REDUCTIONS. - From the very beginning of Spanish colonization in America the system of the reductions came into force, following the instruction issued by the King of Spain in 1503, in which it was ordered that the nomadic Indians be gathered into villages so as to reduce them thus to civilization, to a settled way of life and to Christianity. Everywhere the Spaniards encountered nomadic tribes not united in a fixed settlement, such as the Aztecs in Mexico, the Incas in Peru, the Muiscas in Colombia. Therefore the missionaries attempted to gathto gather them into villages and accustom them to a stable system of life.
In the region of La Plata and Paraguay the Franciscans had been the first to preach the Gospel with success, such as St. Francis Solano and Luis Bolaños, and the latter especially had founded r. of Guarani Indians. The Jesuits, who arrived in Tucuman in 1585 and in Paraguay in 1587, at first worked with little success among the Indians both of the encomiendas and of the nomadic ones. Then the superior general Claudio Acquaviva and the visitor Esteban Paez prescribed replacing the practice of flying missionaries with that of fixed residences for the Indians, withdrawing them from all extraneous factors. The project was approved by the Spanish court with royal ordinances of Philip III of 1606, 1607 and above all 1609. The governor of Paraguay, Hernando Arias de Saavedra, entrusted to the Jesuits three territories to be Christianized: one west of Asunción among the Guaycuru, a second in the Paraná among the Guarani, the third north of the Paranapané among the Guayra. The first mission failed. Among the tribes of the Guarani and the Guayra, however, the Jesuits succeeded, founding the first r. in 1610. Among the Guayra of the north, until 1628, the r. were established, 9 of which, however, from 1628 to 1631 were destroyed by the Paulists. Subsequently the Jesuits emigrated southward with 12,000 Indians. Here the Jesuits had founded numerous r. since 1610 among the Guarani, especially between the rivers Paraná and Uruguay and from 1628 also on the other bank of the Uruguay among the Tapi. The latter, too, were destroyed in 1636 and 1638 by the Paulists, so that these Indians also withdrew westward into the r. of the Guarani. Thus the territory of the Jesuit r. of Paraguay acquired its definitive boundaries, which remained stable until the expulsion of the Jesuits. For the purpose of defense against the incursions of the Paulists the King of Spain permitted the arming of the Indians of the r., who from 1641 were able successfully to defend themselves against them. At their apogee in 1731 the Jesuit r. of Paraguay counted 141,242 Christian Indians.
The great strength of the Jesuit r. was their isolation and their special organization: the land was the property of the community, excluding all non-Indians, including Spanish officials; the private property of families was reduced to a minimum. Food, clothing and lodging were the same for all. The supreme direction in temporal and spiritual matters and jurisdiction were in the hands of the missionaries; for the lower temporal administration, bodies chosen by the community were deputed. The surplus products of agriculture and cattle-raising were transported to the market in the Spanish cities in order to make the necessary provisions of metals, salt, etc., and to be able to pay the contributions, in themselves meager, to the crown. The plan of the individual r. was uniform: at the center the main square with the church, the house of the missionaries, the school, the workshops and the common storehouse. From there the straight streets departed in all directions and along them were built the houses, with which every family was provided. Religion dominated public as well as private life. Sacred functions began and concluded the day. Feast days were celebrated with great pomp, music, sacred songs, and after lunch sacred and profane theatrical performances. Thus each r. formed a compact community of Christian Indians directed by the missionaries, with a certain theocratic and communist organization.
Some imperfections of the r., such as the exaggerated tutelage exercised, explicable considering the times and the cultural state of the Indians, the external religious and civil formalism, were already in the 18th century much exaggerated by the enemies of the Jesuits and then taken up again in the 19th century by Protestant writers such as Gothen and Pfotenhauer. Despite some defect, the r. had excellent results in the field of religious and moral education, always placed in the first line, in the field of the stability of peoples, of colonization and of culture. For Spain the r., notwithstanding their relative independence, did not form a separate state; but were members of the colonial Empire.
Similar r. were founded by the Jesuits in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries among the Chiquito, Chiriguani and Mojo in Bolivia, among the Mayna on the Marañon river and among the Otomachio on the Orinoco river. In Brazil too the system of the r. introduced by the Jesuits is found, especially in the north of Maranhão, where in the 17th and 18th centuries flourishing r. were established.
Following the example of the Jesuits, the Capuchins too in the 18th century founded r. isolated from the extraneous environment between the rivers Orinoco and Caroni in Venezuela. Toward the end of the century there existed in the region about 30 r. with about 25,000 Christian Indians.
The system of the r. was likewise introduced by the Franciscans in California, where from 1769 until 1823 they had founded 21 stations with 30,000 Christian Indians.
The system of the r. had in a certain sense a rebirth in the African missions of the 19th and 20th centuries, though not in the strictly isolationist form of the Jesuit r. Thus in the missions of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit, both in western and in eastern Africa, Christian villages have been founded; in eastern Africa as shelters and bulwarks against slavery, in the West against overbearing paganism and the overwhelming influence of the pagan chiefs. Similar was the system of the Jesuits in the Congo and in Zambesia. In the Congo the so-called "Fermes-Chapelles" were first established, stations in the vicinity of the dwellings of the natives as centers of missionary schools and of agriculture with the aim of educating the youth to work and withdrawing the nascent Christian communities from the influence and power of the pagan chiefs. After the Belgian government had prohibited the "Fermes-Chapelles", the Christian families gathered by preference in special Christian villages. In the mission of Zambesia too the system of founding Christian villages was employed.
With the progress of the missions, however, this system was everywhere abandoned because of the deficiencies and difficulties of the system itself, such as the frequent divisions within the tribes, the lack of zeal of the Christians for the conversion of the people, and the more or less justified suspicions on the part of the chiefs and of the colonial authorities.
Bibliography6 works
1918: Z. Engelhardt, Missions and Missionaries in California, 4 vols., San Francisco 1908-15; E. Engel, Die Missionmethode der Missionäre vom Heiligen Geist auf dem afrikanischen Festland, Knechtsteden 1932; I. De Pierpont, Les Fermes-Chapelles au point de vue économique et civilisateur, in Bulletin de la Société belge d'études coloniales, May 1912; C. Luçon, La république communiste chrétienne des Guaranis, Paris 1949 (with bibl.).