Spanish missions in the Americas

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The Spanish missions in the Americas were Catholic missions established by the Spanish Empire during the 16th to 19th centuries in the period of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Many hundreds of missions, durable and ephemeral, created by numerous Catholic religious orders were scattered throughout the entirety of the Spanish colonies, which extended southward from the United States and Mexico to Argentina and Chile.

The relationship between Spanish colonization and the Canonicalization of the Americas is inextricable. The conversion of the Indigenous people of the Americas was viewed as crucial for colonization. The missions created by members of the Catholic orders were often located on the outermost borders of the colonies. The missions facilitated the expansion of the Spanish empire through the religious conversion of the indigenous peoples occupying those areas. While the Spanish Crown dominated the political, economic, and social realms of the Americas and people indigenous to the region, the Catholic Church dominated the religious and spiritual realm. In some regions, missionaries attempted to create settlements of indigenous people ruled by the Catholic missionaries and beholden to the Crown but independent of secular colonial authorities.

Missionaries usually followed a strategy of creating reductions to concentrate indigenous people into Spanish-style settlements in which they were instructed in Christianity and Spanish customs. In general and over centuries, the reductions succeeded in achieving the widespread adoption by indigenous people of Christianity and Spanish customs. Spanish authorities and missionaries forced the indigenous people to live in the reductions. Resistance to and revolts against the missionaries were frequent. The missionaries helped, with varying success, to protect indigenous people from slave raiders and Spanish colonists wishing to exploit indigenous labor. However, the concentration of the indigenous people into reductions facilitated the spread of Old World diseases such as smallpox. Epidemics were frequent and often reduced the mission population by more than one-half.