Friar Baltazar Montoya

Friar Baltazar Montoya is the priest at Ácoma, a man of tyrannical disposition who believes the pueblo exists chiefly to support its fine church and his own comfort. He exacts tribute in corn, hides, and labor, drafts Indian boys into his service, and grows a wonderful garden watered by women who owe him so many ollas a week, all while his appetite for brandy and fish and roast rabbit grows more exacting. His sensual, overbearing rule stands as the novel's sharpest portrait of the old order's corruption, the world Bishop Latour has come to reform.