In the Footsteps of Sélim Abou SJ: Lost Fragments of The Paraná

In the Argentine province of Misiones, at the remote crossroads of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, the remnants of Jesuit missions tell a story of cultural blending, resistance and singular social utopias. From the ruins of San Ignacio to present-day Guaraní communities, Levant Time traces the path left by Father Sélim Abou, former rector of Saint Joseph University, whose fieldwork sheds light–far beyond Latin America–on contemporary questions of identity and coexistence, reaching as far as Lebanon. On this March 19, Saint Joseph’s day–the patron saint of USJ–Levant Time presents Maxime Pluvinet and Miroslava Salazar’s report from Latin America, following in the footsteps of Father Sélim Abou.

In the heat of the old mission lands, where red laterite roads dissolve into the forest and the Paraná River traces uncertain borders between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, fragments of history endure–never entirely erased by time. They are stones, voices, memories. And at times, human journeys that bridge worlds once thought irreconcilable.

Father Sélim Abou, S.J., who died in Beirut in 2018, was one such figure, whose path extended well beyond national borders. A leading anthropologist, a key thinker on pluralism and Lebanese identity, and former rector of Saint Joseph University, he was also, for more than half a century, deeply connected to a remote corner of South America: Argentina’s Misiones province.

n these settlements, a hybrid society took shape–neither fully European nor purely Indigenous–built on collective organization, an autonomous economy, and the central use of the Guaraní language.

When the young Lebanese Jesuit Sélim Abou first encountered these ruins at Christmas in 1961, at the age of 33, the impact was immediate.

Having arrived in Argentina to complete his training, he visited San Ignacio Miní, now designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Standing before what he would later call “the silent testimony of stone,” he experienced a kind of intimate recognition: the sense of a dialogue between cultures made possible–fragile, yet real–confirming him in his Jesuit vocation.

The moment proved revelatory. An intellectual heir to the anthropologist Roger Bastide and Father Albert de Jerphanion, who was killed at the outset of the Lebanese civil war, Father Abou found in the Jesuit-Guaraní experience a confirmation of his calling: to understand how plural identities might coexist without dissolving into one another.

A Jesuit Utopia?

More than sixty years later, in Posadas–the provincial capital looking out over the Paraná River–this memory endures in unexpected places. The Instituto Montoya, named after a celebrated pioneer of the Jesuit-Guaraní enterprise, became a second home for Sélim Abou.

It was here that he began teaching in the 1960s and returned regularly over three decades. It is also here that many of his archives are preserved.

In a quiet room on the upper floor of his Apostoles residence, amid photographs and original works by Sélim Abou, Dr. Marisa Micolis carefully handles documents accumulated over more than fifty years.

A friend, colleague, and former student of “Father Abou,” she recalls a man for whom long-term perspective was a necessity.

“Today,” she says, reflecting on the half-century she has devoted to education, “people think excellence appears out of nowhere. But human beings are made for the long term.”

In one photograph, the young Jesuit smiles alongside his brother Habib. In another, an icon of the Virgin before which he prayed daily. Nearby lies a copy of his 1961 work on Arabic-French bilingualism–his first major contribution in Buenos Aires.

To grasp what left such a deep mark on Father Abou, one must cross into Paraguay. In San Ignacio Guazú, Father Daniel, curator of the Jesuit museum, sums up the experience of the reductions without romanticizing them: “There is no perfect society. But compared with the world of its time, the Jesuit-Guaraní society genuinely created something new.”

He recalls the figure of Roque González de Santa Cruz, a Jesuit born in Asunción in the 16th century and a fierce opponent of the encomienda system. Along with other missionaries, he advocated for Guaraní communities to exist as free societies, protected from the slave raids that devastated the region.

This project was not an exercise in abstract utopia, but a historical compromise. The Guaraní gained a measure of autonomy; the Jesuits found fertile ground for evangelization.

Between the two, an original culture emerged.

Even today, in Paraguay, Guaraní is an official language–a direct legacy of these communities, where it was not only spoken but also written and taught alongside Spanish and Latin, as evidenced by the many printed works produced within the reductions themselves.

In the church of Santa María de Fe, a small town near San Ignacio Guazú, a guide points out a sculpture of Saint George slaying a dragon. Here, however, the dragon takes the form of the aña, a figure of evil in Guaraní cosmology.

