Abstract
The modern adage known as Murphy’s Law states that what can go wrong will go wrong, and could be applied to a series of unfortunate events that befell the Jesuit administered missions among the Guaraní in the years 1733 to 1740. Weather anomalies resulted in poor crops and food shortages, and at the same time, royal officials mobilized thousands of Guaraní mission militiamen. Many Guaraní fled the missions in search of food, but the military mobilization and the flight of many from the missions also spread contagion. During the crisis period more than ninety thousand Guaraní died. The Jesuits prepared narrative reports known as cartas anuas that provide details regarding the crises and particularly the food shortages not found in other sources, as well as a sense of how the Jesuits responded to the crises. Details in the cartas anuas also reveal details of the inner workings of the missions.
The Society of Jesus produced a vast corpus of documents during their tenure in the Spanish Americas, including letters, reports for the Jesuit leadership and royal officials, chronicles or official histories of the activities of the order, and cartas anuas. The carta anua was a narrative report sent to the Jesuit leadership in Rome and contained different information including the educational and spiritual activities of the urban colegios and so-called “misiones populares” to test the faith of colonists who ostensibly were already Catholics, missions the Jesuits conducted, and the necrology of the members of the order who died. The cartas anuas were prepared for each separate Jesuit province or administrative jurisdiction.1 The cartas anuas contain built-in bias as they presented a Jesuit perspective directed to the leadership in Rome with a decidedly triumphal tone, but also provide clues to the mindset of the authors of the reports and what they thought. Nevertheless, the anuas contain useful and important information. The authors of the cartas anuas provided different levels of information. Some provided minimum detail, while others provided considerable detail. In some instances, the authors of the anuas also appended censuses.2
The cartas anuas of the province of Paracuaria for the years 1730–35 and 1735–43 are the subject of this article. The reports are attributed to Pablo Lozano, S.J. (1697–1752),3 and the one that covered the years 1735–43 was particularly detailed, and outlined a series of calamitous events that befell the region and particularly the missions among the Guaraní the Jesuits conducted. As Lozano drafted the document recounting a series of mortality crises, he may have thought that God was testing the faith of the Jesuits and the residents of the thirty missions among the Guaraní as in the Old Testament book of Job. Lozano reported poor crops and famine caused by drought but also unusual freezing conditions that damaged crops, a plague that killed thousands, and the mobilization of thousands of mission militiamen in an unsuccessful siege of the Portuguese outpost of Colonia do Sacramento (Uruguay), and in response to the ongoing political crisis in Asunción known as the Comunero Rebellion. In the crisis years 1733–40, more than 90,000 Guaraní died, and the population of the thirty missions dropped from some 141,000 recorded in 1732 to less than 80,000 in 1740. In a counterfactual historical musing, I wonder if had the modern popular adage known as Murphy’s Law existed in the eighteenth century, Lozano might have thought that the series of events he described in the cartas anuas were a result of Murphy’s Law at work. Perhaps Lozano thought of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who brought conquest, famine, war, and death, and that the calamities were a portent of the end of days. However, this article explores the possible natural events that caused the climate anomalies and suggests that a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands may have been the possible cause.
In recent years, scholars have rewritten history to identify the ways in which natural events such as volcanic eruptions have changed the human past. Examples include the history of ancient Egypt. The “Old Kingdom” collapsed at the end of the sixth dynasty as a result of famine and political turmoil following the failure of the annual flood of the Nile, which was a consequence of the disruption of rains in what today is Ethiopia. Volcanic eruptions caused crises in Ptolemaic Egypt and may have contributed to the fall of Cleopatra.4 Similarly, a volcanic eruption may have caused the climate anomalies described in the cartas anuas.
The focus of this study is one element of the series of events during the crises years that Lozano described in some detail in the cartas anuas, the anomalous weather events in the years 1733 to 1736 that caused poor crops and food shortages on the missions and flight as many Guaraní left in search of food. Lozano obviously considered the series of unfortunate events important enough to describe them in detail in the reports he drafted, which also included details on the effects of epidemics and mortality patterns not found in previous anuas. Previous studies examined the demographic consequences of the epidemics during the crisis years, particularly the severe 1737–40 smallpox outbreak, and this study only discusses the epidemics as related to the poor crops and famine conditions.5
The musings presented here touch upon four themes. The first section outlines what the cartas anuas of 1730–35 and 1735–43 reported on the anomalous weather events and responses to the food shortages of the Jesuits and of the Guaraní mission residents as described in the cartas anuas. Many Guaraní left the missions in search of food, and in 1735 one group established a fugitive community on the edge of the mission territory. The Jesuits did and could do little to alleviate hunger. The second section attempts to identify the causes of the anomalous weather conditions in historical climate studies that identify possible El Niño climate events, but also the climate effects of volcanic forcing (the ejection of volcanic material into the atmosphere) from an eruption in the Canary Islands in the early 1730s. The third section outlines mortality patterns during the crisis years and is followed by a discussion of how the crises affected the missions. But first a bit of background.
