The congregation of the Guaraní into large settlements at the missions facilitated the spread of diseases.[18] Nevertheless, the missions soon had 40,000 Guaraní in residence.[19] Tens of thousands of Guaraní living in the same region remained outside the missions, living in their traditional manner and practicing their traditional religion.

The reductions were within Portuguese-claimed territory and large-scale raids by the Bandeirante slavers of São Paulo on the missions and non-mission Guaraní began in 1628. The Bandeirantes destroyed many missions and decimated and scattered the mission population. They looked upon the reductions with their concentration of Guaraní as an opportunity to capture slaves more easily than usual. Beginning in 1631 and concluding in 1638 the Jesuits moved the mission survivors still in residence, approximately 12,000 people, southwestward about 500 kilometres (310 mi) to an area under Spanish control that in the 21st century is divided among Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil.[20] There were already Jesuit missions in the area and the refugees from Guayrá were also joined by Guaraní refugees from Uruguay and Tapé (in present-day Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) who had suffered similar experiences.[21]

In the 1630s, the Jesuits also established short-lived missions in the Itatín region of present-day Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. They were destroyed by Bandeirantes and revolts by the local indigenous people.[22][23]

Location of the most important Spanish Jesuit reductions (1631-1767) in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay with present-day borders

At the new locations, the Jesuits established 30 reductions, collectively often called the Rio de la Plata missions. By 1641, despite slavers and epidemics, the Guaraní population of the Rio de la Plata missions was 36,190. For nearly a century thereafter, the mission population increased to a maximum of 141,242 in 1732.[24] Populations of individual reductions varied from 2,000 to 7,000.

The immediate need of the Guaraní in the 1640s was to protect themselves from slavers. The Jesuits began to arm them, producing guns and gunpowder in the missions.[25] They also secured the Spanish Crown's permission, and some arms, to raise militias of Indians to defend the reductions against raids. The Bandeirantes followed the reductions into Spanish territory, but in 1641 the Guaraní militia defeated an army of 1,500 or more Bandeirante slavers and Tupi auxiliaries at the battle of Mbororé.[4] The militias would eventually number as many as 4,000 troops and their cavalry was especially effective, wearing European-style uniforms and carrying bows and arrows as well as muskets.

Over a century passed until, in the 1750 Treaty of Madrid, the Spanish ceded to the Portuguese territories including the Misiones Orientales, reductions now in Brazil, threatening to expose the Indians again to the more oppressive Portuguese system. The Jesuits complied, trying to relocate the population across the Uruguay river as the treaty allowed, but the Guaraní militia under the mission-born Sepé Tiaraju resisted. What came to be known as the War of the Reductions, or the Guaraní War, ended when a larger combined force of 3,000 Spanish and Portuguese troops crushed the revolt in 1756, with Guaraní losses. both in the battle and subsequent massacres, of over 1,500.[26]

The reductions came to be considered a threat by the secular authorities and were caught up in the growing attack on the Jesuits in Europe for unrelated reasons. The economic success of the reductions, which was considerable, although not as great as often described, combined with the Jesuits' independence, became a cause of concern.

In 1767, king Charles III of Spain (1759–88) expelled the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions in the Americas. The expulsion was part of an effort in the Bourbon Reforms to assert more control over the American colonies.[27] In total, 78 Jesuits departed from the missions leaving behind 89,000 Guaraní in 30 missions. [28]

According to historian Sarreal, most Guaraní initially welcomed the expulsion of the Jesuits. Spanish authorities made promises to Guaraní leaders and gained their support. The Guaraní leaders of one mission thanked the authorities who "liberated us from the bondage that we lived in as slaves". Within two years, however, the financial situation of the missions was deteriorating and the Guaraní began leaving the missions seeking both freedom and higher wages. A decree in 1800 freed the Guaraní still in the missions from their communal obligation to labor. By 1840, the former missions were in ruins. While some Guaraní were employed outside the missions, many families were impoverished. A growing number of mestizos occupied what had formerly been mission lands. in 1848, Paraguayan president Carlos Antonio López declared that all Indians were citizens of Paraguay and distributed the last of the missions' communal lands.[29][30]

Some of the reductions have continued to be inhabited as towns. Córdoba, Argentina, the largest city associated with the reductions, was atypical as a Spanish settlement that predated the Jesuits and functioned as a centre for the Jesuit presence, with a novitiate centre and a college that is now the local university. The Córdoba mission was taken over by the Franciscans in 1767. Many of the missions in ruins have been declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including six of the Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos in Bolivia, and the ruins of Jesuit Missions of La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue in Paraguay.[31] Two creole languages, Língua Geral and Nheengatu, based on Guaraní, Tupi, and Portuguese, originated in the reductions.

