Missions and the Frontiers of Spanish America: A Comparative Study of the Impact of Environmental, Economic, Political, and Socio-cultural Variations on the Missions in the Rio de la Plata Region and on the Northern Frontier of New Spain (review)

The prolific author, Robert H. Jackson, in his tenth book since 1991, seeks to extend his work on the missions of Baja and Alta California even further, this time comparing two Spanish colonial frontiers, that of the missions of the Rio de la Plata region of South America and that of the northern provinces of New Spain (Sonora/Pimería Alta, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida). Jackson chose to explore the California–Rio de la Plata comparison with the aim of examining how the adjustments made by Jesuits within desert settings "provide important insights to the workings of missions managed by the Black Robes in more favorable environments" (p. 23). The missionaries involved in the other regions that are periodically brought into the discussion were a mix of Jesuits, Franciscans, and some Dominicans. As explained in the introduction and borne out by the balance of chapters and extensive illustrations, maps, figures, tables, and appendices, Missions and the Frontiers of Spanish America remains focused primarily on the California missions, with the other regions' missions brought in for selective comparison.

Chapter one offers a narrative overview of the exploration and colonization of Baja and Alta California and the origins of missionary work there. The next four chapters examine topical subjects, focusing on the financing and supplying of missions, the design and construction of mission complexes, missionary plans for the social and cultural reformation of mission residents, and the demographic changes seen in fertility and mortality patterns among mission residents. At twice the length of the other chapters, the two focused on economics and demography stand at the heart of Jackson's work, offering the most detailed discussion of the functioning of missions and the disease and health problems that resulted from mission living conditions.

Texas makes only limited appearances in this study. Jackson is clear that the case studies of Texas, as well as those of New Mexico, Florida, and Sonora (and to some degree even the Rio de la Plata region), are selectively chosen and meant only to "highlight or provide additional insights" in comparison to the Californias (p. 23). Yet as the case of Texas missions indicates, a bit more digging into readily available archaeological studies and published primary sources might have provided interesting nuances, and in some cases, decidedly different perspectives on the questions under review. For example, Jackson argues that in the arid environments of Texas, Pimería Alta, and the Californias, Spaniards "created new communities from scratch" (p. 194). Yet in Texas, the more successful missions took hold at a site long used for shared encampment, shelter, hunting, and defense by native peoples—a site natives called Yanaguana and Spaniards would come to call San Antonio de Béjar. The Indian peoples who took up periodic and permanent residence in those missions represented long extant communities, with each of the five missions housing different and specific groups of allied family bands. Spaniards merely superimposed physical and ideological structures onto native ones. This is only one small example, but it may suggest a larger opportunity missed in this exploration of Spanish missions. Specifically, Indian perspectives do not allow us to study merely questions of native receptivity, resistance, or rebellion to missionary programs but to study questions concerning the fundamental functioning of mission institutions—their economy, architecture, and demographic patterns—all of which were shaped just as much by Indian as Spanish hands.