Travel Guide San Ignacio Guazú

San Ignacio Guazú is the largest city in the department, but is still a quiet town with lots of trees and birds. There are even horse-drawn carts! They come from the neighbouring Mennonite colony, Colonia Reinfeld, populated by farmers of Canadian origin who arrived in 1966 and who live in a traditional, austere way. San Ignacio Guazú is nicknamed the "Capital of the Hispano-Guarani Baroque". It is a city that deserves a stop, especially for its museum of religious art. It was in the lands of the Guarani cacique Arapyzandú ("He who listens to the voices of the universe") that Fathers Marcial Lorenzana and Francisco de San Martin celebrated the first mass of San Ignacio in December 1609. Shortly afterwards, the Creole missionary Roque González de Santa Cruz, made it one of the most advanced reductions of the Trenta Pueblos. The name San Ignacio, pays homage to the founder of the Society of Jesus, the Basque Íñigo de Loyola (Ignacio de Loyola in Castilian). Guazú (or Guasú, "big" in Guarani) makes it possible to distinguish the mission from that of San Ignacio "Mini", located in the Argentinian province of Misiones. Like many Jesuit reductions, San Ignacio Guazú moved, to flee the Portuguese slave hunters. Originally located at the present site of Santa Rita, she moved to "Santiago", before settling at the present site in 1667, a century before the expulsion of the Society of Jesus. From San Ignacio, the Jesuits founded the other reductions of the region: Santa Rosa, Santiago, Santa María de Fé..