Challenging Evangelization: Jesuits and Ideas about Blackness and Mission Work in New Spain

In a royal decree dated October 25, 1538, King Charles I of Spain ordered that enslaved “negros and mulatos” in Mexico be instructed in the realm’s religion. On September 28, 1572, fifteen members of the Society of Jesus established one of the order’s largest sixteenth-century administrative provinces, the Provincia Mexicana. And at least according to late sixteenth-century Jesuit annual letters, the Society of Jesus made special efforts towards the royal edict’s end. In the 1583 annual report from the Society’s residence in Veracruz, Jesuits highlighted their efforts noting that they could already see the fruits of their labour taking root because Black people had “potential,” demonstrated “great devotion,” and did “not appear so notably sinful like before.”

Much of the scholarship on Jesuits in colonial Mexico focuses on the Society’s engagement with Indigenous communities, especially the establishment of missions and the learning of Indigenous languages and customs. However, Jesuits encountered people from across the socio-economic and ethno-racial spectrum. This presentation examines the rhetoric and tactics employed by sixteenth-century Jesuits as they encountered both free and enslaved African-descended people to illuminate notions of Jesuit authority and the Society’s role in defining Blackness.