Catholicism, Marriage, and the Making of Borders in Nineteenth-Century Paso Del Norte Jamie Matthew Ts Arling University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]
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University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2012-01-01 The Bonds of a Common Faith: Catholicism, Marriage, and the Making of Borders in Nineteenth-Century Paso del Norte Jamie Matthew tS arling University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Starling, Jamie Matthew, "The Bonds of a Common Faith: Catholicism, Marriage, and the Making of Borders in Nineteenth-Century Paso del Norte" (2012). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 2199. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/2199 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE BONDS OF A COMMON FAITH: CATHOLICISM, MARRIAGE, AND THE MAKING OF BORDERS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PASO DEL NORTE JAMIE MATTHEW STARLING Department of History APPROVED: Cheryl English Martin, Ph.D., Chair Paul Edison, Ph.D. Dana Wessell Lightfoot, Ph.D. Brian Yothers, Ph.D. Benjamin C. Flores, Ph.D. Interim Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Jamie Matthew Starling 2012 Dedication to Portia Starling. THE BONDS OF A COMMON FAITH: CATHOLICISM, MARRIAGE, AND THE MAKING OF BORDERS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PASO DEL NORTE by JAMIE MATTHEW STARLING, B.A., M.A. DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO August 2012 Acknowledgements First, I wish express my most sincere appreciation to Cheryl Martin, who has served as my advisor and mentor over the last eight years. Her guidance has enabled me to carry this project to fruition in a timely manner. To the members of my committee, Paul Edison, Dana Wessell Lightfoot, and Brian Yothers, I am grateful for your critiques and suggestions for improvement during the writing and revision process. I also want to thank the faculty members in the Department of History at the University of Texas at El Paso who I have worked with; Charles Ambler, Adam Arenson, Ernesto Chávez, Yolanda Chávez-Leyva, Jason Colby, Maceo Dailey, Keith Erekson, Joshua Fan, Charles Martin, Sandra McGee-Deutsch, Julia-Schiavone-Camacho, and Michael Topp. I am grateful to Samuel Brunk and Jeffrey Shepherd for their service as professors and doctoral program advisors. I also want to acknowledge David Hackett for his encouragement during my first year as a graduate student. The staff of the history department has also been most helpful over the years; I have benefitted from the efforts of our graduate secretaries, Estebán Terrazas, Stephanie Gonzales, and Alma Acosta- Valles. I also wish to thank our department’s administrative secretary, Edith Yáñez, who truly makes our academic work possible. The Office of the Dean of Liberal Arts has been very supportive in granting funding for academic travel and research. I appreciate the leadership of Deans Howard Daudistel and Patricia Witherspoon. The Graduate School at the University of Texas at El Paso, under the leadership of Charles Ambler and Benjamin Flores, has generously funded conference and research opportunities. Olympia Caudillo and the staff of the v Graduate School have conducted many workshops that have been of assistance to all doctoral students. I also want to acknowledge Phi Alpha Theta and the W. Turrentine- Jackson Fund for their generous support. Much of my research would not be possible without the librarians who preserve documents and assemble finding aids. I want to thank the librarians of the University of Texas at El Paso, in particular Claudia Rivers in Special Collections, as well as the staff of the Nettie Lee Benson Library and the Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas, the staff of the New Mexico State University libraries, and the archivists at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives for their efforts. The Department of History and the Center for Latin American and Border Studies at New Mexico State University have also provided me with many wonderful opportunities over the last year. I wish to thank Iñigo García-Bryce, Amado Guzmán, Mary Holguin, Jon Hunner, Andrea Orzoff, and Seth Wilson for their warm welcome to Las Cruces. Learning is never a solitary endeavor, and the last eight years have been graced by many insightful conversations with my fellow students; Dennis Aguirre, Mayra Ávila, Mike Bess, Joanna Camacho, Braulio Cañas, Sheron Caton, Selfa Chew-Smithart, Scott Comar, Michelle Delgado, Ann Gabbert, Nancy González, Gary Kieffner, Joanne Kropp, Violeta Mena, Juana Moriel-Payne, Antonio Reyes López, Alejandra Maldonado, Aaron Margolis, Irma Montelongo, Nohemi