The Spanish settlements in Río de la Plata were, until the end of the eighteenth century, sparsely settled and politically and economically marginal within the group of Spanish territories in the Americas. The Jesuit missions among the Guaraní were the most populous settlements in the region, and the Jesuits actively marketed goods to the Spanish settlements in the region such as Buenos Aires and Santa Fe produced in the communal economy they administered, such as yerba mate and textiles. The river highways, the Paraguay, Paraná, and Uruguay, facilitated the shipment of goods, but also the spread of contagion carried in the bodies of the crews of rivercraft (see Map 1). The missions occupied a relatively compact territory, were close to each other, and there were contacts between the individual missions that included trade in goods often carried by river craft that also facilitated the spread of contagion (see Map 2). Thousands of Guaraní lived in compact villages on the missions (see fig. 1). In 1731, the San Nicolás mission was the most populous with 7,690 people. Two missions had more than 7,000 people, five had between 6,000 and 7,000, three between 5,000 and 6,000, seven between 4,000 and 5,000, ten with a population of 3,000 to 4,000, and three counted between 2,000 and 3,000.6 As a point of comparison, in 1744 Buenos Aires reportedly had a population of 10,056.7
A c.1754 diagram of San Juan Bautista Mission. The diagram shows the spatially compact village where 3,892 people lived in 1753.
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
bibliotheque nationale de france, paris. in the public domain.A 1780s map of the region of the Jesuit missions among the Guaraní
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
library of congress geography and map division, washington, dc. in the public domain.Detail showing the locations of the thirty missions that existed at the time of the 1730s famine
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
Telling the Story from the cartas anuas and Other Sources
The cartas anuas for the years 1730–35 and 1735–43 provided details of the multiple crises in the missions from a Jesuit perspective (see Table 1). The period of the crises of the years 1733–40 began with the mobilization of thousands of mission militiamen in service to the crown. The first mobilization sent some six thousand militiamen to the Río Tebicuarí in what today is southern Paraguay, which marked the boundary of the jurisdiction of Asunción, as a part of the ongoing political crisis known as the Comunero Revolt. The carta anua of 1730–35 described the posting of the militiamen and problems of supply.8 The 1735–43 carta anua provided more details regarding the mobilization of mission militiamen to the Río Tebicuarí, and the disruption to food production caused by the absence of so many men not available to cultivate the land.9 The large-scale mobilization occurred in conjunction with poor crops on the missions. The carta anua reported drought conditions from December of 1733 through March of 1734, in other words, the summer planting season. The report further noted that hunger began to be felt in the mission communities by April of 1734. Some mission residents left in search of wild foods or went to other communities.10 The Guaraní traditionally supplemented agriculture with hunting and the collection of wild plant foods, and their reaction was a logical response to the poor harvest. However, this was a problem for the Jesuits who attempted to reduce the Guaraní to a fully sedentary lifestyle.
What actions did the Jesuits take in the face of the intensifying subsistence crisis? The carta anua reported that the missionaries brought the children together to feed them, but little more.11 The cartas anuas reported little on the organization of mission agriculture, but other documents provide clues to understand the scope of and nature of the responses to food shortages. The inventories of the missions prepared in 1768, although dating to thirty years following the subsistence crisis, still documented the workings of mission agriculture. In a 2014 study, Julia Sarreal argued that the Guaraní received food rations from communal production during the Jesuit tenure but then became more economically independent following the Jesuit expulsion and the implementation of a system of civil administration.12 However, details in the cartas anuas and the 1768 inventories do not support this interpretation. In other words, communal production was limited, did not reach levels to feed the entire mission population, and was focused primarily on the production of goods for sale to generate income to cover expenses such as tribute payments.
The cartas anuas provide no evidence of the Jesuits distributing food to the bulk of the mission population because the Guaraní were not dependent on the Jesuits for the supply of food and provided their own subsistence from the chacras they exploited. The flight of so many mission residents upset the Jesuits, as Lozano reported in the carta anua. This passage, however, is also negative evidence that demonstrates that the Jesuits did not provide food to the bulk of the mission populations. They lamented the flight of so many people, particularly those that died without receiving the sacraments. However, the Jesuits did not and could not provide food in the face of famine, because they did not have the resources to do so.13
The 1768 Ytapúa inventory reported how the Guaraní described the communal lands, and what was cultivated on these lands. There were two parcels for corn production, but most were dedicated to the production of yerba mate. The inventory also noted that there was also a reserve of one thousand fanegas14 of corn and some four hundred fanegas of wheat and other grains.15 The inventory of Candelaria mission, the administrative center of the thirty missions, was more explicit in differentiating between communal lands and the lands worked by Guaraní heads of household, and the uses of communal food crops for the ill, orphans who lived in the cotiguazú, and children brought for catechism. Post-expulsion administrative records recorded a similar use for communal food crops.16 A third inventory, that of the San Francisco Xavier mission, recorded the amount of stored communal products, and items such as cotton and wool for textiles and yerba mate topped the list.17
A recent study reexamined the question of the organization of food production on the missions, and the important role played by clan chiefs in co-governance on the missions.18 Jesuit missionaries such as Juan de Escandón (1696–1772) and José Cardiel (1704–81) described the assignation of plots of land for cultivation to the individual heads of household by the caciques, and the pattern of mission residents being absent to tend their crops. The system of the missions was similar to that of the pueblos de indios in other parts of the Spanish Americas, such as the Andean Highlands. Individual heads of the household received subsistence plots in usufruct from community lands controlled by the kuraka (indigenous lord) called sayanas or asignaciones.19
The anomalous weather conditions continued during the next agricultural cycle. The 1735–43 carta anua reported freezing on the nights of August 20, 21, and 22, 1734, which damaged the growing crop. The anua noted that the Jesuits attempted to get the Guaraní to plant a new crop, but also reported that mission residents continued to leave in search of food. Moreover, others continued in service in the mission militia. The carta anua also reported copious rains in December of 1734 that ended the drought, but also complained that the crop was lost for lack of attention such as the cleaning of the fields. Food shortages reportedly continued into 1735, and the Spanish—Portuguese conflict in the region of the Banda Oriental (modern Uruguay) prevented the rounding-up of feral cattle that could have provided an alternative food source. Combined mortality on the year totaled 10,139, or a crude death rate per thousand population of 80.2.20 At the same time, mortality rates between the missions varied.
