The Jesuits in New Spain had actively…
1763 CE
The Jesuits in New Spain had actively evangelized the Indians on the northern frontier, but their main activity involved educating elite criollo (American-born Spanish) men, many of whom themselves became Jesuits.
Mexican-born Jesuits represent seventy-five percent of the six hundred and seventy-eight expelled from Mexico in late June 1767, when Spanish soldiers remove the Jesuits from their sixteen missions and thirty-two stations in Mexico.
No Jesuit, no matter how old or ill, can be excepted from the king's decree.
Many die on the trek along the cactus-studded trail to the Gulf Coast port of Veracruz, where ships await them to transport them to Italian exile.
There are protests in Mexico at the exile of so many Jesuit members of elite families, but the Jesuits themselves obey the order.
Since the Jesuits have owned extensive landed estates in Mexico—which support both their evangelization of indigenous peoples and their education mission to criollo elites—the properties become a source of wealth for the crown.
The crown auctions them off, benefiting the treasury, and their criollo purchasers gain productive well-run properties.
Many criollo families feel outraged at the crown's actions, regarding it as a "despotic act."
One well-known Mexican Jesuit in exile, Francisco Javier Clavijero, will write an important history of Mexico with emphasis on the indigenous peoples.
The famous German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who will spend a year in Mexico in 1803-04, will praise Clavijero's work on the history of Mexico's indigenous peoples.
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