Guatemala's Catholic Revolution: A History of Religious and Social Reform, 1920-1968 0268104417, 9780268104412

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Guatemala’s Catholic Revolution

GUATEMALA’S CATHOLIC REVOLUTION A History of Religious and Social Reform, 1920–1968

B O N A R L . H E R N Á N D E Z S A N D O VA L

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2019 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America Library of Congress Control Number: 2018043815 ISBN-13: 978-0-268-10441-2 (hardback) ISBN: 978-0-268-10443-6 (WebPDF) ISBN: 978-0-268-10444-3 (epub)

∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected]

To Marta, Roberto, and Liv Karen for being there for me To Marguelli for being there for me

CONTENTS

Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments  xi Introduction  1 P AR T O N E .  F O U N D AT IONS CHAPTE R ONE.   Papal Power and Church-State Relations  21 CHAPTER TWO.   The Romanized Church  41

P A R T T W O .   EX P AN SION CHAPTER THREE.   The Resurgent Church  61 CHAPTER FOUR.   The Missionary Church  75

P A R T T H R E E .   T R A N SF O R MAT IONS CHAPTER FIVE.   The Reformist Church  103 CHAPTER SIX.   The Progressive Church  129

Epilogue  159 Notes  165 Works Cited  213 Index  231

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAP Map of Guatemala from a papal document from 1950. Source: Correspondencia, 1920–1964: Emiliano Castellani a Mariano Rossell Arellano, Guatemala, April 2, 1950. Fondo diocesano. Archivo arzobispal. Monseñor Mariano Rossell. Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Guatemala.  xiv

FIGURES FIGURE 1.  Luis Durou y Sure in 1938. Durou, who served as archbishop between 1929

and 1938, epitomized the ascendancy of papal power and paved the way for the revitalization of Catholicism in Guatemala. Source: Revista Eclesiástica 78 (November– December, 1938), 1.  43 FIGURE 2.  Mariano Rossell y Arellano in 1942. Rossell’s tenure (1939–1964) as archbishop of Guatemala was one of the longest in the country’s history. He oversaw the arrival of foreign missioners, the creation of Catholic Action, and the institutionalization of the Church’s programs of development in the highlands. Source: Revista Eclesiástica 6 (July–September, 1942), 558.  63

FIGURE 3.  Costumbrista performing a religious ritual in Huehuetenango. During the

postwar years, Maryknoll missioners sought to undermine the religious and social influence of costumbristas at the parish level. Source: Maryknoll Mission Archives, Ossining, NY.  82

FIGURE 4.   Catechist in Huehuetenango provides religious instruction to a group of parishioners. During the 1950s and 1960s, Maya catechists became the backbone of the Church’s efforts to disseminate a sacramentalized religious worldview and practice. Source: Maryknoll Mission Archives, Ossining, NY.  111 FIGURE 5.  Training and nontraditional crops. During the 1960s, Maryknoll missioners promoted the cultivation of nontraditional crops (including cabbages, as shown in this photograph) and the formation of a new class of Maya community leaders. Source: Maryknoll Mission Archives, Ossining, NY.  146

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The journey that led me to write this book has been both an academic and a deeply personal one. At the age of fourteen, I moved not only from middle school to high school but also from my native country, Guatemala, to the United States. In the ensuing years I was kept busy learning English, adapting to a foreign society, and grappling with my newfound identity as an immigrant. It was not until my sophomore year at San Francisco State University that, encouraged by my professors, I developed a serious interest in the field of history. As I enrolled in an increasing number of history courses, I became fascinated by the process involved in historical inquiry. In particular, I was drawn by the search, in the words of Michel-Rolph Trouillot, for “what happened” and “that which is said to have happened.”1 This study is in many ways the byproduct of my own ongoing journey as an immigrant and as a historian of Guatemala. In my evolution as a historian and in completing this book, I benefited from the support of many individuals. At San Francisco State University, I would like to express my gratitude to Julyana Peard, Abdiel Oñate, and Rudolph Busby for encouraging me to think as a historian and for their help and words of wisdom as I decided to pursue graduate studies. I am also indebted to a number of professors and the staff in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, where this book began as a dissertation project that was originally intended to shed light on the history of Catholic Action in Guatemala. In particular, I would like to thank Jonathan C. Brown, Charles R. Hale, Mark A. Lawrence, and Matthew Butler. Virginia Garrard deserves special mention. She has been a kind mentor who provided guidance and encouragement as I expanded the geographical and thematic focus of this book. She has helped improve this project in many different ways. This study would not have come to fruition without the assistance of the staff at a number of archival institutions. In Guatemala, I am grateful to the xi

xii  Acknowledgments

archivists at the Archivo de la Provincia Franciscana, the Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, the Hemeroteca Nacional Clemente Marroquín Rojas, and the Teologado Salesiano. In the United States, I would like to thank the staff at the Maryknoll Mission Archives in Ossining, NY, and the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. In Vatican City, the staff at the Vatican Secret Archives proved extremely helpful. The archivists at these institutions, including Alejandro Conde, were patient with my seemingly countless requests for materials and in helping me locate valuable materials for this book. In addition, I would not have been able to start, much less complete, this project without the financial support of a number of institutions. At the University of Texas at Austin, I received support from the Department of History, the Graduate School, and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. I also benefited from funding from the Social Science Research Council. I completed the last stage of this book with funding from the Department of History and a Small Research Grant from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University. Eli Bortz, senior acquisitions editor at the University of Notre Dame Press, provided encouragement, guidance, and editorial support throughout the publication process. At UND Press, I am also indebted to Susan Berger, Robyn Karkiewicz, and Wendy McMillen. Matthew F. Dowd, managing editor, pointed me in the direction of Kellie M. Hultgren, whose careful copyediting has helped improve the text. Two anonymous reviewers provided perceptive feedback that allowed me to sharpen the argument and think of the contributions of this book in a much broader sense than I originally imagined. Colleagues, friends, and students contributed in many ways to the completion of this study. Special thanks (in alphabetical order) go to José Barragán, Creighton Chandler, Bill Malone, Annie Mendoza, Pablo Mijangos, Benjamín Narváez, Mauricio Pajón, Juan Carlos Sarazúa, Arnoldo Sola, and Fernanda Soto. My colleagues at East Stroudsburg University motivated me to continue with this project. At Iowa State University, my colleagues in the Department of History provided much support and encouragement as I completed this book. I would like to thank especially James Andrews, Michael Bailey, Jeff Bremer, Simon Cordery, Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Jennifer Rivera, and Tao Wang. Special thanks goes out to the students in my Latin American History graduate seminar. Among other things, doing research for and writing this book has convinced me that individual accomplishments are the result of collective efforts.

Acknowledgments  xiii

This project (which has taken more time to complete and has taken me to more places than I would ever have imagined) would not have been possible without the supportive environment provided by my family. My rela­ tives in Maryland kindly opened the doors of their homes and patiently listened to my intellectual pursuits. In Guatemala, where I have spent many months throughout these years, my relatives also provided much-needed support. I would like to thank my family in Guatemala City, particularly Mari­cela Sandoval and her family and Sayda Salazar, and my family in Ipala, Quezaltepeque, and Esquipulas. These relatives welcomed me in their homes, allowed me to listen to their stories and to tell them my story, and, lest I forget, shared with me countless warm meals. Among other things, they have reinforced my love for Guatemala and its cuisine. Words cannot describe how deeply grateful I am to my parents, Roberto Hernández and Marta Sandoval de Hernández, and my sister, Liv Karen Hernández Sandoval. They have supported and motivated me at every moment, in the process giving me the confidence to imagine myself as a his­ torian and the strength to persevere as I started and finished this project. My wife, Marguelli Bojórquez, has also accompanied me in this endeavor, patiently listening to my academic pursuits, inspiring me to finish this project, letting me accompany her in her own personal and academic journey, and encouraging me to understand myself better. Her smile, support, and unselfish love nurture me every day. This book—and my life—is the product of their unconditional love and support. Throughout the completion of this book I have come to understand that it is a reflection of my experiences as an immigrant and my search for my own personal narrative. Much like the transnational perspective provided in the chapters that follow, the completion of this book was the culmination of a transnational personal story, one that first brought me to the United States and then led me back to Guatemala. I had to go away in order to come back to my native country. This book has led me back, and by that I’m immensely blessed. I’m also infinitely grateful to those mentioned above, for they have pushed me forward—and continue to do so—in this ongoing journey.

Map of Guatemala from a papal document from 1950. Source: Correspondencia, 1920–1964: Emiliano Castellani a Mariano Rossell Arellano, Guatemala, April 2, 1950. Fondo diocesano. Archivo arzobispal. Monseñor Mariano Rossell. Archivo Histórico de la Arquidiócesis de Guatemala.

Introduction

On December 21, 1967, the Guatemalan government expelled from the country four Catholic missioners. The four clerics—Sister Marian Peter, Blasé Bonpane, and the brothers Arthur and Thomas Melville—were members of the U.S.-­based Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, better known as Maryknoll. During the preceding months, the Maryknollers had joined a small number of radicalized laypeople who concluded that the solution to Guatemala’s long-­standing history of political exclusion, social inequality, and institutionalized racism resided in the formation of a Christian-­­inspired revo­ lutionary movement. A new generation of socially committed clerics and lay activists, they believed, would lead this armed revolution. These revolutionary Christians planned to join the Marxist-­­inspired insurgency that had emerged earlier in the decade in the eastern part of the country while at the same time retaining their “Christian identity.” This Catholic movement did not materialize in the late 1960s, for news of the missioners’ radicalized posture soon reached Maryknoll authorities and officials at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. Shortly thereafter the four American missioners were forced to leave the country and boarded a plane headed for Miami.1 The expulsion of the Maryknollers took place against the background of an emerging progressive religious and social movement within the Catholic Church that took much inspiration from the theological opening inaugurated by Pope John XXIII (1958–1963) and his call for an ecumenical international 1

2  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

council. This meeting, collectively known as the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, brought together Church leaders, prominent theologians, and laypeople from around the globe in a series of gatherings between 1962 and 1965. Vatican II marked a theological shift within the global Church, for it encouraged clerics and lay Catholics to engage modernity and people’s spiri­ tual and social realities. In Latin America, these transformations coalesced during the second meeting of the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (Conference of Latin American Bishops), held in 1968 in Medellín, Colombia. This gathering gave Latin American Catholics the religious and social perspective for adapting and applying Vatican II’s conclusions to the social and political circumstances of the region. It equipped them with the language to articulate a new set of pastoral priorities, in the process leading many Catho­ lics to denounce socioeconomic inequality, political exclusion, and other forms of oppression. Thus, a new generation of Catholic activists emerged as advocates of a progressive religious trajectory, which was partly encapsulated by liberation theology and its accompanying “preferential option for the poor” posture. During the 1970s, this socially conscious generation of Catholics became radicalized by the violence brought about by the Cold War and often joined various local and transnational social and political movements.2 This narrative about Latin American Catholicism serves as a reminder of the transformative effects of Vatican II and the Medellín conference. It highlights how Catholics, inspired by global and regional developments, took an active role in advancing a variety of social causes. In addition, it has given scholars a framework for situating the Latin American Church within the context of increasingly polarized and militarized societies. For, as they have reminded us, the proponents of liberation theology carried out their pastoral work in the midst of—and oftentimes in opposition to—state-­ sponsored violence during the Cold War.3 Sister Marian Peter, Bonpane, the Melville brothers, and other socially committed Catholics were no exceptions in this respect. Their progressive pastoral position and subsequent radi­ calization were part and parcel of the religious and political changes affecting the Guatemalan and, more broadly, the Latin American Church in the aftermath of World War II. Despite its interpretative value, this Vatican II–centric canvas—which posits Vatican II and Medellín as watershed moments—sheds little light on the historical circumstances that nurtured the religious and social environment that fostered a progressive Catholic ethos. It fails to clarify why national churches whose leaders espoused patently conservative and anticommunist

