Misiones del Nayar: la postrera obra de los jesuitas en la Nueva España

Abstract

The Jesuit missions in the Sierra of Nayarit represent the Society's last foundation project in New Spain and that of shortest duration. The conquest of the site known as La Mesa del Tonati, in 1722, in the Nayar heartland, meant the collapse of the last redoubt that had continued to resist Spanish religious, political and military control into the eighteenth century. It also signaled the commencement of the short-lived Jesuit mission enterprise in this indomitable mountain region, which was in turn brought to an end with the Society's abrupt expulsion in 1768. This study reviews the origins and development of the foundations, which were overseen by the presence of two of the Viceroyalty's major institutions: the mission and the presidio, systems of control and defense of the colonized lands, measures that had been tried and tested a century before in the missions of Baja California, Sonora and Sinaloa. The work also analyzes the modest architecture developed in Nayarit and the enormous difficulties faced by the missionary builders in view of the lack of adequate materials for construction — building stone, timber, or suitable soil for making adobe, where the existence of altar-pieces carved in stone and wood is surprising. The study deals with such decorative and artistic properties owned — despite their poverty — by the mission churches, as attested by inventories and other accounts of the period; it also addresses the present state of conservation of the architecture and the loss or presence of movable properties. Chronicles and other writings of the period are likewise examined; which are unique testimonies to the period and to the work carried out in this region. The labor effected by the missionary Joseph de Ortega is also stressed.