Talk:Jesuit missions among the Guaraní

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Jesuit Province of Paraguay[edit]

If you type in 'Jesuit Province of Paraguay', shouldn't it lead here? 165.146.177.74 19:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bias[edit]

These Jesuits sound like saints. Universal literacy? My arse.

78.147.146.29 (talk) 22:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course the Guaranis living in the Reductions were not free by modern standards BUT the Jesuits created these villages to protect them from Spanish and Portuguese slave traders. The aim of the Treaty of Madrid was to allow these traders to resume their business. The Guaranis wars, fought after that the last Jesuit departed, show that the Guaranis knew bloody well the difference! Therefore, I am quite astonished by the content of this article, which follows the old Portuguese propaganda. There is a bias, but not the one you think of!Jsoufron (talk) 07:08, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree. On the linguistic side, the work of those Jesuits was really impressive and they had similar projects even in Europe. They for example tried to codify my first language (Bavarian) and make it a standard language independent of today's Standard German. But the next year after they were banned in 1773, this project was canceled and Bavarian had the same fate as Guaraní ... it slowly vanished and was reduced to a dialect spoken only by uneducated people. --El bes (talk) 07:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. The article is full of POV and naive propaganda. For example how one hunderd Jesuits were able to "keep absolute power" and "ruthlessy exploit"? Or why the Guarani fiercely defended the missions against the Portugese despite of Jesuits requests to give up the fight? The introduction is as POV as Goebels' tyrade.Yeti (talk) 00:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Yeti, you are using a parabula that shows that you have not much information about the historic discourse. This Mr. G., you are mentioning, never said anything but hate tyrades against Catholicism in general and especially about the Jesuits. Here he was in the even older tradition of Prussian anti-Jesuit propaganda, that was common even under intellectuals there. --El bes (talk) 03:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While moving indigenous people onto preserves will always have some common elements, it would only lead to confusion to liken what happened in Indian reductions in general with what the Jesuits effected in Paraguay. If someone wants to complete the daunting task of writing on all Indian reductions as one topic, then we can see whether they should all fall under one heading. Jzsj (talk) 20:45, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup and citing[edit]

I have added a few more citations to this page and removed the tag. This is in preparation for a fairly large merge of material that I intend to do from the rather large section under Guaraní, which is largely taken verbatim from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The bulk of that information belongs here however, as that section is larger than the main article. Arkyan 18:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

French page[edit]

Have a look on the French page... we could get some information off there and improve this page. jackchen123 23/08/07 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by [[Special:Contributions/{58.109.100.117 (talk · contribs) }|{58.109.100.117 (talk · contribs) }]] ([[User talk:{58.109.100.117 (talk · contribs) }|talk]]) 11:37, August 23, 2007 (UTC)

Better and well balanced - see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_j%C3%A9suite_du_ParaguayJsoufron (talk) 16:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Opening sentence[edit]

I'm not pleased with the opening of "Jesuit Reductions": "The Jesuit Reductions were a particular version of the general Spanish colonial strategy of building reductions...".

An explanation of what a "reduction" is ought to come first. It's a settlement, according to the "Indian Reductions" article. D021317c 08:34, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you compare the Paraguay Reductions with the Patronato real system of cross and crown going together, you'll recognize an essential distinction: here the initiative is not the Conquistadores' search for gold but the protection of the indigenous peoples from exploitation.Jzsj (talk) 21:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Gott in himmel[edit]

