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

Abstract

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.