Luis de Bolaños

– 11 October 1629) was a Spanish Franciscan friar and missionary evangelist, initiator of the system of reductions (indigenous towns) in Paraguay and northeastern Argentina.

Friar Alonso de San Buenaventura passed by his convent looking for missionaries to work in South America, and Bolaños joined his group.

These towns "reduced" the originally nomadic natives to fixed, stable locations, allowing the missionaries to better control and catechize them, while teaching them to read and write, to cultivate the land, to domesticate animals, and to create manual artistic works.

The Franciscan friar founded reductions all over the basin of the Paraná River, in Paraguay, large parts of Brazil, and the Argentine provinces of Misiones and northern Corrientes.

The Catechism approved by the Third Council of Lima in 1583 was translated by him, and the First Synod of Asunción (1603) dictated that it be employed to teach Christian doctrine to the natives.