The Kingdom of God in Paraguay, III

...In theory, the system of common ownership of property remained in force in the depopulated settlements, and it was not until 1848 that the Paraguayan dictator, Lopez, issued a decree finally abolishing the communist form of government among the Indians...

...In 1759, the order was banished from Portugal, and in 1767 the same thing happened in Spain, and the Spanish premier, Aranda, took the necessary steps to put an end to Jesuit rule in Paraguay...

...But soon after this period, better times were to dawn for the South American slave-dealers, for now, after the unexpected difficulties over the boundary settlement, their complaints against the accursed fathers who for a century and a half had ruined their business were to find willing listeners...

...They immediately found themselves faced by a regular system of fortified works defended by guns, from which the Indians could be evicted only after a desperate struggle costing many lives, after which the Indians withdrew to a new line of defense in the mountains, the capture of which so exhausted the troops that a further advance had to be deferred for some weeks...

...to flames...

...It having become evident that separate action was impracticable, the Spanish joined forces with the Portuguese in a combined attack...

...The Spaniards, however, had to withdraw to the banks of the La Plata, on encountering bodies of Indian troops of considerably greater numerical strength than themselves, while the Portuguese, who had advanced westward from Sao Pedro to Rio Grande de San Pedro, were equally unsuccessful...

...An Indian even came to the governor of Buenos Aires with a map of the country showing these gold mines, on which the fortifications constructed by the Jesuits for the defense of this treasure were also clearly marked...

...Secular officials were appointed to take charge of the settlements which had been deprived of their masters, and they made it their first business to seize for their own benefit the church ornaments, the foodstuffs in the granaries and the cattle...

...When a group of learned dreamers attempted to bring about the establishment of Communism in the twentieth century, they were at once faced by an infinitely difficult task...

...One after the other, the seven districts to be surrendered to Portugal had to be conquered, during which process an entire Spanish cavalry brigade was attacked and captured by the Indians...

...The governor immediately set out to investigate the matter on the spot, but, though he failed to discover the least trace of the gold mines, no one from that time onward had any doubt regarding the existence there of untold wealth...

...This fortress was so skilfully constructed that the Portuguese suspected that the two fathers were really not priests at all, but disguised engineer officers...

...In the mean time, the fathers also endeavored to make the Portuguese troops harmless by undermining their discipline...

...This firm conviction had an effect which would not have been produced so rapidly in any other way...

...Father Florian Baucke reports regarding his experiences at the hands of these commissioners: Their first concern was to take possession of my few belongings...

...Acting under their instructions, the Indians refused to sell anything to the white people...

...Each citizen has to perform a certain amount of agricultural work and is further allocated to a trade to follow...

...It was further stated that the fathers had arbitrarily concluded formal treaties with the neighboring Indian tribes, that they had gone so far as to order their subjects to refuse obedience to the Spanish and Portuguese authorities, and even that in Paraguay there was a Jesuit king called Nicholas, who had issued golden coins bearing his own image...

...Even the most unimportant item of furniture was seized...

...A number of commissioners were dispatched to the settlements, and these officials ransacked every college and every drawer, in search of the mythical wealth of the Jesuits, but in this they were bitterly disappointed...

...The churches, schools and workshops of the Jesuits were either demolished or allowed to fall into ruin...

...All property is held in common, and every citizen is required to work, the lighter forms of labor being allotted to the women...

...The most serious accusations were made against the Jesuits...

...all concerned with the Spanish colonial possessions, from the prime minister down to the least junior official, were inspired by the one passionate idea of obtaining possession of this gold...

...But the fury of the higher command reached its climax when, during a further advance, the troops found themselves confronted by a Jesuit defensive work armed with guns and held by the Indians under the leadership of two fathers...

...It soon afterward happened that Portuguese troops deserted to the Jesuits, taking with them their ammunition and rations...

...Far from having modeled their state on any preconceived theories, the fathers rather made primitive innocence of their Indians the basis of the whole of the economic and political organization of their settlements...

...Disappointed of their booty, the Spaniards and Portuguese treated the imprisoned fathers with every brutality, at first keeping them in close confinement like malefactors, and then transporting them to Europe between decks in their men-of-war...

...All this, they stated, I had done to gratify my own whim...

...Boatmen could not be found to row their craft, and when eventually they were forcibly recruited, it was learned that, under the orders of the Jesuits, the Indians had deserted their villages in all parts of the province, taking all their foodstuffs with them...

...As from that date, the inhabitants of the former Jesuit state became citizens of the Brazilian republic, and their storehouses and property were sequestrated by the state...

...The Boundary Commission, wishing to leave the Rio Negro, the Indian work people in Para, the capital of the province, went on strike in order to prevent the departure of the commissioners...

...Joseph de Maistre writes: When we consider that this order inspired by the doctrines of the Christian Church, founded its rulership in Paraguay solely on the influence of its virtues and of its talents, that the Jesuits taught the savages of South America to appreciate the magic influence of music, when finally we remember that it was only through the cooperation of corrupt ministries and of courts of justice which had been seized by madness that it became possible to overthrow this magnificent Society, then only can we visualize in our imagination that madman who rejoicingly tramples a clock beneath his feet, crying the while: "I will stop your noise...

...Only by bringing up a fresh army as reinforcements was the Portuguese general finally able to cope with the situation...

...I told them we had none, since we always obtained everything we needed by barter...

...He and his fellow-fathers did their best to convince the officers that I had left the city without orders from his Majesty, and that I had of my own initiative led the army into these forests where they were doomed to perish of starvation...

