Vasco de Quiroga. The first bishop of Michoacán
The arrival of Vasco de Quiroga to Michoacán transformed the treatment that had been given to the indigenous population, reforming the concentration of the Indians in towns, which coincided with the interests of the Spanish Crown; and on the other, evangelization with peaceful means.
Vasco de Quiroga y Fray Gerónimo de Alcalá (1778) by AnonymusArchivo General de la Nación - México
Beyond an authoritarian figure of imposition on the Catholic religion, Vasco de Quiroga transcended by his capacity for social organization of indigenous communities, by achieving his evangelization purposes in a humanistic way and based on utopian thinking.
La crónica de Michoacán: evangelización indígena (1792) by Fray Pablo BeaumontArchivo General de la Nación - México
During the 16th century, the first advances were made in spreading Christianity in the indigenous kingdom of Michoacán, when the first mass was celebrated in 1522 that is known a decade before Quiroga set foot on the soil of New Spain.
At first, the effort to indoctrinate the natives of Michoacán occurred in a negative way because their main activity was the use of force to exterminate the practice of human sacrifice and the destruction of pre-Hispanic idols.
El Rey Caltzontzin con su ejército recibiendo a los españoles (1792) by AnonymusArchivo General de la Nación - México
In 1525, new Franciscan missionaries arrived who began to instruct the people in the new faith and who found in the person of Caltzontzin, a native ruler of Michoacán, the support for Fray Martín de Jesús de La Coruña to install himself as the first apostle in the region.
Atención de los indios a los soldados españoles en Tzintzuntzan (1792) by AnonymusArchivo General de la Nación - México
However, these religious pioneers faced various problems, firstly when they encountered a language other than Nahuatl, which they already dominated, and later due to the poor organization of the civil authority that led to the execution of the Caltzontzin at the request of Nuño de Guzmán in 1530.
Tzintzuntzan, Pátzcuaro y poblaciones alrededor de la laguna (1778) by AnónimoArchivo General de la Nación - México
Vasco de Quiroga knew how to find the development possibilities of these people and was moved by the sad fate to which they were subjected. During that same year, he founded his second town-hospital in Santa Fe, this time, in the vicinity of Laguna de Pátzcuaro, Michoacán.
When the Second Hearing in New Spain was dissolved in 1935 to consolidate a form of government in accordance with the Spanish Empire, Vasco de Quiroga wrote a report in order to transmit his experience and knowledge of the New Spain people to the first viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, reminding him of the commitment of the Spanish Crown to prohibit the slavery of the natives, in addition to a series of recommendations on how to govern the natives based on the model proposed by the English Tomás Moro on utopia
Vasco de Quiroga y Fray Gerónimo de Alcalá (1778) by AnonymusArchivo General de la Nación - México
Don Vasco was presented as bishop in 1537, and a year later he took possession of the bishopric in the Church of San Francisco in Tzintzuntzan. With his arrival in the bishopric of Michoacán, he began to denounce the mistreatment of the Indians and confirmed their position as free people who could be evangelized by peaceful means and not through war.
Among the achievements was the approval of the transfer of the episcopal seat of Tzintzuntzan to a space closer to the Pátzcuaro lagoon, given the best conditions for the construction of a city.
Despite papal support, the new practices formulated by Vasco de Quiroga generated discontent among the Spanish encomenderos, as he proposed to civilize the peoples with a model that took into consideration and at the same time elevated their customs, forming organized and sustainable communities with a profound vision. Christian church in which Indians and Spaniards could reside as a process of formation of both the natives, and their future Spanish priests, in order to evangelize some and form the clergy.
These actions would be reflected with the merger of the three cabildos in 1560: that of Indians, Spaniards and the clergy, in order to form a type of government that Quiroga called 'the mixed police', a social organization in which Spaniards and Indians they worked together for a common destiny.
Atención de los indios a los soldados españoles en Tzintzuntzan (1792) by AnonymusArchivo General de la Nación - México
However, the development of this type of government was opposed by the Franciscans and, together with the increase in the tribute that the main Indians had to give to the Crown, was that the power of self-management of the Indian communities diminished; and Don Vasco, who was already an old man, lost the support of the Governor of Michoacán when he died at that time.
Vasco de Quiroga y Fray Gerónimo de Alcalá (1778) by AnonymusArchivo General de la Nación - México
On March 14, 1565, Vasco de Quiroga died after falling ill during a pastoral visit to the city of Uruapan. In his will, he would express his concern to give continuity to the work that he promoted in his diocese and stipulated the organization of the Colegio de San Nicolás, giving guidelines on how it should be administered and the assets it granted for its maintenance.
