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Missionaries and Soldiers in the Forging of Modern Paraguay

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Roots of Underdevelopment

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Abstract

This chapter examines two historical events that shaped the Paraguayan nation: Jesuit missions in the Guaraní region and the War of the Triple Alliance. We revisit the literature on the effects of the religious order on human capital, stressing causal identification strategies, as well as on the conflict’s impact on socioeconomic outcomes and gender norms. In addition, we show novel evidence on the cultural mechanisms of missions and present a new analysis of the marriage market for postwar Paraguay. We conclude and suggest directions for future research, indicating additional events relevant to the making of modern Paraguay.

We thank Raúl Duarte, Marcos Martinez Sugastti, and Patricia Paskov for comments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the history of the Guaraní and the Missions, see Ganson (2003) and Sarreal (2014). Waldinger (2017) studies Catholic missions in Mexico and Okada da Silva (2022) focuses on Jesuit missions in the Brazilian Amazon.

  2. 2.

    Some of this material has appeared previously in column format at VOXEU at https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/missionaries-human-capital-transmission-and-economic-persistence-south-america.

  3. 3.

    The author compares Jesuit and Franciscan missions, both orders with the same goal: convert indigenous people to Christianity. However, Jesuits focus on education and technical training in the conversion process, relative to the Franciscans.

  4. 4.

    The author, following Ganson (2003), mentions that indigenous people did not have iron weapons or tools, scenario that provides evidence of their stage of development.

  5. 5.

    For recent evidence comparing the thrift of these Catholic orders, see Andersen et al. (2017) for the Cistercian order in England and Akçomak et al. (2016) for the Brethren of the Common life in the Netherlands.

  6. 6.

    This type of embroidery is known locally as ñandutí.

  7. 7.

    Valencia Caicedo (2019) also looks at the case of technology adoption in agriculture, using the case of the introduction of genetically engineered soy seeds in Brazil. The author finds that these seeds were introduced to a larger extent closer to former missionary areas. The paper also rules out other mechanisms of transmission such as population density, investments in infrastructure, health, and tourism.

  8. 8.

    Oblique transmission refers to the “transmission from individuals other than the parents but who belong to the same generation as the parents” (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981, p. 130). The author does not find significant effects for horizontal transmission.

  9. 9.

    Technically this is the first Republic Census of Brazil, which declared independence from Portugal on November 15, 1889.

  10. 10.

    The colloquial combination of Spanish and Guarani is termed Yopará.

  11. 11.

    Some of this material has appeared previously in column format at VOXEU at https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/sex-ratios-and-conflict-evidence-paraguay.

  12. 12.

    The paper uses the 1886 Census, which is more detailed and complete, and allows us to compare Paraguay to neighboring regions in Argentina (Corrientes).

  13. 13.

    The results are robust to the inclusion of the capital.

  14. 14.

    Results were excluded from the paper due to the smaller sample size.

  15. 15.

    Okada da Silva (2022) shows that the Jesuit missionary results on human capital and income extend as well to the Brazilian Amazon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Felipe Valencia Caicedo & Moisés Pedrozo

  2. Department of Economics, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Moisés Pedrozo

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  1. Felipe Valencia Caicedo
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  2. Moisés Pedrozo
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Correspondence to Felipe Valencia Caicedo .

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  1. Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Felipe Valencia Caicedo

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Valencia Caicedo, F., Pedrozo, M. (2023). Missionaries and Soldiers in the Forging of Modern Paraguay. In: Valencia Caicedo, F. (eds) Roots of Underdevelopment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38723-4_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38723-4_14

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