Antonio de Espejo
In February 1583, Espejo arrived at the territory of the Piros, the most southerly of the Pueblo villagers. From there the Spanish continued up the Rio Grande. Espejo described the Pueblo villages as "clean and tidy". The houses were multi-storied and made of adode bricks. "They make very fine tortillas," Espejo commented, and the Pueblos also served the Spanish turkeys, beans, corns, and pumpkins. The people "did not seem to be bellicose". The southernmost Pueblos had only clubs for weapons plus a few "poor Turkish bows and poorer arrows". Further north, the Indians were better armed and more aggressive. Some of the Pueblo towns were large, Espejo described Zia as having 1,000 houses and 4,000 men and boys. In their farming, the Pueblos used irrigation "with canals and dams, built as if by Spaniards". The only Spanish influence that Espejo noted among the Pueblos was their desire for iron. They would steal any iron article they could find.
San Juan de Yapacaní
At the beginning of colonization, they cultivated upland rice, maize, cassava, yams and legumes. In its early years, the colony was unable to ship most of the rice it produced, due to the unimproved road being impassable when wet. After reaching the main road to Montero, five to six more hours of travel were necessary to arrive at markets. Improvements to the road to the colony and the Montero-Yapacaní highway created more opportunities for the colonists. Also, they established poultry farms, mainly with chickens, which in the mid-70’s consisted of 30% of chicken farming in Bolivia. Electrification reached San Juan in 1979 and the colonists participate in various marketing cooperatives.