Besiro

The Chiquitano, who call themselves the Monkóx, have their homeland in the Chiquitania savanna of eastern Bolivia. The Spanish named them Chiquitos, ‘little ones’. Their language may belong to the Macro-Jê family, and its main dialects were Tao, Piñoco and Manasi.

They farmed and resisted the Spaniards for nearly two centuries after Santa Cruz de la Sierra was founded in 1559. From 1691 the Jesuits set up missions in their country, where the Chiquito language became the common speech and nearly fifty tribes were assimilated, until the Jesuits were expelled in 1767.