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MEXICO MAGICO
TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY... A history of the Mexican people |
CHAPTER IV, The Forefathers - The Baroque Years (70th part continues...)
By Prof. German Estrada - December 2006 |
Church wealth flowed from diverse sources. With the blessings of the crown, the church collected a startling number of duties, donations, and legacies from last wills and testaments paid by Spaniards and criollos and by cofradías (community savings) of Indians and castas. The church had the diezmo, a tax of 10 percent; only Indians, who paid tribute to the crown, were exempt. Of diezmo funds, the church kept all but a tiny fraction. Nearly all of them stayed in the cathedrals; parish priests, the poor clergy, received less than a quarter of them. Capellanías, the privilege of the well-off, brought additional funds to church coffers. Fearing for their souls, the rich and not-so-rich entrusted money to the church so that priests might say masses for them after death. The censo added more funds, a sort of quitrent payable to the church for its services---for example, on a loan of money by a convent to a landlord in exchange for a mortgage on his property. The borrower then paid the censo, about 5 percent on the mortgage. The church, its coffers bulging, had turned banker, lending money not merely to hacendados but to merchants and mine owners, too.
Early on,. Moreover, the church, on its own, had acquired haciendas, sugar mills, cattle ranches, urban real estate, and obrajes. The orders, particularly, displayed a passion for owning real estate. The church spent part of its profits on the building of temples, convents, and so forth, investing the rest in properties paying dividends, despite laws that barred the clergy from acquiring property. The orders relied on hombres de paja, front men willing to do their bidding. Of the missionaries, the Jesuits ran the most efficient haciendas, while the Franciscans, forgetting conveniently their vows of poverty, were famous for the size of their haciendas. The Dominicans, thirsty for land from the start, built sugar mills, the best known at Cuautla-Amilpas, worked by African slaves during the sixteenth century. The Jesuits justified their extensive real estate holdings by spending income from them on their schools and missions. Among the ablest of gentlemen farmers, the sons of Loyola cultivated the soil with up-to-date techniques, understood the importance of fertilizers, and employed both peones acasillados and wage workers. In the cities, the orders owned houses and buildings which they rented out. Aside from its monopoly of schooling, the church ran the hospitals, asylums for the insane, and the orphanage.
The orders, moreover, had not slept; they were busy expanding their domains in the north. For the conquest and settlement of Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California, the Jesuits led the way; the Franciscans answered the challenge in New Mexico and California, erecting missions in such far-off places as Santa Fe, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Monterrey. In Sonora, a striking chapter in this drama. Eusebio Francisco Kino, a Jesuit missionary born in Austrian Tirol, headed the effort. Schooled in Europe, with a gift for languages and widely read, Kino turned down a professorship at the University in Ingolstadt to explore the wastelands of the Primería Alta. Arriving in 1687, he explored, built missions, baptized Indians, and established schools. His memoirs, Favores celestiales, which covered life in northwest New Spain until 1706, told of his adventures, of Manuel González, a friar who, “suffered from hemorrhoids” but gave the cloths off his back to the heathen and dropped to his knees to face the arrows of hostile Indians, dying with the crucifix in his embrace.
Along with property, the church enjoyed special privileges. With its own courts, the clergy escaped trial by royal judges; that was a matter for ecclesiastical authorities. In the realm of law, the church, if not above the state, was certainly its equal. By the right of mortmain, its wealth could not be taxed, the possessor of property held in perpetuity. Critics referred to it as the “dead hand” of the church. “What went in, “they said, “never came out.”
In the next issue we’ll continue with Chapter V of this fascinating book, The Baroque Years.
Prof. Germán Estrada
E-mail: estradanav@yahoo.com
Source: From the book Triumphs and Tragedy, a History of the Mexican People by his author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, and with his authorization. (W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London).
Prof. Germán Estrada is the author of the best selling book, México Mágico: Everything You Wanted To Know About... But Nobody Told You..." available in Puerto Vallarta at The Net House, Mail Boxes, Etc., Books, Books as well as directly from his website.
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