Introduction  3

positions and generally supported military regimes eventually produced a grassroots generation of Catholics who challenged Latin America’s religious, social, and political traditions and structures. Thus, as Daniel H. Levine reminded us in 1992, “the common impression that Vatican II was the sole source and spark for change in the Latin American churches requires modification.”4 In the case of Guatemala, a perspective that considers Vatican II and the Medellín conference as turning points at the expense of other historical narratives obscures the long-­term context that explains why clerics and lay Catholics alike became committed to transforming their societies through the lenses of a Christian-­inspired religious position. It does not fully illuminate, moreover, how and why a not-­insignificant number of Catholic missioners and laypeople surfaced as active participants in the Cold War, pushed forward a progressive brand of Catholicism, became advocates of a new social order, and supported or joined armed revolutionary movements. In this study, I take a broad transnational approach that spans the five decades from the 1920s to the 1960s and moves beyond, but does not discount, national boundaries—in the process reconstructing the ideological and institutional connections between Rome and Guatemalan Catholicism— as a way to uncover the origins of progressive Catholicism. A transnational history, as Stephen J. C. Andes and Julia G. Young have recently argued, “emphasizes the interconnections, shared symbols, and intertwined mobilization that characterized the Catholic activist movements in Latin America, even before Vatican II.”5 A transnational lens is particularly relevant for the study of Guatemalan Catholicism, for, as Susanne H. Rudolph has reminded us, “religious communities are among the oldest of transnationals.”6 I argue that the aforementioned transformations within the Guatemalan Church were propelled by the institutional renewal of rural Catholicism, which dates back to the interwar period when a reconfiguration of national and international politics created new spaces for the Church’s resurgence. This changing landscape, largely spurred by Vatican activism, paved the way for the transnational movement of foreign missionary groups such as Maryknoll, the formation of a myriad of lay Catholic associations, and the crystallization of a grassroots progressive religious spirit in the countryside. In tracing this history, I emphasize the multilayered and oftentimes contentious interaction between Church authorities, clerics, and laypeople both within and beyond the context of Guatemala, and I contend that religion—that is, religious institutions and the lived experiences that sustain them—must be understood as both a reflection of societal processes and a force of change (and social reform) in the modern period.

4  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

Research on these themes has taken place within fairly limited discussions about Guatemalan Catholicism during the twentieth century. Generally speaking, the existing historiography has moved into two divergent trajectories. One group of scholars has taken an institutional approach, focusing on the history of Church-­state relations, and the anti-­liberal, anti-­secular, and anticommunist rhetoric espoused by Church leaders before and during the Cold War. These studies, which have examined Guatemalan Catholicism through the lens of national politics, have described the rise of the Church as a conservative force that generally opposed political democracy and left-­of-­ center social and political ideologies.7 From this analytical vantage point, Guatemalan Catholicism emerges as a static, if not reactionary, institution invariably trapped in its own conservative past, and, as a result, the progressive Church of the postwar period appears as an unexpected occurrence. A second interpretative framework, mostly taken by anthropologists, has focused on the history of Catholicism at the local level. Interested in examining religious change among indigenous communities, these scholars have traced the rise of a multireligious landscape inhabited by conflicting groups, particularly Maya traditionalists, a new cadre of Church-­sanctioned lay Catholic associations, and a small yet expanding number of Protestant converts. They attribute these religious transformations first to increased political activity during the Cold War and second to a series of modernizing trends that affected the nature of social and economic relations among Maya communities. These factors set the stage for the erosion of traditional religious and political hierarchies and the “modernization” of indigenous people.8 Yet this scholarship, which provides important local perspectives of Catholicism and gives prominence to the history of conflict at the parish level, tells us little about how religious ruptures at the community level related to national or global developments, what conditions gave rise to a generation of progressive-­minded Catholics in Huehuetenango for whom the spiritual realm mattered as much as daily material realities, and why the postwar Church became a major religious and social force in the countryside before and after Vatican II.9

TRANSNATIONAL CATHOLICISM, ROMANIZATION, AND RENEWAL

This study pivots on the argument that we cannot understand religious change at the national and community levels, and, for that matter, the origins

Introduction  5

of progressive Catholicism prior to the 1970s, without first employing a transnational approach, one that forces us to look at the historical links between the Church of Rome and Guatemalan Catholicism. The rebirth of Catholicism and the roots of the aforementioned progressive religious trajectory began not in 1962, with the opening sessions of Vatican II, nor in 1968, with the beginning of the Medellín conference, but in the interwar years. In 1920 the Guatemalan Church was a frail institution. It had lost most, if not all, of its political and economic clout as a consequence of the triumph of Liberalism in the late nineteenth century. Led by Justo Rufino Barrios, Liberals saw the Church’s power as an impediment to the material progress of the nation and as contrary to their vision of a secular nation-­state. During the 1870s they implemented an anticlerical program that effectively put an end to the prominence Catholicism had enjoyed since colonial times. Liberals nationalized Church property, suppressed religious orders, expelled foreign clerics, created a secular educational system, and enshrined the separation of church and state. In the wake of this program, the Church became a ghost of its former self. By 1925, there were only ninety-­four Catholic pastors for a population of two million inhabitants. Nowhere was this institutional weakness more evident than in the countryside, where a small number of clerics attended to the spiritual needs of communities scattered across extensive terrain. As a result, the rural population, particularly Maya indigenous peoples, embraced vastly localized sets of religious beliefs and practices, so that by the turn of the twentieth century numerous expressions of popular religiosity had developed almost autonomously from the Church’s sacramental life.10 During the interwar period, Church officials undertook a reform program intended to regain control of this unsanctioned religious landscape. They embarked on an era of expansion and renewal, primarily by establishing closer and often cordial relations with the Guatemalan state. The fruits of this Church-­state rapprochement became most evident during the 1930s and 1940s, when religious leaders—particularly Luis Durou y Sure (1928–1938) and Mariano Rossell y Arellano (1939–1964)—implemented a series of reforms aimed at redefining the priesthood, promoting a sacrament-­driven form of Catholicism, expanding the number of clerics in the country, and creating lay associations as a way of integrating the laity more fully into the structures of the Church. By the end of World War II, a number of initiatives meant to spur the Church’s institutional growth and revitalization were in place. The major force behind these reforms came not from the Guatemalan Church or Maya communities in the countryside, but rather from the Vatican.

6  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

With few exceptions, the historiography of Guatemalan Catholicism remains silent regarding the dimensions of papal influence prior to Vatican II. Hubert J. Miller, in a 1996 article, documented the presence of papal representatives and their interactions with Guatemalan religious and political leaders. He attributes these contacts to a “softening” or decline of anticlerical politics during the interwar years.11 This book builds upon Miller’s article but goes further by situating the history of the Guatemalan Church within the context of the centralization of papal power. I contend that Vatican activism stood at the center of a Church-­state rapprochement during the interwar period and the subsequent resurgence of Catholicism. Papal authorities had long viewed Latin America as “evangelization” area, where the Church had to work to reclaim the religious and social spaces it had lost as a result of anticlericalism, the dissemination of secular values, and the appearance of leftist political doctrines. During the first decades of the twentieth century Vatican officials, inculcated in the doctrine of papal infallibility, sought to spur a revival of Catholic culture in Guatemala and expand the pope’s power over the national church. Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pius XII (1939–1958) spearheaded a religious campaign designed, above all, to forge a new political pact—a modus vivendi—between the Church and the Liberal state. This policy culminated in 1936 with the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the dictatorial regime headed by Jorge Ubico (1931– 1944). This political reconfiguration had long-­lasting effects. For one, it turned the Church into an apolitical actor that generally favored political cooperation with government officials and thus remained silent about the social and political matters of the day. This explains why Archbishop Rossell, an ardent anticommunist crusader who espoused a hierarchical social order, became one of the most reliable ideological supporters of the status quo as embodied by Ubico’s dictatorship. This period of Church-­state convergence gave papal officials and Guatemalan clerics the freedom to actively support the resurgence of the Church. They did so by promoting the immigration of European and Ameri­ can missioners who were summoned to expand a Romanized vision of Catholicism, one that placed sacramentalism at the core of the Church’s life. Romanization—and the Church’s resurgence—was both an ideological and an institutional process, for it gave the Church of Rome greater control over the institutional growth of Guatemalan Catholicism and brought Catholic practice closer to a Romanized (and Europeanized) practice of religion.12 Thus, beginning in the 1940s, a small contingent of foreign missioners,

Introduction  7

including the members of Maryknoll, began to arrive in the western highlands. Historically, this rural region, which consists of a series of mountain ranges extending from the central to the western part of the country, has been inhabited by the majority of the country’s indigenous Maya population and a small population of mixed descent, popularly known as ladinos.13 The presence of foreign clerics in the highlands meant that the main force behind the twentieth-­century revival of Catholicism came from the outside. It stemmed from the centripetal nature of papal power. Using recently declassified and previously unexplored archival documents located in Vatican City and Guatemala City, I examine the ideological and institutional ties between Rome and Guatemalan Catholicism. I seek to uncover the process by which the pope’s diplomats emerged as key religious figures during the 1920s and 1930s. These officials formed part of an expanding network of international envoys who became the face of a Romanized religious vision. They advanced a hierarchical and sacrament-­based worldview, which, as we shall see, became the driving force behind the institutional revival of the Guatemalan Church. This is not to say that Guatemalan clerics (and lay Catholics) passively accepted the dictates of Rome or that Romanization did not have its limits. The first two chapters of this study examine the rift that developed between Vatican diplomats and Guatemalan clerics. This conflict, which revolved around alternative definitions of Catho­ lic practice, brought to the fore long-­established divisions within the Church. Yet, perhaps ironically, the weakened condition of the Church assured the ascendancy of papal power and the Romanization of Catholicism. In focusing on the effects of Vatican influence, this book joins an expanding scholarship on the transnational dimensions of Catholicism. Church historians have called attention, to borrow Peter R. D’Agostino’s phrase, to the “transnational networks” that linked Rome and national churches and the concomitant centralization of papal power in the context of anticlerical, secular, and materialist movements.14 The celebration of the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) and the subsequent proclamation of the so-­called social encyclicals, particularly Rerum Novarum (1892) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931), signaled the hegemony of the Church of Rome.15 Such development sparked a revival of Catholic culture, which in the case of Latin America resulted in the expansion of the clergy, the creation of a new genera­ tion of lay associations, and a more public—although not always political— role played by the Church. In the process, the Latin American Church increasingly became a Romanized Church, that is, an institution that closely

8  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

mirrored the sacramentalized religious vision put forward by papal authorities.16 Papal envoys, this study contends, were at the heart of the Romanization of the Latin American Church. A transnational approach sheds light not only on the roots and impact of Romanization, but also on the history of Church-­state relations. Papal officials stood at the center of the emergent modus vivendi. They acted as intermediaries between government officials and Church leaders, thus surfacing as religious and, in certain cases, political interlocutors, although they generally opposed political activism. Vatican diplomats supported engagement with the state, which resulted in a triangular relationship whereby the pope’s representatives interacted with religious and political authorities. In the process they worked to create amicable relations between national churches and dictatorial regimes.17 The impact of papal diplomacy on the Church-­state rapprochement of this period was not unique to Latin America, for during the 1920s and 1930s the Vatican also spearheaded a new period of Church-­state collaboration in Europe.18 Seen from this vantage point, the history of Church-­state relations emerges as part of a regional and global trend and, more precisely, as invariably tied to the centralization of papal power in Latin America. The first part of this book examines how these transnational connections came into existence in Guatemala prior to Vatican II.

