Oquiriquia Forest

The woodlands of Chiquitania stretch across the eastern Bolivian lowlands, where dry forest and savanna meet. These forests were home to diverse Indigenous peoples before Jesuit missionaries gathered communities into the missions of Chiquitos in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The resulting settlements brought together speakers from many groups, whose descendants formed the Chiquitano people. The forest remained an important part of the surrounding landscape.