Jesuit Reductions
The Jesuit Reductions were a particular version of the general Catholic strategy used in the 17th and 18th centuries of building reductions ("reducciones de indios"), in order to Christianize the indigenous populations of the Americas more efficiently. The reductions were created by the Catholic order of the Jesuits in South America, in areas inhabited by the Tupi-Guarani peoples, which generally corresponds to modern day Paraguay. Later reductions were extended into the areas that correspond to Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay.