This book exposes the depth and breadth of the Jesuit impact on the experiences of the people of Latin America and beyond. This multiauthor volume combines the vast knowledge of scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Although the work can be a little disjointed at times, it gives those who are curious about the Jesuit influence a taste of many aspects of colonial life in which it was significant.
The book is divided into four main sections. The first section looks at Jesuit art, architecture, and material culture. Even though Jesuits have been seen as great cultural assimilators, Gauvin Alexander Bailey demonstrates in the case of French Jesuit Charles de Belleville that they could also be cultural conduits. Father Belleville brought Chinese architectural motifs to Brazil in the hope that the Jesuits’ missionary success in Asia could be replicated there. Kate Ford, however, emphasizes how the Jesuits for the most part incorporated local artistic trends by looking at how indigenous practices of body painting and motifs in pottery show up in the artwork of Jesuit churches among the Chiquitos. Clarissa Rahmeier further reinforces the existence of this artistic hybridization in relation to pottery among the 30 Guaraní missions in Paraguay.
The second section looks at Jesuit mission life, in particular the hybrid social, cultural, and political societies created by the Jesuit impositions on the indigenous population. Barbara Ganson uses the cases of two Guaraní women punished for adultery to highlight the patriarchal society created in the Jesuit missions, where women did resist but at great personal cost. Jesuit cultural impositions extended also to artistic pursuits such as music. Leonardo Weisman explores Jesuit attempts to teach European instruments and polyphony to the people of the northern Amazonian region of Mainas. Capuche Boidin further shows the difficulties Jesuits had in imposing a lingua franca within the Tupi-Guaraní language family.
Evangelization was of course a central theme of the Jesuit presence in Latin America, as the third section discusses. One of the most pressing issues was how to teach concepts of Christianity to indigenous populations when there was no mutual cultural understanding between them and the Europeans. Oriol Ambrogio's examination of baptism exposes the way in which societies in northwest Mexico and Chile viewed this sacrament. Getting baptized could help indigenous individuals rise in the sociopolitical structure of colonial society; however, baptism's frequent use in articulo mortis (while the recipient was dying) associated it with death, causing indigenous peoples to actively shun being baptized. Along similar lines, Virginia Ghelarducci discusses the ideas of the Jesuit Giovanni Anello Oliva regarding the importance of a proper religious education among the Andeans of Peru and Bolivia. Finally, Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá and Caroline Egan explore the difficulty of translating concepts such as “God” and “father” in the missionary guide Doutrina Christá na Linguoa Brasilica.
To finish the collection, William Clarence-Smith and Eduardo Ortiz discuss Jesuit influences on agriculture, medicine, and science in the Americas. Clarence-Smith explores how networks created by the need to trade breeding donkeys and horses for mule husbandry connected the Jesuit institutions throughout the Americas. Similarly, Ortiz explores how Jesuits’ scientific interests bound their institutions to a global community.
Even though it does not provide a comprehensive view of Jesuit activities in Latin America, which would be a rather Sisyphean task, this book provides a historical variety pack. It allows students and scholars alike to see the vast panorama of the Jesuit influence on colonial Latin America. At times, the multiplicity of topics can seem a little jarring between chapters. Taking a step back, however, the volume forms a mosaic of cultural and human interactions that defined many regions of the Americas.
