1810 to 1840 Mission Decline

Together with the general decline of the Missions, there was a gradual degradation of the morals of some of the Missionaries. The final days of 1812, five new friars arrive to Pimeria Alta: Miguel Montes to Tubutama, Matias Creo to Oquitoa, Pedro Ruiz to San Ignacio, Francisco Fontbona to Cocospera, and Francisco Perez to accompany Gutierrez at Tumacacori. Soon afterwards scandal explodes: First, Perez asks to be moved to another place, and then has a fight with the Tubac Alcalde, before being relieved.

Besides this, when the President of the Missions, Fray Francisco Moyano hears rumors about Creo, he goes to Oquitoa trying to reprimand him. However, Creo insults him in such a way that Moyano hides away at Ati, but Creo follows him there and attacks him with a knife in front of the whole town. After being disarmed and tied up, he continues screaming obscenities even though he is taken tied, away from the mission. However, the problems don´t end there: A little later, he also accuses Don Francisco Bustamante, who was the Commander of the Presidio of Santa Cruz.

In the subsequent investigation, the private lifes of both, Fontbona and Ruiz is revealed. The Chaplain of Altar declared that both friars ad headed irected a parade of men and women in horses, singing and drinking while Fontbona sang the verses of Love, love, "making at the same time obscene gestures", and when Don Francisco Redondo abandoned the party in disgust, that same night they went to his home, and mocking him, told him he "was a Jesuit."

A corporal from Altar added that Fontbona liked to have partys and that he finished in less than a month a barrel of liquor; that everybody knew of his relationship with Luz Duran and of his drunken fight with the shoemaker. Besides, he had spent the previous Holy Week playing cards with some soldiers.

This investigation made Ruiz to run away, abandoning San Ignacio, while Fontbona and Creo continued with their dilatory tactics, acussing the other Franciscan Friars, and originating a general scandal among the Missions of the Pimeria Alta. It all finished when both friars also ran away during a night in 1817.

As Fray Narciso Gutierrez would say: "Corruption has arrived among us," although he doesn´t witness the end of the missional system, as he dies alone, without receiving the Sacraments, at Tumacacori, on December 13, 1820, and is buried by the villagers without registering his death in the Mission records.

On September 30, 1826, Jose Juvera claims the lands of the abandoned ranch of the Romero, Buenavista, as well as Maria Santisima del Carmen, while his widow, Josefa Morales acquires the ranch in 1831, buying it in $190.

It has been said that the Cadiz Constitution, who was proclaimed on 1813, is the origin of the Ayuntamientos in America, and that in Northern Sonora, as a consequence of it, Ayuntamientos were elected at Cieneguilla, Pitic, Tubac and Tucson. However, as James Officer wrote:

"...it doesn´t seem to be any documentary evidence to sustain that opinion. The Cadiz Constitution was suspended in 1814, and the Sonoran communities think today that the origin of their Municipal Councils is rooted in the Constitucion de Occidente, from 1825..."

Besides this, within Pimeria Alta the Missional System continued for years after the promulgation of both Constitutions.

In 1832, Fr. Jose Maria Perez Llera finishes the new church at Magdalena, built thanks to the change of the celebration of San Francisco, from December 3, to October 4, to coincide with the annual Indian celebrations of the yearly fall harvests, as well as the end of the yearly rainy Summer season (We can see an engraving of Magdalena, made in 1864 by Ross Browne, where besides today´s church we can see the small church where Father Kino was buried).

The following year, 1833, Jose Elias Redondo presents at Arizpe a petition for the adjudication to him of the Casita Ranch.He says his family has owned it for over 90 years. And soon afterwards he returns with the petition to acquire the demasias, if there are any.

In 1840 Fr. Faustino Gonzalez dies at Pitiquito. He had arrived at Sonora in 1805 and continued the construction of the great church of Caborca. The inhabitants of Cieneguilla had protected him in 1828 from the general expulsion of Spaniards from Mexico.