The beginning of a long transition. The ecclesiastical government of Gabriel González and the end of the Dominican missions in Baja California, 1840 – 1854
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53439/revitin.2023.1.04Keywords:
missions, missionaires, dominicans, secularization, Baja California, 19th centuryAbstract
This article emerges from a bigger investigation, whose purpose is to account for the transition from missionary institutions to those of a diocesan church in the Baja California peninsula, during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. In this case, I focus my attention on the last years of the Dominican presence in those territories, when the presidency of the missions was occupied by Father Gabriel González, a character remembered by local historiography for behaving more like a caudillo than a missionary. I am interested in showing how, during his ecclesiastical government, crossed by the war between Mexico and the United States, a process took place that not only implied the dismantling of missionary institutions, but also the beginning of a diocesan church, whose purpose was no longer the evangelization of the natives but to administer the spiritual life of the "people of reason", for which the function of the missions and missionaries was replaced by that of parish priests, although the episcopal authority in the peninsula was not able to consolidate itself for more than a year. century later.