MISSIONARIES AND MAYA RELIGION: ENGAGEMENT AND FRAGMENTATION

Whereas a transnational framework illuminates the political and ideological landscape that linked Guatemalan Catholicism to the Church of Rome, it also provides a new window into the relationship between clerics and laypeople. In Guatemala, this relationship evolved in the context of a Romanized identity adopted by religious leaders. During the 1930s and 1940s, they organized periodic religious congresses that brought together thousands of Catholics, many of whom joined a series of lay Catholic associations animated by Rome’s sacramentalized religious vision. These public events took place inside church buildings and often extended into the streets, thus reflecting the rise of a “neo-­Christendom” model prior to World War II. In Guatemala, as in other countries, this meant that Church authorities often projected both a collaborationist strategy with regard to the state and a unitary religious imaginary as a way to “re-­Christianize” Latin American societies, particularly by promoting cordial Church-­state relations and integrating

Introduction  9

lay Catholics, in a hierarchical manner, into the sacramental life and structures of the Church.19 In Guatemala this policy of engagement with modern society manifested itself most concretely in the Romanization and revitalization of rural Catholicism. Beginning in the 1930s, Vatican diplomats promoted a Church-­ state modus vivendi and a Romanized vision, Guatemalan clerics expanded sacramentalism through religion-­inspired mass events, and lay Catholics began to play a more active, if not subservient, role in the Church’s institutional life. Catholicism now gradually resurfaced as a religious and social force in the countryside. One of the most enduring effects of the centralization of papal power, therefore, was the twentieth-­century resurgence of the highland Church. By the middle of the century, the highlands had become the epicenter of an institutional expansion reminiscent of the early colonial period.20 The foreign missioners who arrived in the highlands during these years stood at the center of this revival. The first major and arguably most prominent foreign religious group was Maryknoll, whose members established a mission system as a way to advance sacramentalism among the Maya through a variety of religious and social projects.21 This book investigates the roots and expansion of the Maryknoll mission in the highlands. Relying on mission records and previously unexplored Church documentation (particularly correspondence), I contend that this mission territory became a point of contact between the “official” Church and Maya communities. Grounded on studies of popular religiosity in modern Latin America, the second part of this study incorporates the perspectives of clerics and indigenous people at the parish level and, following the lead of José Andrés-­Gallego, interprets the history of the Church as that of a complex, diverse, and constantly evolving institution consisting of the ideas and actions of bishops, parish priests, and laypeople.22 Such an approach transcends historical accounts that reduce Catholicism to an analysis of the theological and/or ideological pronouncements and political positions of Church leaders and analyses that limit themselves to the history of Church-­ state relations. An examination of the experiences and interactions between Maryknollers and Maya parishioners in the context of an expanding rural Church has allowed me to construct a historical narrative that weaves together both institutional and noninstitutional voices. This approach takes the mission as a basic unit of analysis. It focuses on what Erick D. Langer has termed the “mission life cycle,” namely the process by which missioners establish mission territories, create strategies to

10  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

influence the lives of parishioners, and interact with indigenous communities.23 An examination of the “life course” of the Maryknoll mission in the western highlands—and the Romanized impulse that brought it into existence and propelled it—reveals a history of engagement whereby the religious lives of missioners and Maya peoples became interwoven. Imbued in Rome’s Eurocentric and sacrament-­based religious identity, Maryknollers set out to remake Maya religion. In particular, they set their eyes on costumbre, the umbrella term used to describe the constantly changing mixture of Christian and indigenous religious beliefs and practices that had developed since colonial times and experienced a revival beginning in the late nineteenth century.24 During the 1940s and 1950s, missioners experienced the “local” through costumbre, thereby finding out that costumbristas, as the followers of costumbre were known, venerated Catholic saints while at the same time observing the ancient Maya calendar. They also discovered that these local indigenous leaders commanded much respect within their respective communities due to their ability to treat common physical ailments and summon divine intervention on behalf of the social and economic life of the community. Convinced that costumbre smacked of “paganism,” Mary­ knollers strived to undermine it, specifically by displacing its followers from sacred spaces (particularly church buildings), reviving old and creating new parish centers, establishing a system of Catholic parish schools, funding a number of social projects (including rural clinics and agricultural and credit cooperatives), and forming Church-­sanctioned lay associations. A symbiotic process of conflict and adaptation characterized the interaction between missioners and Maya parishioners. To be sure, costumbristas opposed sacramentalism, often by forcing missioners out of their communities. Yet a sole focus on costumbrista resistance obscures the complexity of indigenous agency. Much as indigenous people had done since colonial times, during the postwar years Maya religious leaders often deployed what James C. Scott has called the “weapons of the weak,” in the process employing a variety of strategies to adapt to the Maryknoll mission.25 Confronted with an expanding Maya population that defined its religious identity through the lenses of sacramentalism, costumbristas often looked for nonconfrontational strategies as a way to coexist with the Romanized rural Church. It was not uncommon for them to partially (and sometimes fully) adopt Maryknollers’ sacramentalized vision and practices. A degree of accommodation also characterized Maryknoll’s pastoral work. It was not uncommon for missioners to refashion their missionary enterprise to the religious landscape of the

Introduction  11

highlands. Faced with numerous isolated rural Maya communities in which costumbre had long occupied a central religious and social role, they gradually incorporated certain costumbrista rituals into their quotidian religious practices, thus giving rise to a set of religious practices that were invariably shaped by Maya culture. While the Maryknoll mission produced much conflict at the parish level, it also gave way to priest-­parishioner engagement. Clerics and laypeople (including costumbristas) built and inhabited a common religious landscape. Thus, following Reinaldo L. Román’s call to avoid interpretations that “distinguish too sharply” between religious orthodoxy and popular beliefs, this book contends that sacramentalism and costumbre became part of the same cultural fabric.26 Though the mission created spaces for the development of a shared religious culture, it is also true that it provoked profound religious and social divisions among the Maya. Highland indigenous communities were far from homogenous and static. They had been subject to a myriad of outside pressures, which became especially relevant in the late nineteenth century as Liberals established a variety of exploitative labor arrangements designed to provide the export sector with cheap native labor. As a result, Maya men and their families had no other option but to make the yearly trip from their homes to toil on the coffee plantations scattered in and around the highlands.27 This situation meant that the “closed corporate community” that social scientists found among indigenous communities in Mesoamerica was in constant flux.28 Such fluidity accelerated between the 1940s and 1960s, for during these years indigenous towns and villages became increasingly fragmented along social, political, and religious lines. Community divisions developed as a consequence of the continuing predominance of the labor cycle attached to the export sector, the expansion of a multiparty system in the highlands, and the implementation of state-­led development initiatives. They also occurred as a result of long-­standing tensions within Maya communities.29 The expansion of Maryknoll-­sponsored lay religious associations, too, contributed to community fragmentation. The most important of these organizations was rural Catholic Action, a lay Catholic organization of European origin that emerged in the 1930s and that, in the context of the high­ lands, sought to bring about a revival of Catholic culture at the parish level by incorporating indigenous communities into the devotional and sacramental life of the Church. Its army of Maya catechists emerged as a new religious group throughout the highlands in the postwar years. These religious

12  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

instructors became the face of sacramentalism and interlocutors between the institutional Church and the Maya population. In their efforts to convert indigenous people to a sacrament-­driven form of Catholicism, catechists directly challenged the recruiting structure that had long sustained costumbre. This system required male community members of varying ages to contribute their time, labor, and resources to help maintain costumbrista rituals. Through their proselytizing, catechists undermined the old religious hierarchy and, in doing so, created new opportunities for advancement for enterprising Maya men, who often chose to bypass the service expectations intrinsic to costumbre and instead joined Catholic Action. In this way, the creation of the Maryknoll mission, the propagation of sacramentalism, and the expansion of a catechetical program embodied by Catholic Action produced new religious actors who identified themselves with the rituals of the Romanized Church. These divisions mattered in the long term because, as Arturo Arias, Greg Grandin, and others have reminded us, they paved the ground for the emergence of a new generation of social and political leaders among the Maya population.30 The mission, thus, created spaces for engagement while at the same time augmenting the ongoing fragmentation of highland communities. This reality was a harbinger of things to come during Guatemala’s civil war (1960–1996), when state violence shattered the social and political structures and the notions of community and democracy that sustained highland communities.31

RELIGION, DEVELOPMENT, AND SOCIAL REFORM

The resurgence of the Church—including the establishment of a mission territory—and the relationship between missioners and Maya parishioners cannot be dissociated from the ideological and political ethos of the Cold War. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Maryknoll mission and lay indigenous associations such as Catholic Action promoted the development of highlands communities. Cognizant of the socioeconomic realities of the highlands and the changing religious environment, foreign missioners and Maya Catholics surfaced as agents of social reform. As scholars of religion remind us, religious institutions and popular religious traditions have remained intrinsically tied to the formation and evolution of postcolonial societies in Latin America. Drawing on the historiography on religion and modernity in Latin America, this study also conceptualizes religion as a source of reform

Introduction  13

in twentieth-­century Guatemala and thus moves beyond characterizations of religious institutions and the beliefs and practices that support them as mere reflections of politics or economic phenomena.32 It does so by situating the lives of Catholics within the broader ideological context of the Cold War. My work here is informed by recent studies on the Cold War, which have challenged superficial portrayals of Latin Americans as pawns or passive recipients in the East-­West conflict. Taking advantage of both new and old sources, this literature has shed new light on the various ways that Latin Americans played an active role in reworking the ideological and political conflicts of the postwar years.33 Seen from this perspective, Guatemalan Catholics emerge as protagonists who, moved by their own religious and social convictions, acted to shape society in the increasingly polarized world of the 1950s and 1960s. In the aftermath of World War II, the highlands underwent rapid socioeconomic and political alterations. The Guatemalan state advanced an assimilationist ideological project aimed at integrating the Maya into national politics, labor networks, and consumer markets. It did so by promoting a myriad of Western-­inspired developmentalist projects, particularly in the realms of education and agriculture. This was the case during the democratic opening of the Guatemalan October Revolution (1944–1954), when national leaders promoted multiparty politics, funded literacy campaigns, and supported the redistribution of land among landless peasants. With some key modifications, this national project persisted after the U.S.-­backed military coup that led to the downfall of President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. As Stephen M. Streeter and J. T. Way have indicated, the military governments of the post-­1954 period accelerated the pace of developmentalism, this time by channeling U.S. economic assistance as a way to prevent the expansion of communism in the countryside. To this end, these regimes encouraged modernization through the formation of credit and production cooperatives and construction of new road networks. These policies fostered an unprecedented degree of interconnectedness in the highlands.34 The developmentalist policies adopted by Maryknollers in the highlands mirrored state-­sponsored assimilation. Just as they sought to remake Maya religion in the image of a Romanized religious vision, missioners acted as agents of socioeconomic development. Initially intended to weaken costumbre and expand sacramentalism, Maryknoll’s social projects eventually crystallized into a program of development aimed at uplifting “underdeveloped” Maya communities. Several factors, including the life course of the

14  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

mission and subsequently Vatican II, combined to transform the pragmatism of the 1950s into a program of socioeconomic development. As Bruce Calder and Susan Fitzpatrick-­Behrens note, developmentalism became the “dominant paradigm” among Maryknollers and other foreign missioners in the highlands.35 Driven by the spirit of collaboration of the Good Neighbor Policy, the modernization program behind the Alliance for Progress and the anticommunist sentiment of the Cold War, Maryknoll missioners viewed development as a tool to promote agricultural productivity and diversification, integrate Maya communities into expanding regional markets, improve the living standards of rural peoples, and, more broadly, transform indigenous communities in the mold of “modern” or capitalist societies. They established parochial schools, rural clinics, agricultural production initiatives, credit and production cooperatives, and colonization projects. During the 1950s, this social program morphed into an incipient “green revolution” that rested on introduction of new technologies, including fertilizers, pesticides, and an array of agricultural goods. This agricultural revolution, in turn, both hinged on and fostered the formation of local and regional markets.36 I argue that rather than increasing isolation, Maryknoll’s developmentalism contributed to the integration of Maya communities into the socioeconomic landscape nurtured by Cold War anticommunism and capitalist development. One must not assume that Church-­sponsored developmentalism simply represented an extension of the Cold War state and U.S. foreign policy. Certainly, there were moments of Church-­state confluence, as was the case during the late 1950s and the 1960s when missioners relied on foreign funds—including those provided through the Alliance for Progress—and cooperated with Guatemalan government bureaucrats to promote the cooperative and colonization movement in northwestern Guatemala.37 In this sense, Maryknollers and their mission became instruments of U.S. power, for, in establishing cooperative and colonization programs, they became, in the words of Arturo Escobar, part of the “development apparatus” promoted by the United States. Thus, by embracing development and pursuing a policy of cooperation with Guatemalan and U.S. officials, missioners helped advance and reinforce U.S. political and economic hegemony.38 Despite these confluences, there were limits to this relationship. Arguments that portray U.S. missioners who supported development as simple tools of empire should be viewed with caution. While this study does not discount the extent to which Maryknollers and their pastoral work among indigenous communities were tied to U.S. foreign policy objectives

