Monjeríos

Monjeríos (Spanish pronunciation:

Locations

Monjeríos were constructed at all of the twenty-one

The monjerío was often one of the first rooms constructed in the establishment of the missions.[1] They were deemed high priority and frequently built in the first five years of the mission's establishment.^[1] The missionaries put their importance above many other facilities, since it often took 20 to 30 years to complete all of the buildings of the mission.^[1]

Design

Monjeríos commonly had walls that were three to four feet (1 metre) thick and bars on the high windows,^[1] if they had windows at all.^[5] Having windows near the ceilings reduced communication between people within the interior and people on the outside.^[1] The rooms were often built in areas that could be easily watched by the mission fathers, with doors that opened to the mission's central courtyard, adjacent or across from the quarters of the missionaries.^[1]

Restricting movement and communication and maximizing surveillance were integral to the design of monjeríos within the Mission complex.

The way in which monjeríos were constructed along with their upkeep by the missionaries led to poor conditions within the rooms themselves. Missionaries themselves often described the monjeríos as benign institutions.

By separating girls from their parents and communities, the monjeríos created a space within the mission for easier indoctrination into

Part of the function of the monjeríos was also to select a husband for the child that would be to the benefit of the missionaries' ideology. Spousal selection was limited to Indigenous converts. From the padres' view, this was to prevent or limit racial mixing, prevent the girls and women from undesired sexual encounters, as well as to maintain and continue to produce an exploitable workforce of Indigenous children and labor for the mission.[1]^[4]

Indigenous experiences

Family separation was an inherent part of the monjeríos. Many girls and women endured family separation and disconnection as a result of the monjerío system. This often meant being taken from one's parents at a very young age, often around the age of seven.^[3] This created an intergenerational gap in the transference of Indigenous knowledge and practices.^[3] If never selected for marriage by the padres, the women could be kept at the mission facility for much of their adulthood.^[6]

Indigenous peoples recalled experiences of sexual abuse and rape occurring between priests and girls and women at the monjeríos.^[5] Translated in the late 1800s, American anthropologists and historians recorded the story of Fernando Librado, a Chumash man, who heard of how molestation occurred at Mission San Buenaventura at the site of the monjerío:^[5]

The priest had an appointed hour to go there. When he got to the nunnery [monjerío], all were in bed in the big dormitory. The priest would pass by the bed of the superior [maestra] and tap on her shoulder, and she would commence singing. All of the girls would join in... When the singing was going on, the priest would have time to select the girl he wanted, carry out his desires... In this way the priest had sex with all of them, from the superior all the way down the line... The priest's will was law. Indians would lie right down if the priest said so.^[5]

Resistance

In a recollection by Fernando Librado, he notes how some acts of resistance between Indigenous women and men were carried out to resist sexual confinement:^[5]

The young women would take their silk shawls and tie them together with a stone on one end and throw them over the wall. This was done so that the Indian boys outside the high adobe wall could climb up. The boys would have bones from the slaughter house which were nicely cleaned and they would tie them on the shawls so that they could climb these shawls using the bones for their toes. The girls slept merely on [woven tule] mats, and there were no partitions or mats hung inside the room for privacy. The boys would stay in there with those girls till the early hours of the morning. Then, they would leave. They had a fine time sleeping with the girls.^[5]

Escape

At the time of

Ysabel, who evidently shared some of the same experiences as Bearfoot, confirmed, 'It is the memory of that [place] which drove Bearfoot into the chaparral...what we suffered there, how many years ago I cannot say, fifty, sixty, maybe more...See these scars! We had to keep fresh our memories of Pala Mission. Does the white man think it strange that we do not want to come? [We] and others, when young girls, had been held prisoners at Pala.'[10]

Rebellion

The miserable conditions at monjeríos and throughout the missions often led to rebellions.^[11] In a rebellion at Mission Santa Cruz in 1812, a group of Indigenous people gained control of mission operations after killing the head priest Andrés Quintana, including crushing and removing his testicles.^[5] Ohlone Lorenzo Asisara reported that his father, who participated in the rebellion, and the others, unlocked the monjeríos as soon as the priest was dead, and then: "The single men left and without a sound gathered in the orchard at the same place where the Father was assassinated... After a short time the young unmarried women arrived in order to spend the night there. The young people of both sexes got together and had their pleasure."^[5]

Memorialization

The scale and intensity of the punishment that occurred within monjeríos is not often covered in modern-day tourism or exhibitions of the missions, including at the modern-day renovated Spanish missions in California.^[1] Some have argued that the tendency for historical narratives to obscure Indigenous women has further erased the memory of monjeríos.^[12]

In some cases, the room may not be acknowledged at all in official exhibitions.^[1] This lack of attention to the monjeríos differs from how they were valued in the mission period: "the importance of the monjeríos as indicated by this work [a survey of mission records] contrasts sharply with their lack of representation within current mission interpretation."^[1]

Some historical narratives that are presented at official mission exhibitions tend to position the missions as symbols of progress and civilizational advancement, while Indigenous peoples are framed as primitive and usually disappear in the background of the story.^[12] This has generally resulted in the erasure of Indigenous experiences at the missions, including at the monjeríos, sometimes with the implication that they were largely willing participants.^[12]

References