Mission 2000 Database

Notes: Father Perera entered the Jesuit Order on July 18, 1719. He first came to Santa María del Pópulo in 1725 or 1726. He served at Cucurpe at least from 1741 to 1748. He then served Baviácora and Aconchi. He was living at Aconchi at the time of the Jesuit expulsion. As a young priest he had helped Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, Sr., remove the aging Father Campos from San Ignacio in 1736. Now, thirty-one years later, as an old man, he was forcibly removed from Aconchi. Arrested by Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, Jr., he had to be carried by stretcher from Aconchi to Mátape and on to Guaymas. From there the arrested priests were transported by ship to San Blas. Of the twenty Jesuits (seven of whom – Nicolás Perera, Alexandro Rapicani, Francisco Hlava, Juan Nentvig, Pedro Díaz, Manuel Aguirre, and Bartolomé Saenz – appear in the mission records of Guevavi and Suamca) who died on the forced march through the coastal jungles between Tepic, Nayarit, and Guadalajara, Jalisco, Father Perea was the oldest and the first to succumb to death. He was seventy-one years, eleven months, and six days of age when he died at Istlán.