THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE IN MEXICO
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Perhaps the strongest institutional vehicle for the advancement of the Spanish frontier was the mission. From the establishment of the very first colony in the Caribbean through the late eighteenth century, energetic missionaries, including Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, and Augustinians, labored to convert the Indians to Christianity. In many cases, the friars served as advocates for the Indians to prevent labor abuses by Spanish colonists. Most notable among these was Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, whose untiring efforts in the early sixteenth century served as the catalyst for a series of reform laws promulgated by the Crown to protect the Indians. |