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The Franciscan Missionary Enterprise in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

Erick D. Langer
Erick D. Langer*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington, DC
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Extract

This essay is in large part inspired by Fr. Antonine Tibesar OFM, whom I had the privilege to meet in 1982 just after I returned from my doctoral research sojourn in Bolivia. Fr. Antonine was for many years the director of the Academy of Franciscan History when that institution had its beautiful campus in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. I had corresponded with Fr. Antonine earlier and during my visit enjoyed discussing with him the many facets of Franciscan missions in Latin America. He proudly showed me the large collection of books in the academy library. What impressed me about both Fr. Antonine and the friars I had met in Bolivia during my research was their selflessness and willingness to help a budding scholar—one who at that point had little of scholarship to show. These characteristics got me thinking about the Franciscans and their worldviews and how those must have affected the missions. Although I was determined to write mainly about the indigenous population on the missions (after all, they constituted the vast majority of the mission population and were the ones most profoundly affected by the mission experience), I realized that it was important not to ignore the missionaries. Though few in number—most missions had just one or perhaps two friars—it was their desires for the native population and the overall goals and local organization of the missions they founded that profoundly shaped the human settlements they supervised.

Type
Tibesar Lecture
Information
The Americas , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , October 2011 , pp. 167 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2011 

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References

1. The vast majority of mission histories for southeastern Bolivia have come from Franciscans. Sec for example de Nino, Bernardino, Etnografa chiriguana (La Paz: Ismael Argote, 1912);Google Scholar Alejandro Mara Corrado, El colegio franciscano de Tarijaa y sus misiones, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Tarija: Editorial Offset Franciscana, 1990);Google Scholar Anglico Martarelli, , El Colegio Franciscano de Potos y sits misiones, 2nd ed. (La Paz: Talleres Grficos Marinoni, n.d.)Google Scholar; and Doroteo Gian-necchini, , Historia natural, etnografia, geografa, lingstica del Chaco boliviano (Tarija: Fondo de Inversin Social/Centro Eclesial de Documentacin, 1996).Google Scholar

2. The term self history is one I borrow from Jackson, Robert H.. See his introductory essay in The New Latin American Mission History, Langer, Erick D and Jackson, Robert H., eds. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), p. ix.Google Scholar

3. Phelan, John L, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. For Argentina, see Teruel, Ana A., Misiones, economa y sociedad. La frontera chaquea del noroeste argentino en el siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2005)Google Scholar and Langer, , Liberal Policy and Frontier Missions: Bolivia and Argentina Compared, Andes: Antropologa e Historia 9 (1998),pp. 197–213.Google Scholar For Peru and Bolivia, see Jordan, Pilar Garcia, Cruz y arado, fusiles y discursos. La construccin de los Orientes en el Per y Bolivia, 1820–1940 (Lima: Instituto Frances de Estudios Andinos, 2001);Google Scholar Jordn, Garca, To soy libre y no indio, soy Guarayo. Para una historia de Guarayos, 1790–1948 (Lima: Instituto Francs de Estudios Andinos, 2006);Google Scholar and Langer, , Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree: Franciscan Missions on the Chiriguano Frontier in the Heart of South America, 1830–1949 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009).Google Scholar

5. There are many histories of Italy for this period, but few in English that deal with the conflict with the Papal States. For the best treatment in English, see Kertzer, David I., Religion and Society, 1789–1892, in Italy in the Nineteenth Century, 1786–1900, John A., Davis, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001 ), pp. 181–205.Google Scholar

6. See Kertzer, David I., Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes Secret Plot to Capture Rome from the Nov Italian State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).Google Scholar

7. This was the case with the Toba and Mataco Indians, ethnic groups that the Franciscans missionized in Bolivia and Argentina. See for example Lagos, Marcelo, La cuestin indigena en el estado y en la sociedad nacional. Gran Chaco, 1870–1920 (San Salvador de Jujuy: Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, 2000)Google Scholar. Also see Erland, Nordenskio Id, Indianerleben: El Gran Chaco (Su damerika), (Leipzig: G. Merseburger, 1913).Google Scholar

8. This is of course an oversimplification. In Brazil and elsewhere there were often conflicts between missionaries and government officials. Moreover, the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Iberian possessions brought about the decline of their mission systems. For colonial Brazil, see for example Marchant, Alexander, From Barter to Slavery: Tije Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500–1580 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1942)Google Scholar and Mathias, Kiemen, The Indian Policy of Portugal in the Amazon Region, 1614–1693 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1954)Google Scholar. For the effect of the Jesuit expulsions on the Paraguayan missions, see Wilde, Guillermo, Religin y poderes en las misiones de Guaranes (Buenos Aires: Editorial SB, 2009)Google Scholar and Telesca, Ignacio, Tras los expulsos: Cambios demogrficos y territoriales en el Paraguay despus de la expulsin de los Jesutas (Asuncin: Universidad Catlica Nuestra Seora de la Asuncin, 2009).Google Scholar

9. See Jordn, Garca, Cruzy arado, and Langer, Liberal Policy and Frontier Missions, pp. 197–213.Google Scholar

10. Fray Joaqun Remedi, "Memorial presentado al Presidente de la Repblica Argentina Domingo Faustino Sarmiento por el prefecto de misiones (1870)," Misioneros del Chaco Occidental: Escritos de franciscanos del Chaco salteo (1861-1914), (San Salvador de Jujuy: Editorial CEIC, 1995), p. 71.

11. For example, Mendoza, Marcela in The Western Toba: Family Life and Subsistence in a Former Hunter-Gatherer Society, in Peoples of the Gran Chaco, Miller, Elmer S., ed. (Westport, Conn: Bergin Garvey, 1999), pp. 81–108 Google Scholar describes well the migrations of the Tobas.

12. See Giannecchini, Doroteo, Historia natural, etnografia, geografia, lingstica del Chaco boliviano 1898 (Tarija: Fondo de Inversin Social, Centro Eclesial de Documentacin, 1996), p. 195.Google Scholar

13. See Gordillo, Gaston, Landscapes of Devils: Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).Google Scholar