was, together with
Manuel da Nóbrega, the first Jesuit that Ignacio de Loyola sent to the Americas In the 16th century, priests of different
religious orders set out to
evangelize the Americas, bringing Christianity to indigenous communities. The colonial governments and missionaries agreed on the strategy of gathering the often
nomadic indigenous populations in larger communities called reductions in order to more effectively govern, tax, and evangelize them. Reductions generally were also construed as an instrument to make the Indians adopt European lifestyles and values. The Jesuit reductions originated in the early seventeenth century when Bishop
Lizarraga asked for missionaries for Paraguay. In 1609, acting under instructions from
Phillip III, the Spanish governor of Asunción made a deal with the Jesuit Provincial of Paraguay. 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. Their story has continued to be the subject of romanticizing, as in the film
The Mission (1986), whose story relates to the events of the 1750s on a miniature scale. The Jesuit reductions have been lavishly praised as a "socialist utopia" 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.
Failure and flight 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 . The total Native population of this area was probably about 100,000. 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. 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. Nevertheless, the missions soon had 40,000 Guaraní in residence. 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 to an area under Spanish control that in the 21st century is divided among Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. 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. 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.
Reestablishment and success 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. 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. 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. 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.
Expulsion 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. In total, 78 Jesuits departed from the missions leaving behind 89,000 Guaraní in 30 missions. 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, after Spain's loss of the territories, 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. 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. Two
creole languages,
Língua Geral and
Nheengatu, based on Guaraní,
Tupi, and Portuguese, originated in the reductions. ==Other reductions==