The Guairá Reductions were located west of the current state of Paraná. These lands were occupied by Encomiendas and by the Spanish cities of Ciudad Real (1550), Vila Rica do Espírito Santo (1570) and Copacabana. Encomiendas consisted of: encomiendas Indians provided services to landowners, in exchange for protection and catechesis.
In this place there was a commercial route over land, through the old Indian trail, from São Vicente, up the Plateau to São Paulo, following through Vila Rica, to Ciudad Real.
The Spanish from Vila Rica and Ciudad Real intermediated the sale of natives to the Paulistas, exchanging them for tools, marmalade, sugar, wine and fabrics. The route continued to Asuncion in Paraguay. And by her the smuggling of Peru and Prata do Potossi was done.
Another route followed the Tiête River and the Iguatemi River, from where a trail leaves for Cuiabá and another for Asunción. And a third, by sea from São Vicente to the island of Santa Catarina, passing to the mainland and going up the trail indigenous to the Iguaçu River, bordering close to its mouth, from where it went to the step above the Sete Quedas, reaching Assumption.
Native slavery was a good business because the Dutch attacked and took Pernambuco and Angola, controlling the slave trade. In the period of the Iberian Union, the indigenous replaced the black on the plantations of Bahia and Baixada Fluminense. Indian slavery was prohibited, so they were labeled as runaway blacks when they arrived in São Paulo.
After the paulistas exterminated the indigenous population on the coast of Santa Catarina, the “malocas”, São Paulo Indian hunting expeditions, began to devastate the Guairá region. The natives hid in the woods. The Spaniards asked the Bishop of Tucumã for missionaries to reduce them.
The reduction protected the natives both from Spanish enmiendeiros and from São Paulo malocas, because the Jesuits handed them over to slavery.
The Spaniards used this labor to work in the native herbs. The work in the herbs consumed thousands of Indians, who carried loads greater than their own weight, dying from abuse and lack of food.
José Catalino and Simão Masseta, in 1609, penetrated Guairá and in 1610 founded the Reductions of N. Mrs. of Loreto and of San Inácio. Between the Tibaji and Iguaçu rivers, another 13 reductions appeared from 1622 to 1629.
With the end of the traffic of native slaves due to the action of the missionaries, the paulistas united in companies with the sale of shares, to prear indigenous people in Guairá. These societies organized in the City Council of São Paulo, were called “Bandeiras”, due to their military organization.
The first attacks on the Guairá reductions were carried out by the flags led by Manuel Preto. In 1623, he and his brother Sebastião Preto prepared an expedition that left São Paulo practically depopulated of men. The attack yielded about 3,000 captives, who were taken to the Planalto farms and to other squares.
In 1968, the Guairá reductions were razed to the ground and reduced to ashes. A flag formed by ninety mestizos and more than 2,000 Tupi natives left Vila de São Paulo, headed by Antonio Raposo Tavares.
With the support of Paraguayan Governor D. Luiz de Cespes Xerias, governor of Paraguay, who was a partner of the councilor and bandeirante Raposo Tavares, the Spaniards attacked the reductions to capture the natives and sell them to the bandeirantes.
The natives revolted, encouraged by the shamans who were enemies of the missionaries. The pioneers imprisoned and took 18 thousand natives to São Paulo. Missionaries Simão Masseta and Justo Macilla followed the flag, picking up the children left on the way by the Paulistas. When the Priests delivered the children to the next camp, the Paulistas ordered the slaughter of the innocent, because they delayed the mothers' journey. From Guairá to São Paulo they left a trail of blood.
The priests were shocked by the joy that this expedition was received in São Paulo. One of them wrote: “The whole life of these bandits is going to the sertão, bringing prisoners [the Indians] with such cruelty and violence to sell them like pigs!
Father Ruiz de Montoya gathered 12,000 natives and in more than 700 canoes, navigating the Paranapanema and Paraná rivers, arriving only 4,000 in present-day Argentina, where they gathered in the new reductions of N. Mrs. Loreto and San Inácio.
These fugitive Guaranis would later increase the demography of the Tape region (Uruguay).
Quote taken from the text: HOOMAERT, Eduardo & PREZIA, Benedito. Indigenous Brazil: 500 years. São Paulo: FTD, 2000.
This text is by Patrícia Barboza da Silva
Bibliographic References:
FLOWERS, Moacyr. History of Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre, New Dimension, 1996. 5th ed.
HOOMAERT, Eduardo & PREZIA, Benedito. Indigenous Brazil: 500 years. São Paulo, FTD, 2000.
QUEVEDO, Julio. Rio Grande do Sul Aspects of the Missions. Porto Alegre, Martins Livreiro-Editor, 2nd ed, 1997.
Brazil Regional - history of Brazil - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiab/reducoes-guaira.htm