Talk:Spanish missions in the Americas

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Do you think this should article should be combined with the wiki aritcle Spanish Missions in South America? This article could use more in-depth information as well as a view of missions in other parts of the Americas. Jmg6x2 (talk) 21:21, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jmg6x2, Cmunchycrunch. Peer reviewers: Esqm8, Rcm3b.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:45, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cgutieru, SamanthaIAguirre.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:45, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Major Revisions

We [Wiki Education Foundation editors] restructured the article to emphasize the approach and effects of the missionaries rather than the ethical considerations. Since the listed missions in the sections at the end of the article were blank and linked to nonexistent articles, we deleted those and added information about the main orders of missionaries instead. The "criticism" section was also heavily edited to maintain neutrality and focuses on source reliability instead. We intend to add a section on the cultural effects of these missionaries at a later date. Cmunchycrunch (talk) 16:17, 3 November 2017 (UTC) Jmg6x2 (talk) 16:26, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Inaccurate information in article

This article is riddled with errors and mistaken judgments. I'll detail a few. First, it is incorrect to call the Catholic missionaries "monks." Rather they were priests, friars, and in some cases lay brothers. It's probably best to just call them "missionaries." Secondly, the Jesuits were in the New World for more than 2 centuries, not "a short time'. Third, the definition of "reductions" is wrong.. Reduction means "concentration" as in concentrating the Indian people into Spanish-type settlements. More coming....Smallchief (talk)

The statement that "empires used missions to teach indigenous people about Christian values" is misleading. Yes, it was a major objective of the Spanish Empire to Christianize the Indians, but saying they were taught "Christian values" seems vague and value laden to me. Rather the missionaries tried to impose the cultural values of Europe, especially Spain. Thus, the missionaries imposed standards of dress, behavior, daily regimen, settlements, and occupations on the Indians -- because they thought that real "Christians" followed a European style of life.

Next there is the statement that missions were the "first step" in establshing other forms of colonialization by the Spanish. Actually, encomiendas often predated missions or accompanied them. As did the search for gold and other riches. Missions accompanied, in most cases, secular efforts by the Spanish to control an area and its Indian population.

The paragraph about the Fransciscans is mostly not about the Franciscans, but rather how "monks" behave. I'm not aware of instances in which the Franciscans were criticized for being too slow in Christianizing the Indians. I don't think most of the missionaries used “meditation and contemplation” as tactics. Rather, the usual practice was to force the Indians to attend daily religious sessions, work for the missionaries, and change their cultures to adopt European practices. What the missionaries, especially the Jesuits, tried to do was establish a theocracy ruled by themselves with a firm hand. In some cases, such as the Jesuit Reductions in Paraguay, these practices helped protect the Indians from being enslaved; in other areas the missionaries were in league with local ranchers and miners to supply Indian labor for their endeavors. Smallchief (talk) 17:55, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

You've highlighted that the info we have about the missions is biased because it comes mostly from Spanish sources. However, we need to interject into the article some feeling that the Indians were actors rather than just being background faces in the mission effort of the Spanish. For example, there are many instances of Indian revolts against missions, notably the Pueblo revolt in New Mexico in 1688 in which several hundred Spaniards and mestizos were killed, including most of the Franciscan missionaries. The resistance of the Indians and the survival of Indian customs should be mentioned. Another example, the Guarani language in Paraguay not only survived but became one of the two official languages of the country. Smallchief (talk) 18:08, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

• I've made a few changes I feel qualified to make -- and I suggested to the principle author of this article that we revert back to earlier versions of this article. Smallchief (talk) 11:17, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Response to Smallcheif's comments

Thank you for your feedback smallcheif! I will try to address your comments here and in the article:

• I am glad you were change some of the wording such as monks.
• When researching Jesuits, we found the definition of reductions to be what is written in this article. Do you have a source that says otherwise?
• I changed "empires used missions to teach indigenous people about Christian values" so the sentence is less vague.
• In the sections of the articles detailing the orders, our goal was to best explain the thoughts and way of life of missionaries at this time. All of the information was found in reliable sources but perhaps could use some eloboration. Please feel free to elaborate on any section that needs further information or if you find a source the contradicts the information in the article please list it in the talk page.
• I agree the article should include more information about the indigenous peoples' respoonse to missions. This page is an on going project so that should be the next goal.

