ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on the history of the myth of the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay. After the end of the Jesuit Reductions in 1767 and the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, the former Jesuits Domingo Muriel and José Manuel Peramás praised the missions of Paraguay as an example of the ‘happiness’ associated in Europe with traditional society and the rule of law; by doing this, they aimed to counter the new culture of the Enlightenment. Peramás in particular claimed that the Reductions in Paraguay represented an excellent embodiment of the classical ideal of politics as expounded by Plato; by contrast, he related the ideology of the French Revolution to the Epicurean ideal of politics. Later myths of Paraguay in the age of Restoration followed some elements of Peramás’s traditionalist thought, and their legacy can still be traced in some reassessments of the Christianization of Latin America in recent times.
