“Children of the jesuits” or children of their past?

Abstract

This paper argues that pre-evangelisation indigenous survival techniques noted in both contemporaneous Jesuit sources and in subsequent 20th- and 21st-century anthropological research continued to be employed in the mission to the Chiquitos. These concerned hunting, respect towards the supernatural combined with ritual attendant on that respect, a belief in the power of potent substances, modifying the body to deflect supernatural caprice, and marking numinous sites. It concludes that the painted churches reflected both Jesuit attempts to disguise the churches’ per-ceived deficiencies and indigenous attempts to protect them from harm.