...Alexander von Humboldt also writes: When the Jesuits in Santa Fe were thrown into prison, no trace was found on them of the piles of piastres, the emeralds of Muzo, the gold ingots of Choco, which the enemies of the Society had alleged they possessed...

...This reflection brings us nearer to an understanding of how it came to pass that the Jesuits were able to set up their Utopia in Paraguay...

...The men carry on weaving, mason's and potter's work, wood-work, metal-work, while the women are chiefly engaged in spinning...

...Among the arts, music is specially cultivated, and when the Solarians make thank-offerings to their God, these take the form of music...

...This City of the Sun is a republic ruled by a priest, its whole social life being based on pure communism and on the administration of productive wealth by the state...

...It is true that, from the early days of the eighteenth century up to our own time, there have been those who have sought to depreciate the value of what was done in Paraguay, and to cast doubt on the fathers' integrity...

...As the Jesuits did not possess sufficient troops to offer armed resistance simultaneously on two fronts, they organized a complete strike and inaugurated an extensive boycott movement in the north...

...The general enmity which had meanwhile grown up against the Society of Jesus in the European courts, in the convents, boudoirs and professors' studies, naturally strengthened the decision to overthrow the Jesuit republic...

...they had long since lost that holy simplicity, that absence of individuality, that lack of material needs, which in Paraguay facilitated the establishment of a classless and ideal state...

...Even the authorities in Madrid and Lisbon allowed themselves to be convinced that the "human rights of the Indians" constituted a grave danger to the whole colonial policy...

...It was not until six months after the commencement of hostilities that the European troops entered the first Indian settlement, which had been abandoned by its inhabitants and put * Parts one and two of this narrative, which is taken from The Power and Secrets of the Jesuits to be published by the Viking Press, appeared in The Commonweal the last two weeks...

...In a letter from the bishop of Para to the court of Lisbon, it is stated that:The missionaries went so far in disobedience as explicitly to forbid the natives in all the villages on the banks of the Tapajos to plant breadfruit trees...

...As to the fate of the library established by the Jesuits in Paraguay, a Protestant author writes as follows: This magnificent collection suffered the same fate as the famous Alexandrian library...

...After searching every coffer and box, they asked where the money was...

...If all this was not sufficient to induce the authorities in Europe to adopt energetic measures, the enemies of the Jesuits were able to bring forward another argument which could not fail to produce the desired effect...

...Those critics who, as the result of investigations, were compelled to admit the reality of the Indian state of Paraguay and of its institutions denied that the Jesuits possessed any originality, and sought to prove that what they had established was founded on certain political novels written in the sixteenth century...

...The inhabitants are not the owners but the tenants of the land, which belongs to the community...

...It would, however, be equally easy to find similar parallels in every other communist Utopia, but it has ever been the case that all these visions of an ideal state with no class distinctions have sprung from the world-old day-dream of Paradise Lost...

...We find equally surprising resemblances between the institutions in the Jesuit settlements and those in the City of the Sun which was imaginatively described by the Dominican monk, Campanella...

...For, no matter how backward the Russians may have been compared with the remainder of Europe, they are nevertheless Europeans in this, that they differ from one another in innumerable ways according to the nature of their talents and vices, of their desires and passions...

...The governor-general reported at the time that Father Aleixo Antonio tried to get on friendly terms with certain officers, and, under the virtuous pretext of instructing them in the exercises of Saint Ignatius, persuaded them to remain in the college...

...The erroneous conclusion was arrived at that these treasures had really existed, but had been entrusted to faithful Indians, and concealed in the cataracts of the Orinoco until the order should be restored at some future date...

...It was not an Omar, or the savages of the Gran Chaco who destroyed them, but Christians, spiritual descendants of that Theodosius who ordered the destruction of the Alexandrian library...

...In the mean time, the republic had also had to fight for its life in the north, for in that direction also a Spanish-Portuguese frontier agreement had been concluded at its expense...

...For this reason, despite immeasurable bloodshed, Bolshevism has so far fallen short of its aims, but the Jesuits in Paraguay had merely to adapt their rules to the desires and needs of their uncivilized forest Indians, and, under their guidance, the "ideal communist state" came into being entirely of its own motion...

...the Indians, under the leadership of the fathers, continually harassed them and enticed them into ambushes, thereby compelling them to conclude an armistice...

...But, as they could no longer sing and make music in the settlements, many of the Indians escaped from their new rulers by fleeing to and wandering aimlessly in the dense forests which the fathers had formerly induced them to leave...

...It is true that, if we compare the Jesuit republic with the island of Utopia which was invented by the English lord chancelor, More, we find remarkable coincidences: like Paraguay, Utopia consists of a number of cities planned on the same lines, each of them forming the centre of an agricultural district of a prescribed size...

...it was alleged that the taxes levied by the Jesuits bore no proportion to the enormous trade income of the country...

...They used most of the Jesuits' books for making cartridges, for baking biscuits, or for lantern lights, and I had a similar experience to that of the historian Orosius, who found in Alexandria only the empty bookcases of the library which was formerly there...

...They simply could not admit that such an ideal state really existed, still less that it should have been the work of the hated Jesuits...

...the Jesuits withdrew their troops to the eastern bank of the Uruguay, where the expeditionary force now found itself confronted by an Indian army 14,000 strong...

...It was now alleged that the fathers had discovered gold mines in Paraguay, whose existence they had kept strictly secret...

...Its history is manifestly one of the most interesting and suggestive narratives in the long chronicle of development in the Americas...