The Ava Guaraní are an Indigenous people formerly known as Chiriguanos or Chiriguano Indians who speak the Ava Guarani and Eastern Bolivian Guaraní languages. Noted for their warlike character, the Chiriguanos retained their lands in the Andes foothills of southeastern Bolivia from the 16th to the 19th centuries by fending off, first, the Inca Empire, later, the Spanish Empire, and, still later, independent Bolivia. The Chiriguanos were finally subjugated in 1892.
The Chiriguanos of history nearly disappeared from public consciousness after their 1892 defeat—but were reborn beginning in the 1970s. In the 21st century the descendants of the Chiriguanos call themselves Guaranis which links them with millions of speakers of Guarani dialects and languages in Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil.Combés, Isabelle (2005), "Las batallas de Kuruyuki. Variaciones sobre una derrota chiriguana," Bulletin de l'Institut d'Etudes Andines, Vol 34, No. 2, p. 221, 230-231
The census of 2001 counted 81,011 Guaraní, mostly Chiriguanos, over 15 years of age living in Bolivia.Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, "The Guarani People and the Situation of the Captive Communities in the Bolivian Chaco", pp. 1-2, http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/ComunidadesCautivas.eng/Chap.Iv.htm, accessed 24 Oct 2016 A 2010 census counted 18,000 Ava Guarani in Argentina. The Eastern Bolivian Guaraní language was spoken by 33,000 people in Bolivia, 15,000 in Argentina, and a few hundred in Paraguay.Eastern Bolivian Guaraní at Ethnologue
Origin of the name and people
The common name for the Eastern Bolivian Guaraní since the 16th century has been variations of the name "Chirihuano", a word of Quechua origin which referred to itinerant doctors or medicine vendors (curanderos) from the Bolivian province of Larecaja, called also Collahuayas, Yungeños and Charasanis. Because "chiri" means "cold" in Quechua, the word chirihuano has been interpreted with the pejorative meaning of "people who die from freezing".Alconini, Sonia (2004), "The Southeastern Inka Frontier against the Chiriguanos: Structure and Dynamics of the Inka Imperial Borderlands," Latin American Antiquity, Vol. 15, No. 4, p. 394. Downloaded from JSTOR. In the late 16th century, the Quechua term was Hispanized to Chiriguanos. Although Chiriguanos usually refers to Guarani language speaking peoples in eastern Bolivia, the Spanish sometimes applied the term to all Guarani peoples and other lowland people speaking non-Guarani languages living in the eastern Andes and the Gran Chaco region.Scholl, Jonathan (2015), "At the Limits of Empire: Incas, Spaniards, and the Ava-Guarani (Chiriguanaes) on the Charca-Chiriguana Frontier, Southeastern Andes (1450s-1620s)", Dissertation, University of Florida, pp. 12, 78-85
The Chiriguanos called themselves "ava", meaning humans. The Guarani people are believed by archaeologists to have originated in the central part of the Amazon rainforest and migrated southward at an uncertain date. Equally uncertain is the date they arrived in eastern Bolivia. The historical Chirguano were a synthesis of the Chané and the Guaraní. The Chiroguanos migrated from Paraguay to Bolivia in the beginning of the 16th century absorbing, assimilating, and enslaving the Chané.Alconini, Sonia (2016), Southeast Inka Frontiers: Boundaries and Interactions, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, pp. 26-34. Downloaded from Project MUSE. Chiriguano raids on the lands of the of Yamparae (present-day Sucre) predates the incorporation this area to the Inca Empire.
Some Ava Guaraní peoples may still have been migrating into the eastern Andes at the time of the Spanish conquest in the 1530s, possibly drawn by the riches of the Incas and Spanish and in search of the mythical land of "Candire", the "land without evil", rich with gold and other wealth.Alconini (2004), p. 395
Culture The Chiriguanos occupied the foothills between the high Andes and the Altiplano and the flat plains of the Gran Chaco, living mostly at elevations between and .Google Earth The climate is sub-tropical and precipitation during the rainy season is adequate for growing crops. The region is characterized by steep ridges and deep river valleys making access and communication difficult. The Chiriguanos were never united as a people into a single political unit, but instead functioned on the village level and formed loosely-organized regional coalitions headed by a paramount chieftain, or tubicha rubicha (capitán grande in Spanish).Langer, Erick D. (2009), Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree,, Durham: Duke University Press, p. 13, 290
The Chiriguanos had a warrior ethos, fighting among themselves as well as outsiders. They said they were "men without masters" and considered themselves superior to other peoples whom they called "tapua" or slaves.Scholl, pp. 50, 53 The Spanish described them in the most unfavorable terms possible: without religion and government, dedicated to war and cannibalism, naked and sexually promiscuous. That litany of offenses justified, in Spanish eyes, undertaking wars of "fire and blood" against the Chiriguanos and enslaving them.Scholl, pp. 50-51
The Chiriguanos acquired horses and guns from the Spanish, but their preferred method of fighting was on foot and with bow and arrow. The Spanish by contrast preferred to fight on horseback and with guns, although guns were in short supply on the frontier for much of history. The Chiriguanos were an agricultural people, cultivating maize and other crops. They initially lived in very large longhouses in villages, but, probably for defense, they came to live in small dispersed settlements of individual houses.Langer, pp. 14-15
