The Catholic Church, the Missionary Orders and Syncretism in Spanish and Portuguese America

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The right granted by the Pope to the Spanish crown to control Church appointments and finances in its American colonies, tying religion directly to royal government.

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The Padroado, giving the Portuguese crown similar control over the Church in Brazil.

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Spiritual (convert and save souls), political (teach obedience to crown authority), and cultural (reshape indigenous family life, work and settlement to a Catholic-European model).

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Newly built, Spanish-style towns organised around a church, into which scattered indigenous populations were forced to make conversion and taxation easier.

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The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico, in which indigenous communities violently drove out Spanish settlers and priests for over a decade.

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A Dominican friar who became the leading critic of the mistreatment of indigenous peoples, arguing they had full human souls and rights.

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Jesuits built self-sufficient, semi-independent reduction communities (e.g. in Paraguay) with their own farms and economy, while Franciscans and Dominicans worked mainly through existing colonial towns and reducciones.

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Reformers saw the Jesuits as too wealthy, independent and protective of indigenous converts against settler and crown demands — a 'state within a state'.

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The blending of two different religious traditions into one — in this context, the mixing of indigenous belief with Christian teaching.

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Our Lady of Guadalupe (1531) — the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to Juan Diego on a hill once sacred to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, blending Catholic and indigenous devotion.

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Church campaigns, especially in 17th-century Peru, to search out and destroy hidden indigenous shrines and objects seen as idolatry disguised within Catholic practice.

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Because it reflects indigenous populations actively reshaping an imposed religion to preserve elements of their own worldview — a form of adaptation and resistance, not passive failure.