San Ignacio de Moxos

San Ignacio de Moxos was founded as a Jesuit mission in 1689 among the Moxeño peoples of the Beni floodplain, and what survives there is less the architecture than the culture the missions produced and the community kept: a tradition of Baroque violin and choral music taught and played by local musicians, and the Ichapekene Piesta, the July festival that UNESCO inscribed in 2012. It runs for days and layers the Christian feast of Ignatius over Moxeño ritual: masked dancers, enormous feather headdresses, the machetero dancers with their wooden swords, processions, violins and drums. The town is a grid of low houses around a plaza with a church, on the flat cattle country of the Beni, and it is quiet for the rest of the year.

History

San Ignacio de Moxos was founded in 1689 by the Jesuit missionaries Antonio de Orellana, Juan de Espejo and Alvaro de Mendoza, on a first site 20 miles south of the present town (Wikipedia, San Ignacio de Moxos).

What's there

• Machetero dancers - feather headdresses and wooden swords in procession.
• Mission Baroque music - violins and choir in the local tradition.
• The Ichapekene Piesta - days of ritual and dance at the end of July.
• The plaza town - low houses and church on the Beni floodplain.

When to go

Late July for the festival, which is the reason to come and which fills the town completely. May to October otherwise for the roads; the wet season floods the Beni and can cut the town off.

Practical notes

Outside the festival there is little to see and the town is very quiet. During it accommodation is scarce and basic. The road from Trinidad is rough and floods in the wet season. Facilities are limited year round.

Nearby

Trinidad lies east; Rurrenabaque is northwest.

Key facts