A Spanish policy demanding that Native Americans live apart from colonial society so that missionaries could convert indigenous peoples to Christianity and Spanish culture.
In northern Argentina and Paraguay Franciscans first began the process of reduccion, or reduction, of Native Americans. This process involved isolating Native communities from outside influences other than missionaries. Although the Franciscans started the process, Jesuits perfected the method. With the reducciones Jesuits hoped to eliminate negative influences by Spanish colonists upon the Native population. In this way they hoped to use intensive indoctrination to convert Natives to Christianity and
Spanish culture. Not only did the isolation promote the conversion process, it also protected indigenous peoples from slave raiders. However, by congregating Native Americans onto reserves, the missionaries increased their exposure to European diseases and inadvertently promoted the spread of epidemics.
Although reduccion was the official Jesuit mission policy and became common in South America, many aspects of reducciones were used throughout Spanish America during the colonial era. Most of the reducciones were selfsufficient from cultivating European and American crops, raising cattle, horses, sheep, and various other items, and what they could not produce for themselves they bought with the surplus that they created.
Further reading: Philip Caraman, The Lost Paradise: The Jesuit Republic in South America (New York: Seabury Press, 1976); Magnus Morner, The Political and Economic Activities of the Jesuits in the La Plata Region: The Haps-burg Era (Stockholm: Victor Petterson, 1953).
—Dixie Ray Haggard
World History
