Despite their less prominent role, the Portuguese Jesuits had a similarly large impact on the Indigenous nations of the Amazon. Their presence began when a charismatic priest, Luís Figueira, convinced the royal government to support the creation of a network of missions within the colonial jurisdiction of the Estado do Maranhão. Starting in 1639, they created autonomous villages (aldeias) while promoting a policy referred to as liberdade dos indígenas.
Although the concept of liberty was essentially limited to a status of non-slavery that was contingent on a regime of Jesuit autocracy, it conflicted with the ambitions of the bandeirantes and civil authorities, who viewed Indigenous populations as a source of slave labor. The missions pursued two objectives: providing a refuge for Indigenous people and demonstrating an alternative economic model that was more palatable to their supporters within the Portuguese Court.
As in Maynas, the Jesuits compelled multiple different ethnic groups to cohabit in mission settlements, where they were schooled in a common language, known as Língua Geral, a simplified dialect of Tupi-Guaraní that modern linguists refer to as Nheengatú. Agriculture, presumably on black earth soils, provided workers and patrons with essential foodstuffs, but revenues were derived from the commercialization of forest products collectively known as the drogas do sertão. On Marajó Island, the Jesuits laid claim to vast natural savannas and introduced cattle, the first in the Amazon, for the production of hides, tallow and dried beef. The herd of more than 200,000 head of cattle was their most economically valuable asset and among the first to be seized by colonial authorities.
The success of the Jesuits, and the religious colonialism that characterized the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century, motivated other religious orders to pursue similar missionary programs, which led to a competition for souls amongst the monastic orders. In 1693, King Pedro II restricted the Jesuits’ evangelical activities to the south bank of Amazon River and its associated tributaries; simultaneously, he granted the Carmelites, Mercedarians and Franciscans domain over missions in the northern half of his Amazonian territories.
The Carmelites were the most consequential, because they assumed responsibility for a string of missions on the Rio Negro and Rio Branco, which established Portuguese sovereignty on the frontier lands adjacent to the Spanish Empire’s Viceroyalty of New Granada, today Colombia and Venezuela.
As in Maynas, the Indigenous communities suffered from wave after wave of infectious diseases; at least one-third of the population died on the Solimões in 1647 and a similar proportion on the upper Rio Negro in 1740. These losses were aggravated in the Portuguese Amazon by the bandeirantes, whose business model depended upon capturing or buying Indigenous people for transport to the lower Amazon, referred to as ‘descents’, for sale to colonists establishing agrarian enterprises in Maranhão. Despite the tensions between the Jesuits and the colonial actors, they coexisted until 1750, when the religious orders were ordered to surrender the economic component of their missions to colonial authorities. In 1759, the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal and all of its colonies.
The first Jesuit mission in the province of Maynas was established at a military post near the confluence of the Marañón and Santiago rivers in 1637. Over the next 130 years, more than 150 missions or reductions were established, although only 33 were active at the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish colonies in 1768 (Negro- Tua 2013). In the Portuguese territory of Grão Pará, the Jesuits established dozens of missions during the 17th century, but those north of the river were transferred to other clerical orders in 1693 as a strategy of the crown to limit the secular power of the Jesuits, who were expelled from Portuguese territories in 1759. The reductions in what is now Bolivia were administratively linked to the Jesuit province of Asunción (Paraguay), and were organized into two groups: (a) Moxos, in the flooded savannas associated with the Mamoré River, and (b) Chiquitos, in the seasonal forest and savannas of the Cerrado at the headwaters of the Guaporé River. Data sources: Saito (2015) and Groesbeck (2018).
In the Southwest Amazon, Jesuits based in what is now Paraguay established two clusters of missions: Chiquitos, in the seasonal forests on the Brazilian Shield (Santa Cruz, Bolivia), and Moxos, in the vast inundated savannas in the upper watershed of the Rio Madeira (Beni, Bolivia). As in Maynas, they were characterized by their isolation and their ability to organize multiethnic, self-sufficient agrarian societies.