I have removed Gott's misunderstanding of, or wordplay with, the sense of "reductions", meaning "concentrations", in Spanish. Obviously, as far as the Spanish colonial authorities were concerned, acquiring "European civilization" would be raising up, not "reducing" the Indians. Richard Gott is neither a historian, nor a neutral source, and should be used with care. Johnbod (talk) 01:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The intention was not to push pov as your edit summary suggests. Quite simply I had a real life interruption and had not finished that paragraph. (Also removed the refs from the lead to reformat, which I see you've done.) Thanks for the input. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:23, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Jenks24 (talk) 12:58, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Jesuit Reductions → Jesuit reduction – Please place your rationale for the proposed move here. --Relisted. Armbrust The Homunculus 07:35, 3 August 2014 (UTC) Per WP:MOSCAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization") and WP:TITLE, this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. There also seems to be no reasont to pluralise, per wp:title. Tony (talk) 06:53, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose this silly nom. Always capitalized in sources, & meaningless as a "generic, common term". Johnbod (talk) 12:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Are you usually so rude? I suppose I'll have to do a quick google search. Many examples of lower case. Here's UNESCO (see caption), and it's not capped in Spanish either. Catholicism.org (five examples, ignoring where it's a film title, or section titles). The Catholic Dictionary, curiously, downcases in its page title, and upcases in the main text (along with Government and Father). Lower authority, but still telling: a historian's presentation (slide 16), and stamps. That's just the top of a google search.

As well, reduction in this article's text was entirely lowercase (about 28 examples) except for the top two, which had been capped, and which I downcased before realising the title also needed doing, and one section title further down. I haven't done a google search of books, but that's normally more likely to contain lowercase. Please explain "silly". Tony (talk) 13:17, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well if you do a google search of books you find this. Yes there are "many examples of lower case" but upper case is predominant. Lower case often uses what Wikipedians like to call "scare quotes", and upper case is often used for "Reductions" without the "Jesuit". The reason for all this is that, far from being "a generic, common term" as you claim, "reductions" used for large communities of people is a unique and strange, even bizarre, usage in English, taken straight from the Spanish (where I think it is not a normal meaning either). Treating it as a "generic, common term" just puzzles people who don't know what it means, like, say, those looking it up in an encyclopedia. The topic is normally discussed as a collective phenomenon, except in guide books covering individual sites, and so the plural is more common in the sources, and shoulsd be retained. Johnbod (talk) 10:13, 3 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support a move to singular per WP:SINGULAR and (I can't believe I'm doing this; I love CAPS) a move to lowercase per WP:NCCAPS. This is an article about the entity called a reduction, not a list of such reductions which would require a plural. As far as caps go, capitalization is not used to differentiate terms from "generic" or "common" (meaning usual) usage unless that name is a proper name. Here, "reductions" is not a proper name; it is an unusual use of the term but that does not make it a proper name. Other terms with similar unusual uses such as flesh, mission, profession, or species also remain uncapitalized. I reviewed the Google Books results provided by User:Johnbod and found usage in sources is indeed mixed (I disagree that caps predominates and note: at least one of the hits for a capitalized version is a hit from a table of contents—the text uses lowercase—and another source also capitalizes "mission" which Wikipedia does not. Spanish usage is irrelevant; it has different capitalization rules and this is English Wikipedia. When faced with such mixed usage, we should go with the Wikipedia style manual. —  AjaxSmack  03:16, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – according to Google n-grams, the lowercase is much more common in books, for both the singular and plural, even without accounting for the common use of caps in titles and headings. No contest per MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 03:58, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Title is misleading[edit]

I plan to expand this article as it seems to me to need more detail and balance between what was good and what was bad about the reductions. But I also notice that the title is misleading. "Jesuit Reductions" is the title, but Jesuit reductions took place in about 10 regions in South America and several in North America -- and this article only covers one area, the Guarani reductions, with brief mentions of a couple of others. The article might be titled "Jesuit Reductions in South America" with additional material regarding other Jesuit reductions added. Or it could be titled "Jesuit Reductions with the Guarani" or "Jesuit reductions in Paraguay." (The latter title is a bit confusing because most of the reductions were located in what is now Brazil or Argentina, rather than Paraguay. Paraguay used to be larger.

Any opinions? [[User:Smallchief|Smallchief]] ([[User talk:Smallchief|talk]] (talk) 23:52, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Should distinguish Jesuits more from Spanish government[edit]

At the moment anybody reading the article would get the impression that the Spanish authorities had an idealistic motive:

The Spanish Empire adopted a strategy of trying to gather native populations into communities called "Indian reductions" (Spanish: reducciones de indios). The idealistic objective of the reductions was to impart Christianity to the Indians

etc.