The crisis intensified in 1735 and 1736. The carta anua reported continued flight from the missions, and the creation of a fugitive community near Lago Iberá that the settler militia eventually attacked in response to raids by the residents of the community. Royal officials mobilized four thousand mission militiamen for what proved to be an unsuccessful siege of the Portuguese outpost Colonia do Sacramento, and another one thousand mission militiamen went to the siege of Colonia do Sacramento in December of 1735. From January to May, another six thousand mission militiamen were on campaign in the suppression of the ongoing political crisis in Asunción, and at the end of the campaign, the number of mobilized mission militiamen totaled twelve thousand. Continuing drought hit the mission communities, located in what today is southern Paraguay, particularly hard, and Guaraní continued to leave in search of food. One group established a fugitive community on the fringes of mission territory near Iberá Lake, and raided rural properties that belonged to residents of Corrientes. The residents of the community reportedly engaged in a parody of Catholic beliefs.21
The anomalous weather conditions and famine continued into 1736. The carta anua described a second wave of freezing temperatures in September, but also an improvement in drought conditions in October that allowed the mission residents to plant again. Earlier in the year flight from the missions continued, and the Jesuits sent out parties to look for the dead.22
The Jesuits reported the uneven effects of the famine conditions. In the area of the Paraná River, for example, Loreto, Corpus Christi, and Santos Cosme y Damián suffered more than the neighboring missions such as Santa Ana, San Ignacio, and Santísima Trinidad. Of the missions on both sides of the Uruguay River San Lorenzo, San Francisco Xavier, Santa María la Mayor, San Luis, and San Nicolás suffered the most. Other missions such as San José, Concepción, de Santo Tomé, Apóstoles, San Carlos, San Francisco de Borja, and la Cruz faced less severe shortages, but reportedly had to deal with fugitives from the other missions looking for food.23 Climate conditions improved in 1737, but the mission residents faced a new threat which was the outbreak of smallpox that lasted through 1740 and killed thousands.24
Evidence of Climate Anomalies
There were several possible causes for the climate anomalies that caused poor crops and food shortages on the missions as reported in the cartas anuas. One was the lingering effects of a southern oscillation El Niño climate episode. The cartas reported drought during 1733 and early 1734, and again in 1736. There is historic evidence that El Niño episodes caused drought conditions in large parts of South America, and in Mexico as well.25 One study that analyzed tree rings and the status of glaciers found evidence of a strong El Niño episode in Patagonia and central Chile in 1736, which coincided with the report of drought conditions on the missions in the same year.26 A second study documented a very strong El Niño episode in Ecuador and Peru in 1728, and strong episodes in 1729 and 1730.27
A discussion of a later and well-documented El Niño southern oscillation episode, that of 1877–78, provides evidence to help understand the climate anomalies of the 1730s. In northern Argentina and neighboring parts of Paraguay and Brazil, an intensified tropical jet stream effect caused heavier-than-usual rainfall and flooding. The same occurred more recently in 1982–83.28 Further north, as in the Bolivian altiplano and the Bolivian lowlands, drought conditions prevailed. There is particularly complete information on the effects of drought in 1878 and 1879 in the Cochabamba region. The drought began in December of 1877 after crops had been planted, and there was minimal rainfall during the rest of the planting season in early 1878. The price of grain increased, and some profiteers speculated on rising prices by contracting to buy the entire crops of haciendas in 1879, which was not a normal practice. There were instances of social unrest such as the pillaging of food markets in Cochabamba City and Tarata.29
There was also increased mortality in the region in 1878. Conventional interpretations of the relationship between drought and epidemics relate increased mortality to the physical debility of people facing starvation and a weakening of the immunological system. However, the evidence for Cochabamba suggests otherwise. The study of the drought by Aceituna et al. contains two graphs that show increasing grain prices beginning in April of 1878, and continuing into 1879, and higher-than-normal mortality in Cochabamba City that peaked in January of 1878, before the surge in grain prices. There was also an earlier episode of higher-than-normal mortality that peaked in May and June of 1877, before the effects of drought.30 A more detailed analysis of mortality patterns suggests a different explanation that correlates with what the cartas anuas describe on the Guaraní missions. An epidemic had already begun during the winter and spring of 1877 and surged in late 1877 and early 1878. There was a second mortality crisis at the end of 1878 and in the first months of 1879, as people on the move looking for food spread disease. Burial records for Tarata documented an average of 131 burials per month between November 1878 and May 1879. Deaths in Tarata averaged eighty-eight per month during the earlier epidemic that began in August 1877. Priests and local officials began finding abandoned bodies of the dead in January 1879, and abandoned bodies accounted for fifteen percent of all burials during the month.31 Similarly, the Jesuits reported finding abandoned bodies and sent people out to look for the dead.
