106 CHAPTER 5 STATE, CHURCH, AND SOCIETY
affairs generally, and the belief that the Jesuit mis-
sion system constituted a state within a state. The
expulsion of the Jesuits from Paraguay resulted in
intensifi ed exploitation of the Guaraní by Spanish
offi cials and landowners. Within a generation the
previously thriving Jesuit villages were in ruins.
THE INQUISITION IN THE NEW WORLD
The Inquisition formally entered the Indies with the
establishment by Philip II of tribunals of the Holy
Offi ce in Mexico and Lima in 1569. Prior to that
time, its functions were performed by clergy who
were vested with or assumed inquisitorial powers.
Its great privileges, its independence of other courts,
and the dread with which the charge of heresy was
generally regarded by Spaniards made the Inquisi-
tion an effective check on “dangerous thoughts,”
whether religious, political, or philosophical. The
great mass of cases tried by its tribunals, however,
had to do with offenses against morality or minor
deviations from orthodox religious conduct, such as
blasphemy.
Spain’s rulers, beginning with Queen Isabella,
forbade Jews, Muslims, conversos (New Chris-
tians), and persons penanced by the Inquisition
from going to the Indies. Many conversos, how-
ever, hoping to improve their fortunes and escape
the climate of suspicion and hostility that sur-
rounded them in Spain, managed to settle in the
Indies, coming as seamen or servants of licensed
passengers, or sometimes even with licenses pur-
chased from the crown. Some attained positions
of wealth and authority. Toward the end of the
sixteenth century, many conversos settled in New
Spain and Peru. Many came from Portugal, where
a strong revival of Inquisitorial activity after the
country’s annexation by Spain (1580) was tak-
ing place. One who came to New Spain was Luis de
Carvajal, who rose to be captain general and gov-
ernor of the northern kingdom of New León. Car-
vajal was a sincere Catholic, but his son and other
relatives were fervent practicing Jews, mystics who
urged other members of the large converso com-
munity of New Spain to return to Judaism. They
were denounced to the Inquisition, which tried
and condemned them to death as relapsed her-
etics. The sentences were carried out at a great
auto-da-fé(public sentencing) in Mexico City in- In 1635 the Lima Inquisition struck at the
converso community of the city. Some were sent to
the stake; all suffered confi scation of goods. It is evi-
dence of the wealth of the Lima conversos, mostly
rich merchants, that the Lima offi ce of the Inquisi-
tion, having confi scated their property, “emerged
as the wealthiest in the world.”
As in Spain, the Inquisition in the Indies re-
lied largely on denunciations by informers and
employed torture to secure confessions. Also like
Spain, the damage done by the Inquisition was not
limited to the snuffi ng out of lives and the confi s-
cation of property but included the creation of an
atmosphere of fear, distrust, and rigid intellectual
conformity. The great poetess Sor Juana Inés de la
Cruz alludes to this repressive atmosphere when
she mentions her diffi culties with “a very saintly
and guileless prelate who believed that study was
a matter for the Inquisition.” Indigenous peoples,
originally subject to the jurisdiction of inquisi-
tors, were later removed from their control as re-
cent converts of limited mental capacity and thus
not fully responsible for their deviations from the
Faith, but were subject to trial and punishment by
an episcopal inquisition.
THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION
The church enjoyed a virtual monopoly of colonial
education at all levels. The primary and secondary
schools maintained by the clergy, with few excep-
tions, were open only to children of the Spanish
upper class and the indigenous nobility. Poverty
condemned to illiteracy the overwhelming majority
of the natives and mixed castes. Admission to the
universities, which numbered about twenty-fi ve at
the end of the colonial era, was even more restricted
to youths of ample means and “pure” blood.
The universities of Lima and Mexico City, both
chartered by the crown in 1551, were the fi rst
permanent institutions of higher learning. Pat-
terned on similar institutions in Spain, the colo-
nial university faithfully reproduced their medieval
organization,curricula, and methods of instruc-
tion. Indifference to practical or scientifi c studies,