Description
Book SynopsisAnalyzes one of the most important Catholic mission systems in republican-era Latin America.
Trade Review“
Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree is a superb book. Erick D. Langer departs from previous historical work with his portrayals of the mission life cycle (which no future historian writing on the topic will be able to ignore); missions in the republican period; the Bolivian Chaco; the frontier as a permeable, advancing and contracting concept, rather than a bright line; and the ethnohistory of the Chirguano, from autonomy to dependence.”—
David Block, author of
Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon: Native Tradition, Jesuit Enterprise, and Secular Policy in Moxos, 1660-1880“Culminating over a decade of research,
Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree brings the republican-era Franciscan missions of the Chiriguanía of southeastern Bolivia into the center of frontier history. Erick D. Langer integrates the empirical data from numerous archives into cultural frameworks in ways that create a powerful narrative of ethnogenesis in the ‘fields of interaction’ that emerged from the institutional mission.”—
Cynthia Radding, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations and Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. The "Chiriguano Wars": Indian Warfare and the Establishment of the Missions 21
2. The Franciscans 61
3. Death and Migration: The Population Decline of the Missions 101
4. Daily Life and the Development of Mission Culture 126
5. Conversion, Chiefs, and Rebellions: Relationships of Power on the Missions 160
6. Missions and the Frontier Economy 196
7. Outside Relations and the Decline of the Missions 218
8. From the Chaco War to Secularization, 1932–1949 257
9. Comparions 270
Appendix: The Inauguration of Tiguipa Church (1902) 284
Glossary 289
Notes 291
Bibliography 337
Index 355
