In 1767, king Charles III of Spain (1759–88) expelled the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions in the Americas. The expulsion was
. In total, 78 Jesuits departed from the missions leaving behind 89,000 Guaraní in 30 missions.
In their newly acquired South American dominions, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires adopted a strategy of gathering native populations into communities called "Indian reductions" (Spanish: reducciones de indios, Portuguese: reduções). The objectives of the reductions were to impart Christianity and European culture.[3] Secular as well as religious authorities created "reductions".
The missions among the Guaraní are often called collectively the Río de la Plata missions. The Jesuits attempted to create a "state within a state" in which the native peoples in the reductions, guided by the Jesuits, would remain autonomous and isolated from Spanish colonists and Spanish rule.[4] A major factor attracting the natives to the reductions was the protection they afforded from enslavement and the forced labour of encomiendas.
Under the leadership of both the Jesuits and native caciques, the reductions achieved a high degree of autonomy within the colonial empires. With the use of native labour, the reductions became economically successful. When the incursions of Brazilian Bandeirante slave-traders threatened the existence of the reductions, Indian militias were set up, which fought effectively against the Portuguese colonists.[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. So ended the era of the Paraguayan reductions. The reasons for the expulsion related more to politics in Europe than to the activities of the Jesuit missions themselves.[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. The reductions of the Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos, in eastern Bolivia, reached a maximum population of 25,000 in 1766.Jesuit reductions in the Llanos de Moxos, also in Bolivia, reached a population of about 30,000 in 1720.In Chiquitos, the first reduction was founded in 1691 and in the Llanos de Moxos in 1682.
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.[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. In Portuguese Brazil reductions were known as aldeias. 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.[9] 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.[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] The Jesuits were to "enjoy a tax holiday for ten years" which extended longer.[10] This mission strategy continued for 150 years until the Jesuits were expelled in 1767. Fundamentally the purpose, as far as the government was concerned, was to safeguard the frontier with the reductions where Indians were introduced to European culture.[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.[12] 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"[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.
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, 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.[31] Two creole languages, Língua Geral and Nheengatu, based on Guaraní, Tupi, and Portuguese, originated in the reductions.
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. Along the way at stated intervals were shrines of saints where they prayed, and sang hymns between shrines. 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.
At noon each group assembled for the Angelus, after which came dinner and a siesta; work was then resumed until evening. After supper came the rosary and sleep. On rainy days they worked indoors. Frequent festivals with sham battles, fireworks, concerts, and dances enlivened the community.
The goods that were produced at the missions, including cattle, were sold in Buenos Aires and other markets under the supervision of the priests. The proceeds earned were divided among a common fund, the workers, and dependents.
Much emphasis was placed on education, as early training was regarded as the key to future success. Much of the instruction was conducted in Guaraní, which was still the prevailing language of the region, but Spanish was also taught.
The suppression of the Society of Jesus was the removal of all members of the Jesuits from most of Western Europe and their respective colonies beginning in 1759 along with the abolition of the order by the Holy See in 1773; the papacy acceded to said anti-Jesuit demands without much resistance. The Jesuits were serially expelled from the Portuguese Empire (1759), France (1764), the Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma, the Spanish Empire (1767) and Austria, and Hungary (1782).
Historians identify multiple factors causing the suppression. The Jesuits, who were not above getting involved in politics, were distrusted for their closeness to the pope and his power in independent nations' religious and political affairs. In France, it was a combination of many influences, from Jansenism to free-thought, to the then-prevailing impatience with the Ancien Régime.[2] Monarchies attempting to centralise and secularise political power viewed the Jesuits as supranational, too strongly allied to the papacy, and too autonomous from the monarchs in whose territory they operated.[3]
With his papal brief, Dominus ac Redemptor (21 July 1773), Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society as a fait accompli. However, the order did not disappear. It continued underground operations in China, Russia, Prussia, and the United States. In Russia, Catherine the Great allowed the founding of a new novitiate.In 1814, a subsequent pope, Pius VII, acted to restore the Society of Jesus to its previous provinces, and the Jesuits began to resume their work in those countries.
