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The Guaraní and Their Missions: A Socioeconomic History

2015; Duke University Press; Volume: 95; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-3088776

1527-1900

Guillermo Wilde,

Religion and Society in Latin America

In contrast to the Spanish-language literature, there are only a few rigorous studies in English on the Jesuit missions of Paraguay. This lack has been generally covered over by eloquent classics of apologetics such as A Vanished Arcadia (1901) by R. B. Cunninghame Graham and The Lost Paradise (1975) by Philip Caraman or the many translations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit writings, which offer an oversimplified portrait of the Jesuit “state” of Paraguay. The recent turn in the historiography of the region emphasizes at least three aspects: the insertion of the Paraguayan case into a broader regional context, the complexity and internal contradictions of the Jesuit missionary regime, and indigenous participation in the formation of the missions. Although ethnohistory and demography have played key roles in this turn, economic history had not made substantial contributions since the work of Magnus Mörner (1968), Juan Carlos Garavaglia (1983), Nicholas P. Cushner (1983), and Rafael Carbonell de Masy (1992). But these studies focused only on the Jesuit period and were marked by now resolved debates on the colonial system, the modes of production, and the expansion of the world economy. Julia Sarreal's The Guaraní and Their Missions: A Socioeconomic History, carefully edited by Stanford University Press, retrieves the central debates in economic history on Jesuit Paraguay, incorporating new topics and sources to the research agenda.One of the book's main contributions has to do with the period considered, the eighteenth century, the moment of the transition from Jesuit rule to secular administration after the order's expulsion in 1768. This period involved radical changes in the administrative structure of the Spanish colonial system in general that directly affected the missions, which shifted from a paradigm of population and administrative segregation to a model of integration and assimilation based on the growth of agriculture, trade, and individual economic activities. This transition had not been sufficiently considered from a socioeconomic perspective. Sarreal analyzes the progressive breakdown and decay of the regime installed by the Jesuits, eradicated by the officials following the Jesuits with the aim of boosting the region. Through a thorough analysis of a variety of sources — mainly account books, inventories of goods, and population censuses — Sarreal describes the decline in the missions' production and work and identifies changes in patterns of consumption, distribution, and exchange. These transformations reveal a growing regionalization of the missionary economy in post-Jesuit times. Until then, the Jesuits had controlled an integrated trade system between missions and colonial cities, along with solidarity networks based on collective production. The sources used by Sarreal point to cultural aspects that the book mentions but does not analyze. For example, among the inventories of goods, Sarreal identifies the purchase of sombreros and Spanish-style clothing (chapter 7), which evinces a progressive Hispanization of the population, particularly the indigenous elite, during the period. Such a cultural detail interestingly broadens Sarreal's argument to include the reconstruction of prestige networks (a political economy) inside and outside the missions in the post-Jesuit era. The social life of these objects (their acquisition, circulation, and exhibition) is a topic that should definitely be addressed in future research.Sarreal provides a very good balance between general, regional, and local levels, identifying causes and effects of successive crises affecting missions, the particular role of some mission towns (such as Yapeyú or San Miguel) in the attempt to recover from these crises, and the contradictions between the orders of central authorities and concrete local realities. The book combines strictly economic data with social and political aspects regarding conflicts between administrators, priests, caciques, and cabildantes in the post-Jesuit social structure. Sarreal shows that the indigenous elite actively participated in economic decision making (for example, by signing account books). Flight was also a common strategy among a segment of the indigenous elite after the Jesuits' expulsion. In short, Sarreal shows that liberal reforms produced the decline of the missionary regime after the expulsion of the Jesuits. The book also includes a series of tables with economic and demographic information, plus a useful index of subjects and names and an updated bibliography.As a specialist on the same period of transition, I would make a methodological observation. Sarreal's approach to the Jesuit period (chapters 1–4) is almost exclusively based on Jesuit official accounts, most of them published, which induce a suspiciously coherent view of the Jesuit period. This highlights a big contrast with her treatment of the post-Jesuit period, which is more abundantly, systematically, and rigorously documented and analyzed by means of mostly unpublished materials. It is my intuition that the use of memoriales, books of precepts, and letters between provincials, superiors, and general fathers — that is to say, internal documentation of the Jesuit order — would have probably suggested a more nuanced picture of the Jesuit period. This does not reduce the value of this important book, which will be useful for both students interested in having access to the research on Jesuit missions and scholars interested in the socioeconomic history of Latin America at the end of eighteenth century.