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Don Vasco de Quiroga (1470-1565) was the first bishop of MichoacAn in Western Mexico. Driven by the desire to convert the native PurhEpecha-Chichimec peoples to a purified form of Christianity, free of the corruptions of European Catholicism, he sought to establish New World Edens in MichoacAn by congregating the people into pueblo-hospital communities, where mendicant friars could more easily teach them the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and the values of Spanish culture.

In this broadly synthetic study, Bernardino VerAstique explores Vasco de Quiroga's evangelizing project in its full cultural and historical context. He begins by recreating the complex and not wholly incompatible worldviews of the PurhEpecha and the Spaniards at the time of their first encounter in 1521. With Quiroga as a focal point, VerAstique then traces the uneasy process of assimilation and resistance that occurred on both sides as the Spaniards established political and religious dominance in MichoacAn. He describes the syncretisms, or fusions, between Christianity and indigenous beliefs and practices that arose among the PurhEpecha and relates these to similar developments in other regions of Mexico.

Written especially for students and general readers, this book demonstrates how cultural and geographical environments influence religious experience, while it adds to our understanding of the process of indigenous appropriation of Christian theological concepts in the New World.