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The Americas 59.4 (2003) 592-593



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Los Franciscanos en Colombia, Tomo III (1700-1830). By Luis Carlos Mantilla R. Bogota: Ediciones de la Universidad de San Buenaventura, 2000. Volume 1, Pp. 858; Volume 2, Pp. 770. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. No price.

In his preface to Luis Carlos Mantilla's two volume history, P. Adolfo Galeano notes the three themes that dominate the work: the evangelical efforts of the Colombian Franciscans, the emphasis on the daily lives and travails of individual Franciscans, and Franciscan participation in formation of the Colombian national identity (Volume 1, pp. 24-26). Relying solely on archival sources, there is sufficient evidence in the two volumes to elucidate the themes noted by Galeano. In addition, a fourth theme, conflict, surfaces repeatedly.

Mantilla classifies conflict in a variety of ways: between colonial authorities and Franciscans, between Franciscans and civil, non-indigenous society, between Indians and Franciscans, and between the Franciscan hierarchy and missionaries. Mantilla's discussion of missionization efforts in the Chocó region in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century illuminates such conflicts. Even though colonial authorities relied heavily on the Franciscans to pacify Indians to facilitate the search for gold, jurisdictional battles between civil and ecclesiastical authorities over control of Indians, according to Mantilla, only covered up the ambition of all parties for gold (Volume 1, p. 663). Miners and some missionaries complicated evangelical [End Page 592] efforts through the frequent use of violence and by making Indians slaves. Indian resistance to the mission effort was to be expected in such circumstances.

By the mid-to-late seventeenth century, Mantilla argues conflicts between the Franciscan hierarchy and missionaries, and between Franciscans and colonial authorities thwarted evangelical efforts. In 1759, Franciscan superiors sent missionaries in the field in Popayán a list of rules to use in the governance and administration of missions. The list, according to Mantilla, demonstrates the gulf between theory and practice in mission work, between those that theorized and those that did the work (Volume 1, p. 139). Such separation did not further the Franciscan evangelical effort. In 1789, conflicts with civil authorities further complicated missionization. Mantilla argues that the appointment of Diego Martínez in 1789 as corregidor of Andaquíes presented an open challenge to Franciscan missionaries in Popayán and resulted in the ruin of mission efforts in the region. (Volume 2, p. 52) In 1790, Martínez issued the Ordenanzas para el Buen Gobierno, rules that simultaneously highlighted problems in missionary-Indian relations while undercutting Franciscan authority. One rule, for example, ordered Indians to respect and obey the missionaries; Martínez gave Indians permission to live where they chose (Volume II, p. 61).

Mantilla's work is historiographically consistent with the evolving discussion of the role of the frontier in Latin American history and with debates about how Bourbon reforms changed the role of the Church in society. Mantilla's detailed discussion of the complicated reality associated with missionary efforts in the Chocó and in Popayán compliments Erick Langer and Robert H. Jackson's thrust in The New Latin American Mission History (1995)and Jane Rausch's work on the Colombian llanos. Heightened struggle between Franciscans and civil authorities also parallels the situation in Bourbon Mexico portrayed by William Taylor in Magistrates of the Sacred (1996). Because Mantilla chose to build his work around primary sources only, he does not place it in dialog with these historiographical trends, leaving his reader to infer connections or parallels, and also leaving the reader with questions. For example, given the strength of the Church in Colombia and Mexico during the national period, how was the Bourbon reform experience different in Colombia? Were Indians really incorporated into the nation, as Galeano notes in the preface, or did the Franciscan evangelization efforts in the eighteenth century accentuate cultural frontiers?

Mantilla deserves a great deal of credit for presenting a detailed and well documented "warts and all" account of Franciscan missionization in Colombia, an atmosphere defined by conflict. Because he does not place events in Colombia within the context of concurrent events...

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