Christian Conversion of Native Peoples in Mexico and Brazil

Introduction: Faith, Morals, and Imperial Motives

In the 16th and 17th centuries, European nations — especially Spain, and to a lesser degree Portugal — began colonizing the Americas. They brought their Christian religion with them, and this paper critiques some of the successes and failures that the Spaniards encountered in Mexico, and that the Portuguese encountered in Brazil. The paper examines the changes ostensibly instituted in the name of "faith and morals" — albeit the Spaniards' concept of faith and morality was, in hindsight, tainted by greed, arrogance, pomposity, and imperialistic obsession.

Why was it necessary for an outside force to come in, take control, and reshape the cultural and spiritual lives of the inhabitants? Why was it important for the Spanish invaders to reinvent the "faith" and "morals" of people living in Mesoamerica, who were doing quite well on their own? These are, of course, rhetorical questions — easy to pose in hindsight. But from the Spaniards' point of view, the native peoples of Mexico represented some form of divine message. As Curcio-Nagy writes, the "devotion, humility, and obedience of the aboriginal peoples" apparently gave many Catholic friars the impression that Mesoamerican natives were "the prophesied Christians of the third age" (The Oxford History of Mexico, 151–152).

Spanish Arrival in Mesoamerica and Early Missionary Methods

Spanish colonization of the Americas brought with it a set of assumptions about indigenous peoples that shaped the entire missionary enterprise. Chapter 5 of The Oxford History of Mexico describes the native culture prior to Spanish arrival as having "a religious belief system" that revolved around the "cosmos." The native peoples believed that their connection to the divine was "a filial one" — they were the children, and God was the father. This was an ancient yet remarkably self-sufficient society, thriving in a world they believed they understood.

Because the Roman Catholic leadership in Spain saw the natives as part of a prophecy — a gift from God to enrich Spanish culture — the Franciscan missionaries, the first priests in Mexico, used the term "indoctrination" rather than "evangelization." The Spaniards reportedly believed that since God had placed these Native Americans on Mexican soil for the enhancement of Spanish culture and religion, the natives merely needed instruction in the facts of Christianity, not the full process of evangelization. The Spaniards were wrong, and they found themselves in the midst of a myriad of troubling situations they could not possibly have predicted.

Meanwhile, the morally corrupt system of encomienda — placing native peoples into virtual slavery as a reward given to Spanish colonists for "Christianizing the indigenous population" (153) — began almost immediately upon the launch of the Conquest and was not halted until 1542. In fairness, as Curcio-Nagy writes, many clergy "sought to maintain a clear separation between their Indian charges and decadent Spaniards eager to exploit native labor." Indeed, some friars became "vociferous opponents of encomienda, especially the personal labor service clause, which they equated — rightly so — with native slavery." It should also be noted, however, that "many priests exploited native labor just as much as the encomenderos did, forcing the construction of monasteries and churches and living off what the natives produced."

Portugal and the Colonization of Brazil

The Portuguese did not share the Spanish belief that God had placed native Brazilians there for their benefit. Unlike the Spaniards' motivations for conquering Mexico, when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil around 1500, they were initially in search of "valuable goods for European trade" — including resources such as the brazilwood tree. They did not, as a general rule, come to bring Christianity and save souls for Christ. The early colonialist movement was also driven by a desire among many impoverished sailors to escape poverty in Portugal, and by the lucrative slave trade. The Portuguese were more interested in importing enslaved Africans — and enslaving native peoples in Brazil — to grow sugar cane and coffee and to work the rich mines than they were in converting indigenous populations to Christianity. Gold and diamond mines had been discovered in Brazil (Schultz, 2005), and while the Spaniards were threatening Portugal's peninsula from the east and the Napoleonic invasion loomed from the north, Brazil offered the Portuguese a haven.

The Portuguese Jesuits did, however, play a role in converting natives to Christianity, and they did their best to protect Indians from being forced into slavery by Portuguese colonists. According to an article in the Bulletin of Latin American Research (Vainfas, 2005), in 1585 there was a serious rebellion on the part of Indians against slavery, colonial pressure, and the "disruptive indoctrination" of Portuguese interlopers.

Vainfas writes that before the Jesuits arrived with Christianity — a relatively small effort compared with the Spanish assault on Mexico — the native Brazilian Indians had their own religion, which they believed in deeply. This may help explain why the natives resisted the new religion so heartily. In the minds of 16th-century Brazilians, there existed a mythical, mystical place called a "Land without Evil" — a kind of paradise. By researching the writings of Jesuit Manoel de Nóbrega (written in 1549), Vainfas learned that the Indians had "special sorcerers" who traveled to villages and were welcomed to "bring sanctity." The sorcerers asked women to "confess their sins" while preaching "at length in a child's voice," promising that crops would soon grow on their own and arrows would hunt for them. They also taught that killing and eating enemies would bring longer life. "According to Nóbrega," Vainfas wrote, "at the end of the sorcerer's preaching, the Indians all started to shake, especially the women." The sorcerers proclaimed that a new age of prosperity was coming, and the inhaling of tobacco smoke formed a central part of the ceremony. What this all amounted to, Vainfas's research reveals, was a deep hostility toward Catholic priests, slave owners, and, "in the end," the Indians' so-called search for the "Land without Evil" constituted "a war against colonialism."

What Vainfas demonstrates through a lengthy scholarly analysis of Jesuit documents is that some native Indians — though opposed to slavery and Christian indoctrination — "found protection within a plantation" belonging to notorious slave-owner Fernão Cabral, "where they constructed a church that combined Catholic and Tupinambá elements." The Portuguese governor of the region ordered Cabral to destroy the church and charged that Cabral had "seriously offended God in the Christian lands." While other incidents of natives building their own churches were recorded in Jesuit writings, it is clear that the Portuguese effort to convert native Brazilians — by force or otherwise — was far less successful than the tactics used by the Spaniards in Mexico.

Conclusion: Comparing Two Colonial Missions

Both the Spanish campaign in Mexico and the Portuguese mission in Brazil reveal the extent to which colonial Christianity was inseparable from exploitation, coercion, and imperial ambition. The Spanish, driven by a belief that indigenous peoples were a providential gift, pursued conversion aggressively through indoctrination and forced labor — only to face sustained, widespread resistance. The Portuguese, motivated more by commerce and the slave trade than by religious prophecy, pursued a comparatively restrained missionary effort, yet their Jesuit missions still disrupted deeply held indigenous belief systems and fueled rebellion. In both cases, the imposition of European Christianity on native peoples produced not spiritual transformation but conflict, suffering, and defiance — a testament to the fundamental incompatibility of genuine faith with the violence and greed that undergirded colonial rule.

Works Cited

Deeds, Susan M. Defiance and Deference in Mexico's Colonial North: Indians Under Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.

Interknowledge Corporation. "Brazil: History." (2005).

Meyer, Michael C., and William H. Beezley. The Oxford History of Mexico. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Sheridan, Thomas E. Empire of Sand: The Seri Indians and the Struggle for Spanish Sonora, 1645–1803. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999.

Vainfas, Ronaldo. "From Indian Millenarianism to a Tropical Witches' Sabbath: Brazilian Sanctities in Jesuit Writings and Inquisitorial Sources." Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2005.