Twilight of the Mission Frontier examines the long process of mission decline in Sonora, Mexico after the Jesuit expulsion in 1767. By reassessing the mission crisis paradigm--which speaks of a growing internal crisis leading to the secularization of the missions in the early nineteenth century--new light is shed on how demographic, cultural, economic, and institutional variables modified life in the Franciscan missions in Sonora. During the late eighteenth century, forms of interaction between Sonoran indigenous groups and Spanish settlers grew in complexity and intensity, due in part...