UNESCO
Visitors come to see the ruins of the Jesuit missions in present day Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil Paraguay and Uruguay, and marvel at the grand scale of some of the churches, the native carvings copied from European art of the day, and the way of paternalistic, benevolent governing that made the Jesuit missions a total contrast to the management of native tribes elsewhere in Latin America.
As they grew, the mission cities drew the notice of Spain, Portugal, and who feared that the Jesuits were becoming too powerful, too independent. In 1756, Spanish and Portuguese forces attacked the missions, killing many and leaving the reducciónes and reduçãos in ruin. The surviving natives fled, and the Jesuits were expelled from South America, as they were from other portions of the globe. However, their spirit remains in the ruins of many missions: sixteen reducciónes in Argentina, seven in Paraguay and seven reduçãos in what is now Brazil.