EARLY SOUTH AMERICAN COMMUNISM

In addition to the North American Pilgrims, at about the same time there was another early experiment in communism in South America. The Jesuits created communist settlements for the Indians they had converted to Christianity (from The Lost Paradise by Philip Caraman, page 108):

Economically the Reductions were self-sufficient, while socially they were more advanced than any Indian community since the passing of the Inca Empire. For the welfare of their citizens, they developed a system that European countries took another two centuries to attain. Consequently it was not surprising that they attracted the attention of social theorists long before the French Revolution. Many eighteenth-century writers saw in their organization a planned attempt to put into practice the ideas of Thomas More and Tommaso Campanella.

According to some writers' the Jesuits deliberately modelled their government on Campanella's City of the Sun: Maceta and Cataldino, the Italian founders of the Guaira mission, were Campanella's compatriots and contemporaries; they had set out to found a Christian communist community in Paraguay;