Introduction  15

(particularly in relation to its opposition to communism), it does situate Maryknollers and Guatemalan Catholics within the global and local religious and social milieu in which they lived. For one, Maryknoll’s socioeconomic projects reflected broader transformations within the Guatemalan and the global Church. Drawing on histories that call attention to the quotidian experiences of political, social, and religious actors, I contend that as Maryknollers interacted with Maya parishioners, they came face-­to-­face with the multitude of social and economic ills that plagued these highland communities.39 They encountered a deficient (if not nonexistent) rural educational system, a highly unequal land tenure system, and various forms of institutionalized racism. These conditions kept indigenous people perpetually tied to the ladino and white bosses who controlled the coffee plantation regime and export sector. Shaped by these realities and the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, missioners reworked and in some cases openly questioned the conservative Romanized vision that had inspired them to go the highlands in the first place. Thus, they began to approach their pastoral work among the Maya from a spiritual and social vantage point. Vatican II served to reaffirm, not create, this progressive perspective. It equipped Maryknollers and Catholic Action members with the religious and social language to adapt the gospel of development to their missionary enterprise. Such a shift—or conversion process—led them to advocate for the “common good” of Maya communities. In the process, missioners and laypeople became actors in the formation of a reformist religious and social trajectory that stood as a counterpoint to the Marxist-­inspired insurgency and the military regimes of the 1960s. These conversion experiences by the members of Maryknoll and their lay indigenous allies in the highlands were best captured by a Maryknoller who, in the early 1970s, called on his fellow missioners to strive to “to save men, not only souls.”40 Thus, the Maryknoll mission in particular and the expanding rural Church more generally served as incubators for social transformations at the parish level. Maryknoll-­led religious and social programs created the social conditions for the emergence of a generation of socially conscious community leaders. As developmentalism became a guiding force of the Maryknoll mission, Maya communities became increasingly socially fragmented. Development-­inspired projects, as in the case of Catholic Action, created new opportunities for Maya leaders to become literacy workers, agricultural experts, and activists in the cooperative movement. Their work at the parish level became suffused with the self-­help ideology that in large part drove

16  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

Cold War developmentalism. By the 1960s it was also influenced by the theological shifts brought about by Vatican II. Indigenous leaders sought to equip their fellow parishioners with the tools necessary to solve everyday problems within the parameters of the progressive program of developmentalism. This emerging activist tack turned Maya community leaders, including Catholic Action members, into the shock troops of religious and social change in the highlands. In this way, one of the most salient and unanticipated outcomes of the ascent of papal power, the expansion of the sacrament-­ based Romanized Church, and the formation of Maryknoll’s missionary project was the rise of the progressive Church and a generation of religious and social activists, many of whom would be at the forefront of major social and political movements during the country’s civil war, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.41 This historical trajectory becomes apparent if we consider, in the words of Virginia Garrard-­Burnett, Mark A. Lawrence, and Julio E. Moreno, “the interrelationship between the Cold War as a geopolitical phenomenon and the Cold War as a quotidian experience,” whereby nongovernmental entities, including religious institutions, emerge as actors in their own right.42 This setting engendered the conditions for the expulsion of the four Maryknollers in 1967. These clerics and the laypeople who had joined them in their attempt to establish a revolutionary religious movement had come of age in the midst of an expanding rural Church and a nascent reformist Catho­lic movement. A confluence of religious and social factors—namely, the language of sacramentalism, the ideology of developmentalism, and the spirit of Vatican II—had nurtured this centrist path. By the late 1960s this progressive stance had begun to move in unforeseen and sometimes radical directions. Several factors contributed to this radicalization. The rise of a Marxist-­inspired guerrilla movement and the subsequent expansion of counterinsurgency policies, adopted by Guatemalan military government and funded by the U.S. government, meant that spaces for religious-­inspired reformism began to gradually disappear. The association of activism with radical politics and the generalization of political violence led a small yet significant number of clerics and laypeople to abandon developmentalism and the hierarchical religious culture that sustained the Romanized Church. These Catholics now embraced revolutionary solutions to tackle the problems of political exclusion, social inequality, and racism. Moreover, by the late 1960s it was becoming abundantly clear that the developmentalist project advocated by Maryknollers and other missioners had its limits.

Introduction  17

Conservative sectors, particularly ladino power brokers and landowners who often counted on the support of the military government, resisted the efforts by missioners and Maya reformers to change the social and economic realities of highland society. This convinced many Catholics to abandon the structures of the Church and join outside centrist social movements or to articulate the tenets of a Christian-­inspired armed revolutionary movement. A small number of clerics and lay Catholics chose the latter path in those turbulent days of late December 1967.

A WORD ABOUT SOURCES

The bulk of the archival material I have used in this study can be described as “institutional.” It was produced by Vatican diplomats, Church officials, and missioners. As the reader will notice, Maya (and lay) sources are largely missing from the analysis that follows. Nevertheless, whenever possible and appropriate I have sought to uncover the religious beliefs and practices of indigenous communities by analyzing Church and mission records. I have done so by situating these sources in their proper social, political, and religious contexts, questioning the optimistic accounts often left to us, for example, by Maryknollers and looking for patterns in these documents in order to illuminate the changes experienced by Maya Catholics and their responses to these transformations. In general, I follow Inga Clendinnen’s approach in her study of Maya responses to the Spanish conquest. For her, “the trick is to strip away the cocoon of Spanish interpretation to uncover sequences of Indian actions, and then to try to discern the pattern of those actions, as a way of inferring the shared understanding which sustains them.”43 In this way, although “institutional” voices tend to dominate the narrative in this study, I have used Church and mission records in an effort to reconstruct the “shared” cultural and social world created and occupied by missioners and indigenous communities.

ORGANIZATION, THEMES, AND METHODOLOGY

This study follows a chronological order and employs a transnational methodology. The first section, which encompasses chapters 1 and 2, investigates the political context that allowed for the revitalization of the Catholic Church

18  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

in Guatemala beginning in the early 1920s and examines the rise of a Romanized Church during the 1930s. It relies on previously untapped sources housed in Guatemala and Vatican City, as well as pastoral letters and other Church publications of the 1920s and 1930s. These materials have allowed me to chart the communications and interactions between papal diplomats and the Guatemalan clergy and to spell out the ways in which Church leaders in Guatemala sought to expand sacramentalism and create a Romanized Church. The second section, chapters 3 and 4, delves into the arrival of Maryknoll in Guatemala. It focuses on the resurgent and missionary Church of the 1940s and early 1950s, in the process analyzing the relationship between missioners and Maya parishioners, particularly the adherents of costumbre, and the expansion of rural Catholic Action in the highlands. It taps into a variety of mission records located in United States, particularly parish diaries and official correspondence of Maryknollers who did pastoral work in highland parishes. The last section, chapters 5 and 6, explains the roots and development of the reformist Church among Maya communities during the 1950s and 1960s. It traces the expansion of Church-­sponsored development initiatives, including programs intended to spur agricultural productivity and diversification, expand a regional network of agricultural and credit cooperatives, and form indigenous community leaders. As chapter 6 demonstrates, during the 1960s reformism was nurtured by the language of developmentalism, the spirit of Vatican II, and the lived shared experiences of Maryknoll missioners and Maya Catholics, thus leading to a progressive— or, as a missioner put it, a “revolutionary”—religious and social movement within the Church. These last two chapters primarily rely on Mary­knoll mission records, such as parish diaries, personal papers, and publications. This organization and methodology, therefore, allowed me to provide a detailed narrative about the foundations, expansion, and transformation of the progressive Church in Guatemala.

PART ONE

Foundations

CHAPTER ONE

Papal Power and Church-­State Relations

On the morning of September 7, 1922, police officers surrounded Luis Muñoz y Capurón’s residence in downtown Guatemala City. They presented Muñoz, a Guatemalan Jesuit who had become archbishop in 1921, with a decree issued by President José María Orellana (1922–1926) that ordered him to leave the country. By the end of the day, the national police had escorted Muñoz and at least six other clerics to Puerto San José, a main port on the Pacific coast.1 The archbishop, who would spend the remainder of his life in exile, joined a long line of Church leaders in Guatemala and other Latin American countries who faced exile and lost control over the administrative direction of the Church. Indeed, this episode rekindled memories of a not-­too-­distant past. It brought to the fore Latin America’s long history of Church-­state conflict, which had been tied, almost invariably, to the Liberal-­Conservative divide that engulfed national politics after independence. By the second half of the nineteenth century this ideological and political struggle had given way to a period of anticlerical reform, which, in Guatemala, severely weakened the influence of the institutional Church. Liberal governments confiscated Church property, closed monasteries, expelled foreign clerics, and established the separation of church and state. These reforms opened a long era of institutional decline for the Church and, therefore, undermined its ability to influence urban and rural societies.2 21

22  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

At the same time, the Church’s fragile status, which became all too evident in the aftermath of Muñoz’s exile, presaged the beginning of a new historical era for Guatemalan Catholicism. It exposed, among other things, the growing transnational activism of papal officials in Central America. Beginning in 1922 the Holy See and its representatives in the region played an increasingly important role in organizing and redirecting the mission of the Guatemalan Church. Papal activism took many forms. It involved papal officials appointing clerics to key positions in the Church’s bureaucracy, creating new ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and entering into political negotiations with the Guatemalan state. These actions radically transformed the Church (and Catholic culture) in Guatemala during the remainder of the twentieth century.3 Perhaps paradoxically, Muñoz’s march into exile in September 1922 paved the way for a more visible papal presence. Recently declassified Vatican-­and Guatemalan-­based archival sources provide a transnational vantage point into the growing power of the Holy See in Guatemala. A close reading of these sources reveals the inner workings of the centripetal nature of papal power. It highlights the increasing power of Rome, particularly when it came to the administration of the Church, the deployment of old and new definitions of Catholic practice, and the direction of Church-­state relations. This chapter traces these developments as they unfolded during the interwar period. It argues that Vatican activism, which aimed to create new religious spaces for the Church, resulted in a new era of institutional building, expansion, and stability. It also gave way to an unprecedented period of Church-­state conciliation, not unlike the political agreements reached in Europe during the interwar years.

