The Guarani under Spanish Rule in the Rio de la Plata (review)

Inspired by Counter Reformation zeal, the establishment of the Guaraní Missions in the early 1600s was one of the most noteworthy efforts of the Jesuits in the New World. Eventually, the region under this order’s command stretched from present southern Paraguay across the Paraná and Uruguay rivers into what is now the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Jesuits in the Río de la Plata enjoyed the favor of Spanish monarchs as their missions provided a stable frontier and bulwark against Portuguese expansion from the east.

The order’s determination to insulate these establishments from the hispanic society of the colonial Plata signified that for the first 150 years of the Guarani missions, Indians interacted with only a small number of Jesuits. These missionaries instructed the Guaraní in the Christian religion, and introduced them to European pastoral, agricultural, and artisan skills. As this study reveals, however, the inhabitants of the missions were not just passive recipients. Rather, Indians were active participants in the creation of a flourishing and unique Guaraní mission culture. The language of the missions was Guaraní and the Jesuits fostered a degree of literacy in the native tongue. Elements of pre-Columbian culture survived, among which were even some ancient religious practices (although in a surreptitious manner). The arming of Guaraní men to counter slave raiders from Portuguese Brazil and at times to enforce Spanish policy in the Upper Plata, appealed to their warrior tradition.

Neither the Jesuits, nor the Guaraní, could halt time, and the unique conditions that enabled Indians to survive as an island in the midst of colonial hispanic culture disappeared by the mid-eighteenth century. Under the impact of the Borbón reorganization of the state, indeed of society, the methods of the seventeenth century that Indians and other subaltern classes of the Empire employed to further their ends proved less viable. “Enlightened bureaucrats” of the empire knew what was best for the Indians, and the latter would just have to accept new policies.

The Treaty of Madrid in 1750, by which Spain and Portugal agreed upon boundaries in the New World, was a disaster for the Guaraní. The pact called for seven eastern missions to be ceded to Portugal. Ever since the paulista slave raids of the mid-1600s, the Guaraní considered the Portuguese to be their deadly enemies. Now, while proclaiming their loyalty to Spanish monarch, the Guaraní themselves, independently of Jesuit advice and leadership, took the lead in resistance to the treaty. Their protests to local officials as well as to Madrid were to no avail. Some fled the missions; others finally decided that armed resistance was necessary. In the latter case, the hastily raised Indian forces were no match for regular troops in the Guaraní War. Opponents of the Jesuits in Europe blamed the order for the resistance, but it was really the Indians, concerned about their future under Portuguese rule, who resisted. Surely, as this work illustrates, no greater proof of Indian capacity for independent action to ensure their survival can be found than this tragic conflict.

No longer did the Jesuits enjoy royal favor. Royal officials considered them a foe of the centralizing efforts of the Borbón monarchy, and the structure of their missions to be an anomaly of the past. In 1767 Charles III decreed the expulsion of Jesuits from the empire, and after that expulsion the Crown appointed royal administrators over the Guaraní missions. The result was an economic decline for that region whose complex ramifications are well handled in this study. Again, by means long customary in hispanic tradition, Indians complained about harmful policies and corrupt administrators, and pleaded for economic redemption. For all the good intentions of some officials, little was accomplished to relieve the Indians of their distress. In the face of economic disaster, they utilized their last resort and many fled the missions...