Juan Jacobo Baegert's "Noticias de la península americana de California". Influences and context of a document with ethnohistorical value

Abstract

In recent years the testimonial legacy of Juan Jacobo Baegert, well-know Jesuit missionary of German origin with a long experience in the California Peninsula, has become a privileged source to the ethno-historical knowledge of the indigenous groups who inhabited the area during the conquest period. Since there are many ethnohistorical studies about it, this paper focuses in the intellectual, ideological and historical contexts that influenced the author while writing, and later published, the above mention written work. At present the subject is relevant because it enhances critical thinking around the construction of memory of the Baja California inhabitants, as well as over the process of construction of ethnohistorical knowledge from a postcolonial point of view.