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 Amazon State (1,564, 455 km2) is the most extensive of the whole of Brazil. Within it, the Prelature of Labrea is cut off and accessed by the Purus river, with its four municipals: Tapauá, Canutama, Lábrea y Pauiní. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) the extension of the Prelature is 229, 065 km2 and has 87,658 inhabitants (2010); or to put it another way 2.61 km2 per person. It is all a great big green carpet of innumerable rivers. Despite being 1,800 kilometres from the Atlantic coast it has only an average of thirty meters of altitude above sea level.
The rivers fall and rise according to the thaw of the Andes and the rains, in a difference of more than fourteen meters in depth. The Purus has some 3,200 kilometres (2,000 within the mission) and is one of the largest and sinuous in the world. For this reason, the distance between Labrea and Manaus, of 610 km in a straight line comes out as 1,672 km by river. All communication is by air or by boat.
NEXT PAGE: c. Social geography of the Mission of Labrea
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
