Jesuit-Guarani Ruins, part 1: Historical Aspects and Travel Plans
This is a series of five posts about a recent short trip by bus and bike in Argentina and Paraguay to explore the jesuit missions of the XVII century in South America
Travel plans
After studying a bit about the jesuit settlements in South America, I decided to make a bike trip from Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, to the ruins of the missionary reductions in northeastern argentinian province of Misiones and southern paraguayan department of Itapúa.
The whole region, including the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, has 30 jesuit ruins where 7 are considered UNESCO World Heritage sites.
As for the trip, I would stick to four of these ruins:
- San Ignacio Miní, Misiones, Argentina
- Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana, Misiones, Argentina
- Jesús de Tavarangüé, Itapúa, Paraguay
- La Santísima Trinidad del Paraná, Itapúa, Paraguay
The main idea was to cover the distances by bike from Foz do Iguaçu to the argentinian cities of San Ignacio and Santa Ana, then to Posadas to cross the international border to Paraguay for the city of Encarnación, ending up in Trinidad and Jesús de Tavarangüé.
But due to the time window I had available between jobs in São Paulo, I had to make most of the route by bus and took my bike along to cover smaller distances. Another strong reason that made me decide to do so is that I have a road bike and at least half part of the road from Foz do Iguaçu to San Ignacio, the Ruta Nacional 12, has no paved shoulders, a bunch of miles are single laned and it has a heavy traffic of doubledecker buses and trucks. Considering that RN-12 the main federal road in Misiones that connects the province to both Brazil and the rest of Argentina, I didn’t want to take the risk.
The trip is doable by bike? Yes. If you have a gravel or a mountain bike. The shoulders that aren’t paved are covered in dirt, grass or gravel.
So, long story short, my travel plan ended up being:
- 🚲 Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, to Puerto Iguazú, Argentina, by bike: 13 km
- 🚌 Puerto Iguazú to San Ignacio Miní by bus: 243 km
- 🚲 San Ignacio Miní to Santa Ana by bike: 17 km
- 🚌 Santa Ana to Posadas by bus: 48 km
- 🚌 Posadas, Argentina, to Encarnación, Paraguay, by bus (ride a bike is prohibited. You can also do it by train): 10 km
- 🚌 Encarnación to Trinidad by bus: 31 km
- 🚲 Trinidad to Jesús de Tavarangüé by bike: 13 km
The way back:
- 🚲 Jesús de Tavarangué to Trinidad by bike: 13 km
- 🚲 Trinidad to Encarnación by bike (I couldn’t embark on a bus): 35 km
- 🚌 Encarnación, Paraguay, to Posadas, Argentina, by bus: 10 km
- 🚌 Posadas to Puerto Iguazú, by bus: 302 km
- 🚲 Puerto Iguazú, Argentina, to Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, by bike: 13 km
On the next four posts I present the logistic and touristic aspect of each destination. Information that is worth to both a cyclist, a backpacker or a weekend tourist.
Historical aspects
The Jesuit-Guarani Missions of Companía de Jesús
The Companía de Jesús or Society of Jesus was founded in 1540 by the spanish catholic priests Ignacio de Loyola and Francisco Javier in Paris. Some of the missionaires — the jesuits — were sent in the late decades of XVI century to the spanish territories in South America, the west portion according to the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). The east portion was portuguese territory, Brazil nowadays. Their main duties were to expand the exploration of spanish lands and evangelize the natives.
By 1608, the jesuits reach the region of Río de La Plata coming from Peru and found the first mission, San Ignacio Guazú, where the city of San Ignacio, Paraguay, is located today. The next 25 years saw the creation of 42 new missions in the whole region. The reducciones, townships lead by jesuit priests were also used to protect the guarani natives from portuguese attacks. Different from the treatment given by the portugueses who enslaved them, since 1596 any indigenous buddy inside a jesuit mission was considered a vassal of the king, therefore protected from becoming slave in the hands of the colonos españoles.
The townships were composed basically by a central plaza surrounded by the viviendas, the indigenous houses, a church, a cemetery, the colegio and the talleres or workshops where the natives could learn ocidental crafts. The structures were all constructed in stone and wood.
Jesuits and guaranis lived together in peace: if on one hand the guarani people were lenient and were conquered easily, on the other hand the jesuits were also permissive regarding cultural traditions of the natives. A political system led by both priests and caciques managed the reductions successfully.
The reductions were pretty wealthy economic and culturally speaking, bringing protection to the guaranis and elevating their living standards. While the guaranis became monogamic and sedentary, they could keep their traditions and knowledges of sculpting wood, making ceramic objects, cooking with fire, rudimentar farming, clothes from animal leather. The natives learned improvements and new techniques like sculpting rocks, manipulate iron and silver, a more advanced sewing and were introduced to European cuisine with new plants brought by the jesuits and other unknown food and beverages like wine and cheese. The near reducciones used to trade items with each other.
