It is common knowledge that Latin America is “muy Católico,” although after a half-century of Protestant missionary work it is perhaps more accurate to say that many or most Latin Americans understand themselves as Christian. In Mexico, urban gangs as well as grandmothers embrace the Virgin of Guadalupe. That they do so for different reasons (just as grandmothers and IRA members in Ireland embrace St. Patrick for different reasons) is less significant than the fact that it is the mother of Jesus who is claimed as a protector.

Of course it was not always so. The “rise of Christianity” in Latin America began some 500 years ago, following Columbus' fateful “discovery.” Spanish colonization of the Caribbean and then Mexico featured thousands of missionaries and clerics who in a relatively short span (c. 250 years) won millions of Indians and mestizos to christianity. As was the case in early medieval Europe, “conversion” rarely meant the wholesale abandonment of indigenous beliefs and practices. Still, just as most people in sixth-century Iberia or Gaul understood themselves as Christian, so it is today with Mexicans and other “Latin” Americans.

In this chapter, I focus on the rise of Christianity in northern Mexico. Beginning in 1591, the Jesuits over the course of a half-century baptized over four hundred thousand Indians and established dozens of missions across what is today northern Sinaloa, Sonora, southern Chihuahua, and northern Durango.