Orozco, Cynthia Rentería, Melanie Rodríguez, Alejandro Rodríguez-Mayoral, and María Schrock. Finally, I owe much to the wise counsel of Nancy Aguirre, Cristóbal Borges, Jill Constantin, and John Paul Nuño. Your support over the last few years has truly made a difference in my academic career. vi Abstract The Roman Catholic Church occupied a central place in life in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands as it governed interpersonal relationships, marriage, and family law from the Spanish colonial period until the 1860s and 1870s. This project examines the role of this church in Paso del Norte (present-day Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas) as a social institution that regulated domestic life against the backdrop of dramatic political, economic, cultural, and ecological transformations. The central sources for this study are the marriage records of the Parish of Guadalupe. This church emerged as a Franciscan Mission for the indigenous Manso people in the seventeenth century and became a secular parish of the Diocese of Durango in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, the parish experienced many of the processes that defined the United States-Mexican borderlands on an intimate level; Mexican independence and attempts to forge a republic, military conflicts between Mexico and the United States, the emergence of long-distance trade networks, the growth of Euro- American settlement, and industrialization. One of the most significant changes the parish experienced was the imposition of a new boundary in 1848. However, the Guadalupe, as the seat of the Vicariate of Paso del Norte, retained its authority over adjacent parts of Texas and New Mexico. For nearly three decades after the U.S.-Mexico War, Catholics who lived north of the border continued to be baptized, married, and buried by an institution that remained under Mexican leadership. Ultimately, the arrival of a wave of settlers who sought to “Americanize” the borderlands brought an end to a Mexican church hierarchy that extended north of the border. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….…v Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….…vii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………….…viii Introduction………………………………………………………………………1 0.1 Sources and Methodology………………………….………………….…........4 0.2 Historiography……………..…………………………..……………….……..9 0.3 Chapter Outline………………………..…………………………...….…..…22 0.4 Terminology…………………………...…………………………….…...…..31 Chapter 1: “A Delightful Country in the Summer”: The Catholic Frontier, 1659 1810...35 1.1 The Emergence of Paso del Norte as a Mission Frontier…………………….36 1.2 The Diocese of Durango’s Northern Borderlands..…….……………...….…48 1.3 Paseños in the Late Colonial Period………………..……………………......66 Chapter 2: “If Prayer Is Lacking, How Much More Is Lacking?” The Crisis of Borderlands Catholicism, 1810-1833.……………………………………...……………76 2.1 The Borderlands Church during Mexican Independence…………………....77 2.2 The Nadir of the Diocese of Durango in the 1820s….…………………........87 2.3 Bishop José Antonio Zubiría’s Visitation to the Northern Frontier…………94 Chapter 3: “From the Moment that I Made My Wedding Vows My Suffering Began”: Gender, Honor, and Church Governance in Paso del Norte, 1821....................108 3.1 Ramón Ortiz and Marriage in Paso del Norte………………………………109 3.2 The Marriage and Divorce of Bárbara Aguirre and Francisco Belarde...…..120 3.3 Starting Over? The Second Marriage of Bárbara Aguirre……………..…...138 3.4 Entering an Age of Transition……………...………………………...…......142 viii Chapter 4: “He Does Not Profess, until Today, Any Religion”: War and Accommodation in the Borderlands, 1846-1860……………………………………………...…………..143 4.1 The Partition of Paso del Norte……………………………….……………144 4.2 War and Marriage…………..………………....……………..…………......151 4.3 Bishop Lamy Comes to the Borderlands………….……….………...….....169 4.4 The Church in Divided Paso del Norte………………………….…………180 Chapter 5: “She Will Only Leave My Home by Gunpoint”: La Reforma Arrives in the “City of Juárez,” 1860-1870…………………………...………………….....….….188 5.1 Mexico’s Social Revolution, La Reforma………………………………….189 5.2 Benito Juárez in Paso del Norte …………………..…..…………..……......204 5.3 La Reforma in the “City of Juárez”……………………………………........213 5.4 The Secular Nuptial Investigation………………………………………….215 Chapter 6: Testing The “Bonds of a Common Faith”: El Paso, 1860-1881….………...218 6.1 El Paso in the Shadow of Conquest….………………………………...…...219 6.2 The Realignment of Diocesan Boundaries………..………………..………227 6.3 Antonio Borrajo’s Crusade against Euro-Americans……………...….……234 6.4 The Deluge…………………….………………………….……….….….....241 Epilogue......…………………………………………………………….…..….…….....256