Godly purpose, earthly missions.

• Author: Moreno, Alcides Parejas
• Position: Jesuit missions in Chiquitos, Bolivia

Since colonial times, the province of Chiquitos in eastern Bolivia's Oriente region has been known for its inaccessibility, its near isolation from the outside world. Still commonly known as Chiquitania, the area's rolling terrain, which rises to occasional mountain ridges, encompasses humid tropical forest, savannas and low plains, and swampland. However, compared to the Mojos plains to the north, Chiquitania has little water for sustaining human settlement.

Of the native population, classified as tropical forest village farmers, the best known group is the Chiquitanos, of which the Chiquito subgroup is the most prominently mentioned in documentary sources and is the primary focus of researchers.

Discovery and conquest of the Bolivian Oriente was carried out almost simultaneously from two opposite ends - the highlands and Rio de la Plata. The Spanish crown established the Department of Mojos in 1560, and the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra was founded a year later. The original location of that city soon gave rise to serious problems because of its extreme isolation. It became necessary to establish a settlement midway between the city of La Plata (today's Sucre, originally the capital of the Audiencia of Charcas) and Santa Cruz. The problem was finally resolved in 1621 when Governor Nuno de la Cueva decided to move Santa Cruz de la Sierra from its site in Chiquitania to San Lorenzo and build a new city. One problem was solved only to create another: The province of Chiquitos was abandoned, leaving a broad border area at the mercy of Brazillian mestizos.

In the late seventeenth century the Society of Jesus, responding to political and social concerns, accepted responsibility for evangelizing Chiquitania. On the one hand, the Chiquitos had become a constant threat to government security, although they had at the same time fallen easy prey to the citizens of Santa Cruz, who sought to trade them as day laborers. On the other hand, raids by armed bands of Brazilian explorers were on the increase, making it necessary to incorporate the province of Chiquitos within the administrative structure so that it could serve as a territorial retaining wall.

On December 31, 1691, Father Jose de Arce founded San Javier, the first "reduction" (settlement of converted Indians) in Chiquito territory. It was soon followed by San Rafael, San Jose, San Juan Bautista, San Ignacio de Zumucos (short-lived), Concepcion, San Miguel, San Ignacio, Santiago, Santa Ana, and Santo Corazon, which was the final town established during that cycle, in 1760.

The Reductions

The Paraguayan historian Father Juan de Villegas has defined the reduction as "the evangelist reply of the Jesuits in Paraguay to infidel Indians." Derived from the Latin phrase ad ecclesiam et vitam civilem essent reducti, that is, the initiation of the Indian population into civil and religious life, the reduction was more than a simple village set up for evangelization of the Indians. It comprised the whole existence of its inhabitants, representing the spatial structure imbued and motivated by the culture and spirit of a community.

The Jesuit reductions existed in extreme physical and social isolation - both from colonial law and people. "The reductions, purposefully established in isolated areas," wrote scholar Alberto Armani, "were located far from any other major center in Paraguay or Rio de la Plata." Poor communication - because of wretched or nonexistent roads - meant that distances were measured in more than miles. Consequently, as the years went by, administrative and economic autonomy of the reductions expanded, since they could not rely on the provincial capital of Cordoba or on the civil authorities at Asuncion or Buenos Aires to solve their problems or satisfy their daily needs.

The missionaries launched a plan of action designed to initiate the Indian population into "civil and religious life." Undoubtedly, the aim was to form "new men" in a new society. However, the linguistic diversity in Chiquitos made the task of the missionaries far more difficult. They resolved to adopt the Chiquito language as their base and major means of unifying diverse ethnic groups. As a result, the acculturation process, targeted at both individual and group levels, became rapid and effective. Four years after the Jesuits' expulsion, Cosme Bueno, a professor at the University of Lima, visited the province and observed:

It seems a miracle that these people, so recently converted to Christianity and of such a violent natural...