Mission San José and the Road to Secularization, Part 1: 1794

In theory and in law, the Spanish missions of the U.S. Southwest borderlands were never meant to be permanent. After about ten years, each mission was to pass to local secular clergy, and its Indigenous residents were to receive land to support themselves once their conversion to Spanish citizens was complete. Ten years was roughly how long conversion had taken in Latin American missions. In San Antonio, though, missionaries ended up in control for about a century, and for Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo the road to secularization was long and costly.

A large, expensive mission

Founded in 1720, San José had grown large by the time Governor Jacinto Barrios surveyed it in 1758:

It also had a soldiers' quarters, a carpentry shop, a workshop, a granary and a mill. Barrios reckoned the mission cost the Spanish Crown 450 pesos a year, and that its size entitled it to an annual allowance of more than 1,300 pesos.

Luis Antonio Menchaca's Mapa del Presidio de San Antonio de Béxar (1764).

Decline

By the late 1700s San José and the other San Antonio missions were deteriorating. Catholic historian Marion Habig traced the decline to three causes:

1. A 1778 decree that made all unbranded cattle Crown property rather than the missions', shrinking San José's herds.
2. Raids by neighboring Comanche and Apache peoples, costing livestock and lives.
3. Recurring disease, such as smallpox, which reduced the population.

In 1788, Fray José Rafael Oliva, president of the Texas missions, drew up nine arguments for and against the missionaries continuing to manage mission property. Though conversions continued, he noted, the crumbling missions needed heavy financial support — and he asked whether the missionaries should hand the property to the residents and confine themselves to religious duties.

The 1794 decree

The order finally came in 1794 from Commandant General Pedro de Nava, whose jurisdiction covered the Interior Provinces of New Spain: every mission more than ten years old was to turn its property over to its Indigenous residents. Texas governor Manuel Muñoz saw it carried out.

The missionaries stay

With land, tools, livestock and homes, residents were expected to support themselves — yet the missionaries stayed. One reason may have been debt: in 1795, Fray José M. Pedrajo recorded that the mission had run up 2,230 pesos of debt from 1790 to 1794, money he said he borrowed to help residents in need. Spanish missionaries remained at San José for two more decades, during which social changes offered glimpses of the communities that would form after complete secularization in 1824.

Sources

Based on "Mission San José and the Road to Secularization, Part 1: 1794," by Cristóbal López, published by the National Park Service for San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, citing archival records of the San Antonio Missions and the work of Herbert E. Bolton and Marion A. Habig; rewritten in hubnx's own words.