Building the Other, Davide Sacconi

Abstract: Between the 17th and 18th centuries in a remote area along the basins of Uruguay and the Paraná rivers, a very peculiar form of settlement arose: the Jesuit reduction. In a region characterised by violent conflicts between the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns, the indigenous population, and the Bandeirantes militia, the Jesuits were called to provide order.
This project implied both the spiritual mission of evangelization and the material reduction to a territorial organisation. Establishing a network of thirty settlements with minimal variations and gathering at its height more than 140,000 Guarani and just about 60 Jesuit priests, the reduction was not just a village but the embodiment of a specific form of life. Arranged in a precise scheme, the generic and repetitive architectural elements of the reduction established a common ground where the conversion, with all its individual and political struggles, could be negotiated through religious and civic liturgies of coexistence. As such, the Jesuit reduction operated as an archetype, a paradigmatic form that makes present and explicit a set of rules and uses. Rather than as a type, an abstraction that implicitly imposes norms and behaviours.