Jesuit Missions Tours

The jesuit missions tours is  trip back in the historry of Jesuit in Bolivia. The first Jesuit missionaries arrived in what is now Bolivia (then known as Upper Peru) in 1572, having moved eastward from the Viceroyalty of Peru, where they had been established since 1568. 

They were preceded by other orders, amongst them the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Mercedarians. The Jesuits had petitioned the Spanish Crown for permission to enter its holdings in the New World for three decades before it finally was granted in 1566 by Phillip II, while the Portuguese King John III had given them leave to enter Brazil in 1549. For the first hundred years or so, the Jesuits invariably accompanied the Spanish military and were residents of its scattered garrisons. They were not authorized to establish frontier settlements without approval of the civil authorities, which, needless to say (given the authorities’ suspicions of the Jesuits’ motives) never happened. 

These early missionaries were almost exclusively native Spaniards. For the most part, they attended to the spiritual needs of the colonists in the arid Altiplano, around Lake Titicaca, and in the cities of La Paz, Potosí, and La Plata (present-day Sucre), where they established chapter houses, churches, and schools, the earliest being that of La Paz, built in 1572 (although not opened until a decade later). In 1587, three Jesuits reached the remote far eastern outpost of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, at that time located near present-day San José de Chiquitos. (It moved to its present location in 1621.) The following year, the Jesuit Fr. Diego Martínez began sporadic evangelisation of the nearby Itatine tribe. Other tribes, almost of them lingustically part of the Chiquitano (also known early on as Gorgotoqui) or Tupi Guaraní groups, soon were converted, with only the Chiriguano showing consistent hostility. 

The first chapter house in Santa Cruz was set up in 1592, and in 1605, the settlement was elevated to the ecclesiastical status of a bishopric (what we would call a diocese now). For many years, the Jesuits continued their peripatetic work in the region alongside the other missionary orders. Nowadays you won’t find many Jesuits in the Chiquitania (although there are a few there). The Franciscans have been the main influence since 1931 – they were present in neighbouring Chuquisaca Department and throughout the Chaco from as far back as 1540 – and continue to staff the Apostolic Vicariate of Ñuflo de Chávez (headquartered in Concepción) and the recently erected Diocese of San Ignacio de Velasco (as well as other area parishes, including Ascensión de Guarayos) to this day. An apostolic vicariate is similar to a diocese, except that for various reasons – scarcity of clergy or other resources, huges distances, and so on – it is administered directly by the Holy See through an apostolic vicar (whose responsibilities and powers are very similar to those of a bishop or archbishop). 

Nearly a century passed before the Jesuits grudgingly were given the go-ahead to expand into the Chiquitania (originally including the area now known as the Gran Chaco as well). They were already a force to be reckoned with throughout Upper Peru and elsewhere in the Viceroyalty of Peru. They had established no less than 29 settlements in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay alone (which had a total population of more than 100,000 native inhabitants in 1742). In Bolivia, they had been successful as well, with 30 villages established in the west and far northern reaches of the territory by 1705. Another 16 towns had been established between 1682 and 1715 to the northwest of Santa Cruz, amongst the Moxos and Guarayos regions. It is mute testimony to the indomitable courage and faith of the Jesuits – and the peoples they sought to convert – that of all the missions established in these areas, only those of the Chiquitos and the one of San Ignacio de Moxos have survived, and they flourish to this day. The others have long been reduced to ruins, it is one of the rezons  why the jesuit missions tours in Bolivia could be an interesting experience.