High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! São Miguel das Missões (Portuguese for St. Michael of the Missions) is a Unesco World Heritage site located in the small town of São Miguel das Missões in the northwestern region of Rio Grande do Sul, a state in southern Brazil. It is also known as São Miguel Arcanjo and by its Spanish language name San Miguel. It was one of the many Jesuit Reductions in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Jesuit missionaries founded the mission in the 18th century in part to catechise the Guaraní indian population and to protect the natives from the Portuguese slave traders known as the Bandeirantes.