Colonial and Republican Missions Compared: The Cases of Alta California and Southeastern Bolivia

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Abstract
In Latin America missions have traditionally played a large role in conquering and incorporating native populations into dominant society. Most studies of the missionary enterprise have focused on the colonial period, when the missions reached their high point. The Jesuit missions in Paraguay and the Franciscan missions of central and northern Mexico, for example, ruled over vast territories and thousands of Indians. Although these institutions and their leaders have been widely studied because of their importance and visibility for colonial Latin America, it is not often recognized that missions continued to play a crucial role in the frontier development of the region even after the Spanish and Portuguese had been driven from the continent. Throughout the republican period, missionaries from many orders and creeds became critically important actors who, to a large degree, determined the shape of relations between native peoples and national society. This is quite clear even today in the Amazon basin, where missionaries often provide the natives' first exposure to Europeanized society.