The Alta California missions, known as reductions (reducciones) or congregations (congregaciones), were settlements founded by the Spanish colonizers of the New World with the purpose of totally assimilating indigenous populations into European culture and the Catholic religion. It was a doctrine established in 1531, which based the Spanish state's right over the land and persons of the Indies on the Papal charge to evangelize them. It was employed wherever the indigenous populations were not already concentrated in native pueblos. Indians were congregated around the mission proper through the use of means including forced resettlement, whereupon they were "reduced" from a perceived free "undisciplined'" state and ultimately converted into "civilized" members of colonial society.[92] Their own civilized and disciplined culture, developed over 8,000 years of freedom, was not considered. A total of 146 Friars Minor, all of whom were ordained as priests (and mostly Spaniards by birth) served in California between 1769 and 1845. 67 missionaries died at their posts (two as martyrs: Padres Luis Jayme and Andrés Quintana), while the remainder returned to Europe due to illness, or upon completing their ten-year service commitment.[93] As the rules of the Franciscan Order forbade friars to live alone, two missionaries were assigned to each settlement, sequestered in the mission's convento.[94] To these the governor assigned a guard of five or six soldiers under the command of a corporal, who generally acted as steward of the mission's temporal affairs, subject to the priests' direction.[28]
Indians were initially attracted into the mission compounds by gifts of food, colored beads, bits of bright cloth, and trinkets. Once a Native American "gentile" was baptized, they were labeled a neophyte, or new believer. This happened only after a brief period during which the initiates were instructed in the most basic aspects of the Catholic faith. But, while many natives were lured to join the missions out of curiosity and sincere desire to participate and engage in trade, many found themselves trapped once they were baptised.[95]
To the padres, a baptized Indian person was no longer free to move about the country, but had to labor and worship at the mission under the strict observance of the priests and overseers, who herded them to daily masses and labors. If an Indian did not report for their duties for a period of a few days, they were searched for, and if it was discovered that they had left without permission, they were considered runaways. Large-scale military expeditions were organized to round up the escaped neophytes. Sometimes the Franciscans even permitted neophytes to escape to their villages, so that an expedition might be organized to follow them and in the process of capturing the fugitives, a dozen or more new "Christians" could be rounded up.[citation needed]
A total of 20,355 natives were "attached" to the California missions in 1806 (the highest figure recorded during in the Mission Period); under Mexican rule the number rose to 21,066 (in 1824, the record year during the entire era of the Franciscan missions).[96][notes 28] During the entire period of Mission rule, from 1769 to 1834, the Franciscans baptized 53,600 adult Indians and buried 37,000. Dr. Cook estimates that 15,250 or 45% of the population decrease was caused by disease. Two epidemics of measles, one in 1806 and the other in 1828, caused many deaths. The mortality rates were so high that the missions were constantly dependent upon new conversions.[95]
Why some fucking illegal conquistador descendent would come here to protest when they have so much to do back home is fucking cowardly at best, being a selfish greedy fuck at worst. If that offends, it should, I find this shit offensive as fuck given we have so many of our own people in need of the few resources our own political dynasties leave to us. I do not hate the Mexican, I just have no respect for a people that enforce the will of old families that came to this continent to horde gold and have yet to stop. As Moctezuma II, once ruler of Mexico would say had Hernando Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro not stoned him to death "the uninvited hispanic is not what I would consider a great dinner guest"