Mission San Xavier del Bac

Located in southern-Arizona, this mission was originally founded by Spanish friars in the late-seventeenth century. The church that stands today was built with indigenos labor in the following century. During the colonial period, the Crown authorized the establishment of many similar church complexes throughout the modern-day borderlands of the United States and Mexico. Its objective was to evangelize the native peoples, but it also had a practical purpose. Spain struggled to produce enough bureaucrats to staff the new governments created in the vast American territories that Spain claimed. Allowing missionaries to run the churches and run these communities helped the monarchs increase the Spanish presence in this frontier zone.