Gold Mines and the “Malignant Species to Discredit the Jesuits”

Abstract

Startingfrom an endless series of complaints against the Society of Jesus for exploiting gold mines in the territory where they protected the Guarani villages, evidently to the detriment of the interests of the crown, this article recounts such operations, that took place during practically the entire stay of the Jesuits in the province of Paraguay. The article is based on an extensive bibliography, which is contrasted with mostly published sources, and aims to outline the motives and effects of these accounts, which were brought to court on several occasions with adverse results for the denouncers. The central goal is to establish the impact of such narratives on a systematic construction of a general discredit that eventually constituted one of the various alleged sources of the Pragmatic of 1767, which expelled the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions of the Iberian Peninsula and overseas.

Keywords
Gold mines; reductions; expulsions