The Jesuits explored the Llanos de Moxos and its Indigenous people starting in the 1670s, and the first permanent settlement was established in 1682 at Loreto, on the Río Mamoré, a tributary of the Madeira situated about 200 kilometers north of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Subsequently, they established mission outposts downstream on the Mamoré, followed by others on the western edge of the inundated savannas, which created a link to the colonial authorities in Peru (1683–1700). A second phase expanded into the savannas south of the Guapore River (1700–1715) demonstrating again the geopolitical calculations that motivated the actions of the Spanish Jesuits.
As in all of the reducciones, natives were both forcefully inducted and enticed into the settlements, which by 1736 encompassed 24 missions with a population of 37,000. A typical settlement cultivated cassava, maize, sugar cane, cocoa, cotton, rice and coffee, while housing workshops were dedicated to iron work, carpentry, weaving and tannery, as well as warehouses, a sawmill and slaughterhouse. The Moxos was particularly renowned for its cotton cloth and a livestock herd that numbered 50,000 cattle and 27,000 horses in 1767.
Missions were designed to manage the annual floods that characterize the Llanos de Moxos, but they were periodically beset by catastrophic floods that triggered epidemics of dysentery in the sedentary villages. Even more serious were one smallpox epidemic in 1731, presumably triggered by the clergy themselves, and another in 1763, caused by the arrival of Spanish troops sent to counterbalance incursions by Portuguese bandeirantes. Diseases reduced the population to fewer than 19,000 when the Jesuits were expelled from the region in 1767.
After the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Chiquitanos were enslaved by secular authorities who imposed a feudal labor model centered on the latifundia. Image courtesy of the History Museum, Universidad Autónoma Gabriel René Moreno.
The ten Chiquitos missions established between 1691 and 1760 were among the most successful of the Jesuit reducciones. At their peak, they were home to between 20,000 and 40,000 congregants. As in the other missions, different ethnic groups cohabited in villages and spoke a universal version of Guaraní to communicate. The Chiquitos missions were all associated with natural (Cerrado) grassland, which supported 32,000 cattle and 800 horses. Each village was self-sufficient and capable of producing a surplus for trade with the outside world.
The Chiquitos missions were established in a region with no navigable rivers; consequently, they communicated with the outside world using horses and oxen. Despite their isolation, they were still exposed to attacks by bandeirantes and were equally distrustful of their Spanish allies in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, who had a history of conducting ethnic warfare, as well as a proclivity for exploiting the labor of Indigenous people. Self-defense forces protected their residents and provided a coercive tool for attracting new congregants.
Fortunately, the climatic and cultural conditions in Chiquitos, now known as Chiquitania, preserved much of the architectural and artistic legacy of the Jesuit period. Jesuits, then as now, embraced education as a vocation; consequently, they tended to be competent administrators and had technical skills or were proficient in the arts. Many hailed from the Hapsburg territories of Central Europe and were among some of the most enlightened individuals in the Catholic Church.
The residents of Chiquitos and Moxos maintained their identity as Indigenous people. Rather than identifying with a specific linguistic or ethnic group, however, they assumed a composite identity that reflected their shared Jesuit past. Known as Chiquitanos and Moxeños, they speak Spanish and are among the most numerous Indigenous peoples in the Amazon.
Banner image: The construction of the Estrada de Ferro Madeira-Mamoré (EFMM) was emblematic of the migration phenomenon during the first rubber boom. Controlled by an American businessman (Percival Farquhar), the company hired skilled and unskilled workers from all over the world. Credit: Courtesy Dana B. Merrill Collection, Paulista Museum.
“A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” is a book by Timothy Killeen and contains the author’s viewpoints and analysis. The second edition was published by The White Horse in 2021, under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).
To read earlier chapters of the book, find Chapter One here, Chapter Two here, Chapter Three here, Chapter Four here and Chapter Five here.
Chapter 6. Culture and demographic defines the present
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