Baure

The Baure are an Indigenous people of the Llanos de Moxos, the broad lowlands drained by the Mamoré and its tributaries. Their language belongs to the Arawakan family, whose speakers were spread across much of South America. Rivers, seasonal wetlands and raised areas form the setting for communities whose settlements and cultivation were adapted to the annual cycle of flood and dry ground.

Spanish missionaries entered Baure country at the end of the seventeenth century. Early encounters could be violent: the Jesuit Cipriano Barace was killed in 1702 during an expedition. In 1708 the Jesuits established Concepción de Baures, one of a series of missions that brought Baure and other Indigenous inhabitants into new settlements. These missions reshaped the political and religious life of the region under Spanish rule.