The Sculpture of the Misiones Orientales represents one of the most substantial and valuable surviving legacies of the culture of the Misiones Orientales, a group of Jesuit missions among the Guarani founded in the current Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. At the time owned by Spain, the Misiones Orientales were typical examples of the missionary model developed by the Jesuits in the Americas: an indigenous community fixed in a more or less self-sufficient settlement, and administered by the priests of the Society of Jesus, with the help of the natives. The success of the missions was enormous, being social, cultural, political, economic, and urbanistic projects that were advanced for their time and place. The participation of the Indians was not achieved without difficulties, but thousands chose to live in these settlements voluntarily, being converted to Catholicism and acculturated to the forms and manners of European life, producing large quantities of art, always under Jesuit supervision.
This artistic production, where sculpture appeared in prominence, was guided by European aesthetic models, and emerged with the basic purpose of providing a visual aid to the catechesis of the indigenous - in the process of evangelization organized by the missionaries of the New World. These works incorporated a multiplicity of stylistic currents, some updated, others long obsolete in Europe itself. However, there was a predominance of Baroque forms, and characteristics of the natives were also infused to some extent. Thus, such works reveal unique characteristics that define them, according to some authors, as an individualized regional form. Most of the missionary sculpture collection was lost over time, but there is still a significant collection of more than 500 pieces distributed among public institutions and private collections.
The importance of the missionary sculptures as a historical and artistic document is immense, and for this reason, it was listed by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage. The remaining collection still needs attention and care not to be further depreciated, especially considering that half of the identified pieces belong to private individuals and are not preserved as they should be, and some continue to disappear or are getting destroyed despite official protection.
Among critics, however, the Sculpture of the Misiones Orientales is still a matter of controversy: for some, it is a unique and original expression of the multifaceted Latin American Baroque, while for others it is nothing more than a crude and slavish imitation of European models.
Misiones Orientales
The Misiones Orientales were a typical example of the main model of evangelization created by the Jesuits in the Americas: fixed settlements (missions) in villages that brought together the native people. The history of the missions goes back to the ministry of the Apostles instituted by Jesus himself, when he sent his disciples to go around the world proclaiming the gospel. The main objective of these settlements was to create a society with the benefits and qualities of European Christian society, but free of its vices and wickedness. These missions were founded by the Jesuits throughout the colonial Americas, and according to Manuel Marzal, summarized the views of other scholars, constituting one of the most remarkable utopias in history.
The Jesuits became famous for their pragmatism and adaptability to the conditions they encountered in each place; they were disciplined, enterprising, and well-prepared in various fields of knowledge, having in their ranks many artists, literati, scientists, and scholars, and were also skilled in the arts of persuasion and teaching. They were the vanguard of European religiosity in their day. The combination of so many qualities explains their success as missionaries and is reflected in the variety of practical solutions adopted in the missions they founded throughout America and the Orient. They also adopted a peculiar theology, which allowed them to yield and conform the Christian doctrine to the native perceptions to achieve the completeness of the evangelizing project. It is known, therefore, that Jesuit missionarism in the eastern part of South America, then controlled by the Portuguese, developed in a different direction from that adopted in the Misiones Orientales, which were under Spanish rule. There the Jesuits were able to build much more organized and stable settlements than those created in colonial Brazil under Father Manuel da Nóbrega and his colleagues.
In the region submitted to the Jesuit Province of Paraguay, which included the Misiones Orientales, and which many consider having set the "classic" prototype of the Jesuit settlement, this settlement was defined around a large square, where there was a church, Indian residences, houses for widows and orphans, a school, the missionaries' cloister, a cemetery, several workshops and small industries that supplied basic needs, an orchard, a vegetable garden, administrative spaces, an inn, a prison, among other improvements. On semi-autonomous farms nearby, there were black slaves, the cultivation of crops, and the raising of cattle. They bartered their products with various Spanish colonies and Europe. Sometimes the surroundings of the urbanized nucleus were protected with trenches and a wall to defend against the attacks of wild Indians and the predatory expeditions of the Brazilian bandeirantes, which occurred many times. Therefore, some missions, by special license from the Spanish Crown, had small armies and cavalry. The government of civil affairs and elementary education were generally handed over to the Indians and respected tribal hierarchies. Advanced education-including the direction of arts, engineering, and architecture, the divine offices, catechesis, and justice, as well as general supervision of all affairs, were left to the Jesuits.
