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62 chapter 3 Christianizing Demonic Knowledge d espite all the efforts displayed by the Jesuit missionaries, the machis remained a powerful influence among both amigo and enemigo communities . The difficulties found by colonial and religious officials in their attempts to reduce the Mapuche into Spanish-style towns weakened the effectiveness of the missionaries’ attempts to control indigenous magical and religious practices. In 1649, Luis Pacheco, the Jesuit superior for Chile, asked Governor Martín de Mujica to make sure the Mapuche were“reduced into towns with as many of them as can be settled, because in this way they can be instructed repeatedly and often in the things of the faith.” For Pacheco, it was also imperative to find a way to prevent the amigos from leaving the towns near the Spanish forts and to stop them from relocating to other areas.1 In part, this situation was a consequence of the establishment of a permanent army on the border between Spanish and Mapuche lands. The close proximity of both sides gave rise during the seventeenth century to a borderland society along the Bío Bío River. In this social setting, wandering, illegal bartering, and the amigos’ frequent change of sides became common.2 War, commerce, and the fickle loyalty of the amigos all combined against the Jesuit efforts to keep the influence of the machis in check. When one considers that the Jesuits did succeed in keeping a sizable native population living in towns under the rule of one or two missionaries in other areas of South America, it is clear that this situation was dictated by the particular development of the ongoing war against the Mapuche. Perhaps nowhere on the continent were the Jesuits more successful than in Paraguay.3 The thirty reductions the Jesuits managed there have come to stand as the embodiment of Jesuit missionary activity in South America, having even been portrayed in a major motion picture.4 Unlike other areas of the continent, where the Jesuit method involved a combination of itinerant missions and residence among the natives whenever possible, the missionary method employed by the Society of Jesus in Paraguay was based almost exclusively on the reducción model that had proved so successful in Juli. This model probably accounted for a great deal of the perceived Christianizing Demonic Knowledge 63 success of the Paraguayan missions, particularly by shielding the Guarani from Spanish exploitation, turning them instead into an effective workforce for the benefit of the communities as a whole. In spite of this success, the creation of the reductions was a process fraught with peril and difficulties. Some of these were external menaces, such as the raids organized by the bandeirantes, who typically set off southward from the Portuguese enclave of São Paulo and attacked the Jesuit missions in order to capture Guarani natives and sell them off in the Brazilian slave markets.5 The repeated attacks forced the Jesuits to secure from the Crown the unusual authorization to arm the reduction Indians, who in 1641, under the leadership of the Jesuit lay brother Domingo de Torres, defeated a large bandeira in Mbororé, after which the Portuguese expeditions became more and more scarce until they finally stopped at the beginning of the eighteenth century.6 However, the Portuguese were not the only menace the Jesuit missionaries had to overcome in their efforts to settle the Guarani clans into fixed towns. As it also happened in Chile, the Jesuits faced an intense, and sometimes violent, opposition from the paies, or Guarani shamans. Writing in 1673, the Belgian Jesuit historian Nicolas du Toict—also known by his Hispanized name, Nicolás del Techo—squarely accused the paies of being agents of the devil and of being responsible for the fluctuations in the neophytes’ faith by constantly encouraging Map 3.1: JeSuit MiSSionS in paraguay during the Seventeenth century Asuncíon Santa María Santa Rosa San Ignacio Santiago San Cosme y Damián Itapúa Jesús Trinidad Candelaria San Carlos San José Apóstoles Santo Tomé La Cruz Yapeyú Corpus San Ignacio Miní Loreto Santa Ana Mártires Santa Maria San Javier Concepción San Francisco de Borja San Nicolás San Luis Gonzaga Guarani das Missoes Santo Ángelo San Lorenzo Martir San Miguel Arcángel R í o P a r a n á R í o U r u g u a y Area of Interest M o d e r n n a t i o n a l b o...

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