Jesuit Missions and the Guarani Ethnogenesis: Political Interactions, Indigenous Actors, and Regional Networks on the Southern Frontier of the Iberian Empires

WILDE, GUILLERMO

Big Water: The making of the Borderlands between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay

Arizona University Press

Lugar: Tucson; Año: 2018; p. 54 - 77

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits established a presence on the southern frontier of the South American domains of Spain and Portugal. At the borders of the two empires, they erected a series of mission towns with the goal of converting local indigenous groups to Christianity. Also known as ?reductions? (reducciones), the Jesuit missions also served to incorporate the indigenous populations into a labor regime that would produce colonial tribute and help control the vast territory under dispute between the two European powers. This chapter aims to reconstruct the colonial history of this region through the study of the social, economic, and political dynamics embedded in this territory.