The construction of space in the Jesuit missions of Paraguay: indigenous agency and cultural transactions

WILDE, GUILLERMO

Berlin

Conferencia; Conference “Transcultural Imaginations of the Sacred”; 2012

Freie Universität Berlin

The process of Christian conversion among the Amerindians entailed the imposition of a “civil order” characterized by a rational and hierarchical organization of space (both at the urban and the regional scale). The main orientation of the Spanish Monarchy`s policy of “reducciones” (mission towns) in the borderlands of Empire, was to shape indigenous daily life according to that civil order, identified with the very principles of Christianity. Some of its purposes were to concentrate indigenous population scattered throughout the rain-forest, to segregate the neophytes from the Spanish world, and to bring out a new autonomous political organization. This paper analyzes the formation of Jesuit Missions in two regions of Southern America (Guarani and Chiquitos in Colonial Paraguay) emphasizing the transformation of indigenous people’s concepts of spatiality. I emphasize the role Indians played in shaping the missions’ goals and priorities, especially those related to the political organization of mission towns in the rain-forest. I also discuss the models of spatial organization negotiated between Jesuits and Indian leaders and the ways Indians appropriated and transformed imposed spatial patterns.