Distinguished by a unique fusion of European and Amerindian cultural influences, the missions were founded as reductions or reducciones de indios by Jesuits in the 17th and 18th centuries to convert local tribes to Christianity.

[8] With the permission of King Philip II of Spain a group of Jesuits traveled to the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1568, some 30 years after the arrival of the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Mercedarians.

In 1592 the settlement had to be moved 250 kilometres (160 mi) west because of conflicts with natives, although the remains of the original town exist in the Santa Cruz la Vieja archaeological site.

With encouragement from Agustín Gutiérrez de Arce, the governor of Santa Cruz, the Jesuits focused their efforts on the Chiquitania, where the Christian doctrine was more readily accepted.

The local Piñoca tribe, who were suffering from a plague, begged Arce and Rivas to stay and promised to build a house and a church for the Jesuits, which were finished by the end of year.

The church is nonetheless a largely faithful 20th-century reconstruction – as opposed to renovation (a key criterion for inclusion in the World Heritage Site group) – of the second Jesuit templo built in 1761.

[17] In 1766 Jesuits were accused of causing Esquilache Riots in Madrid; consequently in February 1767, Charles III of Spain signed a royal decree with expulsion orders for all members of the Society of Jesus in Spanish territories.

In practice, the shortage of clergy and the low quality of those appointed by the bishop – almost all of whom did not speak the language of the local peoples and in some cases had not been ordained – led to a rapid general decline of the missions.

In January 1790, the Audiencia of Charcas ended the diocese’s mismanagement, and temporal affairs were delegated to civil administrators, with the hope of making the missions economically more successful.

[18] Sixty years after the expulsion of the Jesuits the churches remained active centers of worship, as the French naturalist Alcide d'Orbigny reported during his mission to South America in 1830 and 1831.

The complex, consisting of the church, bell tower, sacristy and a grassy plaza lined by houses, is considered to have the most fidelity to the original plan of the Jesuit reductions.

[3][9][26] In their design of the reductions, the Jesuits were inspired by “ideal cities“ as outlined in works such as Utopia and Arcadia, written respectively by the 16th-century English philosophers Thomas More and Philip Sidney.

The Jesuits had specific criteria for building sites: locations with plenty of wood for construction; sufficient water for the population; good soil for agriculture; and safety from flooding during the rainy season.

Out of the original ten missions, only the plaza at Santa Ana de Velasco does not show major changes, consisting as it did in colonial times, of an open grassy space.

[nb 9] Once a settlement had been established, the missionaries, working with the native population, began to erect the church, which served as the educational, cultural and economic center of the town.

The initial church in each mission (except in Santa Ana de Velasco) was temporary, essentially no more than a chapel and built as quickly as possible of local wood, unembellished save for a simple altar.

In San Xavier the quotation is in Spanish: CASA DE DIOS Y PUERTA DEL CIELO ; and in Latin at the other two churches: DOMUS DEI ET PORTA COELI, meaning The house of god and the gate of heaven.

[26] The construction of the restored churches seen today falls in the period between 1745 and 1770 and is characterized by the use of locally available natural materials like wood, used in the carved columns, pulpits and sets of drawers.

Paint in earth tones was applied over the lime whitewash, and ornaments were drawn, featuring elements from flora and fauna, as well as angels, saints and geometrical patterns.

The tradition of figure carving has been preserved to the present day in workshops where carvers make columns, finials and windows for new or restored churches or chapels in the area.

In the 1960s, the San Ignacio de Velasco church (a non-current UNESCO WHS) was replaced with modern construction; in the 1990s, Hans Roth and his co-workers brought the restoration as close as possible to the original edifices.

[20][34] Though the settlements were officially a part of the Viceroyalty of Peru through the Royal Audiencia of Charcas and of the diocese of Santa Cruz in church affairs, their remoteness made them effectively autonomous and self-sufficient.

As early as 1515, the Franciscan friar Bartolomé de las Casas had initiated a "foreigner law" for the "'Indian people'", and no white or black man, other than the Jesuits and authorities, was allowed to live in the missions.

The thriving economy in the reductions enabled them to export surplus goods to all parts of Upper Peru, although ironically not to Paraguay – the region the Jesuits most wanted to reach.

[nb 11] Schmid in particular was responsible for this skill being developed to such a high degree that polyphonic choirs would perform, and whole orchestras would play Baroque operas on handmade instruments.

He built an organ with six stops in Potosí, disassembled it, transported it by mules over a distance of 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) on a difficult road to the remote mission of Santa Ana de Velasco, and re-assembled it there from hand.

Your Reverence would be able to observe here, how children which were torn away from the jungle just a year ago, together with their parents are able today to sing well and with an absolutely firm beat, they play the zither, lyre and the organ and dance with precise movements and rhythm, that they might compete with the Europeans themselves.

We teach these people all these mundane things so they may get rid of their rude customs and resemble civilized persons, predisposed to accept Christianity.”Some Jesuit institutions still exist in the Chiquitania.

There are other primary sources as yet unexamined, the majority of which are archived in Cochabamba, Sucre, and Tarija (in Bolivia); Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Tucumán (in Argentina); Asunción (Paraguay); Madrid; and Rome.

References to many others are found in the extensive bibliography offered by Roberto Tomichá Charupá, OFM, in La Primera Evangelización en las Reducciones de Chiquitos, Bolivia (1691-1767), pp.