Ciegos o engañados: Narratives about the spiritual conquest of Northern New Spain (17th and 18th centuries)

Abstract

In this paper we seek to understand the texts produced by Franciscans and Jesuits about the spiritual conquest of Northern New Spain under certain interpretative axes used by those religious. We do not intend to identify what is “indigenous” and what is “European” in those texts, as part of the historiography has already tried to do, but to consider what features, models and narrative forms were used by the authors to construct their representations of the inhabitants of that part of the New World and, thus, reflect on the relations between the form of narrating and what is narrated. The axes we have proposed for the reading of these chronicles are “demonical action/Divine Providence” as opposed to “human agency/free will”. That is, even if we can identify characteristics of a particular time and/or religious order, we will not limit our analysis to this scope. Therefore, we consider other elements that are also part of the missionary accounts, such as a greater or lesser emphasis on human capacity, individual will, free will in the records on indigenous alterity and the mission’s everyday life. Finally, we also make some considerations about the historiography of the spiritual conquest of Northern New Spain.

Keywords: chronicle, historiography, New Spain, Franciscans, Jesuits.