Mojeños

The Mojeños, also known as Moxeños, Moxos, or Mojos, are an indigenous people of Bolivia. They live in south central Beni Department, on both banks of the Mamore River, and on the marshy plains to its west, known as the Llanos de Mojos. The Mamore is a tributary to the Madeira River in northern Bolivia.

Mojeños were traditionally hunter-gatherers, as well as farmers and pastoralists. Jesuit missionaries established towns in the Mojos plains beginning in 1682, converting native peoples to Catholicism and establishing a system of social organization that would endure well beyond the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. Mojeño ethnic identification derives from a process of ethnogenesis as a result of this encounter between a number of pre-existing ethnic groups in this mission environment. This process occurred in several different mission towns, resulting in distinct Mojeño identities, including Mojeño-Trinitarios (Trinidad mission), Mojeño-Loretanos (Loreto mission), Mojeño-Javerianos, and Mojeño-Ignacianos (San Ignacio de Moxos mission). They numbered some 30,000 in the first decade of the 20th century. Many Mojeño communities are affiliated with the Central de Pueblos Indígenas del Beni and/or the Central de Pueblos Étnicos Mojeños del Beni.