Baure

Baure is a Southern Arawakan language of the Llanos de Mojos, the seasonally flooded savanna of the Beni in eastern Bolivia. It is closest to the Trinitario and Ignaciano Moxo varieties, differing from them chiefly by dropping word-final vowels, and itself comprises Baure proper, Carmelito and Joaquiniano.

Jesuit priests moving out from Santa Cruz de la Sierra began evangelizing the region in the 1670s, founding Loreto and then, in 1686, the principal mission of Trinidad on the Mamoré River. In these reductions Moxo served as the general indigenous lingua franca, while Baure was used alongside it among the Baure people, who kept their language alive in greetings, folktales, ritual speech and the festival Song of the Baures.