The Society of Jesus and the power of security. The Guaraní Ignatian missions as islands of life and consolidation of the exercise of security power

The power of security can be thought of as the form of exercise and reproduction of power that allows the governmentality to act on the bodies at biopolitical and political anatomy level. This exercise falls on a population to control its reproduction and establish what statistics are normal. For Cavaletti, this exercise of power must be anchored in a physical territory determining who is it's just population and delineating a border against an Other that is subjectivized as an enemy. This paper seeks to analyze the Jesuit missions, predominantly the Guarani ones prior to the expulsion of 1767, as a form of exercise of these power relations. The Society of Jesus can be thought of as a disciplinary island within a sovereign sea. The missions functioned as institutions that manufactured islands of life, established productive boundaries and linked a population within security and disciplinary power relations.