Moxo

The Moxo, known in Spanish as the Mojeños or Mojos, are an Arawakan people of the Llanos de Mojos, the seasonally flooded plains of the Mamoré River in the Bolivian Beni. Their ancestors built thousands of raised earth mounds, ponds and canals, dated to around 250 CE, which drained the floodplain for farming.

Early accounts collected by chronicler Diego Felipe de Alcaya describe a ranked society under a leader titled Grigotá, served by chiefs such as Vitupué at the head of hundreds of warriors.

Jesuits began evangelizing the region in the 1670s, founding Loreto and then Trinidad in 1686, and mission towns fused many local groups into the Trinitario, Ignaciano, Loretano and Javeriano identities. When the Jesuits were expelled in 1767 this mission organization and the Arawakan Moxo languages remained the frame of Moxo life.