On a mission...

Trip Start Aug 31, 2008
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33
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Trip End Feb 02, 2009


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Where I stayed
Adventure Hostel
(San Ignacio hotels)

Flag of Argentina  ,
Thursday, October 30, 2008

If you want to sell folks something, you have to catch them while they´re vulnerable. Half-asleep, maybe, or after hearing some upsetting news (telemarketers, take note.) Or perhaps the moment they step off a long-distance bus. Yep, we were suckers, we went with the bus vulture. The bus vultures are a crew of hotel/lodging representatives that hang out around the bus station (or stop) all day waiting for some foreign suckers to come in. They´re much less aggressive here than in Peru, but even in the best of circumstances, I usually emerge from the bus all bleary eyed and sleepy, definitely not in the mood to have flyers shoved in my face or have the better qualities of the game room extolled to me. This time, it worked though and we headed off to our fate.
The reason we were in San Ignacio (another little town in the Missiones province) in the first place was to take a look at the ancient Jesuit missiones that are scattered all over the place in this region, both in Paraguay and Argentina. Indulge me in a little history lesson. In the early 16th century, Spanish Jesuit missionaries were sent to the borders of the Spanish empire to maintain Spain´s claim over the region against the nearby Portugese colonies, at least from the crown´s point of view. The Jesuit´s objective here was an evangelical one: to use classical teachings of art, music, agriculture, architecture, and animal husbandry to educate the indigenous Guarani people of the area. A quiet forest tribe, the Guarani were plagued by slave hunters, both Portugese and from neighboring tribes, and the ever-present threat of starvation. The Jesuits offered them some relief in the form of jungle missions, stone cities where the Guarani could take refuge, learn to farm, read, paint, and build. While I´m sure moving from a simple, nomadic, forest lifestyle to a baroque catholic european settlement must have been quite the difficult adjustment, overall the Guarani thrived in this environment, produceing a melting pot sculpture style, Baroque-Guarani, and some equally incredible music. The missions were abandoned in the early-mid nineteeth century after the Jesuits were expelled by Spain, and the jungle took over. Today, many walls and columns are still standing at San Ignacio, the largest and best preserved that we visited, but others are sadly neglected, with half-finished excavations left covered in tarp after funding dried up.
These places are eerie, remote ones, only reachable on foot, each with a standardized layout. Each of the three missions we visited included a college, library, workshop/studio, cathedral/church, hospital, and a house for widowed or single women and children who could not provide for themselves. There´s a strong utopian element to all the descriptions of the colonies, causing me to wonder if the atmosphere back then was really all that rosy. But, I suppose, that´s part of the danger of interpreting history solely through artifacts.
Today, the Guarani people are dwindling in number, with only 3500 registered full-blooded tribe members. They live in scattered pockets in this region, many in severe poverty. It´s difficult to say whether they benefitted from mission life in the long term; perhaps the tribe would have been wiped out three centuries ago were it not for the Jesuits. Do some further research on your own if you´re interested-this whole region is literally a historical/archaeological treasure chest. In the meantime, though, I hope you enjoy these pictures: San Ignacio, Santa Ana, Loreto missions
And the rest from Carlos Pellegrini (more animals in these, please take the time to check them out): capybara babies!
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