Parroquias rurales, clero y población en Buenos Aires durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX

Abstract

Parish priests were in fact among the first agents with an institutional power attempting to control the Buenos Aires countryside, and to make good Catholics out of its inhabitants. In this regard, they were the protagonists of more than a few conflicts around access to rural parishes, sin ce not all of these parishes were the same. Between the last decades of the colonial period and the mid-19th century, rural parishes increased their numbers and changed their characteristics. Certain locations, therefore, became more attractive than others. This unequal consolidation of parishes, on the basis of their diverse demographic, productive, and commercial profiles, and their institutional development, changed the spectrum of options faced by the clergy. This article focuses on the increase and spread of the church's presence in the countryside. More specifically, it analyzes the relationship between church structures and population, as a way to estimate religious services' accessibility to the rural population.