• "Where the Cult is in the Hands of the People"Enlightened Catholicism and Colonization on the Texas Frontier
• Brian Stauffer (bio)

Catholic diocese map of Mexico, early nineteenth century. Courtesy of the Mapoteca "Manuel Orozco y Berra" del Servicio de Información Agroalimentaria y Pesquera.

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In November 1828, Father Miguel Ramos Arizpe, precentor in the cathedral of Puebla, wrote to the vice president of Mexico requesting permission to colonize a strip of vacant land on the Rio Grande in the state of Coahuila y Texas. Ramos Arizpe proposed to settle two hundred families, which he hoped would be mostly Mexican nationals, "since it is my aim to encourage retired and injured soldiers and so many poor families from [Coahuila y Texas], Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to leave behind their misery while also preventing our best lands from being taken by foreigners." This was far from the first time the enlightened priest involved himself in the matter of northern colonization. Ramos Arizpe had called for the planting of colonies in the frontier provinces as Coahuila's delegate at the Cortes of Cádiz (1810–12), where the native of Saltillo served on the colonization committee; he also authored New Spain's colonization law of 1821, under auspices of which Moses Austin received his empresario contract.¹ [End Page 243]

Ramos Arizpe was neither the first nor last Catholic clergyman to take an interest in northern colonization. The bishop of Linares, Primo Feliciano Marín de Porras, whose diocese included Coahuila and Texas, had pitched his own colonization scheme to royal officials in 1806.² Father José Antonio Gutiérrez de Lara, a Tamaulipas native and brother of the insurgent Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, sat on the colonization committee of Emperor Iturbide's Junta Instituyente, helping draft the Imperial Colonization Law of 1823. Later, he played a key role in designing Tamaulipas's state colonization program.³ San Antonio's parish priest, Refugio de la Garza, made his own plea for colonization of Texas as a delegate to the Constituent Congress of 1822, where he served on the colonization committee.⁴ In his efforts, he received vocal support from the Monterreybased Dominican insurgent, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, who served on the same committee and proved an ardent colonization booster.⁵

What explains the decisive influence of Catholic clergymen in the advent of the colonization programs that reshaped Mexican Texas and ultimately the U.S.–Mexico borderlands? The question becomes more significant when one considers the common historiographical charge that the Mexican Church essentially abandoned Texas to the Protestant masses that came after 1820. Indeed, in the works of historians such as William Stuart Red, David Weber, and Howard Miller, Mexican Texas appears as a spiritual wilderness—an unchurched frontier forgotten by the diocesan hierarchy and mostly aloof from the crippling debates about Catholicism and nationhood then taking place in Mexico City.⁶ Even Carlos [End Page 244] E. Castañeda, whose monumental, Knights of Columbus-sponsored work Our Catholic Heritage in Texas concerns itself principally with writing the Catholic Church back into the familiar Texas narrative of "civilizing" conquerors taming a "savage" land, imagines the Mexican period as a garden of Gethsemane, where the Church "agonized" before rising again (albeit in frenchified form) under the Texas and U.S. flags.⁷

More recent scholars of Texas, when they are not actively reproducing this image of decline, tend to minimize the role of Catholicism in shaping the region's nineteenth-century trajectory.⁸ In the far northeast of Mexico, these accounts argue, regional priorities of shoring up the Comanche frontier and developing a cotton economy relegated spiritual concerns to the backseat and Anglo colonization was an essentially secular business; legal provisions for Catholic exclusivity were ignored by winking Mexican alcaldes and scheming Protestant newcomers alike. When historians have paid attention to the religious ramifications of colonization in northeastern Mexico, moreover, they have tended to see the latter as roughly synonymous with Protestantization—the issuing of colonization contracts to Anglo empresarios appears as either an act of divine providence or a devil's bargain, depending...

