The Jesuit Missions - Their Daily Life

Daily life in the Jesuit missions of Chiquitos was in many ways incomprehensibly removed from anything we in the 21st century can imagine. The gulfs of belief, culture, and time are now so vast that any attempt to revisit, let alone appreciate, daily life in an 18th century mission is nearly impossible. Yes, you could watch "The Mission", which is a decent enough film, although it doesn't begin to capture what a typical day was like in Chiquitos (it treats the Paraguay missions, and isn't quite as authentic as it could have been).

It's probably easiest simply to start with the origin of the reducciones and then some facts. The Jesuits were not the first to emply the reducción method, Their genius led to its perfection, however. The very first in the New World was established by Frair Bartholomew de las Casas and his Franciscan assistants in Cumaná, Venezuela between 1515-1522. It was adopted and perfected by the Jesuits when they were given possession of the doctrina (another name for reducción) of Juli in 1576 by order of the then-viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, a move its former overssers, the Dominicans, did not appreciate.

All of the Chiquitos missions physically followed a similar pattern (the layout of which can still be discerned in Santa Ana de Chiquitos). The ideal was a church complex or complejo misional on one side of the plaza principal, which would include beside the church itself, workshops, a music school, and the parish offices. The Jesuits and their occasional guests lived in this complex. This is still the norm for all the missions with the exception of San Miguel de Velasco, where the complejo is located on a corner and does not span the entire side. Standing at the front of the church and looking straight ahead, you'd see the plaza principal, marked off by a tall wooden cross at each corner.

On the remaining three sides of the square would be houses set aside for widows and orphans, grain storehouses, workshops, and other practical, frequently used edifices, behind which in symmetrical rows would be the houses of the mission's inhabitants (essentially single rooms knit together in longhouse fashion), all of whom by law could only be indigenous peoples. Spanish colonists were forbidden, and even solidiers of the crown were not permitted entrance. In the annals of the Chiquitos missions, only one person, Antonio Rojas, a silversmith perhaps from Cochabamba, was allowed to live in the missions, although we do not know why. (Kühne posits a remarkable theory that perhaps Rojas was responsible for the churches of San Miguel and/or San Ignacio de Velasco.) To avoid social friction, they were separated by tribal allegiance (usually a minimum of four different groups were represented in a mission). Each had a leader or cacique as well as assistants.

Normally there were twelve officials (apart from the missionaries) per reducción, forming a cabildo, equivalent to a town council (and which each mission town still retains). Every role was elective, save that of corregidor (roughly the same as a modern-day mayor), who was appointed by the Spanish governor, not the Jesuits. Nonetheless, the Jesuits pre-approved all nominees for the other offices. Given the different ethnic groups present (not all of whom were on the best of terms with each other) larger issues effecting the well-being of the settlement were left in the hands of the "black robes" as well. The missions ultimately were overseen by a superior (known as a visitor), who appointed an administrator or procurador, who acted in the superior's name on a daily basis. Surprisingly, this procurador was not a Jeauit priest, but always a brother (hermano).

The system worked well, certainly better than the arbitrary rule the Spanish imposed in non-mission towns. And from a civil standpoint it was light years ahead of its time. There was no capital panishment; the ultimate penalty was expulsion from the mission, a dire fate indeed. In the extremely few cases when this occured, the miscreant's family often chose to accompany him. In theory, manslaughter cases were referred to the secular authorities, but as this inevitably meant death to the accused, such cases were never handed over.

Each family was assigned a plot of land to cultivate, with three days reserved for invidual farming and another three set aside for communal agriculture (and later, cattle raising) as well as working in the various workshops and smithies. Trading between the Chiquitos missions was active, and goods from the Chiquitania travelled as far west as Potosí and even Lima, although not to the dreamed-of east, home to the Paraguay missions. The seventh day was sacred from dawn until dusk, and no work of any kind was done. One thing that made life in the missions so attractive to the local populace was the fact that these settlements often had surpluses of food and a well-managed econimic system, which meant little likelihood of starvation, a situation that often confronted the nomadic peoples prior to the Jesuit's arrival.

Another was the comparatively settled life in the reducciones, reduced chance of warfare, and what was by all accounts a benevolent, if also perhaps too paternal for modern tastes, approach from the Jesuits themselves. In fact, as Tomichá points out in La Primera Evangelización en Las Reducciones de Chiquitos, Bolivia (1691-1767), life in the Chiquitos missions was very much a desired choice, and not in any way enforced. The fact that the missionaries led exemplary lifes and were ascetic (we would judge to the extreme) also impressed the natives, and the music so many Jesuits employed in aurally seducing these peoples positively charmed them (and gave birth to the greatest cultural achievement of these settlements), as did the missionaries' penchant for catechising through drama and other art forms.

The Jesuits took great care not only to catechise, but also to educate their charges, believing that a good education would form the basis for further Christian development. As the missions originally were polylingual to the extreme, the priests eventually settled upon Chiquitano (then only one of many tongues spoken in the reducciones) as the lingua franca. Remarkably, the Europeans - every missionary was multi-lingual in the Chiquitania - would teach the non-Chiquitano speaking children the language, who would then instruct their parents and older siblings in it. Soon catechisms, prayerbooks, songbooks, and all manner of written material (the vast majority of it catechectical in nature) were appearing in Chiquitano. The people living in these towns nowadays speak Spanish for the most part, and very few are descendants of the original mission tribes (most of whom fled the reducciones between 1767 and 1851). Nonetheless, the indigenous communities still attend the same churches and follow the same rites their ancestors did centuries ago, and ocassionally a Mass in Chiquitano is offered.

Underpinning everything, and the raison d'être for the missions in the first place, was of course the evagelisation of the inhabitants. Daily life in these missions would be far more understandable to a monk than to any of us. Each day started with Mass at dawn, in Latin and Chiquitano. Then work for the adults or school for the children, followed by a return to church that evening for praying the Rosary, attending Evening Prayer, and finally the offering of the Litany to the Saints. After this, everyone retired for the night. Sundays were, of course, largely given over to Mass and what we would call Sunday school...sometimes lasting for four to six hours and almost always infused with dramatic and musical elements courtesy of the missionaries.

If you travel to one of these towns, you'll immediately agree that yes, the churches are stunning. They really defy expression until you find yourself standing in one, at which point you’re just as likely to be on your knees, so moving is their physical presence. And yes, the age-old traditions – most of which no longer exist anywhere else on earth – are an impressive testimony to the Jesuits’ abilities to catechise: A seventeenth-century missionary would feel very much at home in these mission towns. But what leaves us in greatest awe are the Jesuits themselves. Their commitment was to saving souls and treating their indigenous spiritual brothers and sisters as just that – family – ministering to them as Christ would have done.

Lest anyone think these priests were the runt of the lot, consigned to mission work as a last resort, let me put the story straight. Most were from well-off families and were the intellectual luminaries of Europe. Every one of them was at least tri-lingual, and in most cases spoke four or even five languages, not to mention the others they had to master once arriving in the New World. Most were published scholars of the first rank. Many were born in castles, had secular titles, and the respect of kings and emperors.

They forsook all this. And they came to a land completely unknown to them. They travelled thousands of miles on foot. They ate insects and mouldy bread, and drank foul water. They slept on the ground, and owned nothing. They baptised babies, buried the elderly, and led tens of thousands to God. They gave of themselves completely, practiced their Spiritual Exercises as all Jesuits must, and never looked back.