The Jesuits had begun in 1607 to…
1609 CE
The Jesuits had begun in 1607 to establish missions at various points on the continent, which afford some protection of the natives from slave-raiders.
The most successful of the Jesuit centers is Paraguay, the “vision in the jungle” which contemporaries call the Jesuit State.
Priests of different religious orders in the sixteenth century, had set out to evangelize the Americas, bringing Christianity to indigenous communities.
The colonial governments and missionaries agree on the strategy of gathering the often nomadic indigenous populations in larger communities called reductions in order to more effectively govern, tax, and Christianize them.
Reductions generally are also construed as an instrument to make the Indians adopt European lifestyles and values, which is not the case in the Jesuit reductions, where the Jesuits allow the natives to retain many of their precolonial cultural practices.
In Mexico the policy is called congregación, and also takes the form of the hospitals of Vasco de Quiroga, and the Franciscan Missions of California; in Portuguese Brazil they are known as aldeias.
Legally, under colonial rule, Indians are classified as minors, in effect children, to be protected and guided to salvation by European missionaries.
The Jesuits, only formally founded in 1540, are relatively late arrivals in the New World, from about 1570, especially compared to the Dominicans and Franciscans, and therefore have ad to look to the frontiers of colonization for mission areas.
The Jesuit reductions originate in the early seventeenth century when the Bishop Lizarraga asks for missionaries for Paraguay.
Acting in 1609 under instructions from Phillip III, the Spanish governor of Asunción makes a deal with the Jesuit Provincial of Paraguy.
The Jesuits agree to set up hamlets at strategic points along the Paraná river, populated with natives and maintaining a separation from Spanish towns.
The Jesuits are to "enjoy a tax holiday for ten years" which will extend longer.
The fundamental purpose, as far as the government is concerned, is to safeguard the frontier with the reductions where Indians can be introduced to European culture.
Three Jesuits in 1609 begin the first mission in San Ignacio Guazú.
This mission strategy will continue for one hundred and fifty years until 1767 when the Jesuits are expelled.
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