reducció

Reducció, in Catalan, refers to a process of reduction, but in historical discourse the term les reduccions denotes planned settlements of Indigenous populations in the Spanish and Portuguese empires during the early modern period. Implemented chiefly by Catholic missionaries, notably the Jesuits, these efforts relocated communities from scattered villages into centralized towns.

Purpose and layout: The reduccions aimed to facilitate Christianization, governance, taxation, and organized labor, while offering protection from external threats and disease. Towns were typically laid out around a central plaza with a church, school, and administrative buildings; households and workshops surrounded the core, and Indigenous leaders acted under missionary oversight, with local autonomy curtailed.

Regions and examples: The most well-known were the Guaraní reducciones in present-day Paraguay, also extending into parts of Brazil and Argentina; notable instances include La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná, Jesús de Tavarangue, and San Ignacio Mini. Other major systems existed in the Chiquitano and Moxos regions of eastern Bolivia and parts of Mato Grosso. The reduccions flourished from the 17th to the mid-18th century.

End and legacy: The Jesuit reducciones were disrupted by the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territories, after which many settlements declined or were reorganized as secular towns. The historical reduccions left a lasting cultural imprint: architectural ruins, landscape forms, and linguistic and religious influences, particularly on the Guaraní language, and they remain a focal point of archaeological and ethnographic study.