<<< History

Of Territory to Province

Until the tragic event of the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-1870), the misionera region did not constitute a scope of importance for the policies of the three states that occupied it partly. Neither Argentina, nor Paraguay, nor Brazil had obtained precise definitions respect to the region. The population of the area, on the other hand, far was to interpret the concept of property to a determined national state. Rivers as Parana and Uruguay did not constitute any fence for a racially mixed population that developed the great mobility in the area and that was recognized by a cultural identity that was connected in the extinguished reduccional life. Finalized the War of Paraguay, the national limits and borders were established. The moment agreed with the internal consolidation of the states of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. For the political sectors leaders, "to nationalize" to the population from a centralized cultural project and uniform constituted a priority. Still more in those potentially conflicting zones from an border perspective. As of September of 1870 the first Supreme Director del Rio de la Plata, Gervasio Posadas Put when arranging the provincial limit them , (Misiones happen to be National Territory), annexing each population establishment from the same one to the province of Corrientes, happening such to depend on the Interior of the province on Corrientes In this context that human type and that culture that emerged from remote the last one from the jesuitics missions was threatening. The official projects of European immigration and development of an educative project of national character, finished moving towards the social and cultural marginality to that man and his way of being. "mencho", the "tape", ethnically nourished from of the reduccional past misionero, carriers of a popular culture of raigambre with guaraní-misioneras reminiscencias, was catalogued like symbol of the "irrationality", of the "primitivismo", the "superstition", in short, of a sociocultural situation that was to surpass and to forget. In spite of it, that type of man and its culture survived the cultural attack and ideological of the emergent national states and still today they are with force in regional music, the popular religiosidad, and a variety of uses and customs that impregnate all the sociocultural layers of the misionera region.