The Jesuit Missions: San Juan Bautista

History and Background
San Juan Bautista, not to be confused with modern-day San Juan de Taperas, had the most turbulent history of any Chiquitos reducción. It was founded first in 1699 as San Juan Bautista de los Borós, by the Jesuit Frs. Juan Bautista de Zea (who also co-founded San Rafael de Velasco and the ill-fated San Ignacio de Zamucos) and Juan Patricio Fernández. Possibly the Borós were the same as the Moro, a sub-group of the Ayoreo. It was then re-located in 1705 a short distance away, having been refounded presumably by Fr. Pedro Cerena (making it the only Jesuit mission to have more than two co-founders). It was abandoned in 1712.

A second San Juan, properly known as Taperas de San Juan, was founded by Fr. Juan Bautista Xandra, on the site of the original settlement in 1717, five years after the relocated original settlement was abandoned. This latter incarnation of San Juan Bautista was relocated as well, in or about 1772. In 1780 it was translated yet again.

Dr. Robert H. Jackson, writing in Volume 12 of the Bolivian Studies Journal, in his article "Demographic Patterns on the Chiquitos Missions of Eastern Bolivia, 1691-1767", makes an interesting conjecture that San Juan Bautista may have been established not as a conventional reducción but as a visita - a settlement visited only occasionally by a priest until there were a sufficient number of other Jesuits available for permanent staffing. This view was also supported by Gabriel René Moreno and later by Ramón Gutiérrez, who worked closely with Roth and others on the piecing-together of the confusing history of San Juan Bautista.

In any case, Taperas de San Juan suffered as badly as the original settlement. In 1781 - a year after having been relocated - a disastrous fire broke out (and this on the heels of a plague that had just swept through the region), destroying most of its records and forcing the government to permanently abandon the location and relocate its remaining inhabitants to an entirely new spot that kept the name San Juan de Bautista (used interchangeably with Taperas de San Juan). Thirty years later the village was hit by a fire that essentially burned it to the ground, although a few families remained.

The original Jesuit settlement of San Juan de Bautista is long gone except for a ruined tower, which is possibly the oldest unreconstructed building (well, part of one, anyway) in existence in the Chiquitania. It was built before 1748, according to notes by Hans Roth and Eckart Kühne. At the time of D'Orbigny's 1831 visit to its ruins, it was all that remained, along with the charred structure of the church.

Present-day San Juan de Bautista/Taperas de San Juan (take your pick) is located along the scenic-beyond-belief Río Tucavaca, about 28 miles (45 kms) northeast of San José de Chiquitos. The journey is made by following the San José de Chiquitos - Puerto Suárez road to the hamlet and then bearing left along a dirt track.

The chief appeal of the original San Juan Bautista is its value as an archaeological site. Much remains to be properly excavated and documented. The ruins of the Jesuit church complex amount to little more than the tower. (The modern church in the town of Taperas de San Juan is nondescript.) Still, the old site has a certain mysterious appeal to it. To this day, the reasons for the abandonment of the reducción are unknown (plague and tribal attacks are most often cited), and it is the mission for which the least information is available. All that is known with certainty is that the first-generation settlement was unstable from early on, was translated in 1705, and was abandoned in 1712, before coming to life again five years later as Taperas de San Juan.

All that remains of San Juan Bautista

Quite possibly its original church was erected by the energetic Fr. Martin Schmid between 1755 and 1759 - a claim backed by Querejazu and others - but there is no firm evidence to support this conjecture as yet.

If you come on a quiet day, bring a lunch and picnic in front of the ruins. There is a sense of calm here. Although apart from the stones nothing tangible remains, something intangible - the lingering past - is definitely here.

The modern-day hamlet of Taperas, which came into existence when the Santa Cruz-Brazil railway was built, has nothing to do with San Juan Bautista or Taperas de San Juan. This town, now confusingly called San Juan de Taperas, has a few hundred residents, but no formal restaurants or hotels (you should ask at the parsonage if looking for a place to sleep). Likewise, it has none of the conventional amenities (e.g., bank, post office) associated with larger towns in the region.