The missions, social projects and solidarity actions are a constant in the action of the Augustinian Recollect Family. The Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine has always lived in mission, since its very birth was motivated by the opening of the first evangelization missions in the Philippines in the 17th century. Since then, he has carried out his evangelizing activity following the mandate of Jesus in the places today called “frontiers”: there where it is necessary to defend the dignity of human life, social justice, equal opportunities, the defense of the most vulnerable.
The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 conferred to Spain the entire Amazon. The expeditions to Orellana (1539) and Ursúa (1549) made them known, but the Spanish Empire did not give them great importance. English, French and Dutch tried to settle in their lands. Portugal installed themselves, breaking the Treaty and to strengthen Labrea they founded the cities of Belem, Óbidos and Santarem.
The conquest was brought about by troops punished for being enemies of Portugal, by hunters of the Indians (sertanistas) who enslaved them in order to collect the harvest and by the missionaries who catechized and defended them from military oppression and slavery.
The first written notices of the Purus arrive by way of the German Jesuit Samuel Fritz in 1689: “After I arrived to those places, there arrived from their villages many Cuxiuara Indians with their children. Whilst I was there for eight days they attended to me quickly and lovingly, […] and expressing the desire that I should stay with them”.
Before 1689 there were already Portuguese in the Purus. They navigated for forty days up until 200 leagues up river and they converted it into a great provider of meat, fat, tortoise oil, sarsaparilla, and oil resin for which they would need many indigenous workers. The Indians in the area were quickly exterminated.
The liberalism and the enlightenment of the Marquis of Pombal arrived to the Amazon in 1757. He wanted to integrate the indigenous into the colonial system as farmers, hunters, spice collectors, oarsmen, guides and makers of basic products. The natives were forced to reunite themselves in small towns, and faced with the lack of indigenous workers they introduced African slaves. Overseas trade flourished and there appeared new magnates, land owners, and traders.
The exploitation of rubber determined the rapid occupation of virgin areas. The indigenous lands diminished drastically and various peoples were exterminated. They brought thousands of men from the North-East of Brazil, where the droughts eased this emigration to the new El Dorado. One of these north-eastern people was the Cornel Antonio Rodríguez Pereira Labre, the founder of Labrea in 1873. The municipal came to produce a third of the rubber in the Amazon. It stood out as the “Queen of the Purus”, with stone streets, a Church, some buildings and four “The Purus”, “The Labrense”, “The City of Labrea” y “And the Purus Post”
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TABLE OF CONTENT: MISSIONS
- 1. Augustinian Recollects: Missionaries out of necessity
- 2. Mission, a complex and all-embracing term
- 3. Religious, lay people, and volunteer missionaries
- 4. Missionaries according to the laws
- 5. Missionaries by inheritance
- 6. The Province’s missions in the 19th century
- 7. The Province’s missions in the 20th century
- 8. Prelature of Labrea (Amazonas, Brazil)
- 9. Diocese of Shangqiu (Henan, People’s Republic of China)
- 10. Boys’ Town (Agua Calientes de Cartago, Costa Rica)
- 11. St Monica’s home (Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil)
- 12. CARDI, the Augustinian Recollect Centre for Integral Development, Mexico City
- 13. Service to immigrants: United States, London, Madrid