I do not think this page should be reverted to the original draft becuase the original draft lacked content and was mainly quotes from sources. Jmg6x2 (talk) 22:09, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

• • I suggest you consult the wikipedia articles on Reductions, Jesuit Reductions, and Indian reductions in the Andes. For a non-Wikipedia source, see Jeremy Ravin Mumfort, Vertical Empire: The General Resettlement of Indians in the Colonial Andes (2012), pg. 1. The Viceroy "ordered the native people of the central Andes to abandon their homes and move to new towns founded after a Spanish model. The word for this process was reducción...The new towns, [were called] reducciónes." Mumford uses the word reductions as a synonym for "resettlement."

• • Another source is Charles H. Lippy, Christianity Comes to the Americas (1992), pp 98-99. One of the objectives of the missions was "to bring the nomadic or semi-nomadic natives together in larger population units (the "congregating" of congregation, the "reducing" of the reductions) where they would lead a form of communal life under the direction of the priests"

• • Barbara Ganson in her book, The Guarani Under Spanish Rule (2003), pp. 2-3, uses "reductions" as a synonym and alternative term for Jesuit missions and the Indian settlements associated with the missions.

• • Robert H. Jackson in his book, Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization (1995), p. 6, describes reductions by the alternative term "congregación" which was used in Mexico and California. "The patterns of exploitation developed in the missions [of California]...were simply a warmed-over version of the sixteenth-century colonial policy of congregación/reducción, modified by two hundred years of practical experience in missions..." And on pp. 17-19, "The policy of congregración, which formed the basis of the Franciscan program in Alta California, was designed to resettle a dispersed Indian population into compact communities, for easier extraction of labor and delivery of religious instruction." Smallchief (talk) 01:54, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Smallcheif we will work on making changes and looking at your sources! Jmg6x2 (talk) 16:06, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

About off the content?

Thais page have a vertente strong content because the content reinforces the Black Legend on Spanish colonization based on 21st century scientific concepts, we humans of the 21st Century were not alive at the time of the Pre-Columbian era or European Colonization of the Americas to see how the american indians of that time thought, if they thought they had their own culture, if there was this idea that there were several ethnic groups among the Indians of the Americas and other very strong information that developed by 21st century science with certain strong ideological ideals revising the Age of Discovery. -

It's simplistic to mainly attribute the spread of Christianity in Latin America to conversion of the native population. Given that diseases had a severe impact on the pure native inhabitants, the Westernized mixed race population was able to thrive at their expense. That's how Western cultural norms began to gradually gain the ascendancy in the subsequent years. The flip side of the so-called 'black legend' is too deny the indigenous and mixed raced population agency and propagate an unrealistic supremacist narrative that they were mere helpless victims at the hands of a minority of europeans, which has bigoted connotations. In reality it was the growth and influence of the mestizo population that brought about the proliferation of Christianity in Latin America.

2804:18:802:50F1:C0DF:D6B1:EC3C:7296 (talk) 23:49, 11 May 2018 (UTC).

Omission of violence from Mission Narrative

This article, and especially the introduction section, fails to include any reference to the controversial legacy of the Missions in the Americas and in California, a legacy which is now recognized by historians and Indigenous Rights activists to have involved widespread violence, forced religious conversion, kidnapping and forced labor, and outright genocide on the part of the missionaries. The Missions have been compared by scholars such as Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz to concentration camps, sites of enslavement, cultural erasure, and imperialism. (

The final, uncited section of this introduction reads like an fantastical hagiography of the Catholic Church and should be removed and rewritten to include an overview of the controversial legacy of these historical sites.

References