An El Niño episode may have accounted for the copious rains reported in the mission region at the end of 1734, but most likely not for drought conditions reported in the 1730s and particularly the unusual freezing in August of 1734 and October of 1736. Volcanic eruptions may explain these climate anomalies. Historical studies have identified the climate effects of the 1731 eruption of Sangay Volcano (Ecuador), which occurred in conjunction with an El Niño episode, and of the 1730–36 eruption of Lanzarote Volcano in the Canary Islands. One study shows that the two eruptions caused cooler tropical temperatures in 1731.32 The continuing Lanzarote eruption may have accounted for the unusual freezing in 1734 and 1736. One detailed study shows that at its height the volcano ejected an eruption plume that reached between twelve and sixteen kilometers into the atmosphere that was blown to the north and west. The eruption caused cooler temperatures in northern Europe in 1732 and 1734, and a dry fog in 1734 and 1735 that damaged crops.33
Demographics of the Mortality Crises, 1733–40
The mortality crisis that occurred between 1733 and 1740 killed some ninety thousand and reduced the size of the populations of the Jesuit missions from a recorded high of 141,182 in 1732 to 73,910 at the end of 1740. Because of the detailed Jesuit censuses, it is possible to reconstruct mortality patterns and the effects of the epidemic on a year-by-year basis. Most but not all of the missions experienced a net decline in population during the eight years of the crisis (see Table 2). A combination of factors contributed to the mortality crises and the heavy population losses. One was the mobilization of thousands of Guaraní militiamen. The second was the high population densities of the mission communities and a large number of children and young adults born since the last major epidemic in 1718, who had not been exposed to contagion and were thus highly susceptible to smallpox. The third was the drought and famine conditions that contributed to large-scale flight from the missions as people left in search of food and to escape the disease. Flight also exacerbated the crisis by further spreading contagion.
People in movement spread disease. This can be seen in two ways during the crisis of the 1730s. The first was the posting of Spanish troops and mission militia on the Río Tebicuarí for months. Military encampments were notoriously unsanitary, and the evidence shows that the heaviest mortality during a lethal 1733 epidemic was on the missions located closest to the encampment in what today is southern Paraguay. The Jesuits reported a total of 18,773 burials in 1733 and a net loss in population of some thirteen thousand. Graph 1 documents the net loss of population in 1733, particularly the heavy mortality at the three missions located closest to the militia camp.
Net population change in 1733
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
robert h. jackson, the bourbon reforms and the remaking of spanish frontier missions (leiden: brill, 2022), 152Famine resulted in the flight of Guaraní from the Paraguay missions. However, as already discussed, this was an established Guaraní pattern in periods of poor crops, and also reflected a fundamental clash between the Jesuit goal of converting the mission residents into a more sedentary population and the traditional Guaraní economy that had a basis in shifting agriculture and settlement supplemented by hunting and the collection of wild plant foods. The Jesuits reported in 1735 that 8,022 Guaraní fled the missions, including a group that created the community on the edge of mission territory that was politically, socially, and spatially organized along the lines of the mission communities they had abandoned. At the end of 1735 during the spring and summer an epidemic spread through the missions and continued into 1736 (see Graph 2). There was also an epidemic that spread through the herds of mission livestock.
Net population change in 1735
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
robert h. jackson, the bourbon reforms and the remaking of spanish frontier missions (leiden: brill, 2022), 154No mission census survives, but the carta anua reported that deaths in 1734 reached 16,222. There was a distinct mortality pattern related to the famine conditions. Some 10,132 adults and 6,090 párvulos or young children under the age of ten died. Deaths in 1735 totaled 6,044, and more young children died than did adults. The Jesuits reportedly baptized 4,520, and the total population of the missions dropped by 1,524. In 1736, the Jesuits recorded 5,004 baptisms as against 7,787 deaths and a net decline in numbers of 2,723.34 Mortality was particularly high at Loreto in 1736, where a total of 1,321 died and a crude death rate per thousand population of 308.1 per thousand population. The Jesuits prepared general censuses, but also a series of more detailed tribute censuses that were required to enumerate the number of tributaries and the amount of tribute that was to be paid to the crown. Royal officials had new tribute censuses prepared about once a generation, or roughly every twenty years. The tribute censuses recorded the population by cacicazgo and family, but also tribute categories such as reservado, or exempted men. The tribute categories need to be carefully separated from the strictly demographic information.
