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Monjeríos were spaces of social monitoring between mission padres and Indigenous girls. Image: 19th century engraving of Narciso Duran with a young neophyte girl (pictured).

Monjeríos were gendered quarters within a colonial Spanish mission for overseeing, regulating, and disciplining unmarried Indigenous girls and single women. Girls were taken away from their parents to the monjeríos at around the age of seven until marriage. The quarters functioned as a form of social control at the missions for conversion to Catholicism, regulation of the sexuality of girls and women, and for the rearing of Indigenous children as a labor source.

The monjeríos instituted family separation on Indigenous peoples, with reports of sexual abuse. Resistance and rebellions toward the monjeríos occurred. There were monjeríos at all of the Spanish missions in California, often multiple at a single site. There were similar quarters for Indigenous boys and single men known as jayuntes. The monjeríos were not disbanded until the secularization of the missions by the First Mexican Republic in 1834.

Construction

Monjeríos were located at all of the Spanish missions in California, often multiple being at a single site, and elsewhere.

Locations

Monjeríos were constructed at all of the twenty-one Spanish missions in Alta California established along the California coastline along the El Camino Real. There were also monjeríos constructed elsewhere, including at Mission Santo Tomás in present-day Baja California.

Priority

The monjerío was often one of the first rooms constructed in the establishment of the missions. They were deemed high priority and frequently built in the first five years of the mission's establishment. 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.

Design

Monjeríos commonly had walls that were three to four feet thick and bars on the high windows, if they had windows at all. Having windows near the ceilings reduced communication between people within the interior and people on the outside. 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.

Restricting movement and communication and maximizing surveillance were integral to the design of monjeríos within the Mission complex. Only a few monjeríos were constructed with a different design or placement, such as the one located at Mission La Purisma Concepcion in modern-day Lompoc, California.

Conditions

Otto von Kotzebue visited Mission Santa Clara in 1824 and noted the miserable condition of the monjeríos.

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. However, other colonial officials contradicted this framing of the conditions of the monjeríos. The seventh governor of Las Californias Diego de Borica described them as "small, poorly ventilated, and infested," further noting that the confinement also contributed to an unbearable stench from the miserable conditions and a high rate of death from spreading disease.

An unnamed visitor to Mission Santa Clara wrote that the monjeríos were "so abominably infested with every kind of filth and nastiness, as to be rendered not less offensive than degrading of the human species." Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue wrote of his eyewitness account of the conditions at Mission Santa Clara, likening them to a prison for state criminals. Kotzebue referred to them as dungeons that were only opened twice or three times daily, and only to rush the girls to and from the church. An old Spaniard who possessed a stick directed the girls.

Purpose

Conversion and sexual regulation

Eulalia Pérez was a llavera (key-keeper) at Mission San Gabriel who noted an Indigenous woman by the name of Polonia who was recruited to secure the girls in the monjerío.

By separating girls from their parents and communities, the monjeríos created physical spaces within the mission for easier indoctrination into Catholicism and for the missionaries, who were often Franciscan padres or men, to regulate girls' and women's sexuality. This was to forcefully end Indigenous children's cultural connection to "indigenous forms of knowledge, authority, and power" and was a form of cultural genocide.

There was a paternalistic approach taken toward Indigenous peoples by priests, who infantilized them in their violent attempts to convert, regulate their sexuality, and Hispanicize them. Some Indigenous women, once deemed Hispanicized and Christianized, were then recruited to further the teachings and behavioral practices onto neophytes, and Spanish or Mexican women if available. Women were often restricted from key access to the monjerío without permission from the padres.

Social control and punishment

Girls and women were only allowed out of the quarters during the day at controlled times, often corresponding with church services and other mission practices. Even while being let out, the girls and women were monitored or chaperoned, and were locked into the quarters each night by the padres. This forced housing in crowded quarters contributed to the quicker spread of deadly diseases.

If girls or women disobeyed the orders of the padres or were found to be transgressing orders, they were punished with harsh measures. Punishment was used as a threat to condition girls and women to obey the orders of the padres and maintain the function of the monjeríos. Friar Estevan Tápias, who was the president of the mission system in California between 1803 and 1812, reported on punishment which used stocks for single women, with days accumulating depending on the offense that was deemed committed. If girls or women ran away, the would be "chastised by the hand" from another woman in the monjerío. He then admitted that, although rare, shackles would be used.

Spousal selection and child-rearing

Part of the function of the monjeríos was also to select a spouse 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.

Indigenous experiences

Fernando Librado was a Chumash man born at Mission San Buenaventura who recalled stories of Indigenous experiences of molestation and resistance at the monjeríos.

Family separation

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. This created an intergenerational gap in the transference of Indigenous knowledge and practices. If never selected for marriage by the padres, the women could be kept at the mission facility for much of their adulthood.

Victoria Reid was born in the Tongva village of Comicranga between the years of 1808 and 1810 as the daughter of the chief of the village. At the age of six, she was taken from her parents to Mission San Gabriel for conversion and to live in a monjerío. She was watched by Franciscan padres until the age of thirteen, when the padres selected a 41-year-old Indigenous man to be her husband. She had her first child at the age of fifteen. She was eventually deemed Hispanicized and Christianized and was given two small plots of land known as parajes.

Molestation

Indigenous peoples recalled experiences of molestation occurring between priests and girls and women at the monjeríos. 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. He reported that the priest had a reported time in which he would go to the monjerío. He would tap the shoulder of the woman in command of the facility, which would designate everyone in the facility to begin singing. In the sound, the priest would then select a girl to molest. He would eventually carry out this practice on everyone in the facility.

Resistance

Although monjeríos were dictated, monitored, and enforced to be strictly gendered spaces, Indigenous people's learned to navigate these expectations even under threat of harsh punishment. 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. This would involve creating a ladder to climb over the high walls of the monjerío so that boys on the outside could come into the interior of the room. Once inside, they would not leave until the early hours of morning.

Rebellion

The miserable conditions at monjeríos and throughout the missions often led to rebellions. In a rebellion at Mission Santa Cruz in 1812, a group of Indigenous people managed to gain control of mission operations after killing the head priest Andrés Quintana, which involved crushing and removing his testicles. 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 young men and women came together at the site and "had their pleasure."

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. Some have argued that the tendency for historical narratives to obscure Indigenous women has further erased the memory of monjeríos.

In some cases, the room may not be acknowledged at all in official exhibitions. 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."

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. This has generally resulted in the erasure of Indigenous experiences at the missions, including at the monjeríos.