The structuring of the cultural experience carried out by the Jesuit Order in the Moxos region during the 17th and 18th centuries, on the plains and Amazonian woods of the Audience of Charcas, now Bolivia, is the theme of this work. We strive to show that this experience of occupation of territory was defined from a combination of two criteria of spatial organization: a symbolic criterion, which established a series of architectonic references distributed in an urban framework typical of the ‘baroque', and a productive criterion, that extended and converted the reductions into large industrial, agricultural, and cattle-raising establishments. As a consequence of this dual perspective, the Jesuits, in dealing with the Indians, built new settlements in every sense: social, technological, aesthetic, spatial, at both the urban and regional levels.
Barroc; Jesuitic mission; jesuits
