La Primera Evangelizacion en Las Reducciones de Chiquitos, Bolivia (1691-1767) (review)

The Chiquitos, living beyond even the Chiriguano frontier, were one of the last major groups in what is now lowland Bolivia to be missionized. Jesuits established missions in the region in the last decade of the seventeenth century and kept up their efforts until they were expelled. It is on this period, 1691-1767, that the author focuses his efforts. A Fransciscan (Orden de los Hermanos Menores Conventuales) of Chiquito heritage, Tomichá Charupá is especially qualified for the task he undertakes, for his own heritage makes him far more aware of oral traditions—which he incorporates—than others not familiar with the region might have been.

The book, with a very complete and helpful table of contents, is divided into two major sections. The first deals with the Jesuits and a myriad of subjects ranging from their motivations to their national origins, and the preparation of those who served in the region. This section also discusses the heritage, culture, daily life and problems of the people who make up the Chiquitos as well as other groups who lived in the area. The second section deals with the process of missionization and cultural contact in a broad sense that includes inter-ethnic wars, European diseases, raids by Brazilian mamelucos or the malocas of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (who came primarily to enslave people for their labor), as well as more conventional aspects of mission interaction such as questions over baptism.

The Jesuits had come to the Chiquitos in the late sixteenth century, but these early efforts by the Europeans to bring their religion to the region faded with Spanish abandonment in 1621 of the major local settlement, San Francisco de Alfaro. Due to increasing pressure by mamelucos and malocas in the late seventeenth century, the Chiquitos sent a delegation to talk to the Spanish governor of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. The author believes that it was at this point the Chuquitos, on "their own initiative and will" (p. 519), requested missionaries. In 1696 a Jesuit referred to this event while also talking about other characteristics of these people, stating that the Chiquitos were "indios gentiles de extraordinario valor y braveza en la guerra, pero muy dóciles y de excelentes naturales en el trato, quienes, sin reparar en el desafecto con que han mirado siempre los españoles de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, fueron allí voluntariamente a pedir Padres que los doctrinasen y dispusiesen al bautismo" (ibid.).

The history that the author unfolds parallels events in nearby regions, where disease, slave raiders and rivalries between ethnic groups were ravaging communities, and it was becoming more difficult to find a secure place to live and means of support in an increasingly insecure environment. The author suggests that the very name Chiquitos may have derived from the need for security, in that the doors or entrances to the houses were built very low so that people entered on hands and knees or even crawling for protection ("entrar en ellas ir a gatas y a vezes pecho por tierra" [p. 226]), a protection against raids, as well as against mosquitos. The Spanish, because of the small doors, called the people Chiquitos. The people, however, referred to themselves as Chiquitanos, or even by other names, perhaps due to the fact that in their own language "Chiquito" was too close to their own word for testicles. The language of the Chiquitos seems to have been especially difficult to learn—one Jesuit commented, "La Gramática es dificilísima y el artificio y definición de los verbos es increible" (p. 234)—which restricted some of the missionizing efforts as well as the training of people who worked among the Chiquitos.

La primera evangelación is a fountain of very accessible material on the subjects of the Jesuits, the Chiquitos and the...