8 Jul 2015

Misiones Orientales (Brazil)

Misiones Orientales (from Spanish, "Eastern Missions") or Sete Povos das Missões (from Portuguese, "Seven People from Missions") refer to an area in current Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul that changed hands many times between Portuguese and Spanish empires, often exchanged by Colónia del Sacramento. De facto, though, it was almost-independently ruled by the Society of Jesus until the religious order was expelled from Portuguese Empire, in the 1750s.

As the Portuguese name makes clear, it was constituted by seven different Jesuit "reductions", one of them, São Miguel Arcanjo (St. Michael Archangel), is a World Heritage Site joined by similar sites in Argentina. So I used the number seven in my flag:


This type of cross is, in Brazil, related to the Missões; it seems to be based in the Caravaca cross. The red colors represents the stone bricks used in the historical buildings and the blood shed in Guaraní War. This flag could be used in related museums, archeological sites, etc.

Now, just a side note... During the for-post research, I found a similar flag, but proposed not only by Brazilian reductions, but also neighbor reductions in Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, a supposed "Missionary Nation". In my reconstruction:


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