To understand Santa María de Fe you first have to know the extraordinary phenomenon it was part of: the Jesuit-Guaraní Missions. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Society of Jesus —the Jesuits— began in this region of South America, in what are today southern Paraguay, the northeast of Argentina and the south of Brazil, an ambitious project of evangelization and organization of the Guaraní peoples. They thus founded the 'reductions' or 'doctrines': towns in which the Guaraní lived under the direction of the missionaries, organized in communities with a social, economic and religious structure of their own.
These missions were unique in colonial history. Each town was arranged around a large square, with the church, the college, the workshops, the storehouses and the dwellings of the Guaraní families arranged according to a regular layout. Life combined the Catholic faith with communal work: agriculture, livestock, crafts and, very prominently, the arts. The missions developed a remarkable production of music, sculpture, painting and trades, in which the Guaraní reached an astonishing mastery, fusing European techniques with their own sensibility.
At their height, the ensemble of the 'Thirty Towns' of the missions came to gather tens of thousands of Guaraní and constituted a social experience that amazed —and also aroused suspicion— in the Europe of the era. Santa María de Fe was one of those towns, and although today it's small and silent, its artistic heritage makes it one of the most valuable testimonies of that vanished world.
Santa María de Fe was one of the Jesuit reductions established in the Missions region, in the present-day department of the same name, in southern Paraguay. Like many of these towns, it had its origin in the last decades of the seventeenth century and consolidated in its site during the first decades of the eighteenth century. Some reductions changed site throughout their history, seeking better lands or for defensive needs, before fixing their definitive settlement.
In Santa María, as in the other missions, life was organized around the square and the church, under the guidance of the Jesuit fathers and with the active participation of the Guaraní in the communal government, the work and the worship. The town had its workshops, where trades and arts were developed, and it was precisely in that sphere that the heritage that today distinguishes the locality would flourish: religious sculpture.
The surrounding reductions —San Ignacio Guazú (the first of Paraguay), Santa Rosa, Santiago, San Cosme y San Damián, among others— were part of a single system, neighbors and linked to each other, sharing the mission project, the exchanges and a common art. Santa María de Fe thus integrated into that network of towns that, for more than a century, defined the life and the landscape of southern Paraguay. The proximity and the historical kinship between these towns are the reason they are visited today as a whole, as a circuit.
If Santa María de Fe shines today on the cultural map of Paraguay, it's because of its exceptional sculptural heritage. In the Jesuit missions, the art workshops had a central importance: there Guaraní sculptors, painters, musicians and craftsmen were trained who, under the teaching of the missionaries and from European models (engravings, prints, images brought from the Old World), developed an artistic production of very high quality.
The baroque mission sculpture —images of saints, virgins, angels and religious scenes carved in wood— reached a remarkable expressiveness and mastery. The Guaraní artists did not limit themselves to copying: they reinterpreted European baroque art with their own sensibility, giving the faces, the gestures and the robes a particular stamp. These works fulfilled a devotional and liturgical function within the churches of the reductions, and many of them were preserved after the decline of the missions.
The Jesuit Museum of Santa María de Fe today safeguards one of the most valuable collections of this imagery in Paraguay, set in an old dependency of the town, around the square. Visiting it is to glimpse that fertile encounter between two worlds —the European and the Guaraní— from which a unique art was born. Each carving is testimony to the talent of the Guaraní artists and to the cultural splendor the missions reached at their height. It is, without doubt, the main reason to visit this small town of the south.
The world of the Jesuit missions came to an end abruptly. In 1767, King Charles III of Spain decreed the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from all his dominions, within the framework of a policy that Portugal and France had already applied before, and which responded to political, economic and power tensions between the monarchies and the order. The measure was carried out in the American territories in 1767 and 1768, and fully reached the Guaraní reductions.
The departure of the Jesuits left the mission towns without the leadership that had articulated their functioning for more than a century. The administration passed to other orders and to civil authorities, but the missions entered a progressive decline: the communal organization weakened, many Guaraní dispersed, and the towns lost population and vitality. Over the following decades, the mission system disintegrated, and with it that singular way of life.
The physical fate of the towns was diverse. Some, like Trinidad and Jesús, ended up in imposing stone ruins that are today World Heritage. Others, like Santa María de Fe, survived as settlements and preserved part of their heritage, especially the carvings and images, which were saved and treasured. That survival is what today allows Santa María to keep its square, its layout and, above all, its extraordinary museum, as a living echo of that vanished world.
After the decline of the missions, Santa María de Fe continued to exist as a town, preserving its layout around the historic square and, above all, its artistic treasure. Today it's a small and quiet locality of the department of Misiones, which lives largely in the shadow of its Jesuit past and its valuable heritage.
Its square is considered one of the most beautiful and peaceful of the whole Missions region: wide, tree-lined, with palms and orange trees, it preserves the serene air of the old mission towns. Around it the life of the place is organized and you access the Jesuit Museum, which safeguards the collection of Guaraní baroque carvings and which is the main reason for the visit. The church and the religious heritage complete the legacy of the old reduction.
Santa María de Fe is part of the tourist circuit of the Jesuit Missions of southern Paraguay, alongside San Ignacio Guazú, Santa Rosa de Lima, Santiago and San Cosme y San Damián, and not far from the monumental ruins of Trinidad and Jesús de Tavarangué. Visiting it is to join a tour of the memory of one of the most singular chapters of American history, and to discover, in a silent town of the south, that the art and faith of the Guaraní and the Jesuits are still alive in each preserved carving.