The censuses reported the absence of 2,620 male tributaries, but because of the narrow scope of the enumerations they did not record the number of absent women and children. The individual censuses contain summaries, but it is also useful to extract more complete data from the complete texts of the counts. The tribute census for Los Santos Mártires mission reported the absence of seven tributaries in the Spanish settlements (tierras de españoles). The census for Santos Cosme y Damián summarized the time that fugitives had been absent. One tributary had been absent for four years, nine for three years, nine for two years, twenty-one for one year, and eight fled the mission in 1735. In other words, there were instances of flight from the mission community prior to the crisis.35 The largest number of fugitives was from two groups of missions. The first was from the missions located east of the Uruguay River, and from Santa María la Mayor located close to the west bank of the river. A total of 160 tributaries reportedly were absent from Santa María, 327 from San Nicolás, 166 from San Luis Gonzaga, 262 from San Lorenzo, and 153 from Santo Ángel Custodio. The second was the group of missions located in what today is southeastern Paraguay, which was closest to the zone where the mobilized mission militia was posted and also the fugitive community on Iberá Lake. It is possible that some of the fugitives were militiamen who had been mobilized and then voted with their feet to avoid militia service or to search for food. The largest number of fugitives was 333 from San Ignacio Guazú, 291 from Nuestra Señora de Fe, 141 from Trinidad, and 120 from Ytapúa. Lesser numbers of tributaries fled the other missions. Graph 2 documents an excess of mortality at some missions, but not on the scale of the catastrophic mortality two years earlier in 1733. The heaviest mortality was among the group of missions located on the east bank of the Paraná River, such as San Ignacio Miní. At the same time, the population of some missions experienced net growth. Graph 3 documents heavy mortality in 1736, with the highest number of deaths in the same group of missions and particularly on the Loreto mission.
Net population change in 1736
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
robert h. jackson, the bourbon reforms and the remaking of spanish frontier missions (leiden: brill, 2022), 154The carta anua reported that the year 1737 was less problematic as regards climate conditions, but also reported that a lethal smallpox epidemic spread to the missions from Asunción, and other urban centers in the region at the end of the year (see Graph 4). Three missions evidenced elevated mortality in 1737 that occurred at the end of the year during the warmer summer months. The location of the missions suggests that smallpox may have spread from Asunción. The death rate at Ytapúa was 104.1 per thousand population in 1737, but the epidemic continued into 1738 and perhaps flared up again at the beginning of 1739. The total number of burials in the three years was 2,405, and the death rate 530.1 per thousand population. The crude death rates at Jesús and Trinidad were 184.2 and 154.1 per thousand population respectively.36 In three years (1738–40), the Jesuits reportedly buried 35,104 people on the missions, a net decline of 22,575. The epidemic broke out after five years of crisis in the missions, and the movement of people, mobilization of the mission militia, and river traffic helped spread the contagion. Moreover, the smallpox outbreak was more generalized and lasted for a longer period of time (see Graph 5).37
Net population change in 1737
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
robert h. jackson, the bourbon reforms and the remaking of spanish frontier missions (leiden: brill, 2022), 155Net population change 1738–40
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
robert h. jackson, the bourbon reforms and the remaking of spanish frontier missions (leiden: brill, 2022), 156Discussion
The mortality crises in the years 1733–40 killed thousands and reduced the mission populations by more than forty percent from the high recorded in 1732. However, it is also important to note that mortality rates varied between missions, and several missions such as Yapeyú did not experience catastrophic mortality (see Table 2). Significantly, though, following the period of catastrophic mortality, the mission populations rebounded or recovered, although they did not reach pre-crisis levels. What relationship existed between the movement of people in search of food and epidemic mortality, such as catastrophic mortality during the 1738–40 smallpox epidemic that followed the famine on the missions? Based on a detailed analysis of famine in the Darfur region of Sudan between 1983 and 1985, Alex de Waal convincingly established the cause-and-effect relationship between the movement of people who in turn spread contagion that caused epidemics. Disease that existed in endemic form in populations broke out in epidemics with the movement of people in a region in conflict.38 The Darfur famine provides a model for the famine on the Jesuit missions.
