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Frontiers in Crisis: The Breakdown of the Missions in Far Northern Mexico and New Granada, 1821–1849

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Jane M. Rausch
Jane M. Rausch
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Extract

The decline of the missions in far northern Mexico during the age of Santa Anna has attracted the attention of several scholars. Most recently David Weber in The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846 has identified many complex national and regional factors that contributed to their demise, arguing that in the cases of California and Texas the government's secularization policy played a decisive role, while the reductions—towns of Indians converted to Christianity—in Arizona “crumbled by default” and in New Mexico were quietly abandoned by the clergy.1 (The term secularization means the replacement of state-supported missionaries from religious orders (regular clergy) with parish-supported priests obedient to the ecclesiastical hierarchy (secular clergy).) Many of these same destructive forces operated in New Granada (modern Colombia), where the once thriving missions on the eastern llanos frontier all but disappeared by the mid-nineteenth century. In striking contrast to the Mexican governments, however, those in New Granada were determined to revitalize the missions. A review of their unsuccessful efforts, when compared with the process in far northern Mexico, offers fresh insight into the viability of the mission as a frontier institution in Spanish America during the early national period.

Type
The Limited Power of the Clergy
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 340 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1987

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References

An earlier version of this essay was read at the Seventh Conference of Mexican and United States Historians, Oaxaca, 22–26 October 1985. I would like to thank David Weber and David Bushnell, who read that draft and made many valuable suggestions. I am also grateful for the helpful comments offered by other conference participants and the anonymous reader for Comparative Studies in Society and History.

1 Weber, David, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico (Albuquerque, 1982), 43–68Google Scholar.

2 Although the mission has been one of the most widely studied of Spanish imperial institutions, aits fate in the nineteenth century is relatively unexplored. Conventional wisdom holds that the War of Independence brought about the collapse of the system, but only in the case of the northern borderlands of Mexico has the dismantling been thoroughly documented. Bannon, John Francis's review article, “The Mission as a Frontier Institution: Sixty Years of Interest and Research,” Western Historical Quarterly, 10 (07 1979), 302–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contains not a single reference to the mission in the early national period. For an extensive bibliography concerning the demise of the California missions, see Weber, , Mexican Frontier, 391–93Google Scholar.

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16 That the number of reduced, or converted, Indians actually increased by 5 percent between 1767 and 1800 is compelling evidence that the llanos missions did not collapse with the expulsion of the Jesuits as is commonly asserted, but instead flourished with renewed vigor. For a careful investigation of this question, see Rausch, Jane M., “The Expulsion of the Jesuits from the Llanos of Casanare: A Reassessment,” in The Church and Society in Latin America, Cole, Jeffrey A., ed. (New Orleans, 1984), 173–98Google Scholar.

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34 The Dominican missionary Francisco Granados reported 1,184 Indians in the missions of Casanare in 1838 (AHN, GC, vol. 16, fols. 792–96). The Census of 1835 showed that there were 1,396 people living in the missions of Meta (Juan Medina R., Boyacá, Vol. III of Geografia economica de Colombia (Bogotá, 1937), 123Google Scholar). In 1839 Governor J. Beltrán listed eleven missions in Casanare (omitting Patute for reasons unknown) but made no estimate of their populations (AHN, GC, vol. 17, fol. 139).

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36 Gacetode la Nueva Granada, 19 11 1837, August 1, 1841Google Scholar; Cod. nac., VII, 621–22Google Scholar.

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61 Gaceta Oficial, 4 05 1848Google Scholar.

62 Rausch, , Tropical Plains Frontier, 198Google Scholar. Census data for nineteenth-century New Granada can be found in Urrutia, Miguel and Arrubla, Mario, Compendio de estadisticas históricas de Colombia (Bogotá, 1970)Google Scholar. Nineteenth-century censuses were not notable for reliability, but they do suggest major trends.

63 Cited by Helguera, , “First Mosquera Administration,” 196Google Scholar.

64 Juan Rivero (1681–1736) and Joseph Gumilla (1686–1760) were Jesuits who foundednumerous missions in Casanare and along the Orinoco River. They each wrote accounts of their experiences that are important sources for the colonial history of the llanos.

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74 In 1902 New Granada (by then the Republic of Colombia) signed an agreement with the Vatican reorganizing the missions. A year later the padres of the Compaiiia de María Monfortiana took charge of the missions in San Martin and Arauca, assisted in San Martín by the Hijas de la Sabiduría. The Hermanas de la Presentacion joined the Recoletos, who continue to work today in Casanare. See Henao, Jesus María and Arrubla, Gerardo, Historia de Colombia, 5th ed. (Bogotá, 1929), 743–44Google Scholar.