Abstract

OLMOS AGUILERA, Miguel. The Jesuit Heritage in Northwestern Mexican Indigenous Art. Frontera norte [online]. 2002, vol.14, n.27, pp.201-239. ISSN 2594-0260.

This article evaluates the importance of the artistic legacy of the Society of Jesus, left within the indigenous community in northwestern Mexico during the colonial period. For this purpose, the article, on one hand, reviews the colonial sources, written by missionaries who tangentially address the topic, and on the other hand, uses information from current ethnographies on the region's various indigenous groups. It also uses "data" taken from the ritual experience at the heart of these indigenous communities in northwestern Mexico. Among the accounts the most remarkable are from Cristóbal de Cañas, Eusebio Kino, Jean Fonte, Andrés Perez de Ribas, and Mateo Mange, as well as scattered documents from Jesuits who lived in the northwestern Mexico and the Baja California peninsula in the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century during the conquest of the region.

Keywords : indigenous art; jesuits; evangelization; Mexico; Northwest.