Jesuit missions among the Guaraní
Others have argued that "the Jesuits took away the Indians' freedom, forced them to radically change their lifestyle, physically abused them, and subjected them to disease".
[4] However, directly as a result of the suppression of the Society of Jesus in several European countries, including Spain, in 1767, the Jesuits were expelled from the Guaraní missions (and the Americas) by order of the Spanish king Charles III.
[5] The Jesuit Río de la Plata reductions reached a maximum population of 141,182 in 1732 in 30 missions in Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina.
[4] In Mexico the policy was called congregación, and also took the form of the hospitals of Vasco de Quiroga and the Franciscan Missions of California.
Legally, under colonial rule, Indians were classified as minors, in effect children, to be protected and guided to salvation (conversion to Christianity) by European missionaries.
[4] The Jesuits, formally founded only in 1540,[8] were relatively late arrivals in the New World, from about 1570, especially compared to the Dominicans and Franciscans, and therefore had to look to the frontiers of colonization for mission areas.
In 1609, acting under instructions from Phillip III, the Spanish governor of Asunción made a deal with the Jesuit Provincial of Paraguay.
[10] The Jesuits agreed to set up hamlets at strategic points along the Paraná river, that were populated with Indians and maintained a separation from Spanish towns.
[10][11] The reductions were considered by some philosophers as idyllic communities of noble savages, and were praised as such by Montesquieu in his L'Esprit des Lois (1748), and even by Rousseau, no friend of the Catholic Church.
The Jesuit reductions have been lavishly praised as a "socialist utopia"[13] and a "Christian communistic republic" as well as criticized for their "rigid, severe and meticulous regimentation" of the lives of the indigenous peoples they ruled with a firm hand through Guaraní intermediaries.
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).
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.
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.
[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.
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.
[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.
in 1848, Paraguayan president Carlos Antonio López declared that all Indians were citizens of Paraguay and distributed the last of the missions' communal lands.
Another 50,000 more Tupi, Chiquitos, and members of diverse ethnic groups in the Llanos de Moxos were in Jesuit reductions in Bolivia.
The social organization of the reductions has often been described as extremely efficient; most were self-supporting and even produced surpluses of goods, which they traded to outside communities, which laid the foundation of the belief that Jesuits were guarding immense riches acquired through Indian labour.
[4] The main buildings, especially the churches, were often substantial Baroque constructions made by trained indigenous craftsmen and often remain impressive after over two centuries of abandonment, though the elaborate carved wood interiors have vanished in these cases.
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.
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 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.
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.
