Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay. Richard Francis BurtonЧитать онлайн книгу.
of Lima substi- tuted D. Juan Ortiz de Zarate ; of the lieutenant-governor- ship of the double-dyed rebel Felipe Caceres, who had again revolted against Vergara, and who expiated his offences by imprisonment and deportation to Spain ; and lastly, of the chivalrous career of the valiant Biscayan, D. Juan de Garay, who after conquering and settling an extensive province perished miserably (1581) by the hands of the ignoble Minuano"^ savages. Thus by conquest and violence arose a state which was doomed to fall, in the fulness of time, bathed in its own blood.
As early as 1555 Asuncion became the seat of the first diocess : its juniors were Tucuman, originally established at Santiago-dcl-Estero, and transported to Cordoba in 1700; Buenos Aires, founded in 1620; and lastly Salta, in 1735. From the beginning, as in the days of Dr. Francia and
The word is generally written " Minuane," but I am assured by
Mr. R. Huxham, of the Hio Grande do Sul, a competent judge, that Minuano is the correct form.
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the two Lopez, the spiritual was made subordinate to the temporal power. Ferdinand the Catholic obtained from Pope Alexander VI. the right of levying chureh tithes, upon the express condition of Christianizing his own hemisphere. Shortly afterwards (1508) Julius II. made over to him the entire patronage of ecclesiastical interests. Such concessions created the Spanish kings heads of the South American Church, and proprietors of her property ; the Chief Pontiff confirmed all their appointments, and Papal Bulls had no power in their colonies unless sanctioned by the Consejo de Indias. The first oath of the Bishop elect was to recognise the spiritual superiority, and to swear that he would never oppose the prerogative [patronato real), of his sovereign. In other points the ecclesiastical hierarchy was placed on the same footing as in Spain : the prelates received a portion of the tithes, whilst the rest was devoted to propagandism, and to the building of churches.
The government of the Adelantazgo of private adven- turers — the era of conquest and confusion — was succeeded by the norm of order, and by the despotism laical and clerical of the parent country. A royal decree in 1620 divided Paraguay into two governments, completely independent of each other. The first was Paraguay Proper : the other was the Rio de la Plata, which thus ob- tained her own capital, Buenos Aires, and the seat of her bishopric. To both colonies a king irresponsible by law gave laws and functionaries. Both Paraguay and the Argen- tine Provinces were governed for more than two centuries by the Vice-royalty of Peru, and the '^Audience of Charcas,^' whose only peer was then that of Nueva Espaiia.
It was at this period that the Society of Jesus obtained permission to catechize the indolent, passive, receptive child-men called Guaranis. They were rather barbarians than savages like the nomads of the Pampas j they culti-
26 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
vated maize and sweet potato^ tobacco and cotton, and they had none of the headstrong independence that cha- racterizes the Gaucho or mixed breed. Philip III. having, by his decree of 1606, approved of the project to propagate the faith, allowed two Italians, Simoni Mazeta and Giuseppe Cataldino to set out (December 8, 1609) en route for the colony of La Guayra, where some Spaniards had settled and had laid the foundations of future empire. The Jesuits began to form their rival government in the regions to the east and south-east of the actual republic, the fertile valleys of the Rivers Parana and Uruguay ; and between 1685 and 1760 they established the Misiones or Reductions of Paraguay. The whole Guarani Republic, for it might so be called, contained thirty-three Pueblos or towns. Of these, seven, now hopelessly ruined, lay on the left bank of the Uruguay River ; fifteen, also destroyed, were in the modern provinces of Corrientes and Entre Rios ; and eleven, of which remnants of church or chapel still exist, were in Paraguay Proper, that is to say, north of the Great River. These thirty-three Reductions numbered at one time 100,000 souls and 743,608 head of cattle.
It is a popular error to suppose that all Paraguay was occupied by the Jesuits ; their theocracy extended over but a small portion of the modern Republic ; on the other hand their influence flew far and wide. In the west and about Asuncion was the civil government, one of pure immobility as regards progress, and occupied only by contemptible wars, civil and foreign. The clergy was in the last stage of corruption and ignorance, except when its own interests were concerned. New Spain alone numbered 15,000 priests. About 1649 South America supported 840 monkeries with enormous estates : a will that left nothiog to a religious house was held an irreligious act in those days, and even now the prejudice is not quite obsolete. Moreover, every
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landed property was mulcted in impositions known as Capellanias. Its nunneries were equally wealthy, and most of them admitted only ladies of Spanish origin, thus foster- ing the spirit of aristocracy in the very bosom of religion.
It is interesting to see how, in the organization of those early times, we find adumbrated the system of Paraguay in the heart of the nineteenth century. Then, and not as vulgarly supposed with Dr. Francia, commenced the isola- tion which afterwards gave to Paraguay the titles of Japan and " Chine Americaine.^ Then began the sterile, extra- vagant theocratic despotism which made the race what it still is, an automaton that acts as peasantry and soldiery ; not a people but a flock, a servum pecus knowing no rule but that of their superiors, and whose history may be summed up in absolute submission, fanaticism, blind obe- dience, heroic and barbarous devotion to the tyrant that rules it, combined with crass ignorance, hatred of, and contempt for, the foreigner. Then first arose the oligarchy, the slavery of the masses, the incessant corvees which still endure, the regimentation of labour, and even the storing of arms and ammunition. Bearing this fact in mind, we have the key that opens many a fact, so inexplicable to the world, in the events of the last five years^ war.
The Jesuits appeared as Thaumaturgi, missioners and martyrs : in those days they headed progress and they strove to advance science, until the latter outstripping them, they determined to trip her up. Their system justified hunting- expeditions to catch souls for the Church ; and Azara has well described their ingenuity in peopling the Mission of San Joachim. By founding in every city churches and religious houses they monopolized education, beginning even with the babe, and by immense territorial property they rose to influence and power. The Guaranis, taught to hold themselves a saintly and chosen^ a privileged and
28 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
God-elected race, and delighted to be so patriarclially and caciqually ruled, prostrated themselves before the Fathers in body and mind ; looked up to them as dog does to man, and bound up in them their own physical as well as spiritual existence.
The Superior of the Missions being empowered by the Pope to confirm, bishops were not wanted. That high official usually resided at Candelaria, on the left bank of the upper Parana River. In each of the reduced villages was a ^' College^^ for two Jesuits — misite illos binos, the practice of the earliest Christian Apostles, was with them a rule as in Japan and Dahome. One charged with temporals was the Rector, Misionero, Cmxta or Curate ; the other, called Doctrinero or Companero, the Vice-Curate, managed spiritual matters. Each settlement also had its Cabildo or municipality, composed of a Corregidor, an Alcalde (magistrate) and his assessors; but as in the native corps of the Anglo-Indian army, these were native officers under command of the white strangers. The Fathers also decided, without appeal to the ordinary judges or to the Spanish tribunals, all cases civil and criminal; the only rule or law was the Jesuit^s will, and the punishments were inflicted through the Cabildos over which they presided. Presently the royal tithes and taxes were replaced by a fixed levy in order to avoid communication with the agent at the head-quarters of civil power.
A system of complete uniformity was extended even to the plan of the settlement and of the houses. Travellers in the Missions have deemed themselves victims of delusion when after riding many leagues from one Reduction they found themselves in a facsimile of that which they had left. All the settlements had, like the settlers, saints^ names. The normal plan was a heap of pauper huts clustering about a church of the utmost procurable magnificence, and
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the establishments of the Fathers were in the church, not in the hut. The Jesuits were forbidden to converse