On another motif, the passion fruit, an Indigenous symbol of fertility, converses with the Christian vine. Everywhere, traces of cultural hybridity remain–an experiment prematurely crushed by the expulsion of the Jesuits from the continent, following a political agreement between crowns: the sacrifice of an ideal for decidedly earthly interests, the last hopes of which are vividly dramatized in Roland Joffé’s 1987 film The Mission.

1978: The Heart and the Request

Yet Father Sélim Abou’s connection with the Guaraní was not limited to a fascination with the past. It took tangible form in 1978, during a singular event: the transfer to Posadas of the relic of the heart of Roque González, the Paraguayan saint martyred in 1628 and founder of the city, commemorating his sacrifice.

Members of the Mbya-Guaraní people came to venerate it. For them, this missionary was more than a religious figure–he was “a friend of their ancestors.”

They made an unexpected request.

In the forest, during a meeting with Bishop Jorge Kemerer and professors from the Instituto Montoya, the Pa’i (spiritual leader) Antonio Martínez was asked what his people needed.

Three times, he replied that they needed nothing. But after Bishop Kemerer insisted, he clarified: “I want a school for my grandchildren. I don’t want them to be like me–without papers, without a language in common with you.”

That statement marked a turning point.

Thus was born an unprecedented project: the creation of Guaraní communities with bilingual schools in Fracrán and Perutí.

Father Sélim Abou committed himself fully. For twelve years, he supported and documented the initiative, which he would describe as a “microscopic-scale revival” of the old reductions.

But without nostalgia or illusion: the goal was not to replicate the past, but to invent a contemporary form of coexistence.

Javier Villalba, chief of Perutí, recalls: “He built a bridge between himself and our grandparents. He was like an advisor… and even like a father.”

Across the testimonies gathered, one trait recurs consistently: humility. Sélim Abou did not come to impose a model. He learned, observed, accompanied. He respected social structures, beliefs, and language. He lived among the people, sharing their daily lives. “He was like us,” Villalba recalls.

From Misiones to Beirut: “Cultural Resistance”

In Fracrán–today renamed in honor of Pa’i Antonio Martínez–the school still stands. Children there learn both Guaraní and Spanish.

Catalino Martínez, grandson of the founding chief, emphasizes the initiative’s political significance: “My grandfather wanted our people to keep moving forward, even after his death.”

The experience helped lay the foundations for local institutions, such as a Guaraní affairs office. It also left a subtler imprint: a way of thinking about development without erasing identity.

For Father Sélim Abou, the experience resonated with his reflections on Lebanon.

In a 2006 interview with France Culture, he highlighted the contrast between a Lebanon fragmented into communities and an Argentina striving to build a unified nation despite its diversity.

In both cases, the same question arose: how can a society be built without denying differences? How can cultural specificities live and thrive without becoming the basis for a separate political agenda?

For what Sélim Abou experienced here, in the forests of Misiones, he was simultaneously thinking about Lebanon. As an anthropologist of identities, he devoted his work to this central question.

In Lebanon, the issue took on a dramatic dimension after the civil war and during the Syrian occupation.

Between 1995 and 2003, while serving as rector of Saint Joseph University in Beirut, Sélim Abou became a leading voice in the intellectual resistance to Syrian tutelage. His annual speeches, eagerly anticipated, grew increasingly political in tone.

In 2002, he denounced a “Syrianization” of Lebanon and a system that corrupted even the political language itself. That same year, he declared: “The occupation is the mother of the wounds from which Lebanon suffers.”

But his response was not military. It was intellectual. In the face of repression against protests, Sélim Abou developed a key idea: that of “cultural resistance.” He urged students to write, to think, to express themselves differently, to rebuild a critical space capable of resisting domination.

In one of his speeches, delivered on the occasion of St. Joseph’s Day, he cited editorials and articles by Issa Goraieb and Michel Hajji Georgiou in the pages of L’Orient-Le Jour to support his points.

In his addresses, he warned of a danger deeper than political coercion: the destruction of discernment. He described a system that “perverts language,” “breaks social cohesion,” and “suspends rational discourse.” In other words, an occupation that works on minds as much as on territory, and that fosters mediocrity.

This perspective was rooted in a broader conviction. As one of his contemporaries put it, Sélim Abou sought to answer a fundamental question: “How can we live together, equal in rights but different in our affiliations?”

In the forests of Misiones as in the lecture halls of Beirut, he pursued the same intuition: that identities are not walls, but passageways. And that sometimes, it is at the margins of the world–in a school lost deep in the forest–that the most concrete forms of the universal are invented.