The government of the Moxos and Chiquitos missions after the Jesuit expulsion

When the Jesuits were expelled in 1767 the Crown had to decide who would run thirty-odd Amazonian mission towns. It tried parish priests under a reglamento of 1762, then secular administrators under a plan approved by the Audiencia de Charcas about 1789. Spanish officials fought the question out on paper, and the losing brief survives: it reports fifteen Moxos towns reduced to eleven and Indians who owned nothing of what they made.