"THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD HERITAGE OF SAO... " a São Miguel Travel Page by janaina

The ruins of Sao Miguel Das Missoes lie at the heart of a tropical forest,and is the remain of a Jesuit mission built in the land of theGuaranis during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Guarani indians lived in Brazil,Paraguai and Argentina,and would have been another indigenous people victim of the colonial conquest in South America if the Jesuits would haven't been able to persuade the king of Spain to grant that vast region to their care.
The jesuits promised the king generous rewarsds,in the form of tributes,in exchange of the exemption from the "encomiendas"(hard labour to which were subjected allt he other indians),assuring that the region would have been an Imperial dominium thanks only to the Gospel power.

Therefor,for about 150 years,the jesuits succeeded from protecting the Guaranis from the laids of the slave-hunters from Sao Paulo.
They founded several missions and developed a kind of evangelisation a bit peculiar for that time.
They put into practice the precepts of the Gospel,isolating the Guaranis from the bad influence of the Europeans and developed the creativity of the indians.
Guided by the jesuits,the Guaranis had advanced laws,they founded free public services for the poors,schools,hospitals,stablished birth control and suppressed the death penalty.