Argentinian Folk Religions

Among the Mapuche of southwestern Argentina and south-central Chile, machi communicated with spirits for healing and divination, while communal ceremonies included offerings and animal sacrifice. Spanish accounts from the sixteenth century onward described these beliefs amid warfare and Catholic missionary efforts.

Farther north, Jesuits established missions among the Guaraní in the early seventeenth century, gathering Indigenous people into settlements for Christian instruction. The Spanish crown expelled the Jesuits from the missions in 1767.