San Ignacio de Zamucos

History and Background
Little is known with certainty regarding the short-lived mission of San Ignacio de Zamucos, which like many others was intended to serve as a way stop between the Chiquitos missions and those of Paraguay. It was established primarily for the catechisation of the Zamuco (a sub-group of the Mojo or Ayoreo) - a profoundly antogonistic tribe who had and would continue to harass and derail Jesuit efforts for many years - and to establish Jesuit hegemony in the far southeastern reaches of Chiquitos and help establish a link between the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos and those of Paraguay via the inpenetrable Gran Chaco and/or the Río Pilcomayo.

What we do know for a fact is that it was first founded in 1719 - albeit only for a few months - by the Jesuit Fr. Juan Bautista Zea, who much earlier had co-founded the reducciones of San Rafael de Velasco (1696) and the ill-starred San Juan Bautista (1699). (Zea was the only missionary apart from Fr. Francisco Hervás to co-found three settlements in the Chiquitania.) It was founded some 15 leagues (52 miles or 83 kilometres) south of the Santiago saltworks, which would have placed it in a very desolate and dangerous area just north of what is now the border between Paraguay and Bolivia.

Zea had set out from San Juan Bautista in 1716 in an attempt to evangelise the Zamuco. That excursion did not fare well at all, nor did that of 1717, nor did the local efforts of Frs. Miguel de Yegros and Brother Alberto Romero over the next two years. Romero paid for his daring with his life, the fourth Jesuit martyr in the Chiquitania; Yegros survived. Stubbornly, the Jesuits kept coming back, looking for the elusive path to Paraguay. They returned in 1720 with Fr. Agustín Castañares, who later would return to re-found the settlement. In 1721, 1722, 1723, and 1724 other incursions into the area were made, all without success.

Defying all logic - something the Jesuits were masters at from the beginning - in 1723 the mission was re-founded by Castañares. His companion was Hervás, who caught the plague and died whilst returning to San Juan Bautista. Two other Jesuits, Frs. Juan de Montenegro and Domingo Bendieta, were sent to help him. In 1726, much of its population was transferred to San José de Chiquitos in a bid to separate warring factions within the mission, and San Ignacio de was abandoned until the following year. A decade later in 1737, an epidemic reduced its population to just 30 families, although this number increased soon afterwards.

The perpetual danger that surrounded San Ignacio de Zamucos was no joke. Fr. Ignacio Chomé, a brilliant young linguist and not exactly the timid type, admitted in 1738 that he expected to die any minute. Fortunately for him, he was transferred to Concepción where he wrote the first Chiquitano dictonary. In 1744, The indominable Castañares was not so fortunate: He was killed by the Mataguayo (a sub-group of the Mataco) in Paraguay.

In 1745, what was left of San Ignacio de Zamucos was destroyed, with the majority of its inhabitants eventually moving some 200 miles (320 kms) northwest to the brand-new reducción of San Ignacio de Velasco (then known as San Ignacio de Loyola). There the head of the mission, Fr. Miguel Areijer (or Streicher in the original German), induced the remnants of the Zamuco to live peacefully with the already-settled Ugareño or Ugarone (also probably related to the Mojo family). Those Zamuco who did not trek to San Ignacio went to the much-closer site of San Juan Bautista (which itself was never on firm footing to begin with). That Areijer was able to persuade the Zamucos to live peaceably with the Ugareño is something of a miracle, given that it was the incessant attacks of the Ugareño upon San Ignacio de Zamucos that led to that mission's destruction.

It ruins are still visible, not far from the eastern entrance to Parque Nacional del Gran Chaco Kaa-Iya in an uninhabited area now remembered simply as San Ignacio in western Germán Busch Province, just a few miles from the border with Paraguay and the Cerro San Miguel (also known locally as Yoibide), the second-highest point in the Chiquitania (superseded only by Chochís).

The view from what was once San Ignacio de Zamucos, looking north