A RETRENCHED CHURCH

The Guatemalan Church entered the twentieth century in a demoralized state. Since the 1870s Church leaders, constrained by the country’s anti­ clerical legislation, had faced a chronic shortage of clerics and the continuing rele­vance, if not proliferation, of “popular” religious traditions. In particular, cofradías—religious brotherhoods that combined orthodox Catholic and pre-­ Hispanic Maya religious practices—became a central aspect in the daily lives of rural parishioners.4 This was the religious reality faced by Archbishop Ricardo Casanova y Estrada (1886–1913), whose efforts to reorganize the

Papal Power and Church-­State Relations   23

administration of the Church had produced few concrete results. Equally unsuccessful were his attempts to spur a revival of Catholic orthodoxy through the incorporation of the laity into the Church’s religious mission. Under his watch, the Church, lacking an adequate number of pastors and economic resources, entered a period of retrenchment, particularly in the countryside.5 The Dominican friar Julián Riveiro y Jacinto, who succeeded Casanova as archbishop in 1914, came face-­to-­face with the consequences of the Church’s weakness. During his pastoral visits to the countryside he encountered many Guatemalan couples living in “concubinage” and, in his view, living beyond the boundaries of the “moral authority” of the Church.6 In 1920, toward the end of his tenure, Riveiro summarized his view of religiosity among rural Guatemalans in a confidential report to the pope’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri. In his account, the archbishop insisted on the prevalence of “superstitious” religious practices among indigenous communities in the western highlands. The prelate recounted how he had attempted to “extinguish” unorthodox religious practices by administering the Christian sacraments, particularly confession, communion, and holy matrimony. Yet, as Riveiro confessed, the impact of his pastoral work could only go so far without an adequate number of priests. He noted that, as of 1920, only 70 of the 115 parishes in the country had a resident priest, and indicated that the limited resources at the disposal of the diocesan seminary, which between 1914 and 1920 produced only eight clergymen, partly accounted for the scarcity of priests.7

LIBERALISM AS ANTICLERICALISM

Riveiro’s verdict about the institutional weakness of the Church underscored the legacy of anticlericalism in Guatemala. To be sure, Riveiro remained generally silent about the effects of the country’s anticlerical legislation, which impeded the entrance of foreign religious personnel into the country. The archbishop’s silence stemmed from the tentative character of the Church-­ state rapprochement that developed during the regime of Liberal dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898–1920). Although Estrada Cabrera refrained from modifying in significant ways the anticlerical legislation implemented by his predecessors, he actively sought to maintain cordial relations with religious leaders, particularly Riveiro. Not only did the dictator agree to simplify the procedures for contracting civil marriage (a requisite for religious

24  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

matrimony), but, going against anticlerical tradition, he also permitted the celebration of public religious processions.8 These actions set an important precedent for the establishment of harmonious relations between the Church and the state during the late 1930s and thereafter. Given the rapidly changing political climate of the early 1920s, the tenu­ ous rapprochement of the Estrada Cabrera years soon came to an end. A popular saying of his tenure, “Everyone owes the president something,” was not far from reality. In general, Guatemalan Church leaders repeatedly turned a blind eye as Estrada Cabrera built a dictatorial regime based around self-­adulation, violence, and unprecedented control of society. It came as no surprise, therefore, that, when the strongman fell from power in April 1920, Riveiro, as one of those who had become entangled in Estrada Cabrera’s “web of power,” was one of the first political causalities.9 Pressured by public opinion and faced with a divided Church, the archbishop left the country for Rome and presented his resignation to Pope Benedict XV in December of the same year.10 The political events surrounding the fall of Estrada Cabrera revealed a long-­standing debate about the role of the Church in political matters and brought to the fore divisions within the Church hierarchy. This was evident in May 1919, when José Piñol y Batres, a former bishop of Granada, Nicaragua, and a well-­respected Guatemalan cleric, gave a series of politically charged sermons at the church of San Francisco in Guatemala City. From the pulpit, he denounced Estrada Cabrera’s dictatorial methods. Piñol’s combative posture, which contrasted with the public acquiescence shown to the government by Riveiro, became a central component of the political movement that led to Estrada Cabrera’s overthrow.11 Estrada Cabrera’s opponents, brought together by the nascent Unionist Party, spearheaded a period of political reform. The new president, Carlos Herrera (1920–1921), aimed for nothing less, in the words of one historian, than to “install a democracy in a society that had known only dictatorship for many decades.”12 This political opening was significant, for it encouraged Guatemalans, including members of the clergy, to emulate Piñol’s political activism and take an active role in politics. It also exposed a deep-­seated opposition to clerical involvement in political matters. Vatican sources provide a glimpse of a continuing anticlerical climate during these years. Piñol himself faced this reality in 1919, when Estrada Cabrera ordered his arrest and expelled him from the country.13 He spent the rest of his life in exile, away from Guatemala’s anticlerical political context, traveling back and forth between Europe and the Americas and

Papal Power and Church-­State Relations   25

taking residence in Rome, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, New York City, and Washington DC.14 This was the political backdrop that Luis Muñoz encountered when he succeeded Riveiro in 1921. Muñoz’s repeated efforts to allow Riveiro to return to the country met with the opposition of the Herrera government. According to Juan Marenco, who served as internuncio for Central America between 1917 and 1922, the president’s base of political support partly consisted of anticlerical groups who strongly opposed Riveiro’s repatriation. Sensing an anticlerical backlash, Marenco disapproved of Muñoz’s actions and explicitly informed Riveiro that he “was forbidden from setting up residence in his former archdiocese without the express permission of the Holy See.”15 Yet Church officials were determined to reassert their influence in Guatemalan society. It became evident, for instance, that certain members of the clergy still expected the Church to exert some degree of power in the countryside. In February 1921, seven months before Muñoz’s appointment as archbishop, Rafael Álvarez, then acting as apostolic administrator, proposed the revival of a 1912 project that recommended the establishment of a new ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the western highlands.16 As conceived by Álvarez and other religious officials, the plan would allow the Church to reassert its presence in the highlands. Vatican authorities endorsed the creation of the new ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In July, Pope Benedict XV issued Suprema quam gerimus, the papal bull that mandated the creation of the Diocese of Los Altos.17 It was expected that Muñoz, as the incoming archbishop, would be responsible for overseeing the implementation of the papal program. The stage was now set for a greater Church presence in rural Guatemala.18 Given Herrera’s tenuous hold on power, a brewing political crisis in 1921, and continuing anticlerical sentiment among influential political sectors, this and other institutional reforms did not go beyond a set of aspirations. By the end of the year Herrera had failed to consolidate his presidency. For one, core members of the Unionist Party grew increasingly critical of the president’s apparent willingness to perpetuate the history of dictatorship by appointing pro–Estrada Cabrera elements to key governmental posts. As 1921 came to an end, Herrera faced Liberal pressure to establish what, in practical terms, amounted to a dictatorial regime, one in the mold of the Estrada Cabrera regime, whereby the president would rule as a de facto leader. Herrera’s lack of action in either direction convinced leading members of the Guatemalan mili­tary to intervene. In December 1921 the Liberal-­minded General José María Orellana led a coup d’état that forced Herrera out of power.19

26  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

The emergence of Orellana as a political player marked a return to the strong-­handed Liberal politics of the previous decades. A native of El Jícaro, El Progreso, he had served in Estrada Cabrera’s cabinet as both secretary of education and chief of staff. During this period Orellana gained a reputation as an efficient administrator who, in the words of an American official, was “intensely loyal to his chief.”20 Officially elected as Guatemalan president in February 1922, Orellana entered the history books as the politician responsible for the modernization of the nation’s financial system. His administration oversaw the creation of a national currency, the quetzal, and the creation of a state-­owned bank, the Banco de Guatemala (Bank of Guatemala). But his administration, largely composed of Liberal politicians, also gained notoriety for its favorable policy toward U.S. economic interests. Unlike his predecessor, Orellana supported the sale of the state-­owned Empresa Eléctrica (Electric Company) to the U.S.-­based Electric Bond and Share Company, a subsidiary of General Electric.21 These actions revived memories of the Estrada Cabrera regime, which, on the whole, had proven more than amicable toward U.S. interests.

REBELLIOUS PRIESTS

Orellana’s policies vis-­à-­vis foreign investors created much resentment among nationalist groups, in the process perpetuating the political instability of the late 1910s. Of particular significance was the reaction among members of the clergy, who interpreted the privatization of the Empresa Eléctrica as a sign of the continuing entrenchment of U.S. power in the economy. The U.S. chargé d’affaires, Richard Gate, confirmed the clerical militancy of 1922 when he noted that numerous priests had taken to the pulpit to preach against congressional approval of a new electric bill that would give Electric Bond and Share Company control of Empresa Eléctrica. In Gate’s words, these clerics were telling their parishioners that passage of the bill would allow foreign interests to “own all the water in Guatemala and that they will have to pay exorbitant sums of money to [Electric Bond and Share Company] even for the privilege of taking water out their own brooks and wells.” Other reports indicated that the Church, along with the Conservative Party, had been financing a campaign of intimidation against Liberal politicians in congress in an effort to dissuade them from voting in favor of the proposed law.22 This clerical intervention in political matters was only a sign of things to come. In the spring of 1922, Conservative and proclerical groups began to

Papal Power and Church-­State Relations   27

mobilize against what they perceived as the return of Liberal dictatorship and the “Government of Masons.” Disturbed by Orellana’s strong-­arm tactics, these groups called on Catholic women to take to the streets in an attempt to form “a wall of invincible steel, in order protect our sons, our brothers and husbands, against the blows, tortures, oppressions, outrages, unjust imprisonments and all the martyrdom that the Liberal Party of Guatemala has always committed against defenseless citizens.” A group of Catholic women subsequently formed the Liga de la Mujer Católica para la Defensa de Cristo (League of Catholic Women for the Defense of Christ), which sponsored a few demonstrations, started their own periodical, La Verdad, and even petitioned the U.S. legation in Guatemala to use its influence to prevent the Orellana government from committing any more “atrocities.” Orellana was not impervious to these developments. He issued a public statement in which he asked whether Muñoz might be “the patron of such a work, which brings intranquility [sic] to the hearts.”23 Muñoz may not have been the mastermind of the unrest of the spring of 1922, but subsequent events demonstrated his willingness to insert the Church into the thick of national politics. The archbishop’s own actions in the late summer revealed a measure of recalcitrance, a degree of political miscalculation, and a decision to challenge anticlericalism. In August 1922 he visited the municipality of Palencia, located approximately twelve miles southwest of Guatemala City, shortly before an antigovernment revolt broke out in that locality. Liberal publications such as El Imparcial interpreted his visit, coupled with reports that one of the alleged architects of the revolt, José Miguel Leal, was the president of the Confederación Católica Latinoamericana (Latin American Catholic Confederation), as one more instance of the Church’s “meddling in politics.” In a similar fashion, the liberal press accused Muñoz of using lay Catholic groups, including the Liga de la Mujer Católica, as political fronts to conspire against the government.24 Muñoz’s defiance of anticlerical tradition added credence to these accusations. Probably seeking to regain the public spaces the Church had lost in the 1870s, the prelate encouraged priests to wear cassocks in public, thus contributing to the debate about the public role of the Church. He found justification for doing so in the recently drafted constitution of the Federal Republic of Central America, which had remained silent on the issue.25 The proposed constitution was also silent about religious processions. Several parish priests took this to heart, for they began to celebrate public processions without the approval of the jefes políticos, the regional political commanders who, in representation of the chief executive, had traditionally approved—or

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disapproved—all public religious events.26 Perhaps more significant was the archbishop’s refusal to restrain the activities of clerics who, in the view of the government, had been responsible for inciting rebellion in a number of towns, including San Lucas Sacatepéquez, San Bartolomé Milpas Altas, Taxisco, Chiquimulilla, and San José Pinula, in the central and southern part of the country. A Church inquiry on these accusations did little to appease the anticlerical elements in the Orellana government. It concluded that there had been no political action on the part of the accused priests.27 As the summer of 1922 unfolded, Muñoz’s uncompromising attitude and decision to bypass anticlerical legislation became fixed in the minds of diverse groups. Certainly, Liberals interpreted his position as a breach of the country’s anticlerical system and an affront to the authority of President Orellana. Vatican officials put forward a similar critique of the archbishop. In 1921 the Holy See had viewed Muñoz as the ideal candidate who could harmonize relations with Liberal political groups as a way to bring about a relaxation of the country’s anticlerical system. The following year, however, papal officials concluded that he had in fact pushed aside the conciliatory stance taken by his two predecessors, Casanova and Riveiro. This interpretation permeated a Vatican report composed at the Internunciature of Central America (located in San José, Costa Rica), which indicated that throughout 1922 Muñoz had become increasingly secluded in the archbishopric palace, thus emerging as an opponent of the Orellana administration. This political stance was reinforced by his interactions with leading Conservative figures, including Manuel Cobos Batres, a vocal opponent of Orellana’s decision to privatize the Empresa Eléctrica, and Cobos Batres’s sister, María Cobos de Arzú, described in a Vatican report as “a political hothead.”28 It was well known in the country that the Cobos Batres family had actively participated in the organization of La Liga de la Mujer Católica, the women’s organization that had taken to the streets in the spring of 1920 to denounce the “atrocities” of the Orellana government.29 The stage was set for confrontation. Orellana contributed to the breakdown of Church-­state relations when, in May 1922, he responded to clerical activism by instructing his consulates to deny visas to foreign priests wanting to enter the country. For Muñoz and other clerics, the government’s action formed part of a “silent but effective persecution” of the Church. This “persecution,” the Guatemalan prelate concluded, harked back to the anticlerical movement of the late nineteenth century and was taking place at the very same time that the government was giving Protestant missionaries its