Church from the reduction of San Ignacio Mini in Argentina

The ruins of several of the missions still remain. They were laid out in a uniform plan. The buildings were grouped about a central square, the church and store-houses at one end, and the dwellings of the natives, in long barracks, forming the other three sides. Each family had its own separate apartment, but one veranda and one roof served for perhaps a hundred families. The churches were of stone or fine wood, with lofty towers, elaborate sculptures and richly adorned altars, with statuary imported from Italy and Spain. The priests' quarters, the commissary, the stables, the armory, the workshop, and the hospital, also usually of stone, formed an inner square adjoining the church. The plaza itself was a level grass plot kept cropped by sheep. The native houses were sometimes of stone but more often of adobe or cane, with home-made furniture and religious pictures often made by the natives themselves.

In the morning, children's hymns were followed by Mass and breakfast, after which the workers went to their tasks.

The Jesuits marshaled their neophytes to the sound of music, and in procession to the fields, with a saint borne high aloft, the community each day at sunrise took its way. Along the way at stated intervals were shrines of saints where they prayed, and sang hymns between shrines. As the procession advanced it became gradually smaller as groups of Indians dropped off to work the various fields and finally the priest and acolyte with the musicians returned alone.[35]^: 178f

At noon each group assembled for the Angelus, after which came dinner and a siesta; work was then resumed until evening. After supper came the rosary and sleep. On rainy days they worked indoors. Frequent festivals with sham battles, fireworks, concerts, and dances enlivened the community.

A Jesuit in 18th-century Brazil

Aside from the main farm, each man typically had his own garden, pursuing agriculture, stock raising, and the cultivation of yerba mate. Jesuits introduced many European trades and arts to their communities. Cotton weavers, tanners, carpenters, tailors, hat makers, coopers, boat builders, silversmiths, musicians and makers of musical instruments, painters, and turners could sometimes be found. They also had printers, and manuscripts were also produced by hand copying.[35]

The goods that were produced at the missions, including cattle, were sold in Buenos Aires and other markets under the supervision of the priests. The proceeds earned were divided among a common fund, the workers, and dependents.

Much emphasis was placed on education, as early training was regarded as the key to future success.[35]^: 503 Much of the instruction was conducted in Guaraní, which was still the prevailing language of the region, but Spanish was also taught.

• San Ignacio Mini in Misiones Province
• Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana in Misiones Province
• Nuestra Señora de Loreto in Misiones Province
• Santa María la Mayor in Misiones Province
• Jesuit Block and Estancias of Córdoba in Córdoba

Mission church of San Miguel de Velasco, completed in 1760, Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos, Bolivia

• San Javier
• Concepción
• San Ignacio de Velasco
• Santa Ana de Velasco
• San Miguel de Velasco
• San Rafael de Velasco
• San José de Chiquitos
• Santiago de Chiquitos
• San Juan Bautista
• Santo Corazón
• San Ignacio de Zamucos

• São Miguel das Missões
• São João Batista
• São Lourenço Martir
• São Nicolau
• São Francisco de Borgia
• São Luis Gonzaga
• Santo Ângelo Custódio

• La Santisima Trinidad de Paraná
• Jesús de Tavarangue
• San Cosme y Damian
• Encarnacion de Itapua
• Santa Maria de Fey
• San Ignacio Guazú
• Santiago Apóstol
• Santa Rosa de Lima

• Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados, on the coast of Santa Lucia River.
• Estancia del Rio de las Vacas, founded in 1741 and known today as "Calera de las Huérfanas", in Colonia Department near Carmelo

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• Ganson, Barbara (2003). The Guarani under Spanish Rule in the Rio de la Plata. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-5495-8.
• Gott, Richard (1993). Land Without Evil: Utopian Journeys Across the South American Watershed (illustrated ed.). Verso. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-86091-398-6. Retrieved 2010-03-10.
• Haase, Wolfgang; Meyer, Reinhold, eds. (1994). The Classical Tradition and the Americas. ISBN 9783110115727.
• Henning, John (1978). Red Gold. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674751078.
• Lippy, Charles H; Choquette, Robert; Poole, Stafford (1992). Christianity comes to the Americas: 1492 - 1776. New York: Paragon House. ISBN 978-1-55778-234-2.
• McNaspy, Clement J. (1984). Conquistador without sword. The life of Roque González, S.J. Chicago: Loyola University Press.
• Nonneman, Walter. "On the Economics of the Socialist Theocracy of the Jesuits in Paraguay", from The Political Economy of Theocracy, ISBN 978-0230613102
• Sarreal, Julia J. S. (2014). The Guaraní and Their Missions : A Socioeconomic History. ISBN 978-0-8047-9122-9. OCLC 1198930385.
• de Ventós, Xavier Rubert, The Hispanic labyrinth: tradition and modernity in the colonization of the Americas, Transaction Publishers, 1991, ISBN 978-0-88738-301-4.