Jesuit Ruins

Yesterday, Chelsey and I travelled 40 km outside of Encarnacion to visit the Jesuit Ruinas at La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue.  This is a must-do trip when you are in Encarnacion for a while (in case any of you are planning on making trips down here soon).  We were originally going to go by ourselves but Sister Mariana organized a trip for "the chicas" (right) at the other house and invited us to go along.  As background, the chicas are girls, age 14-23, who are from backcountry Paraguay but live with the Sisters so they can go to school here in Encarnacion.  To pay for their stay, school, food, etc., they all have jobs working in the community.  The people they work for pay the Sisters and then they get to go to a good school.  It is a great program and they are all a lot of fun.  We teach English class to some of them (whoever wants to come) on Thursday afternoons.  Our journey started at 2:30 in the afternoon.  The weather had been overcast all day and we were just waiting for the rain to wash the plans away.  There are not many cloudy days in Paraguay that don't include driving rain and thunderstorms.

Anyhow, back to the story about the Jesuit Ruins.  Paraguay was founded in 1524 and the missions were founded in 1609 (that is two years after Jamestown if I remember AP US History).  The Jesuit missionaries were in the area to evangelize the native Guaraní people.  As I think I have mentioned before, Guaraní is an official language in Paraguay.  The people here are very proud that they have two official languages (Spanish, too) as they are the only country in South America to claim that distinction.  After 150 years of building, the missions were complete and many of the Guaraní people changed their way of life completely by moving into pueblos of 2,000-3,000 people surrounding the missions.  

The missionaries provided an "education" to the Guaraní, taught them of Western Society and put the Guaraní language on paper for the first time.  I make no judgements about whether the missionaries here were good/bad for the people or were welcome at the time.  I do think, however, it is safe to say that they had a different style than present-day missionaries.

First, we visited La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná (photos left and above).  We arrived in daylight and had a guided tour although we did not take much from the tour as the guide was speaking in both Spanish and Guaraní.  

Next, we went to a park in the area and spotted two fine specimens in the woods (left and right).  Did you know that porcupines climb trees? Did you know that I had a cousin who was Guaraní?  Neither did I.  

We concluded the night 12 km away at a second ruins site, Jesús de Tavarangue.  It was dark by the time we arrived and I really was not sure how well that was going to work out.  It was AWESOME.  They play classical baroque music and light the ruins up after dark.  We were out in the middle of nowhere so the stars were really bright and we had some amazing views when the clouds would cooperate.  We saw a shooting star while touring these nearly 400 year old ruins.  AWESOME!

If you are interested in learning more about the history of Paraguay, and specifically, the missionaries there is a film, The Mission (1986) with Robert Deniro that I would recommend.

If you are interested in reading more, Wikipedia has a pretty good page on the ruins here.  They were declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1993.  Paraguay is really pushing its tourism hard and, as a result, is doing  a good job of maintaining the site.  I would recommend them if you are in the neighborhood.