Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
yerba
trees. Later, Jesuit missionaries began to cultivate the tree as a
plantation crop. Eventually, the Jesuits and their mission Indians nearly
supplanted the inefficient forest gathering of
yerba
by merchants. The
commercial advantage of the missionaries aroused the envy of the gen-
try in Asunción, causing a long-festering breach between the Spaniards
in Paraguay.
The Jesuits
By the 1620s, the Jesuits had established missions among the Guaraní
Indians in the region east of Asunción in present-day Brazil. The mis-
sions, of course, had always been an issue of contention between the
missionaries and the settlers over control of the Indians. The Portuguese
settlers at São Paulo had taken to enslaving the Guaraní because of their
reputation as good agricultural workers. The first Jesuit missions had
gathered groups of Indians together into large settlements; therefore,
the Brazilian slave hunters liked to attack the mission Guaraní, carry-
ing off hundreds of slaves. In response, the Jesuits successfully obtained
permission from the Spanish Crown to arm the Guaraní Indians. This
was a momentous decision reestablishing the pre-Columbian heritage
of military prowess among the Guaraní. In 1641, 300 colonists from
São Paulo and 600 Native allies attacked the missions. The Brazilian
expedition suffered a decisive defeat. But the Jesuit arming of the
Guaraní also annoyed the settlers at Asunción, for it closed off to them
this source of indigenous workers.
By the 17th century, many missionary priests had received their
training and ordination in the Americas. These native-born priests and
nuns were exclusively Creoles, Americans born of European parentage.
People of mixed blood, blacks, and Indians were excluded from the
priesthood. The schools at which novices studied eventually became
the first universities of the Americas. Among these was the University
of Córdoba, founded in 1613, which eventually opened up to Creole
young men who did not intend to prepare for the priesthood but aimed
for careers in law and bureaucracy.
Financial support for these schools and for proselytizing came from
a number of sources. The regular orders obtained from the Spanish
Crown land and the rights to Indian labor in order to support their
work. The Jesuits in particular became known as the most savvy of the
religious businessmen. Jesuit headquarters in Córdoba oversaw a nearly
self-sufficient economic system that included haciendas for wheat,
farms for food crops, ranches for cattle and sheep, plantations for sugar
