Work and Social Classes

The Sonoran colonial society was divided in two main republics or social sectors: "gentiles" (non converted indians), and "gente de razon" (Christians).

The Indians:

The Mission took care of the temporal and spiritual administration of the Indians.

From the legal viewpoint, the missional system in Sonora was based on the Regio Patronato, a contract between the Papacy and the King of Spain: the King would finance the missional system, while the Papacy would give the King the authority to name and remove the missionaries.

Territorially, the Mission was not just the church and it´s adjacent buildings where the Missionary lived, but the whole territory of the Mission head, the visits, or inhabites places who received the missionary when he made his periodical trips of the area under his jurisdiction, and the cattle and agriculture lands who belonged to each mission.

Economically, the Mission divided the lands in two types:

The communal lands, known as temporalidades (temporalities), that were administered by the missionary, on which the Indians had the duty to work for 3 days a week, and whose products were for the maintenance of the missionary system itself, as well as to feed the Indians of the Mission.

The remaining lands of the mission were given to the Indian family heads of the mission for them to plant them and use their product, although they couldn´t sell these lands.

Labour in the mission

Although the repartimiento of Indians was practiced in other parts of Sonora under the name of tapisques, in the Pimeria Alta there was not repartimiento since the beginning of the missionary period.

What did happen in the Pimeria Alta, was the temporal and voluntary emigration of Indians to work at the Spanish economic activities, where they were paid, besides receiving the so called partido, which was a kind of bonification in which the miner could keep his production over the established production quota. For the Indians, this kind of labour outside of the mission area, was a substitute to their old custom of periodic emigration to the mountains to complement their subsistence means. This custom eventually would extend also to the mission itself. For instance, the Cocospera missionary said when he was finishing his church in 1796: "all the workers of the church that is being built, and when it is finished, they will leave" which means that they were paid to work in the construction.

Socially, the Indians were divided in several strata: a higher one, smaller in numbers, which was formed by the Indian leaders, by those who helped to fight the rebel Indians. Under them there was the rest of the Indian population, which comprised almost all of them.

Gente de Razon (People of reason)

Besides the Indians, there was the "people of reason:" the Spaniards, Criollos and the remaining castes, of whose spiritual administration the secular clergy was responsible.

To better understand this sector of society, we need to analyze them both from the racial or caste viewpoint, as well as the economic one.

From the point of castes, we have the Europeans, which themselves were divided in several strata, depending on the economic role they played.

Besides them, there were the "coyotes," mestizos from Spaniard and Indian (the concept of "mestizo" started being used here until the XIX Century), mulatoes, and wanderers who tried to find a niche within this socioeconomic structure that had not been designed for them. They lived from whatever they could, wandering between the missions, and only a few cases they could accumulate a personal fortune, either through having found a rich mine, or selling goods.

Finally, there were slaves, generally from African ascendancy, who were imported to work mainly in personal labour related activities, not only for lay people but also for the missionaries. However, as time passed and the lack of workforce, the Apaches gradually started covering this social and economic niche, when in the military campaigns to fight them, their children were captured and taken to be educated and raised by the well to do families, eventually turning into a species of personal servants.

We must add that this caste division was not as well defined in Sonora, because as time passed and the aislated of daily life, several intermediary groups came to be, as we will see later.

Economically, the "people of reason" was divided in the following classes:

Those who belonged to the higher presidial commands, who generally took advantage of their position to improve economically.

The soldiers of the pesidios (the name given them to the military posts), whose function was to preserve peace

The remaining population of Spaniards.

The Sonoran mestizaje

A diferencia del centro del país, donde existe un galimatías de castas, en Sonora los únicos conceptos raciales que se manejan comúnmente durante la Colonia son: español, mestizo, coyote y mulato, y aún muchas veces sólo subjetivamente.

Ejemplos de ello abundan, como la costumbre de calificar aquí a muchos hijos de español e india como españoles en vez de mestizos, como ocurría en el centro de México. Así tenemos el ejemplo de los 8 censos de la Pimería Alta de 1801 (Tumacácori, Cocóspera, San Ignacio, Sáric, Tubutama, Ati, San Xavier del Bac y Caborca), que tienen once casos conocidos de uniones mixtas con descendencia: en 7 de ellos, los hijos fueron asignados a la raza del padre, en 3 a la de la madre y en uno no se especifica la raza del hijo.

Además podemos ver en los registros parroquiales que en muchos casos el calificativo de español, mestizo, coyote o mulato depende de un juicio subjetivo del misionero que hace el registro, ya que en distintos sacramentos el mismo individuo es calificado de diferente manera.

La Interrelación Económica Misión y Sociedad

Estas tres actividades económicas podemos a su vez clasificarlas en cuanto a su oposición o no al régimen misional.

Los mineros no competían directamente con la Misión, ya que sus productos cumplían en cierta manera la función de moneda en la región, además que sus calendarios de actividad no estaban en conflicto directo con los calendarios económicos de la misión.

Los ganaderos y agricultores que, éstos sí, competían con la misión en la producción del agro. Muchos de los ganaderos españoles eran o habían sido militares, principalmente de mandos superiores en la región, y su inicio en esta actividad es anterior a la llegada de los misioneros a la Pimería Alta.

Así está el caso de un capitán español que fundara un rancho ganadero en el actual San Lázaro, en donde llegó a tener más de 9,000 reses aún antes de la llegada de Kino a la Pimería.