In the Paraguayan reductions, the alphabetization of the Guarani Indians resulted in sociabilities unknown before, allowing new relationship models with the others and chains of power. The uses and functions reserved for writing allowed certain Indians to handle the world of papers with nimbleness, a practice that grew after the second half of the 17th century. On that age, lettered Indians used writing as a way to communicate with their fellows or to produce a memory of the facts deemed worthy of remembrance. Because they knew the value attributed to writing in the Old Regime societies, on certain occasions they sought a way to register their testimonies and inquietudes. Thus, the documents "of Indian letters" constitute a testimony of how written culture and memory were intertwined in the quotidian of the population of the missions, in a social game through which they sought to safeguard an Indian version of the facts elapsed in the reductions of Paraguay.
Guarani missions; written culture; Indian histor