Exploration

For Spain, the centuries preceding New Mexican settlement in 1598 were charged with the spirit of conquest. After enduring centuries of foreign occupation in Andalusia, the Castillians were able to drive the Moors back to North Africa during the thirteenth century and reestablish Catholicism as the predominant religion throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Quests for the riches of the Orient— spices, silk, and precious minerals—enjoyed some success, as evidenced by Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage and Europe's "discovery" of the New World. The search for instant wealth, whose perceived reality was heightened by rumor, continued throughout the century and into the next. The risks were great, the stakes were high, the losses were many, and the monetary returns, at times, were incredible.

The uniting of the independent realms of Spain and Portugal in 1581 bolstered the economic resources of the kingdom and made further exploration possible. Throughout the following century, however, fiscal pressures on Spain's treasury continued to mount.^[4] A ready source of economic relief could be found in the conquest of the New World. According to popular myth, the vast riches of Indian monarchs lay in Mexico and Peru waiting only to be located, plundered, and finally returned to Spain— to the king, of course—but not without great personal, social, and economic reward for the conqueror. At this time "home, foreign and economic problems were completely intermingled."^[5]

Earlier in the fifteenth century, the Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal had announced their intentions to settle and evangelize in the newly explored lands. To reduce potential territorial conflicts, Alexander VI issued a papal bull in 1493 dividing the world more or less into halves, with Spain receiving the majority of the Western Hemisphere. Of equal importance, however, was the pope's grant to the monarch of the right to select the clergy in these lands. As a result, the Spanish aristocracy became thoroughly enmeshed in the ecclesiastical governance of the new colonies. Power was endowed in a series of appointed delegates who ultimately answered to the king. This system did little to eliminate or ameliorate inevitable conflicts of interest between church and civil authorities, problems that continued to plague the government throughout its centuries of administration.

Within three decades after Columbus's landing, Hernán Cortés had conquered most of Mexico and Central America, claiming for Spain the great native populations there as subject peoples. The Spanish turned to the tasks at hand. They extracted the wealth of the land to fill royal coffers denuded by war and recession, established colonies to stabilize control of the lands and ensure a continued flow of revenue to the Iberian state, and attempted to Christianize the native peoples and bring them within the influence of the Catholic church.

The Spanish friars were also compelled by other pressures. The religious fervor of the missionaries was at a peak. The Muslim Reconquest was still fresh in the spirit of the time; one foe of the church had been vanquished and Spain was united again. The second enemy, the Protestant Reformation, would require a struggle extending, at least in architecture and the arts, for almost a century. In painting and sculpture, and not least of all in architecture, the resurgence of religious fervor would propel the rise of an aesthetic that manifested the power of the church.

Shortly after Cortés's conquest, a group of Friars Minor of the Observance, later known as The Twelve, arrived in Mexico to bolster the limited missionary activity.^[6] The philosophy that guided the evangelical programs of the mendicant orders operating in Mexico (the Augustinians, the Dominicans, and particularly the Franciscans) was often characterized by an idealism little less than utopian. Bishop Vasco de Quiroga of Michoacán became auditor of New Spain in 1530. Influenced by the humanism of Sir Thomas More's Utopia , Quiroga tried to implement a philosophy that regarded the indigenous people of Mexico as the potential "equals" of the Europeans.^[7] In his view, although these natives existed in a lesser stage of development, they were capable of "improvement" and, in time through tutelage, Christianization. With continued exposure to European civilization, they, too, would be capable of leading what he deemed to be full and worthy lives as good Catholics and royal subjects. These questionable intentions were not always fully reflected in the actions of the Spanish clergy and administrators, however.

For the upwardly aspiring Spaniards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the New World was a place to increase their position or lead a new life. For commoners, it was a road from servitude or debt, although a considerable portion of their remaining years might be required to accomplish any material advancement. Many of the settlers were lured not only by the uncertain promise of wealth but also by the certain attainment of social status; they were to be granted the title of hijosdalgo , "illustrious men of known ancestry."^[8] To impoverished nobles, residence in the colonies might help resurrect a family name with glory primed by coin. Settlement was viewed as an investment: extract a reward from the land quickly and leave. This social group constituted a continual nuisance to religious and civil authorities alike because its members usually considered manual labor beneath their station. For all these groups, settlement in Mexico and later in New Mexico was regarded not only as a social experiment but also as a purposeful transplanting of an old culture for both economic and religious gain.^[9]