Papal Power and Church-­State Relations   29

unconditional support in carrying out missionary work in the country.30 From his exile, Piñol added fuel to the fire by arguing that Orellana’s rise to power epitomized the triumph of “liberal anticlericalism.”31 The Church-­state conflict of 1922 took place against the background of a broader political crisis that engulfed the country that same year. In August, Orellana faced increasing nationalist opposition to his economic policies. During a two-­week period, several uprisings threatened to bring down his administration. Orellana responded by declaring martial law, canceling constitutional guarantees and imprisoning the rebels. His agents were reported to have shot two hundred individuals.32 The government declared the departments of Guatemala, Escuintla, Chimaltenango, Sacatepéquez, and Santa Rosa “on the brink of war.”33 In a last-­minute attempt to contain “the gravest crisis of his administration” and to mollify the Conservative and proclerical opposition, the minister of the interior, Alvarado Tello, asked Muñoz for his public endorsement of Orellana in exchange for the government’s promise to respect freedom of religion. Church leaders questioned Orellana’s intentions. They concluded that Tello’s overture was intended not “to establish cordial relations with the Church, but rather to use its prestige to secure [Orellana’s] vacillating position in power.” Had Orellana been sincere, they pointed out, he would have taken concrete steps to undo or at least relax Guatemala’s anticlerical legislation, which prevented the Church from owning property, maintaining religious orders, and having a role in the educational system.34 Orellana and his Liberal coalition responded swiftly to these demands. On September 6, 1922, the president issued Decree 798. This order marked a watershed in the modern history of Church-­state relations in Guatemala. Citing the activities of “rebellious” priests who aimed to incite sedition and rebellion against established civil authorities, as well as Muñoz’s tolerance of these actions, the president ordered the expulsion of the prelate. On the morning of September 7, police officers escorted Muñoz out of the archbishopric palace and transported him to Puerto San José on the Pacific coast.35 The government also expelled at least six more priests, including future archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano.36 The government decree had repercussions at the parish level because it forbade clerics who were considered “rebellious” from working in their respective parishes.37 In some cases this led to the arrest of priests; such was the case of Juan Lemus, who was removed from his parish in the town of Cuilapa in eastern Guatemala, required to appear in the offices of the Ministerio

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de Gobernación (Ministry of the Interior) and then sent to prison for three months on charges of sedition.38 Antonio Bengoechea, the parish priest of Palencia, also felt the weight of Decree 798. According to government officials, he had been an active participant in the anti-­Orellana revolt of August 1922. Vicar General Rafael Álvarez, who had become de facto head of the Church in the absence of Muñoz, soon came under pressure by Orellana to discipline Bengoechea. Despite resistance by a number of clerics, Álvarez eventually acquiesced to the government’s demands. He removed the “rebellious” cleric from Palencia and transferred him to the municipality of Sum­ pango, located approximately thirty miles west of Guatemala City.39 Orellana’s anticlerical policy produced divergent interpretations among Church officials regarding the role of the Church in society. Writing from exile in El Salvador, Muñoz argued that his expulsion stemmed from a Liberal plot intended to portray clerics as the enemies of the government and, ultimately, to destroy the Church. “I have well-­founded reasons to believe,” the exiled prelate wrote referring to the revolts of August 1922, “that they were provoked by [the government] with the intent of blaming the clergy and even the archbishop for whatever happened.”40 This was the same position taken by Piñol, who, from his exile in Washington DC, argued that “the very same anticlerical Liberal movement of 1871 has triumphed in Guatemala.” The leaders of the movements certainly were different, but, he added, “the principles, the practices, [and] the system are the same ones.”41 Vatican representatives put forward an alternative interpretation, one that closely mirrored the government’s version of events. Just like Orellana, a papal report of the mid-­1920s blamed priests for transgressing the boundary between the spiritual and political spheres. It further noted that Orellana’s Liberal administration could not be expected to tolerate the “great indiscretions committed by irresponsible priests who became entangled in political matters.”42 Guatemalan clerics, in this view, were partly responsible for the crisis of 1922 because they sought to turn the Church into a political actor, thus challenging anticlerical tradition and further contributing to the Church’s institutional weakness.

UNORTHODOX WAYS

Rome’s intervention—and its interpretation of Decree 798 and its aftermath— underscored the gradual crystallization of a Vatican-­inspired definition of

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religious practice. Vatican sources provide a rich source for understanding Rome’s perceptions of Latin American Catholicism and comprehending papal actions in Guatemala during and after the 1920s. They show that Vatican officials envisioned an apolitical Church whose members (clerics and laypeople alike) would accommodate and, if possible, negotiate with the state, rather than challenging its monopoly over politics, and devote themselves to the re-­Christianization of society. They deployed a Eurocentric and a hierarchical form of Catholicism that emphasized obedience and discipline among Guatemalan clerics and lay participation in the sacraments of baptism, first communion, matrimony, confession, and communion. Vatican officials projected their vision of Catholicism onto the population. Urban workers, who might appear as a “very Catholic” group to the casual observer, had only a vague notion of the significance of Catholic teachings. For one, urban Guatemalans had grown up in an increasingly secular society in which the state and its anticlerical system had superseded the influence of the Catholic Church. For many couples, the sacrament of matrimony remained a foreign concept. Concubinage was a common practice. This had to do as much with the lack of religious instruction as with the country’s anticlerical system, which required couples to pay a fee to contract civil marriage (a prerequisite for holy matrimony).43 This context had paved the way for the gradual emergence and expansion of radical political ideologies. Revolutionary Mexico had given much impetus to these developments, for its “apostles of socialism” had inspired the formation of the Communist Party of Guatemala in 1922. In this light, urban Guatemalans were largely unfamiliar with Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which represented an attempt by the Church to remain relevant among rapidly expanding urban (and working-­class) populations. It epitomized the Holy See’s effort to engage with modernity.44 The Vatican’s analysis of rural Catholicism was even more candid. Papal religious discourse portrayed the indigenous Maya population of the western highlands as pious but far removed from a sacrament-­based form of Catholicism. This critique was not new, for the missioners of the colonial period had often relied on similar narratives to justify their evangelizing efforts.45 Such a depiction of Maya religiosity constituted a response not to secularism and communism, but to the system of indigenous beliefs and practices that, as already mentioned, experienced a revival in the aftermath of the anticlerical reforms of the 1870s. The costumbre system depended on a network of shamans, or chimanes. These religious specialists were responsible, among

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other duties, for blessing the yearly crop and summoning divine intervention on behalf of the physical well-­being of Maya communities; in the process, they practiced a religion largely autonomous from the authority of Catholic priests.46 Moreover, indigenous people were devout supporters of the cofradías, religious brotherhoods whose members venerated and cared for Catholic saints. In the view of papal officials, the activities of many co­ fra­días often led not to active participation in the sacramental life of the Church, but rather to a variety of unorthodox religious practices. Cofradía members often consumed large quantities of alcohol and tolerated marimba music and dancing outside church buildings. In other cases, the indigenous-­ controlled cofradías completely deviated from their original mission, as in the case of a cofradía in the highlands that revered a Judas-­like figure that smacked of heterodoxy. This religious setting meant that the Maya population was “very religious, but with many superstitious practices.”47 These instances of religious deviancy were not limited to urban and rural lay Catholics. Indeed, in the view of Vatican officials, Guatemalan clerics were just as culpable for failing to adhere to a Romanized Catholic vision. Vatican correspondence reveals a deeply fractured clergy. This division dated back to the government’s expulsion of Archbishop Casanova in 1887. The vacuum left by Casanova created a split between clerics who favored Casanova’s return and the resumption of his administrative duties and clerics who preferred the appointment of a new archbishop.48 In subsequent years, the gulf between Casanova’s backers and his opponents resulted in a divisive pattern whereby those who did not belong to the governing group were excluded from key positions of power in the ecclesiastical administration. Church leaders had failed to resolve this power struggle, which only worsened after Muñoz’s expulsion. From the perspective of the papal officials who visited the country during this period, lack of unity among the clergy “posed fatal consequences, since clergymen spent their time speaking ill of other priests in front of laypeople and thus dividing the Catholic population.”49 Division had given way to the “low moral state” of the clergy. Vatican representatives often lamented that native and foreign priests had used their positions of authority in their respective parishes to make a profit by charging prohibitive fees for the celebration of the sacraments, including holy matrimony. In many cases, too, these pastors did not respect the authority of Church authorities, as occurred with a Spanish priest who had moved to the highlands fleeing the Cristero War in Mexico and “was exploiting the faith of the poor Indians with insatiable amounts of money.” Even more distressing were the

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reported cases of priests in the countryside who had broken the vow of celibacy, established amorous relationships, and even procreated children.50

ASCENDANCY OF PAPAL POWER

This appraisal of Catholic practice served as a justification for the ascendancy of papal power. During the 1920s and 1930s the Holy See, through its network of transnational diplomats in Central America, projected a Romanized vision of Catholicism and expanded its power over the administrative and religious life of the Guatemalan Church. The Vatican’s presence during the 1930s harked back to the second half of the nineteenth century, when the Holy See progressively extended its influence over national churches. This expansion of papal power, enshrined with the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility during the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), gave the pope the ability to directly shape the global Church. In Latin America, a more visible Vatican presence resulted, first, in the formation of a new vanguard of clerics and, second, in the arrival of hundreds of missionaries from Europe and the United States. Trained in the mold of a Romanized vision of Catholicism, these new religious actors were to play a central role in the daily life of the Latin American Church.51 Guatemala was no exception to this global trend. Papal officials who visited the country during the first decades of the twentieth century sought to create a unified, disciplined, and dedicated army of clerics who would guide Guatemalans toward the path of a sacrament-­based Catholicism. To do so, they promoted the revival of the almost-­defunct diocesan seminary as a way to train future generations of native priests, while at the same time advocating for the immigration of European and American clerics. This second strategy underscored the scarcity of clerics before and after the departure of Archbishop Muñoz. By the Holy See’s own estimate, as of 1925 there were approximately ninety-­four priests in the country, fifty-­four of whom were Guatemalan, twenty-­four Spanish, five Mexican, four French, two Dutch, one Salvadoran, one Nicaraguan, and one a German who possessed U.S. citizenship.52 Another Vatican estimate, this one from 1926, produced a smaller total: 80 priests for a population of 2,300,000.53 These national estimates obscured a more prescient reality about the Church’s retrenchment: the priest-­parishioner ratio was even smaller in remote rural parishes. One historian estimated that, as late as 1944, there were only 2 priests for every 176,000 inhabitants in the

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department of Huehuetenango, a mostly rural region with a predominant Maya population located in the western highlands.54 During the 1920s the Vatican projected its influence through its corps of papal envoys. These emissaries formed part of an expanding network of career diplomats linking the Roman bureaucracy and Guatemala. One of these representatives, Claudio Volio y Jiménez, Bishop of Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras, arrived in Guatemala in 1924 as a papal apostolic delegate.55 During his three-­month stay, Volio visited a number of parishes in the departments of Escuintla and Guatemala and, in a move embedded in much political meaning, met with President Orellana. Although this meeting did not produce immediate political results (Muñoz remained in exile), it demonstrated Rome’s efforts to maintain ties with the Guatemalan government.56 The visit of a second papal delegate, Jorge José Caruana, further highlighted the centripetal nature of papal power. Born in Malta, Caruana began his ecclesiastical career as a parish priest in Brooklyn, New York. In 1921, at the age of thirty-­nine, he became Bishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and in January 1925 he arrived as a papal representative in revolutionary Mexico. Caruana’s stay in Mexico was short-­lived, as he became entangled in the anticlerical climate during the Plutarco Elías Calles presidency. Despite Caruana’s brief apostolic mission in Mexico, by the late 1920s he was well regarded in papal circles.57 During his stay in Guatemala from 1927 to 1928, Caruana, like his predecessors, projected a Romanized vision of Catholicism. In a report he authored after his visit, the papal delegate noted that Guatemalans’ religiosity did not extend beyond “a close adherence to the external aspects of religion.” 58 Caruana was equally blunt when it came to a group of Guatemalan priests, whom he reproached for their “low moral state,” their propensity to charge exorbitant fees for the celebration of the sacraments, and their disregard for the authority of their superiors. These clerics, he concluded, deviated from the hierarchical and sacrament-­driven vision of Catholicism espoused by the Church of Rome.59 Caruana’s mission took place against the background of continuing anticlericalism. In 1926 President Orellana, who had decided to run for a second presidential term, suddenly died of a heart attack. His last months in office had been marked by intense political conflict. Faced with growing opposition to his candidacy, Orellana had expelled leading Conservative activists, including Manuel Cobos Batres, and politically active clerics. On May 29, 1926, he had issued Decree 917, which prohibited members of any religious order from entering the country and banned foreign priests from the country. These clergymen, the decree pointed out, “had persisted in carrying

