8 - Epilogue

Summary

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.