Date Available

12-2-2025

Year of Publication

2025

Document Type

Article

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/School/Program

Hispanic Studies

Faculty

Dr. Ruth Brown

Abstract

During Spanish occupation of Mexico from 1521 to 1821, religion was used as an extension of the Spanish crown as Mexico’s native populations were forcibly converted to Catholicism. Religious orders, including Franciscan friars, a group of men who wandered and preached to help the poor and sick, were used in the systematic conversion of native populations. Because of the sheer scale of religious conversion of these native populations, the Spanish crown’s efforts in New Spain are sometimes described as a “spiritual conquest” rather than a military conquest. However, like military conquest, this evangelization was still enacted through power and domination.

Utilizing a 1782 diary handwritten in Spanish by an unidentified Franciscan friar, this research will explore the work and experiences of one friar to affirm the notion of New Spain’s evangelization through an individual lens by examining how the friar acts as a subaltern, or as an “other” through his genres of choice, the diary and the testimonio. To supplement the diary, existing literature on Franciscan friars will also be put into conversation to evaluate how the diary evidences these methods at the individual level. Although the friar’s diary does not provide unmediated access to a full understanding of religious orders in New Spain, it does help to illustrate how this one individual story supports an understanding of evangelization through its genres as a diary and testimonio. His actions ultimately replicate the methods of the Catholic Church at the individual level in spite of his efforts to divorce himself from the institutions of the Crown and Church, creating a compelling paradoxical effect paramount to understanding this era of colonialization.

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