Los indios, el sacerdocio y la universidad en Nueva España, siglos XVI-XVIII (review)

Various researchers have studied the colonial discussions on whether indigenous men should be allowed to become priests. Another, and much more complicated task, is to investigate to what extent Indians actually were ordained in colonial Spanish America. Trying to address such questions, Margarita Menegus and Rodolfo Aguirre study the indigenous presence at institutions of higher education, in particular, in New Spain. Even if the authors seek to cover the entire colonial period, their chronological focus is on a 130-year period from the late-seventeenth century to Independence.

The authors first analyze the presence of Indians at the University of Mexico. Though the university had been formally open to indigenous students from its foundation in the mid-16th-century, their number had been negligible until the 1690s. At that time a new royal law was issued favoring the education and civil and ecclesiastical promotion of Indians. Researching the university archives, Menegus and Aguirre have found evidence of 144 Indian students between 1697 and 1822. Apart from the university, in 1697, a diocesan seminary was finally opened in Mexico City. Through a close study of its archives, the authors have been able to trace 198 indigenous students until Independence, which supply the notes on the university students. Most of these Indians receiving higher education were members of the indigenous nobility, and in a separate chapter the authors analyze the family background of some of the students originating from different parts of the archdiocese of Mexico, as well as from the dioceses of Puebla and Oaxaca.

In the last major chapter, the authors move beyond the study of higher education and try to analyze the careers of indigenous students, including both priests and jurists. The theme is complex. For example, it is not possible to present an exact percentage of indigenous priests in New Spain; probably their number never surpassed a few percent of the total number of secular clerics, although the proportion might have been somewhat greater in certain colonial dioceses. The authors, however, do make some remarks on the work situation of indigenous clerics in late-colonial Mexico. Most often they remained auxiliary priests and if they in fact were made beneficiaries, their parishes were most likely to be found on the geographical and economical periphery. However, the chapter also includes a couple of in-depth studies of some unusually successful indigenous priests.

My main criticism of the book has to do with the first chapter which contains an analysis of the sixteenth-century discourse on the ordination of Indians, and which I find far too sketchy and unfocused to be really useful. I also find it remarkable that the authors hardly refer to any of the many specialized books and articles that have been written on the question of Indian priests from the 1930s onwards. In particular, one finds a lack of engagement with the works of the Spanish historian Juan Bautista Olaechea Labayen who has written extensively on the subject. The indigenous clergy of New Spain is thus not as unknown as the authors claim in their Introduction and a critical dialogue with the existing scholarship would have given more strength to their argument.

This being said, Menegus and Aguirre have written an intriguing book, whose use of little known material often is quite ingenious. The book also includes a valuable appendix that contains detailed notes on all the indigenous students they found. It should, however, be noted that this number is considered a bare minimum; the total will probably grow with new research. Nevertheless, the findings of Menegus and Aguirre prove that the university and the colleges of New Spain, though predominantly Peninsular and Creole milieus, did include a rather substantial number of non-Hispanic students. The authors have laid a foundation for further research into the concrete work situation and career patterns of Indian priests.