They Built Utopia (The Jesuit Missions in Paraguay) 1610-1768 by Frederick J. Reiter (review)

154BOOK REVIEWS Sánchez and Luis Laso de la Vega. Chapter VIII: the ineffective efforts of the Archdiocese of Mexico to estabUsh a uniform tradition for the apparitions and the inabiUty of other writers to present documentary evidence to the same end. Chapter LX: the inabiUty of apparitionists Francisco de Florencia and Sigüenza y Góngora to Unk Antonio Valeriano with the Nican mopohua. Chapter X: consideration of two factors that played a significant role in estabUshing the "apparition tradition," as it is known today: (1) a number of powerful eighteenth-century sermons favoring the apparition story; (2) the cessation of the 1737 epidemic in Mexico attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Chapter XI: apparitionist Lorenzo Boturini's research into the 1531 event and the confusion he introduced into the issue. Also a consideration of two challengers of the Guadalupe tradition,Juan Bautista Muñoz and Servando Teresa de Mier. Chapter XII carries the author's conclusion: "Guadalupe stiU remains the most powerful reUgious and national symbol Ui Mexico today. This symboUsm, however, does not rest on any objective historical basis." Provocative as this study is, a cautionary note must be sounded, however, because of the recent discovery in Mexico of a sixteenth-century document in Náhuatl which carries the signature of Bernardino de Sahagún and the figure of Juan Diego and of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Whether this is part of a sixteenthcentury codex relating the story of the apparitions or not remains to be seen. Until this has been estabUshed, a number of Poole's conclusions must be held tentatively. Charles E. Ronan, S.J. Loyola University Chicago They Built Utopia (TheJesuit Missions in Paraguay) 1610-1768. By Frederick J. Reiter. (Potomac, Maryland: Scripta Humanistica. 1995. Pp. x, 401. $75.00.) TheJesuit missions to the Guarani peoples ofParaguay are usuaUy described as successful ventures, although few contemporary scholars would agree with the author that they constituted ". . . a true Utopia in the tropical wilderness of Paraguay" (p. i). Reiter justifies this book on the grounds that no American has yet written the history of these reductions and that European authors teU only part ofthe story. Like them, however, he himsetfteUs only fragments ofthe tale, and he mostly tiUs old ground. The bibUography, which is generally helpful, even omits The Lost Paradise:TheJesuit Republic in Paraguay, by PhiUp Caraman , a work similar to Reiter's in point ofview, although superior in execution. They Built Utopia has unusual emphases.Writing from a colonialJesuit point of view, the author devotes about ninety pages to the missions' formation from 1610 to 1750, almost 150 to the Treaty of Limits and the Guarani War in the 1750's, and about ninety to the expulsion of the Jesuits. Thus most of the book deals with the last seventeen years ofthe missions. Another problem is with ev- BOOK REVIEWS155 idence, and Reiter's standards are inconsistent. Portions of the account are fictionaUzed ,whUe others are footnoted in scholarly fashion. The author cites pubUshed primary sources and older multi-volume histories, but Uttle modern scholarship informs his argument. He neglects fundamental anthropological and ethnohistorical work on the Guaranis,who constituted the work force that actuaUy buUt the missions. Reiter pictures Father Roque González, for example, teaching Guaranis to grow corn and yucca, plants which they cultivated before theJesuits arrived. Pre-Jesuit Guarani history, economic patterns, society, and reUgion can help explain theJesuits' success, but such topics never surface in this book. In feet,the index contains no entry for Guaranis,although there is one for their Abipon enemies. Reiter says at one point that the Guaranis who joined Jesuit missions were "savage nomads" (p. ii) and then inconsistendy admits that they were "atfeady femiUar with the rudiments of agriculture" (p. 30). He also ignores the contributions of such Franciscan pioneers as Fray Luis Bolaflos, who ministered to Guaranis in Paraguay before the Jesuits. Here heroic Jesuits lead mute Guaranis against selfish enemies like the PauUstas of Brazil, Paraguayan Bishop Bernardino de Cárdenas, O.F.M., and the colonists of Paraguay. Reiter displays Uttle understanding of the Spanish empire and no sympathy for the other residents ofthe Rio de la...