How can differential mortality rates be explained, as in the case of the population of Yapeyú mission that did not experience catastrophic mortality during the 1733–40 crises? The demographic patterns documented for the Guaraní missions show a major epidemic outbreak about once every generation, or about every twenty years, when there was a large enough number of potentially susceptible hosts, those born since the previous outbreak, to sustain the chain of infection. Quarantine and the construction of temporary plague hospitals for the ill and those exposed were the most common Jesuit responses to epidemic outbreaks.39 It is possible that the Jesuits implemented more effective quarantine at Yapeyú mission during the epidemic, and, perhaps with access to more cattle as an alternative food source, there was less flight from the mission. The carta anua listed Yapeyú as one of the missions less affected by the famine. The record shows continuous population growth on the mission from 1723–54. In these years the Jesuits stationed on the mission reported a total of 12,886 baptisms as against 8,545 burials, or a net growth of more than 4,000. The population of Yapeyú mission also did not suffer catastrophic mortality during the next smallpox outbreak in the years 1764–65. However, the population was vulnerable following the Jesuit expulsion and the implementation of a system of civil administration. It had been some fifty years since the last smallpox outbreak with catastrophic mortality. A smallpox outbreak in 1771 killed some sixty percent of the population of the mission.40
A reconstruction of epidemic mortality should be placed in the context of long-term demographic patterns, and mortality during previous outbreaks. A 1777–78 smallpox outbreak on Nuestra Señora la Fe mission is a case in point. Sarreal cites a 1778 document that reported 697 smallpox deaths on the mission from May 1777 to August 1778.41 However, an earlier document provided more details on mortality patterns during the outbreak.42 From May 1777 to February 1778, 548 people died from smallpox. In March 1778, only 55 people died. Overall, the epidemic killed more than forty percent of the mission population. The long-term pattern shows that the mission population experienced light mortality during a 1718–19 smallpox outbreak, and heavy mortality during the crises in the years 1733–40 with a drop in population from 6,515 in 1731 to 2,044 at the end of 1737. The numbers rebounded to 4,901 in 1763, and the population did not suffer catastrophic mortality during the 1764–65 smallpox epidemic.43 The population of the mission was vulnerable when smallpox broke out again in 1777. Fewer people died in 1764–65, and birth rates continued to be moderate to high. The population continued to grow, and there was a large number of potentially susceptible hosts when smallpox spread to the mission again in 1777.
The famine and epidemics did not fracture the Guaraní—Jesuit alliance forged in the creation of a military organization in the face of bandeirante raids in the 1620s and 1630s that destroyed early missions. The rupture occurred two decades later in the mid-1750s following the signing of the Treaty of Madrid (1750) that contained a provision for the transfer to Portugal of the mission sites and territories including estancias located east of the Uruguay River. The Guaraní leaders of the seven missions located east of the Uruguay River resisted the transfer of their communities, and there were instances of threats against individual Jesuits on other missions.44 Thousands of mission militiamen served the king during the 1730s, and the king did not listen to their attempts to cancel the transfer of their communities and lands.
Sarreal summarized Jesuit administered sales of communally produced yerba mate and textiles that generated the most revenue, and the data show one way that the Jesuits responded to the crises of the 1730s and the mobilization of thousands of mission militiamen. Yerba mate produced the most revenue. In the years 1731–35, sales totaled 44,924 pesos and the Jesuits sold 259,150 pounds of yerba mate. This dropped to sales of 214,169 pounds in 1736–37, which generated 42,340 pesos, but then the Jesuits increased sales to 381,406 pounds in 1738–39, which generated 68,110 pesos in revenue. Similarly, the Jesuits sold 48,907 feet of textiles in 1736–37, which generated 14,055 pesos in revenue, but increased this to 80,653 feet in 1738–39 and 16,860 pesos in revenue.45 In other words, in the aftermath of the subsistence crisis and large-scale mobilizations, the Jesuits sought to generate more revenue to make up for arrears. The Jesuits had the yerba mate, textiles, and other products shipped on rivercraft. However, the increase trade transported on the river highways also facilitated the spread of smallpox through the missions.
The accounts in the offices of the Oficio de Misiones, the offices that sold mission products and procured items the Jesuits ordered, located in Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, show the differential effects of the subsistence crisis and mobilizations among the missions, as well as where the Jesuits had most communally produced goods marketed. At the height of the crises the missions located in what today is southern Paraguay, those along the Paraná River in Misiones, Argentina, and those on the west bank of the Uruguay River in modern misiones, Argentina, ran negative balances in Buenos Aires, while in several years those located east of the Uruguay River did not (see Graph 6). The accounts in Santa Fe show that the missions located in southern Paraguay also ran negative balances, which supports details in the cartas anuas that suggest that drought and the military mobilizations had the greatest effect on this group of missions. Those located on the Paraná River showed the largest positive balances, which can be attributed to greater access to the communal yerbales the Jesuits exploited to produce revenue. The missions located east of the Uruguay River also exploited yerbales, but the ongoing conflict with the Portuguese may have limited access to the wild stands located close to the region in conflict (see Graph 7).
Net balance +/- in the Oficio de Misiones office in Buenos Aires
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
rafael carbonell de masy, estrategias de desarrollo rural en los pueblos guaraníes (barcelona: instituto de cooperación iberoamericana, 1992), 336–43Net balance +/- in the Oficio de Misiones office in Santa Fe
Citation: Journal of Jesuit Studies 10, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/22141332-10020005
rafael carbonell de masy, estrategias de desarrollo rural en los pueblos guaraníes (barcelona: instituto de cooperación iberoamericana, 1992), 346–50Final Thoughts
The Jesuit administered missions among the Guaraní survived the multiple crises in the years 1733–40, as they did in earlier and later periods of crisis such as the period of bandeirante raids of the 1620s and 1630s and the later crisis following the Treaty of Madrid and the Guaraní resistance to the transfer of the seven missions east of the Uruguay River to Portugal. The responses to the crises tell us much about the social and political realities on the missions. Many mission residents left in search of food, which was a common response to food shortages and something the Guaraní had done in the past in periods of poor agricultural production. Lozano wrote in the carta anua of the angst the Jesuits felt over the flight from the missions and reflected the social agenda of trying to convert the Guaraní to a more completely sedentary lifestyle. However, flight was a logical response for the Guaraní, and had a basis in the traditional economy based on shifting agriculture, hunting, and the collection of wild plant foods.
