Indigenous Strategies before the Formation of a Frontier Society in Republican Bolivia. Trinitarios and the Construction of a Space for Freedom in Beni (Bolivia) 1880-1930

The socio-economic project of an emerging elite in Beni, since the mid-nineteenth century, had a negative impact on several of the indigenous peoples that lived in the old missions. In order to secure their survival, these groups developed various strategies. Focusing on the Moxeno Trinitario, located mainly in the capital, Trinidad, we will observe the group's strategy, developed by its corregidor Jose Santos Noco Guaji, before the advancement of the internal frontier and the progressive formation of the Bolivian nation-state. Santos Noco reformulated the elements of mission culture inherited from the Jesuits -social, economic and political practice and the Catholic world view-with the civil rights granted by Bolivian legislation -citizenship and property-in order to create a space on the banks of the Secure and Mamore Rivers, where Trinitarios lived in relative autonomy between the 1880's and 1930.