In the “good old days” of Chiquitos, following the expulsion of the Jesuits, the cacique brought each traveler a maid for his service. To-day it is the mothers or sisters who offer the guest of the monastery a companion during his stay. Not even Santa Cruz can compare with the former “reduction” in the complacency of its customs. The Indians of all this region, it seems, were as free and natural in their sexual relations as the ancient Greeks or several other pre-Christian nations, seeing no harm in the indulgence of a natural appetite; and while the Jesuit fathers had a decided influence in other matters, they had little in this respect. Indeed, there is evidence that the Padres set an example in this regard quite at variance with their preaching.
In San José I discovered that Konanz could not speak his mother tongue. We had called on the manager of one of the two “Belgian” houses for information in the matter of homestead colonists in the region, and at every few words my companion spilled over into his home-made “English.” A dozen times I had to remind him that the manager did not understand that tongue. Here was exactly the type of immigrant Bolivia sadly needs, a man prepared to spend his life in the country, capable of sustained toil, and likely to leave strong children behind him. Yet already the politicians of La Paz had given three large syndicates title, almost for nothing, to all the fertile portions of this immense territory, and these held it shut against settlers who did not accept their terms, which, as I heard them outlined to Konanz, virtually made them vassals to the companies. Instead of assisting a fellow-countryman far off here in the wilderness, the manager used all his suave persuasiveness to get my companion’s name signed to a contract of benefit only to his own “Belgian” house, and would in all probability have succeeded had I not been there with counteracting advice in English.
These houses are more jesuitical than their predecessors in exploiting the natives—“and their own employees,” a former one has added, on reading my notes. The bribery of government officials to obtain immense concessions of land which they make no effort to develop is a mere detail of their business methods. They sell at from 200 to 800 percent increase over buying prices even of Puerto Suarez. A German imitation of a $12 American plow was held at 100 bolivianos ($40); a roll of barbed wire at 40 Bls.; ordinary shoes, as much; a four-gallon can of kerosene, 20 Bls. Not merely do the Germans take advantage of their virtual monopoly to buy of the natives at a fifth of the just value, and sell again at five times that; but even their dealings with each other are unprincipled. One episode will stand as typical. A bank failed in La Paz. The government, seeing all the Germans as brothers, notified one of the firms that the bills issued by that bank had become worthless, expecting one house to warn the other. Instead, the manager gathered together all the worthless billetes in his possession and sent them one at a time by natives to the rival house, with orders to make some small purchase and bring back the change in good money.
Barter is the chief form of commerce in all this region. We chanced to be chattering with the manager of a “Belgian” house in San José, when the wobbly-minded old cura came in with a long document written on the firm’s stationery. It proved to be the certificate of baptism of a daughter recently born to the manager, whose “housekeeper” had insisted on this formality. After much chaffering the priest was at last beaten down to three bolivianos for his divine services.
“Caramba!” cried the German, in pretended anger. “If you ’re going to mulct me this way every time, I’ll discharge my housekeeper and bring you no more to baptise. And what are you going to take for those three billetes?” he went on.
The priest ran his dull eyes around the shelves, packed with all manner of cheap imports, until they fell upon a long array of bottles. Then he glanced back at the manager, who was at that moment offering him a cigarette.
“Pues, señor,” mumbled the old ecclesiastic, as he accepted a light, “I wonder if you have a real good wine, proper to say mass with.”
“Cómo no!” cried the German, in his throaty but self-confident Spanish. “There is a splendid wine, just the thing for mass, worth five bolivianos even in Europe, but”—with a wink at Konanz and myself,—“to you, as my compadre as well as priest, I’ll make it three.”
The cura accepted the exchange and wandered back to the monastery with the bottle under his arm. To judge from the condition he was in when we returned to our lodging, he said at least a half-dozen masses that very evening.
We were lolling luxuriously in our hammocks one morning, when a man in a sun-faded straw hat, cotton jacket and trousers, a long lack of shave, and feet that had never known the restraint of shoes, wandered into the compound and asked Konanz if he spoke English. The latter, full of the self-confidence of his race, had already misinformed the newcomer in the affirmative when I drew his attention. There was not a hair of the man’s head that did not cry native, yet he spoke my own tongue rapidly, with only the intangible hint of a foreign accent.