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out an insidious campaign and in encouraging their parishioners to rebel against the established authorities, in the process drifting away from the spiritual mission to which they were entrusted.” When the dust settled, all religious orders except the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul had been banished. Caruana did not overlook the broader implications of this decree, for he knew well that under the current regime the exiled Muñoz would not be allowed to return to Guatemala.60 Orellana’s successor, General Lázaro Chacón, represented continuity with nineteenth-­century Liberalism, but, like Herrera, he departed from his predecessor’s authoritarian tactics. During his presidential campaign he promised to promote the material development of the country through increased agricultural production, roadbuilding, greater access to credit for farmers, improved health and educational services, and tax reform. Once in office, in 1927 Chacón pushed forward a constitutional reform program that restrained the powers of the executive and gave the national legislature a greater say in the overall political life of the country. These reforms served to encourage much political activity, which, in the words of one historian, “enabled Chacón’s opponents to attack his government with impunity and contributed to the nation’s political instability” during the late 1920s.61 At the same time, this political opening gave way to a gradual “softening” of anticlericalism. Chacón, Caruana soon realized, was a different kind of Liberal. For one, he deviated from the uncompromising anticlerical position taken by his predecessor. The inspector general of the Vincentian Fathers in Central America, Luis Durou y Sure, confirmed this assessment when he reported to the Vatican that “until now it seems that the president-­ elect will not take the [anticlerical] measures that we witnessed in the past.” Durou, a native of France, proved accurate in his observation, for in December 1926 Chacón issued Decree 936, which annulled Decree 917.62 This opened the possibility of the return of Archbishop Muñoz. The prelate, however, did not live to witness this changing climate, for he died in exile in Colombia on January 24, 1927.63 Still, Chacón’s presidency marked a turning point, for it gave Vatican representatives space to prescribe and set in motion reforms that would have long-­lasting effects for the Guatemalan Church. In this light, Caruana’s mission went beyond an analysis of Guatemalans’ religiosity. After Muñoz’s death, the apostolic delegate undertook the task of finding a new archbishop who would be responsible for leading a new generation of disciplined and apolitical clerics. Caruana and other officials had once viewed the former bishop of Granada, Piñol, as a formidable and legitimate candidate. Although his opposition to Estrada Cabrera had led to

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his expulsion from the country in 1919, he had emerged as the possible successor to Riveiro in 1922.64 Now, in 1926, Piñol’s name resurfaced as a candidate for the archbishopric see. Indeed, it was public knowledge that President Orellana had once supported his nomination and that many Guatemalan clerics strongly supported his candidacy.65 Rome’s religious vision, however, did not benefit Piñol. Caruana in particular disliked Piñol’s propensity to become entangled in political affairs. After all, Piñol had used the pulpit to preach politics in 1919. He had been, moreover, a personal favorite of President Orellana, and, in the apostolic delegate’s view, this could turn into a political liability in light of the recent anticlerical past.66 A leader who could navigate the labyrinth of national politics without supporting—or actively opposing—any particular political regime would better serve the Church. It was no surprise, then, that Caruana questioned Piñol’s ability to maneuver through Guatemala’s ever-­changing political context. In the papal delegate’s view, the bishop “lacked the prudence to lead the ecclesiastical government and this could provoke great difficulties” for the Church.67 As 1928 progressed, Caruana and the Vatican bureaucracy set their sights on a less controversial figure. Pope Pius XI did not have to look too far for a new archbishop. In August 1928 the Holy See named Durou as Guatemalan archbishop. The French priest’s background conformed to Rome’s apolitical vision. During his term as the inspector general of the Vincentian Fathers, his reports to Vatican officials had epitomized the “prudence” in religious affairs that Caruana and other papal officials much appreciated.68 Equally significant was a Roman-­inspired restructuring of the Church’s organization. This became evident in the aftermath of Durou’s appointment. In August Pius XI revived and ordered the implementation of the 1921 papal bull Suprema quam gerimus, mandating the creation of the Diocese of Los Altos in the highlands. On the surface, the bull represented an attempt to decentralize the administration of the Church, for it limited Durou’s ability (and that of his successors) to influence the religious direction of the rural Church. The archbishop, after all, would now have to contend with a new ecclesiastical layer in the western highlands, led by the newly appointed bishop, Jorge García y Caballeros. At the same time, Suprema quam gerimus gave the Vatican greater influence in the Guatemalan countryside. It allowed papal officials to communicate directly with García and the clergy in Los Altos. As will be discussed in chapter 3, it also gave them the power to influence in concrete ways the ebb and flow of parish life and to advance a Romanized vision of Catholic belief and practice among the Maya population.69

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CHURCH-­S TATE CONVERGENCE

The centralization of papal power transcended religious or ecclesiastical matters. Indeed, Rome’s project was both religious and political in nature. Through its representatives in Central America, the Vatican not only exerted influence over the religious and administrative direction of the Guatemalan Church, but also spearheaded a new era of Church-­state conciliation. During the 1930s this activist policy gave birth to an apolitical Church, namely a religious institution whose pastors, generally speaking, avoided political activism and direct confrontation with government authorities and instead adopted a posture of engagement and even cooperation with the Guatemalan state. This shift epitomized a continuation of the political rapprochement that first surfaced during the Chacón presidency and, more broadly, represented an extension of the political entente reached between the Vatican and European governments during the interwar period.70 Church-­state conciliation required a propitious political climate. In Chacón’s successor, Jorge Ubico, Vatican officials found a cooperative politician. Ubico, a general who ruled the country from 1931 to 1944, personified the Latin American dictator of the interwar years.71 He expanded his political power in the countryside through a newly instituted network of intendentes, regional political bosses whose positions depended on the approval of the strongman himself. This bureaucracy replaced the old system of elected mayors and therefore represented a return to the autocratic policies of the Estrada Cabrera years. In the economic realm, too, a degree of heavy-­handedness became the norm. Like his Liberal predecessors, Ubico promoted the capitalist development of the economy. As coffee prices plummeted in the early 1930s, Ubico sought to bring stability to the Guatemalan economy by implementing a public works program, cutting government expenditures, and promoting foreign investment. His economic policies came at a heavy price: Ubico’s public works policies greatly depended on unpaid and forced labor and his efforts to attract foreign investment led to the definite entrenchment of U.S. economic interests, particularly the Boston-­based United Fruit Company. The country’s landowning class also benefited from Ubico’s rise to power, for he enforced of a series of vagrancy laws aimed at providing coffee growers with a steady supply of indigenous laborers.72 In doing so, Ubico effectively centralized political and economic power. Vatican officials felt assured by these developments. First, they appreciated Ubico’s anticommunism. During the early 1930s the Ubico government

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obliterated the small Communist Party and repressed suspected leftists. Some were tortured while others, like the young Honduran communist Juan Pablo Wainwright, were executed.73 Significantly, papal representatives viewed Ubico’s anticommunist position as a counterweight to the revolutionary ideas and policies of neighboring Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s.74 If they had any qualms about Ubico’s dictatorial approach, Vatican officials remained silent and even complicit. Indeed, they endorsed Ubico’s “strong hand, [which was] decisively opposed to any communist tendencies and certainly not sympathetic to the system of the current government of Mexico.”75 The strongman’s “soft” anticlericalism further contributed to the emerging Church-­state convergence of the 1930s. Although a Liberal by formation, Ubico’s public attitude toward the Church reflected a degree of ambiguity and a desire to gain the political support of religious leaders. Reportedly, he always kept roses and candles in front of an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in his Guatemala City residence. Similarly, when he visited the pilgrimage site at the church of the Black Christ of Esquipulas in eastern Guatemala, he stood silently at the door of the temple, presumably as a sign of his respect for the Church.76 Moreover, Pius XI’s representatives did not overlook the composition of Ubico’s first cabinet. They pointed to the appointment of Carlos Salazar—in their view, a “sincere Catholic by conviction and tradition”—as the new minister of foreign relations as evidence of a changing political climate. As one papal diplomat put it, Salazar’s selection constituted “new proof of [Ubico’s] . . . willingness to put an end to the long-­standing tradition of anticlericalism.”77 Last but not least, the Vatican did not ignore when, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Ubico administration began to gradually soften the edges of the anticlerical apparatus by easing certain anticlerical restrictions, particularly those that prevented the immigration of foreign clerics.78 This new political context permitted papal officials to bring about a new era of Church-­state conciliation. The Holy See’s diplomatic corps emerged as new religious/political actors in the intricate relationship between Church and state. When two papal diplomats visited Guatemala in the early 1930s—José Fietta in 1930 and Carlos Chiarlo in 1932—both had in mind the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Guatemala and the normalization of Church-­state relations. These diplomatic visits allowed the Vatican to gather firsthand information about and shape local religiosity and politics.79 Alberto Levame, the papal internuncio for Central America, played a key role in bringing about a new political arrangement. Levame, who first visited Guatemala in the summer of 1935, proved more

Papal Power and Church-­State Relations   39

than willing to negotiate with the state. In July, hoping to pave the way for the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Guatemala, he arranged a meeting with Ubico. Levame’s meeting with the Guatemalan dictator underscores the inner workings of the Church-­state convergence of the 1930s and 1940s. We can now examine their meeting due to the availability of Vatican sources, which provide a window into Ubico’s position and intentions. In June the strongman, in a contravention of the constitution’s no-­reelection clause, muscled his way into a second presidential term. He became determined to consolidate his position in power not only by perfecting the tools of political repression, but also by establishing alliances with the U.S. government and key sectors in the country.80 His meeting with Levame in the summer of 1935, therefore, must be understood as an attempt to further expand his political power and to gain the political backing of what he, like Pius XI, envisioned as an apolitical Church. This explains his election of Salazar, a Catholic, as minister of foreign relations, his support for the revival of the national seminary in Guatemala City, and, as one papal report indicated, “his desire to establish diplomatic relations with the Holy See.”81 Levame was encouraged by Ubico’s anticommunism and mild anti­ clericalism, as well as his willingness to engage papal representatives. The internuncio’s initial apprehension about the potential political repercussions of such a pact seems to have vanished by the mid-­1930s. Initially, he had feared that a Church-­state rapprochement might rekindle the anticlerical policies of the past, especially in light of the upcoming celebrations for the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Justo Rufino Barrios, the main architect of the anticlerical movement of the late nineteenth century. But Levame left the meeting feeling encouraged by Ubico’s consolidation of power and convinced that the civil authorities favored conciliation, not conflict, with the Church. He concluded that a new era of Church-­state relations in Guatemala was within sight.82 The papal representative correctly read the changing political landscape. In March 1936, the Diario de Centro América, the state’s official newspaper, announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Guatemala. Moreover, it reported that President Ubico had received Levame as the Holy See’s first apostolic nuncio, or representative, in Guatemala.83 The 1935 meeting, therefore, had paved the way for the establishment of a Church-­state rapprochement. It marked the beginning of a new politi­ cal modus vivendi that would guide the course of Church-­state relations during subsequent decades. Equally important, the 1936 agreement allowed

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Levame and other papal officials to pursue a more activist policy, create new spaces for Guatemalan Catholicism, and expand their Romanized and apolitical vision.

