The Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata

This ethnographic study is a revisionist view of the most significant and widely known mission system in Latin America—that of the Jesuit missions to the Guaraní Indians, who inhabited the border regions of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. It traces in detail the process of Indian adaptation to Spanish colonialism from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries.

The book demonstrates conclusively that the Guaraní were as instrumental in determining their destinies as were the Cath...