|
Paraguay The Sword of the Word
During the next 200 years, the Roman Catholic Church--especially
the ascetic, single-minded members of the Society of Jesus (the
Jesuits)--had much more influence on the colony's social and
economic life than the feckless governors who succeeded Irala.
Three Jesuits--an Irishman, a Catalan, and a Portuguese--arrived in
1588 from Brazil. They promptly moved from Asunción to proselytize
among the Indians along the upper Río Paraná. Because they already
believed in an impersonal, supreme being, the Guaraní proved to be
good pupils of the Jesuits.
In 1610 Philip III (1598-1621) proclaimed that only the "sword
of the word" should be used to subdue the Paraguayan Indians, thus
making them happy subjects. The church granted extensive powers to
Jesuit Father Diego de Torres to implement a new plan, with royal
blessings, that foresaw an end to the encomienda system.
This plan angered the settlers, whose lifestyle depended on a
continuing supply of Indian labor and concubines. The settlers'
resistance helped convince the Jesuits to move their base of
operations farther afield to the province of Guayrá in the distant
northeast. After unsuccessful attempts to "civilize" the
recalcitrant Guaycurú, the Jesuits eventually put all their efforts
into working with the Guaraní. Organizing the Guaraní in
reducciones (reductions or townships), the hard-working
fathers began a system that would last more than a century. In one
of history's greatest experiments in communal living, the Jesuits
had soon organized about 100,000 Guaraní in about 20
reducciones, and they dreamed of a Jesuit empire that would
stretch from the Paraguay-Paraná confluence to the coast and back
to the Paraná headwaters.
The new Jesuit reducciones were unfortunately within
striking distance of the mamelucos, the slave-raiding,
mixed-race descendants of Portuguese and Dutch adventurers. The
mamelucos were based in Sâo Paulo, Brazil, which had become
a haven for freebooters and pirates by the early 1600s because it
was beyond the control of the Portuguese colonial governor. The
mamelucos survived mostly by capturing Indians and selling
them as slaves to Brazilian planters. Having depleted the Indian
population near Sâo Paulo, they ventured farther afield until they
discovered the richly populated reducciones. The Spanish
authorities chose not to defend the settlements.
Spain and Portugal were united from 1580 to 1640. Although their
colonial subjects were at war, the governor of Rio de la Plata
Province had little incentive to send scarce troops and supplies
against an enemy who was nominally of the same nationality. In
addition, the Jesuits were not popular in Asunción, where the
settlers had the governor's ear. The Jesuits and their thousands of
neophytes thus had little means to protect themselves from the
depredations of the "Paulistas," as the mamelucos also were
called (because they came from Sâo Paulo). In one such raid in
1629, about 3,000 Paulistas destroyed the reducciones in
their path by burning churches, killing old people and infants (who
were worthless as slaves), and carrying off to the coast entire
human populations, as well as cattle. Their first raids on the
reducciones netted them at least 15,000 captives.
Faced with the awesome challenge of a virtual holocaust that was
frightening away their neophytes and encouraging them to revert to
paganism, the Jesuits took drastic measures. Under the leadership
of Father Antonio Ruíz de Montoya, as many as 30,000 Indians (2,500
families) retreated by canoe and traveled hundreds of kilometers
south to another large concentration of Jesuit reducciones
near the lower Paraná. About 12,000 people survived. But the
retreat failed to deter the Paulistas, who continued to raid and
carry off slaves until even the reducciones far to the south
faced extinction. The Paulista threat ended only after 1639, when
the viceroy in Peru agreed to allow Indians to bear arms. Welltrained and highly motivated Indian units, serving under Jesuit
officers, bloodied the raiders and drove them off.
Victory over the Paulistas set the stage for the golden age of
the Jesuits in Paraguay. The Guaraní were unaccustomed to the
discipline and the sedentary life prevalent in the
reducciones, but adapted to it readily because it offered
them higher living standards, protection from settlers, and
physical security. By 1700 the Jesuits could again count 100,000
neophytes in about 30 reducciones. The reducciones
exported goods, including cotton and linen cloth, hides, tobacco,
lumber, and above all, yerba maté, a plant used to produce a bitter
tea that is popular in Paraguay and Argentina. The Jesuits also
raised food crops and taught arts and crafts. In addition, they
were able to render considerable service to the crown by supplying
Indian armies for use against attacks by the Portuguese, English,
and French. At the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits from the
Spanish Empire in 1767, the reducciones were enormously
wealthy and comprised more than 21,000 families. Their vast herds
included approximately 725,000 head of cattle, 47,000 oxen, 99,000
horses, 230,000 sheep, 14,000 mules, and 8,000 donkeys.
Because of their success, the 14,000 Jesuits who had volunteered
over the years to serve in Paraguay gained many enemies. They were
a continual goad to the settlers, who viewed them with envy and
resentment and spread rumors of hidden gold mines and the threat to
the crown from an independent Jesuit republic. To the crown, the
reducciones seemed like an increasingly ripe plum, ready for
picking.
The reducciones fell prey to changing times. During the
1720s and 1730s, Paraguayan settlers rebelled against Jesuit
privileges and the government that protected them. Although this
revolt failed, it was one of the earliest and most serious risings
against Spanish authority in the New World and caused the crown to
question its continued support for the Jesuits. The Jesuit-inspired
War of the Seven Reductions (1750-61), which was fought to prevent
the transfer to Portugal of seven missions south of the Río
Uruguay, increased sentiment in Madrid for suppressing this "empire
within an empire."
In a move to gain the reducciones' wealth to help finance
a planned reform of Spanish administration in the New World, the
Spanish king, Charles III (1759-88), expelled the Jesuits in 1767.
Within a few decades of the expulsion, most of what the Jesuits had
accomplished was lost. The missions lost their valuables, became
mismanaged, and were abandoned by the Guaraní. The Jesuits vanished
almost without a trace. Today, a few weed-choked ruins are all that
remain of this 160-year period in Paraguayan history.
Data as of December 1988
|
