Holy Week in the Jesuit Guarani Reductions: baroque ritual, sensorial pedagogy and cultural hybridization in the formation of indigenous subjectivities

Abstract

This article analyzes the celebration of Holy Week in the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay as a ritual space where Tridentine Christianity, Ignatian spirituality and Guarani sensibility converged. From a historical-hermeneutic methodology and from primary sources —Annual Letters, missionaries' reports and colonial inventories— the scenographic, musical and corporal devices that structured these festivities are examined. It is argued that the Easter ritual was not a unilateral imposition, but a process of symbolic appropriation through which the indigenous communities redefined Christian practices from their own aesthetic and religious categories. Baroque theatricalization, music and ritual pain were integrated as resources of an affective pedagogy that facilitated doctrinal internalization and the construction of a Guarani Christian identity. Holy Week is thus understood not only as a liturgical celebration, but also as a social, aesthetic and cultural device in the context of Jesuit evangelization.