Residents of San Ignacio de Moxos in Bolivia spend nine days in July in celebration of their patron, St. Ignatius. This festival tes to 1689, seven years after Jesuits first founded a community there. Jesuits were expelled by the Spanish king in 1767, and it was not until 1984 that they reestablished ministries in the area. They found a people who had held the Society of Jesus in high esteem even during their absence of more than two centuries. Author Fr. Enrique Jordá, SJ, one of the Jesuits who returned in 1984, writes of the remarkable history of the Society in this area.

by Fr Enrique Jordá

In the heart of South America, in the district of Beni, Bolivia, lies the mission of San Ignacio. The Spaniards called this region Moxos, but it was also known as Paitití, El Dorado, and Tierra de Enin. Whatever the name, many adventurers had long dreamed of conquering this land.

The first Spaniards who entered the area discovered that it was not the wild, inhospitable land of their imagination. They found many villages and farms and even the remains of great hydraulic works that they studied in amazement, its presence attesting to the technical and organizational skills of the indigenous people.

The first Jesuit to reach this area, Jerónimo de Andión, arrived in 1595, but 80 years went by before a Jesuit community was founded there. That community, which included Jesuits Pedro Marbán, Cipriano Barace, and José del Castillo, founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Loreto in 1682, the first "reduction" of Moxos and the cradle of the church in Beni. In the following years the Jesuits founded other settlements to help the indigenous peoples defend themselves against the abuses of the Spaniards and the attacks of the Portuguese.

The missions of Moxos formed part of the network of seventeenth-century Jesuit missions in South America that stretched from Ecuador to Bolivia. One can find in the chronicles and studies mention of almost 30 mission towns in Moxos, 14 of which are still standing.

The Jesuits remained in Moxos until King Charles III of Spain expelled them from all his domains in 1767. They were absent from Moxos for 217 years, until 1984, when summoned by the bishop of Beni, they returned. Today, their field of action is once again San Ignacio de Moxos, and they desire to continue the work of their predecessors.

Moxos Before the Jesuits

The first Jesuits in Moxos encountered a developed, ancient civilization. Thousands and thousands of artificial hills up to 60 feet high dotted the landscape, along with hundreds of artificial rectangular ponds up to three feet deep, all part of a system of cultivation and irrigation. The people used the built-up high ground for farming and dug canals to unite ponds and rivers that caught water in this flood-prone region.

All these architectural and structural masterpieces can be attributed to the ancestors of the present-day Moxeños, who include the Arawak, the most extensive ethnic group in the area. Their language belongs to a linguistic family called Amerindian, which includes the Moxos language and its many dialects. The Arawak have always been famous architects, and indeed the great hydraulic works (dated to ca. 250 a.d.) of their ancient empire is located in the territory of Moxos. Many other ancient nations and linguistic families survive in modern-day ethnic groups, including the Kayuvava, Itionama, and Movima and the Guarayo of the Guaraní family.

Even today one speaks of the "Amazonian cultures" as a block, despite the differences between the various peoples. The Amazonian cosmos includes a tripartite world: the sky above, the earth here, and the underworld below. These cultures believe that the earth is controlled by a father creator, in collaboration with created spirits or dueños, masters, of places or things and with ancestors who help to maintain justice and balance. Slipping from the norm brings about a spiritual sickness that is cured by a communal search for the cause and by a variety of religious rituals, including prayers and natural remedies. In Moxos the principal dueños are the spirits of the jungle (connected with the tiger) and of the water (connected with the rainbow). Many rich dances renew the life of the community and the universe.

The Jesuit missionaries who first encountered the Moxeños found a people with a strong belief in God as father and creator. The Jesuits accepted in their catechesis the names the indigenous peoples gave to God in their own languages, trying to embrace all aspects of the culture not contrary to Christian faith or custom.

Mission Villages

The reduction at San Ignacio was founded in 1689 by Jesuits Antonio de Orellana, Juan del Espejo, and Alvaro de Mendoza. To serve its fourteen ethnic groups, villages were formed that were divided into districts for musicians, singers, cowboys, weavers, tanners, etc. These villages reached out to the people and instilled Christian doctrine into the life of the community.

San Ignacio had wide streets and well-marked city blocks, divided by a great central plaza. The people constructed a great church, workshops, warehouses, a school, and a rectory. The economic district included a large market with textiles, embroideries with feathers, carved furniture, musical instruments, and silver work, which were exported to Lima, Puno, La Paz, Sucre, Santa Cruz, and even Europe. Guilds oversaw their specific tasks, but then each family received its fair share of weekly provisions. A series of small paths led to the houses and camps of each ethnic group.

The socialization and evangelization took place in the center of the town: there were meetings, lessons in the Moxos language, customs, and celebrations; there were schools and marriage instruction. Prayer, work, and rest followed a daily schedule; Sundays included a liturgy with violin, harp, and organ. A calendar marked the great festivals, theatrical shows, communal feasts, and various dances held to glorify the Lord (even today there remain over 40 different dances in San Ignacio).