Despite the adversity, thousands of mission militiamen presented themselves for service at the request of royal officials, as they had for decades and continued to do. However, this history of military service also explains armed resistance in response to the provision of the Treaty of Madrid that provided for the transfer of seven missions to Portugal. For more than a century the Guaraní militiamen had served the interests of the king. They felt betrayed by the king’s decision to give their communities to Portugal, and the way that the King refused to listen to their missives. The fallout from the treaty temporarily fractured the Guaraní—Jesuit alliance that had withstood the crises of the 1730s.
The details of the effects of the poor crops on the missions Lozano described in the cartas anuas also showed the limitations of Jesuit authority on the missions. The Guaraní mission residents provided labor for communal production mostly of crops such as yerba mate and cotton for sale in the regional market to generate income for the Jesuits to pay the tribute obligations of the mission residents and the cost of goods the missionaries needed. However, communal production did not produce enough food for the entire mission population, but rather for the ill, the orphans and widows who lived in the cotiguazú, and for the food needs of the Jesuits themselves. The Guaraní clan chiefs administered and distributed chacras for the subsistence food production of the heads of household independent of the lands used for communal production, and the bulk of the mission populations did not subsist on food rations distributed by the Jesuits. This explains why the Jesuits were unable to provide food to most in the face of food shortages, and why so many Guaraní left the missions in search of food. Lozano may have decried the exodus of so many people, but there was little that the Jesuits could do to alleviate the hunger and keep the Guaraní on the missions.
María Laura Salinas and Julio Folkenand, eds., Cartas Anuas de la Provincia Jesuítica del Paraguay 1714–1720, 1720–1730, 1730–1735, 1735–1743, 1750–1756, 1756–1762 (Asunción: ceaduc—Centro de Estudios Antropológicos de la Universidad Católica, 2017), 18–21. Also see Robert H. Jackson, “To Educate and Evangelize: The Historiography of the Society of Jesus in Colonial Spanish America,” Jesuit Historiography Online, ed. Robert A. Maryks, https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/jesuit-historiography-online/to-educate-and-evangelize-the-historiography-of-the-society-of-jesus-in-colonial-spanish-america-COM_212121 (accessed January 29, 2023).
The practice was for a Jesuit that resided on each entity, be it a colegio or mission, to prepare a report sent to the superior of the province. These reports, in turn, were used to prepare the cartas anuas and official chronicles. Examples of the first level reports on colegios and missions in the province of Paracuaria, for example, exist in the Coleção de Angelis of the Biblioteca Nacional de Brasil (Rio de Janeiro).
Lozano, a native of Madrid, entered the Society of Jesus in 1711 at the age of fourteen and arrived in Buenos Aires three years later in 1714. He completed his academic studies at the Colegio Máximo in Córdoba (Argentina) between 1715 and 1723, and professed in Santa Fe (Argentina) in 1730. He was the official chronicler of the Jesuit province of Paracuaria and also drafted the cartas anuas in the 1720s and1730s. He died at Huamanga (Ayacucho, Peru) on February 8, 1752 at the age of fifty-five, as recorded in the carta anua. See Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 23, 780–81.
See, for example, Karen Polinger Foster et al., “Texts, Storms, and the Thera Eruption,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 55, no. 1 (1996): 1–14; Peter L. Ward, “Sulfur Dioxide Initiates Global Climate Change in Four Ways,” Thin Solid Films 517, no. 11 (2009): 3188–203; Colin P. Elliott, “The Antonine Plague, Climate Change and Local Violence in Roman Egypt,” Past & Present. 231, no. 1 (2016): 3–31; Joseph G. Manning et al., “Volcanic Suppression of Nile Summer Flooding Triggers Revolt and Constrains Interstate Conflict in Ancient Egypt,” Nature Communications 8, no. 1 (2017): 1–9; Joseph R McConnell et al., “Extreme Climate after Aassive Eruption of Alaska’s Okmok Volcano in 43 bce and Effects on the Late Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 27 (2020): 15443–449; Francis Ludlow and Joseph G. Manning, “Volcanic Eruptions, Veiled Suns, and Nile Failure in Egyptian History: Integrating Hydroclimate into Understandings of Historical Change,” in Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 301–20; Bart Blokland, “Volcanic Eruptions, Resilience and Vulnerability: The Impact of Nile Flood Variability on Ptolemaic Egypt (261–30 bc)” (ma thesis, Utrecht University, 2022).
