The Jesuit Reductions of Boliva

Records for the year 1554 show that Portuguese slave hunters near San Paulo, Brazil captured 69 thousand Indian slaves that year. In 1585, twelve thousand Indians under the leadership of Louis Montoya, SJ slipped away into the jungle and began an escape that has been compared to the Exodus. In 600 balsa boats they fled down the Patama River and a thousand miles inland with the slave hunters in pursuit. They encountered the impassable Whitall falls - audible for twenty miles, two times the height of Niagara with nine times the water volume. Here they lost 100 balsas trying to float them over the falls. Finally they had to portage everything 25 miles around the falls and down into the jungles of Paraguay where they finally lost the slavers.

In one generation they built thirteen towns or “reductions” incorporating the local cannibalistic tribes. They doubled that number in the next generation and then doubled it again. The towns might contain as many as ten tribes with different languages. Guarani was chosen as the common language for all including the Jesuits. The first years in the founding of a town were spent working together building longhouses and workshops. Only after five years would the building of the church begin. When a town reached five thousand inhabitants another was founded. Towns were governed by a “cabildo” of 20 native leaders, with a single Jesuit spiritual leader and Jesuit brother directing the building programs. Together they produced the first literate society of the Western Hemisphere, craftsmen, sculptors, violin makers and musicians of Baroque music equal to those of Europe. Native cavalry with light artillery protected the towns and patrolled the roads. They retained the native custom of tilling fields communally – with the accompaniment of music. Each family also had its own plot. The town of St Ignatius had five square miles of stone buildings. In Loretto it is said a person could walk through the whole town without ever stepping out into the rain. By 1700, a hundred thousand natives lived and prospered in these Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay.

This apparently utopian life ceased abruptly when the Jesuit order was suppressed by the Pope. Sealed orders from the Spanish monarch Charles III were transcribed by children for secrecy. “For compelling reasons locked in the Royal Breast” all Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish Empire in 1767. The Jesuits were taken to Corsica in chains and the natives again fell prey to Spanish rapacity and fled into the jungle. The abandoned reductions fell to ruin. This story is well known.

What is not so well known is that the Reductions also spread northward into Bolivia where thirty towns flourished among the Chiquitano people with a total of a hundred thousand inhabitants. Unlike the Paraguay Reductions, these did not all dissolve when the Jesuits departed. The churches and the traditions were preserved by native leaders. In the last thirty years many of the churches and artworks have been restored under the leadership of a German ex-Jesuit. The restoration has respected original building methods which used only local materials - native wood, oil from Cusi nuts for paint, minerals for color, mica for decoration. The resurrected carvings have been described as some of the most sensitive sculpture in the history of art.

The art and music and worship of the Chiquitano continue today in living communities. Chiquitano Baroque choral groups travel to Europe for concert and competition.

Liturgy is a regular and vibrant celebration. If you should ever have the opportunity to visit the Jesuit Reductions in Bolivia, I think it will gladden your heart.

The Etiquette of Chicha

Chicha is a common social drink in the Cochabamba rural countryside. It is a milky, pleasantly sweet drink made from pre-masticated corn maize which is boiled then fermented a week or two. This is “buena chicha”. Sometimes an impatient vendor will spike the chicha with sugar and grain alcohol. This is “agua sucia” (dirty water) which can be detected by its overly sweet taste. Persons with fresh chicha to sell hang a white handkerchief on a long pole outside the house. The full moon is said to be the white flag over all of Bolivia.

We offer the following rules of etiquette so that when you visit us you can be on your best behaviour. When invited to a home and offered chicha it is impolite to refuse. The common cup is passed - a shell called a tutuma. It is proper to drain the entire cup in one draft after pouring a small amount of Chicha into the earth to honour Pacha Mama (Mother Earth). The offering may even be done indoors. Drink the entire cup and shake it upside down before passing it to the next person. You might shake it over your head for effect. Caution: the cup continues making the rounds through the night! It is acceptable to say that you will have only one cup since you it is not your custom to drink much. Come visit before too many full moons.

Adjusting to Rural Carmen Pampa

Jean and I have been in rural Carmen Pampa ten days but it seems like much longer. It is a tough adjustment - new language, new living companions, and the school with its own problems.

So many things here confund us - the beauty and the pain. For example, on a cool sunny Saturday morning a student, Moises Chapahani, took Jean and I to meet his family. He led us along a muddy path etched into the steep hillside with vistas through the trees of the distant mountain villages across the valley. The path was shaded by jungle lush with fruit – avocados, grapefruit, coffee beans both red and yellow, raspberries, bananas and limes. Ripe mandarin oranges fell softly onto red-violet Impatience blossoms that cover the forest floor.

Moises showed us iridescent blue moths, different types of wasp and bee hives and vultures that clean the valley. We heard the call of the Uchi – like a drumming on hollow coconuts. Moises pointed to the black birds with yellow beaks and tails as they dove into their yard-long, swaying sack nests.

After a half hour the path crossed a stream and dropped abruptly. We stepped into a small clearing flanked by three huts of adobe block and corrugated tin. In the little dirt yard next to a water spigot that carries water from somewhere up the mountain was Moises’ 80 year old grandfather Celestine. He greeted us in Aymara with a broad, one-toothed smile and hastened to drag a short bench into the sun since there is no power or light inside the house. Moises’ younger brother Renaldo shyly stepped out of the shade. Renaldo is about 18, has epileptic fits and can repeat only a few words. Two years ago he wandered into the jungle and got lost. When they found him days later the dog that had stayed by his side was dead but Renaldo had stayed alive by eating grass. Sr. Damon had driven him to the small hospital.

Now Moises disappeared into the woods and returned shortly with a bag of mandarins. His grandfather clambered up an outdoor ladder to a loft and brought back an old hardcover Reader’s Digest condensation of five books - printed in English. It was inscribed “Ex libris Sr. Mary Catherine” – a gift given to him twenty years ago. So we sat in the sun eating oranges and trying to explain the pictures of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin from another time, another world. When we were ready to depart Moises rose to accompany us - his toes sticking out of his sneakers. He cleared his throat and said softly that he was the only one that could help the family now by succeeding in his nursing training. He asked if we could help or knew anyone who could help him pay his school tuition. Ah, so maybe this whole beautiful, muddy, Dr. Seuss trip was a bid for help. This is painful here. There are so many who genuinely need help and so little we can do. The beauty and the pain.