• “邪教掌握在人民手中” ，德克萨斯州边疆地区的开明天主教和殖民化
• 布莱恩·斯塔弗（Brian Stauffer）（生物）

墨西哥天主教教区地图，十九世纪初。图片由Mapoteca“ Manuel Orozco y Berra” del农产信息服务公司和Pesquera提供。

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我Ñ Ñ月‧日1828，F粥中号iguel ř摩甲rizpe，领唱在普埃布拉大教堂写给墨西哥副总统的信，要求允许其在科阿韦拉和得克萨斯州里奥格兰德州的一片空地上进行殖民化。拉莫斯·阿里斯佩（Ramos Arizpe）建议安家200个家庭，他希望这些家庭主要是墨西哥国民，“因为我的目的是鼓励退休和受伤的士兵以及来自[科阿韦拉·得克萨斯州]，新莱昂和塔毛利帕斯州的许多贫困家庭他们的苦难，同时也阻止了外国人夺走我们最好的土地。” 这远不是开悟的牧师第一次涉足北部殖民地事务。拉莫斯·阿里斯佩（Ramos Arizpe）曾在科迪斯州加的斯市（1810–12）担任科阿威拉人的代表，要求在边境省份种植殖民地，萨尔蒂约（Saltillo）的本地人在那里担任殖民委员会的委员。¹ [结束页243]

拉莫斯·阿里斯佩（Ramos Arizpe）既不是第一个也不是最后一个对北方殖民感兴趣的天主教神职人员。利纳雷斯的主教普里莫·费利西亚诺·马林·德·波拉斯（Primo FelicianoMarínde Porras）的主教区包括科阿韦拉和得克萨斯州，1806年向王室官员提出了自己的殖民计划^。2塔马利帕斯人何塞·安东尼奥·古铁雷斯·德拉·拉拉神父，叛乱分子贝尔纳多·古铁雷斯·德拉·拉拉的兄弟，曾在伊图尔比德皇帝的军政府机构的殖民委员会任职，协助起草了1823年的《帝国殖民法》。后来，他在设计塔毛利帕斯州的国家殖民计划中发挥了关键作用。³圣安东尼奥的教区牧师Refugio de la Garza作为1822年制宪会议的代表，亲自呼吁德克萨斯州殖民化，并在该委员会任职。⁴在他的努力中，他得到了位于蒙特雷的多米尼加叛乱分子弗雷·塞尔万多·特雷莎·德·米尔（Fray Servando Teresa de Mier）的声音支持，他曾在同一委员会任职，并被证明是热情的殖民者。⁵

是什么解释了天主教神职人员在重塑墨西哥得克萨斯州乃至美国-墨西哥边境地区的殖民计划到来时的决定性影响？当人们考虑到共同的史学上的指控，即墨西哥教会从本质上将德克萨斯州抛弃给1820年以后的新教徒群众时，这个问题就变得更加重要。事实上，在历史学家的著作中，例如威廉·斯图尔特·雷德，大卫·韦伯和霍华德·米勒，墨西哥德克萨斯州似乎是一个精神上的旷野，这是教区等级制度所遗忘的未拓宽的边界，并且在墨西哥城发生的关于天主教和民族的残酷辩论中，大多与世隔绝。⁶甚至卡洛斯[End Page 244] E.Castañeda，他的不朽著作，哥伦布骑士团的赞助者我们在德克萨斯州的天主教遗产主要涉及将天主教写回到德克萨斯州熟悉的“文明”征服者驯服“野蛮”土地的叙述中，将墨西哥时期想象成客西马尼园，在那里教会“苦恼”然后再次崛起（尽管以法语形式）在德克萨斯州和美国的旗帜下。⁷

得克萨斯州的新近学者在不积极再现这种衰落的形象时，往往会尽量减少天主教在塑造该地区19世纪轨迹时的作用。⁸这些说法认为，在墨西哥的最东北部，支持科曼奇边疆和发展棉花经济的区域优先事项将精神上的顾虑放到了后座上，盎格鲁殖民化基本上是世俗的事。眨眨眼墨西哥的alcaldes和策划新教徒的新来者，都忽略了天主教徒独占性的法律规定。此外，当历史学家关注墨西哥东北部殖民化的宗教影响时，他们倾向于将后者视为新教的大致同义-向盎格鲁empresarios发行殖民合同似乎是出于上帝的provide顾或恶魔的讨价还价。 ，取决于...