Aconchi

Aconchi lies in the Sonora River valley, a ribbon of cultivated land between the mountains and dry hills of northern Mexico. The valley was home to Ópata communities before Spanish missionaries established a chain of settlements along the river. Its villages shared the river’s water while occupying distinct places in the surrounding mountain landscape.

Jesuit missionaries founded the mission of Aconchi in the seventeenth century, alongside neighbouring Baviácora, Huépac and Banámichi. Missionaries sought to reorganize local life around the church and mission village, while the river valley became part of the expanding colonial province of Sonora. By the end of the eighteenth century Aconchi had been secularized, as the Jesuit mission system gave way to other forms of colonial administration.