Until the 19th century the Chiriguanos proved impervious to the attempts of missionaries to convert them to Christianity. A Jesuit mission in 1767 had only 268 Chiriguano converts, as compared to the tens of thousands the Jesuits had converted eastward in Paraguay among other Guarani speaking peoples.Langer, p. 16
Early wars against the Incas and Spanish Spanish estimates of the number of Chiriguano warriors between 1558 and 1623 range from 500 to 4,000.Saignes, Thierry, edited by Isabelle Combés (n.d.), Historia del Pueblo Chiriguano, Lima: Institution Frances de Estudias Andinas, p. 73 Despite epidemics of European diseases, the Chiriguano population, probably due in part to the incorporation of the Chané, rose to a high of more than 100,000 in the late 18th century.Langer, pp. 15-16
Large-scale Chiriguano raids against the Inca began in the 1520s. The Inca established defensive settlements, including what are now the archaeological sites of Oroncota and Samaipata, to fend off the Chiriguanos."Fuerte de Samaipata--UNESCO World Heritage Centre" https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/883. Accessed 23 Sep 2016; Parssinen, Martti, Suriainen, Ari, and Korpisaari, Antti, "Western Amazonia-Amazonia Ocidental", pp. 32. 45-53. https://www.academia.edu/7322394/Fortifications_Related_to_the_Inca_Expansion, accessed 24 Sep 2016 The Spanish became concerned with the raids of the Chiriguanos in the 1540s because they threatened the indigenous (Indian) workers of the rich silver mines at Potosí and surrounding areas. The Spanish also wished to establish links between their settlements in the Andes and those in Paraguay. In 1564, under a leader named Vitapue, the Chriguanos destroyed two Spanish settlements in eastern Bolivia and a generalized war between the Spaniards and the Chiriguanos began.Scholl, pp. 18, 259 In 1574, The Viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo led a large—and unsuccessful—invasion into Chiriguano territory and in 1584 the Spanish declared a "war of fire and blood" against the Chiriguanos.Saignes, p. 193 In 1594, the Chiriguano forced the abandonment of the Spanish settlement of Santa Cruz and its relocation to the present site of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Some of the settlers abandoned the area and floated down the Amazon River to its mouth and returned to Spain.Gott, Richard (1993), Land without Evil: Utopian Journeys across the South American Watershed, London: Verso, pp. 161-163
The Spanish in the early 17th century followed a policy of attempting to populate the Andean foothills where the Chiriguanos lived and established three main centers as frontier defense: Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Tomina, east of Sucre), and Tarija. By about 1620, however, the Spanish had given up ambitious attempts to advance the frontier. Records are lacking for the next 100 years, but it appears it was a period of relative peace in which Spaniard and indigenous allies enjoyed an uneasy co-existence with the Chiriguanos, although punctuated by mutual raids on each other.Scholl pp. 23, 451, 472-496
The Jesuits, successful in their missionary enterprises in Paraguay, attempted to Christianize the Chiriguanos as early as the 1630s, but had little success.Gott, p. 180
18th century
What historian Thierry Saignes called the "General Uprising" of the Chiriguanos began in 1727. The underlying causes of the uprising were the Spanish colonization of areas near Tarija, led by Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan missionaries and Spanish cattle ranchers who coveted the rich pasture lands of the Andes foothills. The spark that ignited the war was the punishment by the missionaries of Chiriguano neophytes at Jesuit and Dominican missions, especially that of Juan Bautista Aruma, who became one of the three principal leaders of the uprising. However, during the war, the Chiriguanos were not united. Their leaders pursued different strategies and some Chiriguanos did not join the uprising.Saignes, pp. 92-94
In October 1727, with cooperation from the Toba and Mocoví peoples, the Chiriguanos attacked with an army of 7,000 men, destroying Christian missions and Spanish ranches east of Tarija, killing more than 200 Spaniards and taking many women and children prisoner. In March 1728, they attacked Monteagudo (then called Sauces), burned the Church and took 80 Spanish prisoners. The Spanish counterattacked from Santa Cruz in July 1728 with an army of 1200 Spaniards and 200 Chiquitano archers recruited from the Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos in eastern Bolivia. The Spanish army destroyed many Chiriguano villages, killed more than 200 people, and took more than 1,000 prisoners. Violating a truce to negotiate an exchange of prisoners, the Spanish captured 62 Chiriguano leaders, including Aruma, and enslaved them in the silver mines. Spanish expeditions into Chiriguano territory in 1729 and 1731 were less successful. In 1735 the Chiriguano besieged Santa Cruz but the siege was broken by 340 Chiquitano warriors sent from Jesuit missions. In that same year, the Chiriguanos destroyed two reestablished Jesuit missions near Tarija. The Chiriguano integrated some of their captives into their society; others on both sides were released or ransomed, with slavery being a common fate of captives of the Spanish, especially women and children.Gott, pp. 180-182; Saignes, pp 92-94, 220-22; 236; Langer, p. 44
After the General Uprising, additional wars in the 18th century between the Chiriguano and Spanish occurred in 1750 and from 1793 to 1799.Combés, p. 223 The brush-fire wars between Spaniard and Chiriguano were largely conflicts about resources. The Chiriguanos were farmers who grew corn; the Spanish and Mestizo settlers encroaching upon or living in Chiriguano territory were ranchers who raised cattle. The ranchers and their cattle destroyed Chiriguano settlements and corn fields and the Chiriguanos killed cattle and often ranchers.Langer, pp. 45--47
19th century