The jesuits still introduced the powder to their lives, improving their war techniques with the use of horses and metal armory, while keeping bow and arrow. Music was another subject of enhancement: while natives already used to play drums and rattles, sing and dance, they were introduced to more advanced musical instruments like the stringed ones.
In the map above, we’re talking about this yellowish territory limited in yellow and green. That was the Province of Paraguay, much bigger than today. The blue portion in the top right corner of the map was the portuguese territory of Brazil.
The east portion of this region interests us especially: the region of Guayrá, brazilian state of Paraná today. There was originally founded one of the missions I’ve visited, San Ignacio Miní. The region was dense in forests and jungles, used by the guarani people escaping from the portugueses and the mamelucos.
The place had 15 of the townships in Paraguayan territory, housing more than 100,000 natives.
By 1627 the region started to be invaded by the portuguese Bandeirantes coming from the brazilian state of São Paulo — portuguese territory at the time — to capture guaranis for slavery. First, around the reductions and later the Bandeirantes invaded and destroyed the townships. The invasions captured more than 60,000 guaranis.
By 1631, the natives from the region of Guayrá that survived concentrated in the two northern reducciones that remained intact: San Ignacio Miní and Loreto. It was a matter of time for the two townships to be invaded, so a great expedition was organized by the priest Pablo Ruiz de Montoya: the 12,000 remanescent natives, 10% of the original population, built more than 700 wood rafts that navigated down the Paranapanema River, at north of the region, until it became Paraná River, at west.
When the expedition passed by the Ciudad Real del Guayrá, they found difficulties: encomenderos tried to stop them and the region was place of a sequence of seven falls, the Sete Quedas. The natives had to dispose of all the rafts and keep going by the jungle. There, 2,000 other guaranis from the reduction of Tayaoba joined the expedition and they reached the reductions of Natividad del Acaray y Santa María del Iguazú, where they received help to move forward. These reductions are Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil nowadays.
In 1632, the jesuits and 4,000 remaining natives settled and refounded the reductions of San Ignacio Miní and Nuestra Señora de Loreto, place where they are located today in south region of Misiones Province, Argentina. This episode is known as the Guayreño Exodus.
Another reduction that I visited in the region, Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana, was built in the same decade and is a few kilometers away from San Ignacio Miní and Nuestra Señora de Loreto, all in Misiones province.
More than a century later, Portugual and Spain signed the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, where Portugal would give up the Colonia del Sacramento (Uruguay today), the nearest town from Buenos Aires crossing the Río de La Plata and a portuguese outpost that offered danger and vulnerability to the spanish Buenos Aires. In exchange, Spain would cede the portion written “Brasil” in the figure above, the Misiones Orientales at the west margin of Rio Uruguay — the gray line diving Brazil and Argentina.
Now imagine the scenario: seven reducciones, 30,000 guaranis living in peace with jesuits for more than a century. The priests suddenly approach them and say “let’s go guys, we gotta move”. Well, land is something very important to natives, that’s where their relatives are buried, they live and get fed of the land and they are happy to live this way. And it is now portuguese territory, exposing the natives back to portuguese oppresion. They couldn’t understand it, how a decision could change their lives this way and oblige then to simply move away.
So, the Guaraní War took place from 1754 onwards after efforts by the Spanish army to remove the natives failed. The conflict ended in early 1756 with the Battle of Caiboaté, where a joint of the Spanish-Portugual Armies vanished 1500 guaranis while having only 4 European deaths. The seven reductions in now-Brazilian territory were taken by the portugueses and destroyed or abandoned. Portugal decreed the official expulsion of the jesuits from their territory.
In a general panorama, the economic success of the jesuit missions and their relative independence from the Spanish government raised suspicions that a secession dispute could happen at any time. This fear culminated in the expulsion of the jesuits from all the Spanish territories in the Americas under command of King Carlos III in 1767, exactly ten years after Portugal has made it fashion.
All the reductions were taken by other Christian orders like the Franciscans, Dominics and Mercedarians or left to abandon.
Illustration above: plan of a reduction and the population list of 32 towns with their latins names in 1767, date of the jesuit expulsion. The ones I’ve visited: S. Anna, S. Ignatius Mini, Jesus and Trinitas (2nd column).
From 1900 onwards, restoration efforts were made by the three neighbor countries, culminating in seven reductions being considered UNESCO World Heritage sites: San Ignacio Miní, Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana and Nuestra Señora de Loreto, all in Argentina, Jesús de Tavarangüé and La Santísima Trinidad in Paraguay and the brazilian São Miguel das Missões.
The series
- Jesuit-Guarani Ruins, part 1: Historical Aspects and Travel Plans
- Jesuit-Guarani Ruins, part 2: San Ignacio Miní, Argentina
- Jesuit-Guarani Ruins, part 3: Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana, Argentina
- Jesuit-Guarani Ruins, part 4: Jesús de Tavarangüé, Paraguay
- Jesuit-Guarani Ruins, part 5: La Santísima Trinidad del Paraná, Paraguay
