Advertisement
Published: October 22nd 2006
Edit Blog Post
After awaking and leaving the decrepit little hovel that called itself a hostel, we caught perhaps the slowest bus in all of Argentina, which would take us 300km south to a small town outside of the capital of Misiones, called San Ignacio Mini, home to one of the best preserved ruins of the Jesuit Missions that dot this spectacular jungle landscape. After taking what in effect was a milk run, stopping at over 31 different stops, not including the machete wielding campesino at the side of the road who waved the bus to stop, we made our way to the ruins after 6 hours of agonizingly slow and bumpy bus service. I do not exaggerate when I say that we literally saw, visited and stopped in every tiny town between Puerto Igazu and San Ignacio Mini, passing endless Pine plantations and one street towns where everything from dogs humping to old men drinking Mate could be seen from the comforts of a hot and humid, 1970’s vintage bus.
We rolled into San Ignacio Mini, following a local women who had kindly offered to show us the way to the cities main attraction, the ruins of the ancient mission. Taking her
advice, we entered the gates of the municipal park and joined an English speaking tour that had departed only moments before our arrival. If anyone has seen the movie “The Mission” a classic from the 80’s with Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons, they will understand what the Jesuit Ruins consist of and the general story of the Jesuits in South America.
After Columbus ‘found’ the New World endless explorers, i.e. convicts, con artists, murderers and the lot, crossed the Atlantic in search of wealth in the fertile and ripe for pillage lands of South America. However there were also men who crossed the ocean for a more clandestine cause, which was to convert the native inhabitants of this newly found land to honest, hard working Christians.
When news reached Europe that thousands, if not millions of local inhabitants of this new world were awaiting the word of god, dozens of adventurous and zealous missionaries found their way to the tropical regions now known as the triple border, separating Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The missionaries, arrived in an uncharted world nearly 400 years ago with a mission of converting the indigenous Indians, misunderstood and thought to be devil worshipping
heathens, into proper Christians whose saviour would be Jesus Christ.
The Jesuit cause was aided by the arrival of Portuguese slave hunters, who filled these pristine forest in search of their human prey and were known to be violent and ruthless killers and enslavers of the local Guarani. These men thought nothing of quartering an Indian chief in front of his community in order to make a point; men who had been cast out of their own countries for lack of humanity now roamed these jungle, rendering this land more dangerous than it had been previously been when it was filled with jaguars, alligators and poison snakes. In such a caustic environment the missionaries, mostly Italian, offered the Guarani Indians a sanctuary where they could escape the barbarism of these bearded invaders from the East. The Guarani language group is known to have extended all along the Eastern coast of South America from Northern Argentina to the Darien Gap in Columbia. It consisted of millions of people who had roamed the jungles of this great land mass for thousands of years.
The Jesuits built enormous complexes, known as ‘Missions’ to house the native populations and teach the word
of god. These sanctuaries also served as headquarters’ for the Jesuits own commercial interests which included both Guarani handicrafts and plantations of both fruits and Yerba Mate. Harnessing the enormous free labour provided by the Guarani, the missions became a significant force in the burgeoning economy of the this region. So much so that they were eventually expelled from the territory by the Spanish and Portuguese crown who had decided that the Jesuits were unfairly monopolizing the abundant free labour that existed in the form of Guarani slaves. According to our guide, the history of the Jesuits in South America becomes a little bit hazy and misunderstood during this period, although what is known is that missions, beautiful complexes made from the red earth of the surrounding lands and hewn rocks of the jungle were abandoned and soon returned to the same earth from which they were created. All over this tropical region, and in particular in what is now known as Paraguay remain the ruins of these missions, offering a glimpse of what life was like for thousands of Guarani during an enormous period of change following the conquest of the Americas.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.118s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 15; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0788s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb