Jesuit proto-communist missions in Paraguay
anecdote · historical ·
retold in 5 talks
Žižek describes how in 17th-century Paraguay the Jesuits organised indigenous people into economically thriving, culturally rich 'missions' that printed books in Guaraní, exported violins, and organised defence against slave traders, a proto-communist miracle. When Voltaire's criticism led the Vatican to disband the Jesuits, Spanish and Portuguese colonisers destroyed the missions. The paradox: a European 'reactionary' force played the most progressive role in the Americas.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 4
“Paradoxically, Jesuits already began to print in Guarani... If Jesuits were allowed to stay there, the whole image of Latin America would have been different.”
“It didn't, as they like to say, 'The utopia self-destroyed itself from...' No! Brazil and Spain together attacked them.”
“Do you know, for example, that Jesuits were there already printing books in their own Indian Guarani language?”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Terrence Malick2Ignatius of Loyola1Francis of Assisi1Herbert McCabe1José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero1Kasper Holten1Edvard Kardelj1Hans-Jürgen Syberberg1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
Žižek describes how in 17th-century Paraguay the Jesuits organised indigenous people into economically thriving, culturally rich 'missions' that printed books in Guaraní, exported violins, and organised defence against slave traders, a proto-communist miracle. When Voltaire's criticism led the Vatican to disband the Jesuits, Spanish and Portuguese colonisers destroyed the missions. The paradox: a European 'reactionary' force played the most progressive role in the Americas., illustrating paradox of reactionary vs. progressive,colonial history,Jesuit missions as historical alternative
The Jesuit missions in Paraguay ('Reducciones') were thriving economies with Guarani-language books; they were not destroyed by internal utopian collapse but by a ruthless military attack by Brazil and Spain, with even the Vatican against them., illustrating communism-socialism utopia,monasteries as communist utopias
Žižek praises the Jesuit missions (reductions) in Paraguay as an extraordinary humanitarian achievement, including printing books in the Guarani language, and defends them against both Foucault's reading as totalitarian control and the colonial-era European campaign against them., illustrating Christianity's radical egalitarian core,colonialism and its exceptions,Jesuits as progressive
Žižek holds up the Jesuit Republic of Paraguay, which was already printing books in the native Guaraní language, as a historical site of authentic universalism, destroyed by Spain, Portugal, and Argentina acting together., illustrating particular of the particular,universalism vs. local roots,colonialism