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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33.2 (2002) 331-332



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Book Review

The Chaco Mission Frontier:
The Guaycuruan Experience


The Chaco Mission Frontier: The Guaycuruan Experience. By James Schofield Saeger (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2000) 266 pp. $50.00

Despite the numerous studies of Amerindian populations of Latin America published in the last two decades, coverage of the peoples of northeastern Argentina and Paraguay does not appear with much frequency. Historians and anthropologists have shown much greater interest in native populations of the Andes and Mesoamerica. Hindering the study of peoples of southeastern South America are several factors: the virtual absence of documents written in the native languages, the limited perspective of documentation written primarily by their enemies, the geographical mobility of the population, and the limited resources of regional archives. In this regard, Saeger's book on the groups comprising Guaycaruan society over the course of the colonial period and beyond represents an important addition to the research on native Americans.

The Chaco region became the focus of Indian missionary activity—particularly by Jesuits—in southern South America. In the Guaycuruans, Europeans—lay and clergy—found a difficult population to control. Consisting of warring subgroups—including Abipones, Toba, Mocobis, and others—Guaycuruans presented a dispersed population of hunter-gatherers that resisted the Europeans both passively and aggressively. Europeans' interaction with them alternated between raids and ephemeral commercial relations that lasted only as long as benefits were readily evident to both sides. Guaycuruans proved to be frustrating opponents, making additional European settlement difficult. Many Guaycuruans viewed smallpox epidemics and depleted food sources as divine retribution, whereas Christians articulated converse interpretations centered on divine gifts. By the eighteenth century, demographic and environmental factors were forcing Guaycuruans into grudging acceptance of Jesuit missions, although this attitude entailed only transient collaboration and limited conversion.

Various chapters describe Guaycuruan society, economy, religion, and the relationship between politics and war on the part of both whites and Amerindians, first in the context of the mission era that peaked by the mid-1700s and then of the dismembered lines of communication following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. The period between the independence movements and the subsequently fractured political landscape spanned nearly the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century. This era saw a constant tug of war between a declining, but still threatening, [End Page 331] force of Amerindian raiders and equally crude responses by regional officials. The final blow to Guaycuruan resistance came with the greater effectiveness of the Argentine national army, backed by an infrastructure that by the 1880s was capable of encircling and isolating the remaining few thousands of Guaycuruans barely capable of sustaining themselves.

Saeger's motivation for this book is made clear from the start: He takes exception to Sweet's interpretation of the missions' effects on the lives of native peoples—the grim view of the mission as the institutional arm responsible for destroying entire Amerindian populations.1 At first glance this appears to be a small foundation on which to launch a book. But Saeger complains that Sweet's interpretation of the missions represents an all-too-easily accepted view that is unwarranted in light of the data presented by the Chaco case. Saeger finds no evidence that missions caused premature death or were responsible for devastating diseases. Large-scale epidemics were not features of eighteenth-century society in the region, and diseases had been introduced in the sixteenth century by the conquerors, not by the missionaries. Contrary to Sweet's position, Saeger notes that cultural patterns survived within the missions, including traditional food consumption. The temporally asymmetrical nature of Sweet's interpretations was the result of attributing events that had occurred during the conquest to the period when most effective mission activities occurred, thereby inculcating a paradigm of victimization and Eurocentric triumphalism that combine to deny Amerindian agency.

These points are certainly important and bear on debates stretching beyond the realm of relations between whites and indigenous peoples. Nonetheless, important issues do not receive their due in Saeger's narrow field of vision. If Sweet...

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