 | The article's lead section may need to be rewritten. (October 2010) |
Long before Spanish conquistadors discovered Paraguay for King Charles V in 1524, semi-nomadic Chaco Indian tribes populated Paraguay's rugged landscape. Although few relics or physical landmarks remain from these tribes, the fact that nearly 90 percent of Paraguayans still understand the indigenous Guarani language is testament to Paraguay's Indian lineage. The Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1524 and founded Asunción in 1537. Paraguay's colonial experience differed from that of neighboring countries, such as Bolivia and Argentina, because it did not have gold and other mineral deposits that the Spanish were searching for. Because of its lack of mineral wealth and its remoteness, Paraguay remained underpopulated and economically underdeveloped. Early governor Domingo Martínez de Irala took an Indian wife and a series of Indian concubines and encouraged other male settlers to do likewise. Intermarriage fused Indian culture with that of the Europeans, creating the mestizo class that dominates Paraguay today. From the beginning, however, Indians retained their Guaraní language, even as Spanish influence was accepted, and embraced, in other aspects of society.
Although European fortune seekers headed elsewhere in South America, the Jesuits descended on Paraguay and, over a period of generations, transformed the lives of the Guaraní people in eastern Paraguay. By the beginning of the 18th century, about 100,000 of the once polytheistic Indians had converted to Christianity and were resident at the Jesuit missions and on the land surrounding the missions. This theocratic society endured until 1767, when Spanish authorities expelled the Jesuits from Paraguay, fearing that the massive wealth and land accumulated by the Jesuits had made the mission communes (reducciones) an "empire within an empire." In the vacuum left by the Jesuit ouster, the Indians experienced for the first time direct contact with Spanish officials. Ultimately, however, the administrative and military tactics of imperial control proved far less successful and palatable than those of the Jesuits. Tensions between the natives and the Europeans grew steadily during the last years of the 18th century.