'Eastern Missions') (or Siete Pueblos de las Misiones (Spanish pronunciation: [miˈsjones oɾjenˈtales], Sete Povos das Missões (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈsɛtʃi ˈpɔvuz dɐz miˈsõjs], lit.
'Seven Towns of the Missions') was a region in South America where a group of seven indigenous villages were founded by Spanish Jesuits in present-day Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost State of Brazil.
[1] It was famous for its resistance to enslavement and egalitarian laws based on the Bible.
The King of Spain was the nominal ruler of these lands and in the Treaty of Madrid (1750) he gave the eastern part of the Jesuit Reductions to Portugal.
The seven Jesuit missions here were to be dismantled and relocated on the Spanish western side of the Uruguay River.