A number of scholars have discussed the mortality crises of the 1730s. See, for example, Ernesto J. Maeder, and Alfredo S. Bolsi, La población de las misiones guaraníes entre 1702–1767 (Asunción: Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, 1974); Massimo Livi-Bacci and Ernesto J. Maeder, “The Missions of Paraguay: The demography of an Experiment,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35, no. 2 (2004): 185–224; Livi-Bacci, Conquest: The destruction of the American Indios (London: Polity, 2008), 218; Mercedes Avellaneda, Guaraníes, criollos y jesuitas Luchas de poder en las revoluciones comuneras (Asunción: Editorial Tiempo de Historia, 2014), 228–37; Robert H. Jackson, Demographic Change and Ethnic Survival Among the Sedentary Populations on The Jesuit Mission Frontiers of Spanish South America, 1609–1803: The Formation and Persistence of Mission Communities in a Comparative Context (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 66–71; Jackson, Regional Conflict and Demographic Patterns on the Jesuit Missions among the Guaraní in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 17–32; Jackson, A Population History of the Missions of the Jesuit Province of Paraquaria (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 68–73.
Jackson, Demographic Change and Ethnic Survival, 190–91.
Robert H. Jackson, “Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression Organization and Demographic and Quantitative Perspectives,” Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies 2, no. 4 (2021): 17.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anua, 286–87.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 534–35.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 534–35.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 535.
Julia Sarreal, The Guaraní and Their Missions: A Socioeconomic History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 169.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 543.
A grain measure that varied by region, but generally was between 1.6–2.6 bushels.
Francisco Xavier Brabo, Inventarios de los bienes hallados a la expulsión de los jesuitas y ocupación de sus temporalidades por decreto de Carlos iii, en los pueblos de misiones fundados en las márgenes del Uruguay y Paraná, en el Gran Chaco en el país de Chiquito y en el de Mojos (Madrid: Imp. y Esterotipia de W. Rivadeneyra, 1872), 325.
Robert H. Jackson, The Bourbon Reforms and the Remaking of Spanish Frontier Missions (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 147; Brabo, Inventarios, 268.
Brabo, Inventarios, 98.
Guillermo Wilde, and Kazuhisa Takeda, “Tecnologías de la memoria: Mapas y padrones en la configuración del territorio guaraní de las misiones,” Hispanic American Historical Review 101, no. 4 (November, 2021): 597–627, here 603, 613.
Robert H. Jackson, Regional Markets and Agrarian Transformation: Cochabamba, 1539–1960 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), chapters 1–2.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 537.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 541–44.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 569–70.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 571–72.
Salinas and Folkenand, Cartas Anuas, 589.
On El Niño caused drought in Mexico, see Virginia García-Acosta et al., “Historical Droughts in Central Mexico and Their Relation with El Niño,” Journal of Applied Meteorology 44 (2005): 709–16. This study identified an El Niño episode centered on 1730.
Ricardo Villaalba, “Tree-ring and Glacial Evidence for the Medieval Warm Epoch and the Little Ice Age in southern South America,” in The Medieval Warm Period (Dordrecht: Springer, 1994), 183–97.
K. Arteaga et al., “Climatic Variability Related to El Niño in Ecuador: A Historical Background,” Advances in Geosciences 6 (2006): 237–41.
Patricio Aceituno et al., “The 1877–1878 El Niño Episode: Associated Impacts in South America,” Climatic Change 92 (2009): 389–416.
Aceituno et al., “The 1877–1878 El Niño Episode,” 403–4; Jackson, Regional Markets and Agrarian Transformation, 16–19.
Aceituno et al., “The 1877–1878 El Niño episode,” 404.
Jackson, Regional Markets and Agrarian Transformation, 18–19.
Rosanne D’Arrigo et al., “The Impact of Volcanic Forcing on Tropical Temperatures during the Past Four Centuries,” Nature Geoscience 2 (2009): 51–56.
Kirti Sharma, “The Eruptions of Orrefajokull 1362 (Iceland) and Lanzarote 1730–36 (Canary Islands): Sulphur Emissions and Volcanology” (PhD diss., The Open University, 2005), 181, 184, 188–89.
Rafael Carbonell de Masy, Estrategias de desarrollo rural en los pueblos guaraníes (Barcelona: Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana, 1992), 377.
Francisco María Raspart, S.J., Los Santos Mártires del Japón, August 15, 1735, Padrón de los tributarios de esta Reducción de los Santos Mártires del Uruguay, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Sala 9–17–3–6; Buenaventura Suárez, los Santos Cosme y Damián, August 16, 1735, Padrón del Pueblo de S. Cosme y Damián que se hizo este presente año de 1735, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Sala 9–17–3–6.
For the calculation of crude death rates see Jackson, Population History, 200–77.
For a more detailed discussion of smallpox mortality in the years 1738–40, see Jackson, Regional Conflict and Demographic Patterns, 21–24.
Alex de Waal, Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan (Oxford: Oxford University Press on Demand, 2005).
Jackson, Demographic Change and Ethnic Survival, 59–60.
Robert H. Jackson, “Variation on a Theme: Demographic Patterns of Nuestra Señora de los Reyes Yapeyú Mission (Corrientes, Argentina),” Fronteras de la historia 28, no. 1 (2023): 269–306.
Sarreal, Guarani and Yheir Missions, 144.
Josef Barbosa, Santiago, March 30, 1778, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Sala ix–17–9–6–3.
Jackson, Population History, 216–17.
Jackson, Regional Conflict and Demographic Patterns, 47–53.
Sarreal, Guarani and Their Missions, 88.
