Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos - History

History

In the 16th century, priests of different religious orders set out to evangelize the Americas, bringing Christianity to indigenous communities. Two of these missionary orders were the Franciscans and the Jesuits, both of which eventually arrived in the frontier town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and then in the Chiquitania. The missionaries employed the strategy of gathering the often nomadic indigenous populations in larger communities called reductions in order to more effectively Christianize them. This policy sprang from the colonial legal view of the “Indian” as a minor, who had to be protected and guided by European missionaries so as not to succumb to sin. Reductions generally were construed as instruments to enable the natives adopt European lifestyles and values; this was not the case in the Jesuit reductions, however, where the Jesuits allowed the inhabitants to retain many pre-colonial cultural practices.