From Moxos to Chiquitos. The myth of the Eldorado pushed the Spanish towards the lands of the Amazon in search of “Candine”, the city where the streets were paved with gold and silver. According to the legends, the plain of Moxos supposedly sheltered the g of Paititi (Eldorado) as well as the one of the Amazons. As matter of fact, and more practically, this region of Bolivia, with its warm winters and its rainy summers, is actually, crossed by 34 navigable rivers, making it very favorable to agriculture.
Its inhabitants understood a long time ago the interest of managing their territory. To survive the torrential rain transforming Moxos in a gigantic swamp, they had to build 20 000 “mounds” or artificial hills, to create navigation canals and to use agricultural techniques that would not destroy the fragile sandy soil of the Amazon. The Moxos civilization, still more or less unknown ten years ago, was apparently in a period of revival at the time of the arrival of the first explorers. It is estimated that the population of the region represented at this time was a little more than a million people.
The expansion period of the Moxos civilization in the plains and the Amazon Basin lasted until the end of the 13th century, at which date it abruptly disappeared. Increasingly, clues seem to indicate that the Empire Inca was born from the people of the Empire of Enin. And it is supposedly in the Empire of Enin that would be located the famous “Paititi”, or Eldorado. At the beginning of the 20th century, Colonel Fawcett (see his Bibliography in the introduction), fascinated by the legends surrounding this mystic location, organized no less than seven expeditions in the Bolivian Amazon. Theses excursions, that in the end cost him his life, are recounted in his book The Lost Continent.
It is also said, in the department of Beni, that following the expulsion of the Jesuit fathers around the end of the 18th century, the Moxos Indians were gradually reduced to slavery by unscrupulous colons. The feudal system enjoyed an easy life until the revolution in 1952, when began a long and dark period. It is in the middle of the 19th century that a group of Moxeños decided to escape the land owner exploitation and to go in the search of the “Loma Santa”, the saint Hill, supposedly sheltering the Paititi, or the Eldorado. This event generated a population exodus - men, women and children – of which all trace was lost. It is said that these people found the way to the Golden city of the Enin Empire. Even today, it is possible to encounter someone claiming to have found evidences of the Loma. This is why, a man packs all his belongings to follow the mythical path to the Enin Empire in search of the legendary city of the mysterious Moxos civilization...
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