Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
GRAN CHIQUITANIA
The Gran Chiquitania is the area to the east of Santa Cruz where the hostile, thorny Chaco
and the low, tropical savannas of the Amazon Basin have a stand-off. Watched by the foot-
hills of the Cordillera Oriental to the west, the Llanos de Guarayos to the north and the in-
ternational boundaries of Paraguay and Brazil to the south and east, these two vastly differ-
ent landscapes stand together, never making peace.
The flat landscapes of the Chiquitania are broken and divided by long, low ridges and
odd monolithic mountains. Much of the territory lies soaking under vast marshes, part of
the magnificent Pantanal region. Bi- sected by the railway line, it's also the area of Jesuit
mission towns with their wide-roofed churches and fascinating history.
The region takes its name from the indigenous Chiquitanos, one of several tribes that in-
habit the area. The name Chiquitanos (meaning 'little people') was coined by the Spanish
who were surprised by the low doorways to their dwellings.
History
In the days before eastern Bolivia was surveyed, the Jesuits established an autonomous reli-
gious state in Paraguay in 1609. From there they fanned outward, founding missions in
neighboring Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia and venturing into territories previously unex-
plored by other Europeans.
Keen to coexist with the numerous indigenous tribes of the region, the Jesuits established
what they considered an ideal community hierarchy: each settlement, known as a
reduc-
ción,
was headed by two or three Jesuit priests, and a self-directed military unit was at-
tached to each one, forming an autonomous theocracy. For a time the Jesuit armies were
the strongest and best trained on the continent. This makeshift military force served as a
shield for the area from both the Portuguese in Brazil and the Spanish to the west.
Politically, the
reducciones
were under the nominal control of the
audiencia
(judicial
district) of Chacras, and ecclesiastically under the bishop of Santa Cruz, though their relat-
ive isolation meant that the
reducciones
basically ran themselves. Internally, the settle-
ments were jointly administered by a few priests and a council of eight indigenous repres-
entatives of the specific tribes who met daily to monitor community progress. Though the
indigenous population was supposedly free to choose whether it lived within the mission-
ary communities, the reality was that those who chose not to were forced to live under the
harsh
encomienda
(Spanish feudal system) or, worse still, in outright slavery.
The Jesuit settlements reached their peak under the untiring Swiss priest Father Martin
Schmidt, who not only built the missions at San Xavier, Concepción and San Rafael de
