Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos - History - Expulsion and Recent Development

Expulsion and Recent Development

In 1750 as a result of the Treaty of Madrid seven missions in present-day Rio Grande do Sul state in Brazil were transferred from Spanish to Portuguese control. The native Guaraní tribes were unhappy to see their lands turned over to Portugal (their enemy for over a century) and they rebelled against the decision, leading to the Guarani War. In Europe, where the Jesuits were under attack, they were accused of supporting the rebellion and perceived as defending the native peoples. In 1758, the Jesuits were accused of a conspiracy to kill the king of Portugal, known as the Távora affair. All members of the Society of Jesus were evicted from Portuguese territories in 1759, and from French territories in 1764. In 1766 Jesuits were accused of causing Esquilache Riots in Madrid; consequently in February 1767, Charles III of Spain signed a royal decree with expulsion orders for all members of the Society of Jesus in Spanish territories.

From then on, spiritual and secular administration were to be strictly separated. At the time of the expulsion, 25 Jesuits served a Christianized population of at least 24,000, in the ten missions of the Chiquitania. The Chiquitos mission properties included 25 estancias (ranches) with 31,700 cattle and 850 horses. Libraries across the settlements held 2,094 volumes.

By September 1767, all but four Jesuits had left the Chiquitania, and they went the following April. The Spanish considered it essential to maintain the settlements as a buffer against Portuguese expansion. The archbishop of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Francisco Ramón Herboso, established a new system of government, very similar to that set up by the Jesuits. He stipulated that each mission be run by two secular (parish) priests, one to take care of the spiritual needs while the other was in charge of all other – political and economic – affairs of the mission administration. One change was that the Indians were allowed to trade. In practice, the shortage of clergy and the low quality of those appointed by the bishop – almost all of whom did not speak the language of the local peoples and in some cases had not been ordained – led to a rapid general decline of the missions. The priests also broke ethical and religious codes, appropriated the major part of the missions' income and encouraged contraband trade with the Portuguese.

Within two years of the expulsion, the population in the Chiquitos missions dropped below 20,000. Despite the general decline of the settlements, however, the church buildings were maintained and, in some cases, extended by the towns' inhabitants. The construction of the church in Santa Ana de Velasco falls into this period. Bernd Fischermann, an anthropologist who studied the Chiquitano, suggests three reasons that the Chiquitano preserved the heritage of the Jesuits even after their expulsion: the memory of their prosperity with the Jesuits; the desire to appear as civilized Christians to mestizos and white people; and to preserve the ethnicity that originated from a mix of various culturally distinct groups blended by an enforced common language and customs learned from the Jesuits.

In January 1790, the Audiencia of Charcas ended the diocese’s mismanagement, and temporal affairs were delegated to civil administrators, with the hope of making the missions economically more successful. Sixty years after the expulsion of the Jesuits the churches remained active centers of worship, as the French naturalist Alcide d'Orbigny reported during his mission to South America in 1830 and 1831. Although much diminished economically and politically, the culture the Jesuits established was still evident. According to d'Orbigny, the music at a Sunday mass in San Xavier was better than those he had heard in the richest cities of Bolivia. The population of the Chiquitania missions reached a low of around 15,000 inhabitants in 1830. In 1842 the Comte de Castelnau visited the area and, referring to the church in Santa Ana de Velasco, proclaimed: "This beautiful building, surrounded by gardens, presents one of the most impressive views imaginable."

By 1851, however, the reduction system of the missions had disappeared. Mestizos who had moved to the area in their quest for land began to outnumber the original indignous population. Starting with the creation of the Province of José Miguel de Velasco in 1880, the Chiquitania was split into five administrative divisions. With the rubber boom at the turn of the century, more settlers came to the areas and established large haciendas, moving the economic activities together with the native peoples out of the towns.

In 1931, the spiritual administration of the missions was given to German-speaking Franciscan missionaries. Ecclesiastical control moved back to the area with the creation of the Apostolic Vicariate of Chiquitos in San Ignacio in that year. As of 2013, the churches not only serve the mestizo inhabitants of the villages but present spiritual centers for the few remaining indigenous peoples living in the periphery.

In 1972, the Swiss architect and then-Jesuit priest Hans Roth began an extensive restoration project of the missionary churches and many colonial buildings that were in ruins. These churches exist in their present form as a result of Roth's effort, who worked on the restoration with a few colleagues and many local people until his death in 1999. The restoration works have continued sporadically into the beginning of the 21st century under local leadership.

Six of the reductions were listed as part of the World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1990. The churches of San Ignacio de Velasco, Santiago de Chiquitos and Santo Corazón have been reconstructed from scratch and are not part of the World Heritage Site. In San Juan Bautista only ruins remain. UNESCO listed the site under criteria IV and V, acknowledging the adaption of Christian religious architecture to the local environment and the unique architecture expressed in the wooden columns and banisters. Recently ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, warned that the traditional architectural ensemble that makes up the site has become vulnerable following agrarian reforms from 1953 which threatened the fragile socioeconomic infrastructure of the region. At the time of the nomination, the World Heritage Site was protected by the Pro Santa Cruz committee, Cordecruz, Plan Regulador de Santa Cruz, and the local mayoral offices of the mission towns.