understanding life's mysteries through glue and paper

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nothing can make you feel the ambiance of a jungle like a papier-mache museum. it was like i was really there, in the thick of it...me and the bug-eyed crinkly alligator snapping at my feet. i can only assume they have this museum at the entrance to the ruins of san ignacio mini to simulate what it must have been like for the native savages and their jesuit benefactors to live there. there was also, inexplicably, the front half of a pirate ship docked in the courtyard of the museum, but that was just silly.

san ignacio mini was one of the many missions set up by the jesuits in the 15th-17th centuries in southern brazil and north argentina...they, predictably, were gung-ho on converting the natives, though they went about it in a slightly more humane manner than the portuguese--by setting up what was essentially a cooperative, with communal farms and a tightly-knit community where the firm looked after the infirm. the portuguese just sold everyone into slavery, which is what eventually proved to be the downfall of the jesuit missions.

anyway, after the portuguese pillaged and burned the mission like so many misplaced vikings, what remained was a bunch of crumbling red buildings, some of which retain the intricate carvings made by the residents. unfortunately, the awesomest of the ruins, a massive crumbling church that took 30 years to build, is supported by ugly wooden scaffolding. it totally ruined my pictures. couldn't the natives build something more, i don't know...stable? what if those missions had survived until now, huh? they would be praying in a crumbling church. they just don't *think*. i guess that's why they needed to be converted.

but don't think for a second that the ruins were all san ignacio had to offer...the town was also home to the uruguayan author horacio quiroga, famed for his macabre short stories about murderous children and decapitated chickens. he was also famed for the body count of his friends and relatives:

1. father was killed in a "shooting incident" when he was a baby
2. stepfather shot himself in a "shooting incident"
3. he shot and killed a friend accidentally in a "shooting incident"
4. his first wife killed herself in a "poisoning incident"
5. his children both killed themselves in an "undetermined incident"
6. upon learning he had stomach cancer, horacio finally ended his own life in a "poisoning incident"

but the best part was that when his second wife left him (surviving, apparently) he was so angry that he filled the swimming pool (built especially for her) with snakes. unfortunately there are no traces of these snakes anymore. we looked. they didn't even have any papier-mache replicas in the house's museum.

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