The Jesuit Missions were Utopia come true in the heart of South America, one of the most important missions of the Catholic Church and a paradigm of the American missionary work. ... more

The Jesuit Missions were Utopia come true in the heart of South America, one of the most important missions of the Catholic Church and a paradigm of the American missionary work. They are the result of the evangelical determination of the Jesuit priests to convert the Guaraní aborigines to Christianity.

It was the fusion of European and Indian cultures: noblemen from Castile assimilated local customs, language and Indian organization. The Indians - mainly Guarani Indians - accepted this development because it freed them from slavery and from being controlled by the colonists.

At the beginning of the XVIII century there were 30 towns, 15 in what now is Argentina and the remaining ones in Paraguay and Brazil. The missions were a synthesis between Spanish cities and the Guarani villages. There were big collective houses, of about 50 meters long, where 20 to 60 families lived. Internal walls, forming individual units for each family, separated the houses. Streets forming squares separated them. In the central square, the church was the luxury of the town, of Baroque-Hispanic-Guarani style.

The school, the padres' residence, shops and the cemetery were at the sides of the main square. They formed a true multinational organization with people coming from different countries and applying the same principles in all their missions. After the expulsion of the Jesuit fathers they were turned abruptly into the ruins that nowadays are visited by tourists from all over the world.