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Missões nos EUA e norte do México

por Henrique Chagas *
publicado em 23/11/2002.

O historiador Robert H Jackson, de Houston, EUA, nos encaminhou várias fotos das ruínas das missões que se instalaram no norte do México, no Texas, e no Novo México. Afirma-nos que está satisfeito ao ver vários grupos no Brasil, Argentina e Paraguai chamando a a atenção para a importância da história missioneira. Suas investigações enfocam principalmente as missões mexicanas e nos encaminha estudo acadêmico comparativo entre as missões mexicanas e as da América do Sul (textos em Inglês - links abaixo).

The Building of the California and Paraguay Missions: Town Development on the Fringes of Empire

"Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries attempted to create primitive utopian Christian communities in California and Paraguay, and the building complexes of the missions provided the template for the new ordered societies the missionaries attempted to create.. European and New World convents and monasteries as well as the new idea governing urban development in the Americas provided the model for the missions. The mission cascos developed around the public space of the plaza, a feature found in most Spanish American towns of all sizes. The church was the largest and most dominant structure in the town, and was consciously designed to impress upon the natives the magnificence and superiority of the new religion."


Colonial Demography in the Americas: Case Studies from the Fringes of Empir

"This essay uses sacramental registers and censuses to document the process of demographic change among populations living in missions in two parts of Spanish America, the northern frontier of New Spain (colonial Mexico) and greater Paraguay (parts of modern Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil) in the Rio de la Plata region of South America. The mission was a government sponsored institution designed to acculturate and evangelize non-Christian natives in a cost effective way, and to create politically autonomous indigenous communities of sedentary agriculturalists on the model of core areas such as central Mexico or the Andean Highlands. It offers detailed case studies of missions in Baja California and California, and the Jesuit establishments known as reducciones. These two case studies will show demographic collapse on the one hand in the missions of the Californias, and stabilization and growth in Paraguay".


Missions in Baja California and Paraguay: A Comparison of Two Missions

"The missionary orders established mission communities, known by different names including doctrinas, misiones, reducciones, along the fringes of Spain’s empire in North and South America. Although generally studied in isolation as subsets of national history, a comparative approach helps of illustrate the similarities between this important colonial institution, as well as patterns unique to missions located in different areas and organized in different time periods. This essay briefly compares the history of two missions with the same name, Nuestra Senora de Loreto, located thaousands of miles from each other, and established almost a century apart. The first is Loreto established in 1610 by the Jesuits in the Guayra region east of Paraguay. The mission remained in Guayra for two decades, until forced to move in 1631 because of slave raids by bandeirantes from Sao Paulo. The Jesuits moved the mission a second time to its current location near the Parana River in the modern Argentinian province of Misiones in 1686. The second is Loreto mission established in October of 1697 in Baja California at a site known by the local indigenous peoples as Concho."


San Lorenzo Martir: A Jesuit Mission in the Service of Spanish Policy

"This essay examines the development of a Jesuit mission established in the western part of the modern Brazilian State of Rio Grande do Sul in 1690 as set against the backdrop of Spanish geopolitical concerns in the larger region. During most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Rio de la Plata region remained a sparsely populated but strategic borderlands region contested by Spain and Portugal. The Guarani residents of the reducciones played a very important role in the economy and geopolitics of the region. For one the reducciones constituted a large part of the population of the larger region. In 1680, for example, the population of the Spanish provinces in the Rio de la Plata region totaled some 125,000 people. Of this total, the missions accounted for 67,000 or fifty-four percent of the total".

Sobre o Autor

Henrique Chagas: Henrique Chagas, 49, nasceu em Cruzália/SP, reside em Presidente Prudente, onde exerce a advocacia e participa de inúmeros eventos literários, especialmente no sentido de divulgar a nossa cultura brasileira. Ingressou na Caixa Econômica Federal em 1984. Estudou Filosofia, Psicologia e Direito, com pós-graduação em Direito Civil e Processo Civil e com MBA em Direito Empresarial pela FGV. Como advogado é procurador concursado da CAIXA desde 1992, onde exerce a função de Coordenador Jurídico Regional em Presidente Prudente (desde 1996). Habilitado pela Universidade Corporativa Caixa como Palestrante desde 2007 e ministra palestras na área temática Responsabilidade Sócio Empresarial, entre outras.

É professor de Filosofia no Seminário Diocesano de Presidente Prudente/SP, onde leciona o módulo de Formação da Consciência Crítica; e foi professor universitário de Direito Internacional Público e Privado de 1998 a 2002 na Faculdade de Direito da UNOESTE, Presidente Prudente/SP. No setor educacional, foi professor e diretor de escola de ensino de 1º e 2º graus de 1980 a 1984.

Além das suas atividades profissionais ligadas ao direito, Henrique Chagas é escritor e pratica jornalismo cultural no portal cultural VerdesTrigos (www.verdestrigos.org), do qual é o criador intelectual e mantenedor desde 1998. É jurado de vários prêmios nacionais e internacionais de literatura, entre eles o Prêmio Portugal Telecom de Literatura.

No BLOG Verdes Trigos, Henrique anota as principais novidades editoriais, literárias e culturais, praticando verdadeiro jornalismo cultural. Totalmente atualizado: 7 dias por semana.

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