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.

This chapter presents an alternative to the standard narrative of the decline of the mission enterprise, which tends to focus exclusively on Spanish politics.The chapter argues that a series of catastrophic demographic crises ultimately marked the definitive end of mendicant expansion.At least forty percent of the indigenous population perished between 1575 and 1595.In many areas, the population fell below the critical levels necessary for the mission enterprise to remain economically and socially sustainable.The civil records of the viceroyalty show the results: stalling construction projects, diminishing tributes, and declining workforces. Communities had once committed to raising doctrina monasteries now reported widespread starvation and lamented that their workforces could no longer sustain the Church.Thus, while earlier crises wrought by conquests and epidemics had seen vigorous recovery efforts that stimulated the construction and expansion of the mission enterprise, late-sixteenth century demographic crises rendered the mission unsustainable for a rising number of communities.This late-century crisis opened a new phase in the history of the mission enterprise, in which mendicants curtailed once-ambitious construction campaigns, downsized the scale and extent of their operations, and halted the expansion of the enterprise.Friars and native rulers turned to defending the infrastructure that earlier generations had built, and many of these jurisdictions came to serve as centers for concentrating outlying populations in the congregaciones of the early seventeenth century.

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.

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.

The epilogue to “The Mexican Mission” takes a step back from the great edifice of the mission enterprise and situates it in its global context. It traces the ways in which observers around the globe interpreted the Mexican mission enterprise. The Mexican mission profoundly influenced the fledgling mission enterprise in the Philippines, where veterans of Mexico and the New World sought to capitalize on the lessons that Mexico could have on their influence. Similarly, this mission experience shaped Spanish expectations for domestic Morisco in Iberia.As the most widespread overseas mission program in the Spanish Empire, the Mexican mission represented a mission model whereby temporal power could produce rapid and dramatic results. Yet this very characteristic of the mission enterprise was reduced to caricature by detractors and opponents. In Japan, Buddhist monks warned that Spanish-style missions posed grave dangers to Japanese sovereignty, mentioning New Spain specifically.In Protestant Europe and Puritan North America, meanwhile, detractors pointed to Mexico as proof that Spanish missions had more to do with temporal power than spiritual inspiration.Such stereotypes undoubtedly served their authors’ interests, but also contained a grain of truth, as demonstrated in this book: for natives and Spaniards alike, the mission functioned as means of raising a new polity and new world during Mexico’s century of death.

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.