The Lawyer of the Church: Bishop Clemente de Jesús Munguía and the Clerical Response to the Mexican Liberal Reforma by Pablo Mijangos y González (review)

Abstract

nearby independent Indians. The post-Jesuit economy was a hybrid of market and communal structures, and mission leaders struggled (ultimately unsuccessfully) to profit enough from the market to fund the communal redistribution of goods that provided a safety net for the less fortunate and an incentive to remain in the missions. Sarreal describes in depth how two missions, particularly rich in cattle, tried to profit from a booming Atlantic market in hides, yet lost most of the profits to Spanish employees and administrators. Whereas previous studies argued that mission decline was primarily the result of corruption and overexploitation by Spanish administrators, Sarreal insists convincingly that the story was much more complicated. In the end, no one could find a way to make the post-Jesuit missions break even economically.