Old Wine in New Wineskins? The Southeastern Missions in the Franciscan Reorganization of Mexico, 1940-1995

Abstract

The article critically reconstructs the returning process of the Order of Friars Minor (OFM) to the southeast of Mexico during the second half of the 20th century. Once suppressed the colonial province of San José de los Naturales in the 19th century, the minor friars left the region not to come back until the 1940s, as part of a new missionary wave, like a result of a long process of social and territorial reordering of Catholicism in Mexico, as well as doctrinal and organizational changes of being and endeavoring of the Franciscans. The text analyzes documentary data, and begins the reflection with the arrival of the first Franciscan missionaries to Yucatán, coming from the Santo Evangelio province, and concludes with the founding of a new entity in the southeast in 1995: San Felipe de Jesús province.