It was the Jesuits – answerable to the Pope alone – who had this idealistic objective. There is no evidence of any idealism on the part of the colonial authorities: quite the contrary. That's why, when the the Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish Empire, the reducciones lasted no time at all. The Indians were just exploited for their labour, following the usual colonial pattern, and soon ran away.

I suspect this misleading wording comes from an earlier draft. But it's time to put it right. Ttocserp 16:53, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

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Requested move 25 March 2022[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved.(non-admin closure) Turnagra (talk) 19:31, 2 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Jesuit reduction → Jesuit missions among the Guaraní – First, the word "reduction" is unfamiliar to most English-language readers and is almost always used in the plural and is used in the plural in the text of this article. "Missions" is a more common word than "reduction" or "reductions."

Secondly, the title is misleading as it implies a world-wide coverage of the topic, but more than 95 percent of this article is about the Jesuit missions among the Guaraní people in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. A brief mention is made of similar Jesuit reductions in Bolivia, but no mention at all is made of the Jesuit reductions in several other Latin American countries. Thus, the present title does not cover the whole scope of Jesuit reductions.

Third, the Spanish language wikipedia article on this subject is titled Misiones jesuíticas guaraníes which translates as "Jesuit Guaraní missions." I would prefer following the Spanish model with an English title of "Jesuit missions among the Guaraní." Smallchief (talk) 10:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. It improves clarity. Walrasiad (talk) 03:13, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • So what happens to Jesuit reductions? Srnec (talk) 03:42, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • The fact that the Jesuit missions were also called reductions will be mentioned in the text. I'll make the necessary changes in the article. Another problem I didn't mention above is that the English word "reductions" is a false cognate with the Spanish word "reducciones." Thus, the English term is confusing.Smallchief (talk) 10:11, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • The term "Jesuit reductions" is used, false cognate or not. (And it's not: reducción means 'reduction'.) My issue is that an article on Jesuit missions among the Guaraní should not cover "Jesuit reductions in several other Latin American countries", so while the move would solve the "misleading" title, it leaves a bad redirect. The actual es.wiki article that this one links to is Misiones jesuíticas en América, which is where Reducciones jesuíticas redirects. I have no problem with mirroring the Spanish WP's approach, but it is more than a matter of changing titles. Srnec (talk) 15:00, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • Why is the redirect a problem? My technical competence is limited, but isn't that an easy fix?Smallchief (talk) 15:23, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • It wouldn't be a problem if we moved it to a broader title and kept the scope to match. Srnec (talk) 00:39, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support? I think? Definitely "reduction" is really bad as a title unless you're simplifying fractions or thickening a sauce Red Slash 22:22, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. But I'd like to point out that the articles in Portuguese and Spanish that are linked to this one in English are actually "Missões jesuíticas nas Américas/Misiones jesuíticas en América". I do not support moving it to a more specific name such as "Jesuit missions among the Guaraní". The article in Portuguese, for example, covers the topic more broadly, even mentioning Jesuit missions in North America. It seems the english article itself needs more content, not that it was originally intended to cover only the Jesuit missions among the Guraraní peoples, therefore I support moving it to "Jesuit missions in the Americas".Torimem (talk) 23:54, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first rationale rationale of the nomination is weak. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to elucidate, not to dumb down. Either readers know this meaning of reduction, in which case there is not a problem, or they don't, in which case they can click and find out. There is certainly no other encyclopedic meaning of "Jesuit reduction" I can fathom (except maybe a cannibal's thickened sauce à la User:Red Slash's supposition), hence no confusion. Changing this title on the basis that only the most common meanings of nouns can be used would require wholesale renamings from Occam's razor to the National Diet.
In addition, a mission and a reduction are not the same thing, though reductions can be said to be a type of mission. Therefore, it does not improve clarity despite claims above. And the term has worked fine for the reductions article and for Indian reductions in the Andes title chosen by the nominator.
However, the nominator's point that the current title "implies a world-wide coverage of the topic" is well taken. But User:Srnec's point about the redirect is also well taken. If this move is carried out, Jesuit reduction should probably direct to reductions instead of here. —  AjaxSmack  06:17, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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