Spanish Jesuit Churches in Mexico's Tarahumara

By Paul M. Roca

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816505721
• ISBN13: 9780816505722
• Release Date: July 1979
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Length: 369 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 0.6" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

A Reverent Tribute to Long-Ago Missionaries

With our modern sensibilities about freedom of religion, we sometimes wince at the efforts of missionaries to convert "pagans" to Western beliefs. No such doubts existed in 17th- and 18th-century Mexico, where crusading Jesuit missionaries trekked into the the most remote reaches of Sierra Madre mountains of northwestern Mexico to convert the stubbornly independent Tarahumara (who call themselves Raramuri). These doughty fathers built adobe and stone mission churches in the high fertile valleys farmed by the Tarahumara. Many of those churches, large and small, remain today, some even preserving the carved stone doorways, oil paintings and sacred vessels the Jesuits had sent from Spain. In the 1960s and 1970s Paul Roca braved the back roads and trails of those same mountains to find, photograph and record the fates of these churches 250 to 300 years later. A few are merely piles of melted adobe, but a strikingly large number have, not only survived, but have been lovingly cared for in their isolated valleys. (And, if one searches for them on Google Earth, one will find that many have been revived and restored in the years since Roca's journeys.) Roca does not comment on the contradictions of missionary efforts, but he is not blind to the occasional abuses. Clearly he admires the determined Jesuits and wrote this highly researched and annotated volume in an effort to preserve the memory of their sacrifices. He also details the work of modern priests, not just to preserve the churches, but also to provide critical services to the Tarahumara. Whatever your view of Christian missionaries in traditional cultures, this book provides a deeply felt portrait, not just of churches and missionaries, but also of a unique, enchanted land and people high in the remote Sierra.