Jesuit Reductions
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- Related article: Indian Reductions
The Jesuit Reductions were a particular version of the general Spanish and Portuguese colonial strategy of building reductions (reducciones de indios) in order to "civilise" and catechise the native populations of South America.[1] They were created by the Catholic order of the Jesuits in the Tupi-Guarani areas of Portuguese Brazil and Spanish America. The Jesuits dedication to their own mission and refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the civil power led to their ultimate expulsion from the Americas.[2]
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[edit] History
In Brazilian reductions, the Tupi-Guarani languages were spoken, leading to the língua geral which was a single consolidated dialect of Tupi-Guarani with Latin and Portuguese influence that was once the sole language of the Portuguese settlements outside of the centers of Crown power, and is still spoken in isolated communities in Northern Brazil.
The indigenous people of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, the Tupi and the Guarani, would have been victims of the colonial conquest in South America, had the Jesuits not been able to persuade the King of Spain to grant that vast region to their care. Having first landed in South America in 1550, the Jesuits promised the Spanish monarch generous rewards, in the form of tributes, in exchange for exempting the Indians from hard labour to which all the other tribes were subjected.
From 1641 at least the Jesuit order itself acted as the colonial power. The Indians were denied good title to their land, were unable to leave valid wills or to buy or sell portable property other than through the Jesuit orgainsation. The Jesuits in each of these 'reductions' held absolute power, they acted through subordinates but in reality the Jesuit was lord of all he surveyed. . The missions were in existence for a century and a half and the Jesuits were in absolute control for eleven decades but: '... in that period they never brought forward a single Indian candidate for the priesthood and developed no order of religious women or nuns.'[3]The Guaraní were very skilled in handicraft works such as sculpture and woodcarving. The Indians were ruthlessly exploited for their own ends by Europeans.[4]
The Jesuit missions reached their peak in the first half of the 18th century, with between 100,000 and 300,000 Catholic Indians in about thirty missions. They were granted almost full independence from the parts of South America ruled by Spain and Portugal.
In a Reduction, the main buildings, like the church, college and churchyard were concentrated around a wide square, with houses facing the other three sides. Each village also provided a house for widows, a hospital, and several warehouses. In the centre of the square, there was a cross and a statue of the mission's patron saint.
The missions ended with the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Portuguese empire in 1759, and from the Spanish Empire in 1767. After a hopeless war, the Guarani returned to the forest. All that remains today from that period are ruins of some of the Reductions, and two modified indigenous languages, Guarani and Nheengatu.
[edit] Jesuit Reductions by country
[edit] Argentina
- 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
[edit] Bolivia
- San Xavier
- Concepción
- San Ignacio de Velasco
- Santa Ana
- San Miguel
- San Rafael
- San José de Chiquitos
[edit] Brazil
[edit] Paraguay
[edit] See also
- Bandeirantes
- Misiones Orientales
- Guarani War
- The Mission, a 1986 film that tells the story of a Spanish Jesuit priest who goes into the South American jungle to build a mission and convert a community of Guaraní Indians
- Jesuit Asia missions
- Língua Geral
- Spanish missions in Arizona
- Spanish missions in California
- Spanish missions in the Carolinas
- Spanish missions in Florida
- Spanish missions in Georgia
- Spanish missions in Mexico
- Spanish missions in New Mexico
- Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert
- Spanish missions in South America
- Spanish missions in Texas
- Spanish missions in Trinidad
- Spanish missions in Virginia
- Suppression of the Society of Jesus
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ Reductions. The Columbia Encyclopedia. Columbia University Press. Retrieved on 2007-05-18.
- ^ Barbara Ganson (2003). "The Guarani under Spanish Rule in the Rio de la Plata". . Stanford University Press
- ^ Stephen Neill, A Hisotry of Christian Missioni, (Harmonsworth: Pelican) 1962, p. 205.
- ^ C. Lugon, The Communist Christian Republic of the Guranis, (Rio de Janeiro: Paz & Earth), 1977.