The missionary urban model could present variations in the layout of elements and the number of buildings, but its basic scheme remained constant. In short, the settlements were almost self-sufficient city-states, theocratically oriented, economically and culturally advanced for their time and place, and had considerable administrative autonomy. They were, however, subject to general regulation by the high hierarchy of the Society and needed the approval of the Spanish Crown, conqueror, and owner of the land, on which it taxed the priests. Spain also had a political interest in the Jesuit enterprise, wanting them to act as frontier guards, containing the Portuguese advance. The missions provided innovative livelihoods by indigenous standards and inaugurated a very successful urban and administrative model, but were programs of mass religious conversion and acculturation of the indigenous to the European way of life, which did not always occur without resistance and difficulties. On the other hand, they sought to preserve or integrate many of the characteristics of traditional aboriginal life in an unprecedented sociocultural synthesis. Apart from the controversies that still surround the subject, especially about its ethical merit, in any case, it is a fact that an original culture was created within the missions, and in this culture, art had an extraordinary role to play.
The Misiones Orientales were born as an evolution of the eighteen Tape Reductions, founded in 1626 on the eastern bank of the Uruguay River, in a region that is now part of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil. About ten years later, the Brazilian bandeirantes destroyed fifteen of these settlements and imprisoned more than 20,000 Indians, to be sold as slaves in São Paulo. In 1638 they destroyed the three remaining settlements. Under this siege, the remaining Indians and priests took refuge on the western bank of the Uruguay river. The bandeirante advance was only stopped in the Battle of Mbororé, in 1641, but then, with the dissolution of the Iberian Union, new political facts put the missionary enterprise in the region on hold, only to be resumed in 1682. Then the seven settlements that became known as the Misiones Orientales (or Sete Povos das Missões/Siete Pueblos de las Misiones, "Seven Settlements of the Missions" in English) were created, some of them on the ruins of the previous foundation.
They were, as reported by Pinto:
São Nicolau, founded in 1626 by Father Roque González y de Santa Cruz and reinstalled in 1687 by Father Anselmo de la Matta São Miguel Arcanjo, founded by Father Cristóvão de Mendoza in 1632 and reinstalled in 1687 by Father Anton Sepp San Francisco de Borja, founded in 1682 by Father Francisco Garcia de Prada São Luiz Gonzaga, founded in 1687 by father Miguel Fernández São Lourenço Mártir, founded in 1690 by priest Bernardo de la Vega São João Batista, founded in 1697 by father Anton Sepp Santo Ângelo Custódio, founded in 1706 by priest Diego Haze
While the first missionary initiative in the region had mostly evangelizing objectives, as stated by Armindo Trevisan, those of the second one seem to have been primarily economic, born from the perspective of taking advantage of the huge cattle herd that lived free in the pampas, and that was coveted also by the Portuguese. The Brazilian tropeiros who hunted the cattle became one of the first agents of the aggressive Portuguese penetration in the region, invading larger and larger Spanish territories. Cattle acquired such importance for the Jesuits as they understood that if the living conditions for the Indians were not good, especially regarding food, the spiritual education also failed. Cattle were easily raised, and were well used: they provided leather, meat and milk, as well as being a means of traction and transportation. Horses and mules were also abundant. It is estimated that this herd, including the various species, at one time reached a million heads. However, for Maldi, the political component of the settlements was also strong:
Being home to up to thirty thousand people, mainly Guarani, but also some from other groups, such as the Charrúas and Minuanos, the Misiones Orientales flourished until the new territorial demarcations imposed by the Treaty of Madrid of 1750, which determined the exchange of Colonia del Sacramento (a Portuguese possession) for the settlements, and the Indians and priests were to be resettled further into Spanish territory. The Guaranitic War that followed (1754-1756), where Sepé Tiaraju emerged as a historical and mythological figure, was the expression of the refusal by the Guaranis to surrender the missions they had arduously built.
After the war, lost by the Indians, and the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Portuguese and Spanish territories, respectively in 1759 and 1768, the Seven Settlements were dismantled, along with the other Jesuit missions. The dissolution of the Society of Jesus in 1773, by Pope Clement XIV, sealed the end of the whole missionary cycle. An attempt was made to introduce a civil government with the collaboration of other Orders, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Mercedarians, but to no effect: production fell drastically, there were riots, desertions, and mass deaths, imprisonment of Indians, depredations of buildings and looting of churches. When a new war broke out between Portugal and Spain in 1801, the Misiones Orientales were already in such a state of disintegration that their conquest by the Portuguese was easy, although there seems to have been Indian participation as a facilitator of the takeover. In 1828, the settlements were plundered by the troops of Fructuoso Rivera, who stole 60 carts of precious objects and works of art and caused a new indigenous exodus. In 1833, there were only 377 Indians in the region, described by a chronicler of the time as "a bagasse of people."
Missionary art