Music, costumes, dance, and crowds characterize the 300-year-old festival in honor of Ignatius in San Ignacio de Moxos. When Moxeños would say this or that happened en el tiempo de los padres, in the time of the fathers, they were referring to events that occurred more than 200 years ago, when Jesuits were first there.

Expulsion

When King Charles III ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from his domains in 1767, San Ignacio and the other reductions were flourishing. All of a sudden, at a moment of great prosperity, the Jesuits simply had to leave. Secular priests arrived to take their place, but they were ill prepared for such a mission. It soon became clear that they were unable to take even minimal care of the region, and it would be more than two hundred years before Jesuits would once again walk the streets of San Ignacio.

But, according to one story, there was a brief Jesuit presence in Moxos toward the end of the nineteenth century. In 1887 in Moxos, when indigenous people rebelled against the white authorities, local officials asked the Bolivian government to send a commission of Jesuits, for whom the Moxeños maintained their affection. Jesuits in La Paz entrusted the mission to three of their numbers recently arrived from Peru. These Jesuits, the first to revisit Beni, traversed the rivers and talked with the local people; their visit revived the memory and affection the Moxeños had for the Jesuits' predecessors. The Jesuits, in turn, admired how the Moxeños had maintained their faith, teaching, prayers, and love for the sacraments in these remote places, aided only by their local councils and catechists.

In the Reductions In the River Plate region of present-day Paraguay, St. Roque González, SJ, worked to organize the reductions, one of the most well-known Jesuit works in 16th-century South America. A native of Paraguay, González began his ministry among the Indians as a diocesan priest. Entering the Society of Jesus in 1609, he spent the next twenty years continuing this ministry. Jealous of González's success among the natives, a local witch doctor killed him in 1628. Following his death, two Spanish Jesuits -- John del Castillo and Alphonsus Rodríguez -- were also murdered by the same man. All three were canonized in 1988. by Carlos H Parra-Pirela

The Return

On April 11, 1984, the first Jesuits (including this writer) arrived to live in San Ignacio after an absence of 217 years. With great emotion, these men met the descendants of the glorious and valiant Christian Moxeños. Together they wove a beautiful epic that describes how San Ignacio conserved its deeply Moxo-Christian roots.

The parish today covers a territory of about 14,000 square miles. Its 30,000 inhabitants are scattered throughout the jungles, rivers, and prairies and include Moxeños, Mivimas, Yurakaré, and Chimane, with a small percentage of whites, mestizas, and Andeans. Serving its six pastoral regions are four Jesuits, a diocesan priest, and a permanent deacon. Twelve women religious of three different congregations do pastoral work. And over 100 rural Christian community leaders keep this work alive, along with 51 catechists and 22 indigenous lay missioners.

The parish's programs are many, in response to the varied needs of the people it serves. PRODEMO is an agricultural program run by Fr. Edgar Dávalos, SJ, who assists farmers with loans of money and seed, with workshops on cultivation and crop rotation, and by helping them find markets for their harvests of rice and corn. Included in PRODEMO's efforts are study and research on soils, methods of cultivation, selection of more-productive seed, and the best ways to raise livestock.

The parish is also active, in collaboration with other organizations, in protecting the rights and land claims of the indigenous communities; these efforts involve many forms of legal defense and aid and denunciation of abuses.

In the area of community health, the parish supports a mini-hospital and several community medical stations; Michel Bouron, a nurse practitioner from France, leads teams of volunteer workers including three doctors and five nurses, who travel the rivers, providing health care for those with medical problems that range from TB to malnutrition.

Three boarding schools provide education for the indigenous people; a radio program broadcast by Fe y Alegría [see the story Where the Asphalt Ends] helps listeners work toward diplomas in basic and intermediate studies; and nineteen volunteer teachers staff programs in women's education and adult literacy.

The Recapture of Utopia

At this moment the historic mission cathedral of San Ignacio is undergoing its seventh restoration in its 250 years. The only cathedral of the old reductions of Moxos that has remained standing, it is the jewel of the Beni region. It is a symbol of the evangelizing and humanizing work of three centuries and the pride of the Moxo-Christian peoples today. This legendary past and enthusiastic present earned San Ignacio de Moxos the title "Spiritual Capital of the Mission Villages," granted at a great conference in 1997 of architects, scientists, and specialists in the study of the old Jesuit mission villages of South America.

The Jesuits of old had a dream, a dream that continues today. Their modern counterparts, Jesuit and lay, take the vision of their forebears and are leading it into tomorrow.

Author Fr. Enrique Jordá, SJ, is professor of philosophy and theology and former dean of the Institute of Theological Studies in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He has been the pastor at San Ignacio de Moxos since 1984.