El Chaco y el accionar jesuítico en el siglo XVIII. Una mirada de la evangelización en su conjunto.

Abstract

This article explore the actions of the Jesuits in the Chaco territory during the 18th century. The religious activities of the Company's missionaries resulted in the creation of a series of missions made up of groups located in the region. The analysis allows us to have an overall view of the evangelizing process developed with the Chaquense ethnic groups. Under this panoramic vision, we seek to observe the pastoral strategies and mechanisms, their reception and results in the different ethnic groups, and the relationships, tensions and conflicts raised between the main actors of the missionary space (partialities, Jesuits and officials). The political-religious articulation together with the sociopolitical dynamics of the indigenous groups, with specific purposes and interests, influenced the evangelizing progress and the conversion of the natives, producing dissimilarities in the development of the missions. To accomplish do this, we have taken a series of memorials and reports from Jesuits such as Pedro Juan de Andreu, Bernardo Castro, Patricio Fernández and Thomas Borrego. In addition, we revisit the Annual Letters and works of Martin Dobrizhoffer and Florian Paucke. All these sources make visible various dimensions of the activity of the Jesuits with the partialities as well as the reality of each of the towns from creation to 1767.