Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
had been local merchants. Moreover, each new tax official had his own
detachment of guards. Eight intendants were assigned to the principal
cities of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1782. Thereafter, the
Intendancy spread to the other Spanish American colonies.
Tax revenues rose for the entire Río de la Plata region (see figure
on page 69). This resulted more from the efficiency of collection than
from economic growth, and no doubt, the tax burden rose for every-
one in the region. For these reasons, smuggling and contraband never
disappeared.
Church-State Relations
As the civil authority expanded, the Crown also sought to exercise its
patronage over the Catholic Church by reducing the clergy's temporal
power in the colonies. The Jesuits became the first victims of this policy.
Not only had the Jesuits caused resentment among some colonists with
their success at controlling Indian labor and at tax-exempt commerce
of products from their profitable mission estates, but also they had
become implicated in Iberian politics. The Jesuits were perceived as
more loyal to the pope in Rome than to the king under whose patron-
age the religious order had grown wealthy. The order was eventually
expelled from the Spanish Empire in 1767.
In the Río de la Plata, the Jesuits were to leave their colleges in the
major cities, give up their
estancias,
and quit the University of Córdoba.
Likewise, the missionaries were to abandon their work among the
Chaco and Pampas indigenous peoples. Carrying out the order in
Paraguay was an especially delicate matter. The Jesuit missions there
contained nearly 100,000 Guaraní Indians, who maintained their own
armed militias. Special emissaries of the king, accompanied by cavalry
units, conveyed the secret edict to Asunción. They arrested the Jesuit
priests—some in the dead of night—and quickly packed them on river-
boats to Buenos Aires for their exile to Italy. Few people learned about
the royal orders until the Jesuits were already gone.
The reorganization of the militias paid off handsomely for royal
officials when the Crown made the decision to banish the Jesuits from
the Spanish Empire. Public officials charged with the expulsion order
believed that the removal of the Jesuits might provoke rebellion by the
Indians and slaves under their control, but the exile of the Jesuits came
off without great violence. The authorities confiscated the missions and
haciendas and distributed them to other missionary orders or to the
merchant brotherhoods.
