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6 - The Burning Church
- from Part III - A Fraying Fabric
- Ryan Dominic Crewe, University of Colorado, Denver
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- Book:
- The Mexican Mission
- Published online:
- 13 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2019, pp 199-227
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Summary
In the late-sixteenth century, a spate of violent incidents brought disrepute upon the mission enterprise in New Spain.Spanish churchmen lamented that some of their peers were inciting natives to disobey, resist, and even burn the churches of their ecclesiastical rivals.Spaniards spilled much ink in reporting these unseemly clashes in their correspondence and chronicles.Less reported are the many similar confrontations that occurred simultaneously in indigenous communities.Such was the worldly power of the mission enterprise that those Spanish churchmen and native rulers who did not have access to it jostled, often violently, to possess it.This chapter situates these curious episodes in the broader context of a series of political crises that shook the mendicant-indigenous mission enterprise to its very foundations in the 1570s and 1580s.It examines the politics of secularization, conflicts among indigenous jurisdictions for control of the mission Church, and the many points of cross-influence between Spanish and indigenous rivalries.As a result this chapter finds a mission enterprise that began to decline not solely due to Spanish political changes that undercut mendicant power, but rather because this weakening of mendicant power in the Spanish realm interacted with the on-going fragmentation and atomization of indigenous polities.
Part III - A Fraying Fabric
- Ryan Dominic Crewe, University of Colorado, Denver
-
- Book:
- The Mexican Mission
- Published online:
- 13 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2019, pp 197-256
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In the late-sixteenth century, a spate of violent incidents brought disrepute upon the mission enterprise in New Spain.Spanish churchmen lamented that some of their peers were inciting natives to disobey, resist, and even burn the churches of their ecclesiastical rivals.Spaniards spilled much ink in reporting these unseemly clashes in their correspondence and chronicles.Less reported are the many similar confrontations that occurred simultaneously in indigenous communities.Such was the worldly power of the mission enterprise that those Spanish churchmen and native rulers who did not have access to it jostled, often violently, to possess it.This chapter situates these curious episodes in the broader context of a series of political crises that shook the mendicant-indigenous mission enterprise to its very foundations in the 1570s and 1580s.It examines the politics of secularization, conflicts among indigenous jurisdictions for control of the mission Church, and the many points of cross-influence between Spanish and indigenous rivalries.As a result this chapter finds a mission enterprise that began to decline not solely due to Spanish political changes that undercut mendicant power, but rather because this weakening of mendicant power in the Spanish realm interacted with the on-going fragmentation and atomization of indigenous polities.
Part II - Construction
- Ryan Dominic Crewe, University of Colorado, Denver
-
- Book:
- The Mexican Mission
- Published online:
- 13 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2019, pp 89-196
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- Chapter
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Summary
This chapter examines the interdependent relationships between indigenous rulers and missionaries between 1530 and 1560. From its very beginnings, the mission in New Spain was a hybrid enterprise. Native territorial politics and everyday practices of governance largely determined the shape of mission organization. The chapter begins by examining the political foundation of the mission enterprise, which consisted of an expanding web of local native-missionary alliances.The mission was a vital factor in the geopolitical reshuffling of territorial power in post-conquest Mesoamerica, while indigenous territorial divisions served as the basis for the mission system of doctrinas (mission bases) and visitas (outlying mission churches). The chapter then examines the ways in which these alliances of missionaries and native governments adapted pre-conquest political and religious offices to the needs of the mission enterprise.In hundreds of doctrinas (mission bases), officials known collectively as the teopantlaca, or “church-people” – indigenous fiscales (church officers), alguaciles de doctrina (church constables), and cantores and trompeteros (singers and musicians) – oversaw the everyday experience of the mission. By adapting native hierarchical structures, territoriality, and officialdom to the mission enterprise, native rulers and missionaries furthered their respective efforts to reassert local indigenous authority and expand the mission’s doctrinal program.
5 - Building in the Shadow of Death
- from Part II - Construction
- Ryan Dominic Crewe, University of Colorado, Denver
-
- Book:
- The Mexican Mission
- Published online:
- 13 June 2019
- Print publication:
- 27 June 2019, pp 156-196
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- Chapter
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Summary
This chapter examines the social and political history of the construction of the most significant physical monuments produced in the Mexican mission: a network of 251 monasteries, which I refer to as doctrina monasteries.While scholars have examined these structures in terms of architectural and art history, the social history of these monasteries remains neglected. I argue that these monumental building campaigns formed part of indigenous efforts to reconstitute communities in the wake of the severe disruptions caused by the hueycocolixtli epidemic of 1545-1547.Remarkably, in the decade after losing a third of their population, the number of indigenous communities that decided to build large monasteries more than doubled, from 43 to 119 large-scale projects.For indigenous rulers, monastery construction served as a highly visible means of reasserting political power.As a replacement for the teocalli (Mesoamerican temple), the doctrina monastery came to represent the sovereignty of the local native state.Moreover, the process of producing the monastery employed indigenous mechanisms of tribute and obligatory labor that reinforced rulers’ claims over outlying territories and peoples. Nonetheless, labor and tribute were not automatic mechanisms.Instead, the mobilization of labor and tributes were governed by expectations of reciprocity that bound rulers to commoners.Archival evidence reveals the frailty of such arrangements. As ongoing demographic crises strained the social contract, resistance to building campaigns intensified.Thus, these colossal structures embodied aspirations that ultimately were far more fragile than the stone and mortar of these structures’ hulking walls.