Of Huts and Indecent Temples: The State of the Churches of the Missions of the Gran Chaco after the Expulsion of the Society of Jesus (1767-1778)

ABSTRACT

A painting that falls and hurts a visitor, worn canvases and dull paintings, broken sculptures, and collapsed vaults. These few descriptions were enough for the visitors of the Tucumán governorate to denounce the state of deterioration, abandonment, and destruction of the reductional border churches of the Gran Chaco after the expulsion of the Company of Jesus. Consequently, the government and the ecclesiastical chapter of Tucumán began a campaign of building reconstruction for the spiritual safeguard of the indigenous people. The objective of this article is to analyze how, in this context, images and objects of worship were reused and appropriated to compose the sacred. We propose to replace two antagonistic ways of interpreting decorum and decency associated with the sacred by comparing the inventories of temporalities (1767) and those carried out by the governors of Tucumán (1771 and 1777).

Keywords:
Material culture; Society of Jesus; Great Chaco missions; Gerónimo Matorras; Suárez de Cantillana