CONCLUSION

As Levame settled in his position as Rome’s first nuncio in Guatemala, he began to lay the foundations for a revitalized Church. His diplomatic and religious mission during the 1930s was informed by the Church-­state political crisis of the 1920s and the institutional weakness of the Church, particularly the scarcity of clerics in the country. The apolitical and sacrament-­driven form of Catholicism espoused by other Vatican officials during the interwar period guided his tenure in Guatemala. His actions epitomized Pius XI’s policy of engagement with modern society. In the process, the nuncio emerged as a crucial link between Pius XI and the Guatemalan Church. Levame’s actions and those of other representatives during this period signified the crystallization of a transnational nexus that linked Guatemalan Catholicism to Rome in increasingly palpable ways. As I have argued in this chapter, this more visible papal presence in Guatemala brought to light the centralization of papal power. An analysis of previously unexplored Vatican and other Church sources reveals that Levame and other officials acted as transnational religious and political actors who, taking advantage of the Church’s retrenched status, sought to reassert the pope’s doctrinal presence, define the meaning of religious orthodoxy, and promote Church-­state conciliation. We now turn to the consequences of the ascendancy of papal power.

CHAPTER TWO

The Romanized Church

In September 1937, the Jesuit Giuseppe Bearzotti arrived in Guatemala City. Bearzotti, who was given the task of forming a new generation of Guatema­ lan clerics in the national seminary, was the first of a small yet significant contingent of Jesuits and other foreign clerics who arrived in Guatemala during the following years.1 Church authorities expected Bearzotti and the other members of the Society of Jesus to “appear well disposed to the spiri­ tual and scientific formation of the seminary.” They expected them, in other words, to stay away from political matters and devote themselves to the spiri­ tual renovation of the country. By training future priests, the Jesuits would act as pillars of the country’s “Catholic regeneration.”2 Bearzotti’s arrival was momentous for several reasons. For one, the Jesu­ its had a troubled history in Guatemala and other Latin American countries. During the national period, they had been expelled from Guatemala in 1871 and again in 1926. In 1922 the Orellana government had sent Archbishop Muñoz, a Jesuit, into exile. In this light, the return of the Jesuits signified the “softening” of anticlericalism inaugurated by the administrations of Lázaro Chacón and Jorge Ubico. The return of the Jesuits was also significant be­ cause it served as a prelude to the emergence of an increasingly Romanized Guatemalan Church. Bearzotti was followed not only by other Jesuits, but also by an increasingly diverse generation of clerics and missionaries from Europe and the United States. Over the next decades, these religious personnel radically transformed the face and structures of the local Church. 41

42  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

This chapter relies on archival documentation housed in Vatican City and Guatemala City to uncover the roots of this Romanized Church. It con­ tends that, as a Church-​​state rapprochement coalesced around the mid-​ 1930s, Vatican representatives actively sought to bring about a Catholic re­ vival. They envisioned a Church whose pastors would restore sacramentalism as a central component in the life of the Church. During the 1930s and early 1940s, this sacramental movement became reality in two ways. On the one hand, Church leaders pursued an inward-​looking—what might be called a “nationalist”—strategy by reforming the unorthodox ways of the national clergy and promoting the formation of a new cadre of native pastors and lay Catholic leaders who would seek conciliation with the state rather than con­ testing its monopoly over politics. This chapter examines the administration of Archbishop Luis Durou y Sure, paying particular attention to his efforts to mobilize the laity through the formation of various Church-​sanctioned asso­ ciations and to advance a program of clerical reform. On the other hand, leaders followed an outward-​looking approach by supporting the immigra­ tion of foreign clerics. Bearzotti and those who followed him formed part of this transnational movement, which was dependent, ideologically and insti­ tutionally, on the Church of Rome and the immigration of foreign clerics. Although seemingly contradictory, these two strategies gradually melded into a unified policy intended to create an apolitical and sacrament-​driven Church in the image of the Romanized global vision advocated by Pius XI, Vatican representatives in Central America, and religious authorities in Gua­ temala. I contend that these developments epitomized the consolidation of papal power.

THE FRENCH PRIEST’S VISION

Durou, who became archbishop of Guatemala in 1928, exemplified the growing influence of Rome. Born in 1870 in Sainte-​Sabine, in the depart­ ment of Dordogne in southwestern France, Durou entered the priesthood in 1895. Six years later, he joined Congregation of the Mission of Saint Vincent de Paul, also known as the Vincentian Fathers. In 1912, after nine years of missionary work in Popayán, Colombia, Durou rose as the inspector general of the Vincentian Fathers in Central America and the spiritual director of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Guatemala. His pastoral activities were largely limited to Guatemala City, where he became chaplain

FIGURE 1.  Luis Durou y Sure in 1938. Durou, who served as archbishop between

1929 and 1938, epitomized the ascendancy of papal power and paved the way for the revitalization of Catholicism in Guatemala. Source: Revista Eclesiástica 78 (November–December, 1938), 1.

44  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

of the General Hospital in 1927. During the 1920s, Durou’s correspondence with the Roman curia demonstrated sensitivity to the anticlerical climate in the country and an ability to read the country’s changing political context. In late 1926, referring to Chacón, he reported, “Until now it seems that the president-​elect will not take the [anticlerical] measures that we witnessed in the past.”3 Chacón, as it turned out, issued Decree 936, which annulled the anticlerical measures of the previous regime. This firsthand experience gave Durou a reputation as a conciliatory figure among clerics, laypeople, and papal representatives. These qualities, coupled with his missionary experi­ ence, attracted the attention of Pius XI in 1928.4 Given this background, the Durou administration served as a crucial nexus in the Vatican’s efforts to spur a revival of Catholic culture. Durou examined Guatemalan religiosity through the lenses of a sacrament-​driven religious imaginary. To be sure, the archbishop expressed admiration for the “grandiose scenes” of religious processions that filled the country’s streets, which, in his view, left no doubt as to Guatemalans’ profound religiosity. The archbishop’s private correspondence with the Roman curia and even some of his public declarations, however, revealed a different picture. Durou found much religious ignorance behind popular religious manifestations. Guate­ malans of all walks of life, he lamented, often lacked the most elemental knowledge of Catholic doctrine, including the Lord’s Prayer. Durou esti­ mated that, if priests were to test the population on the fundamentals of Catholic doctrine, they would find that “very few would be able to pass a quick catechetical exam on the essential truths” of Catholicism. Most Guate­ malans practiced a type of Catholicism that was nothing but “superficial,” precisely because it did not go beyond the observance of a few exterior reli­ gious practices.5 “We can affirm,” Durou wrote in 1936, “that religious igno­ rance represents the gravest and most widespread social wound.”6 Sacramentalism formed a central, if not pervasive, component in Durou’s religious vision. As he told the members of the Roman curia, al­ though most Guatemalans requested baptism for their children and the last rites for the sick, other sacraments remained a foreign concept among many sectors of the population. This was especially the case in rural parishes, where many couples ignored the importance of the sacrament of holy matri­ mony, limiting their union to a civil ceremony sanctioned by the state. This meant that many couples—70 to 80 percent, in Durou’s estimation—never contracted holy matrimony and thus lived in a type of perpetual “concubi­ nage.”7 Certainly, the archbishop never doubted the faith of his flock, but he continuously critiqued their commitment to the sacramental life of the

The Romanized Church   45

Church. “There is much religiosity,” he indicated, but, in his view, “there are many [Guatemalans] who are content with exterior practices, such as pro­ cessions, fiestas, etc.”8 Such perspective dominated Durou’s views of Maya Catholicism. In­ deed, his writings about indigenous religiosity revealed the ascendancy of Rome’s religious project, which, at its core, hinged on a long-​standing ethno­ centric worldview. The latter equated the beliefs and practices of Maya com­ munities with a heretical religious terrain.9 The archbishop acknowledged that indigenous people generally observed the “outward forms” of Catholi­ cism, including veneration of Catholic saints. Even then, Durou wrote in 1934, “many Indians are superstitious,” a reality that he thought would be “very difficult to extirpate.”10 In many towns in northern and western Guate­ mala, Maya “superstition” was closely tied to the use of alcohol and marimba music during religious ceremonies. It was not uncommon, moreover, for itinerant priests to encounter a variety of heterodox scenes among the rural population. This was the case for Salvador Diéguez, who in 1934 arrived in a village near the town of Carchá, Alta Verapaz, and found that the indigenous parishioners had turned the church altar into a space for “drunkenness and dances to the tune of marimba music.” To the disappointment of local pa­ rishioners, Diéguez refused to celebrate Mass and immediately left Carchá. For Durou, such a scene—in his words, a “saraband”—was not an isolated event, for it spoke of the demoralized institutional position of the Church throughout the countryside.11 Indigenous “superstition” had given way to the flourishing of the dis­ tinctly Maya religious system known as costumbre. As discussed in chapter 1, costumbre had undergone a kind of revival, almost autonomously from the institutional Church, in the aftermath of the anticlerical reforms of the nineteenth century. In the absence of clerics in the western highlands chi­ manes had emerged as local mediators between the rural population and the supernatural world. Through their knowledge of the Maya calendar, these shamans had become the guardians of the rituals that comprised costumbre, which included the veneration of “pagan” religious shrines such as “moun­ tain crosses.” According to Durou, chimanes venerated “ancient idols to cure the sick” and practiced not Catholicism, but “witchcraft.” In the process, they steered Maya parishioners away from Catholic orthodoxy and challenged the doctrinal authority of Catholic pastors.12 Given this assessment of rural religion, it is no surprise that the arch­ bishop’s sacrament-​based religious vision constituted a central theme of his pastoral visits. This was the case in January 1930, when he embarked on a

46  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

four-​month pastoral mission that led him to a number of rural parishes in the departments of Alta Verapaz and El Petén in the northern part of the country. There he encouraged rural Guatemalans to take a more active role in the Church’s sacramental life. During his visit to the town of Flores, El Petén, Durou and the priests who accompanied him reportedly carried out more than eight hundred confirmations, six marriages, and numerous con­ fessions and communions.13 By the time the pastoral visit to El Petén came to an end on May 13, the archbishop and his entourage claimed to have admin­ istered 1,771 confirmations, 33 marriages, and countless first communions and confessions.14 The archbishop maintained this sacrament-​driven worldview as he con­ tinued his pastoral visit in northeastern Guatemala. In Puerto Barrios, a port town on the Caribbean coast and the center of operations of the mighty United Fruit Company, he was shocked to find no suitable church building in the main plaza. In the towns of Morales and Gualán he encountered the local population, as he informed José Fietta, the apostolic nuncio in Central America, “abandoned by the Catholic clergy and invaded by the Protes­ tants.”15 The small number of converts gained by Protestant missionaries did not assuage Durou’s anxieties. For him, Protestant missionaries, through their well-​funded “propaganda” originating in the United States, had taken advantage of the Church’s weakness in the countryside to discredit the teach­ ings of the Roman Church and to spread their “perverse doctrines.”16 He re­ peated these sentiments in his 1934 report to the Roman curia by noting that there was a small yet increasingly visible Protestant presence in the north­ eastern part of the country, where Protestants had established a number of schools for boys and girls.17 Such perspective explains why, in 1934, Durou asked clerics to investigate the status of Protestantism within their parishes. The archbishop was interested in determining the number of Protestant mis­ sionaries present in the country and how to halt the Protestant “invasion” of the country. “Parish priests are urged to indicate,” the prelate instructed his pastors, “the most efficient means to counteract the Protestant campaign” in order to bring back into the Church those who had fallen under the influ­ ence of the Protestant “heresy.”18 Durou’s vision also led him into a social (and anticommunist) analysis of society. He concluded that the Church’s weakened position and religious ignorance among the population predisposed Guatemalans to communist influence. Leftist groups, however small, sought to steer the population into the path of class conflict.19 They might promise the advent of a utopian,

The Romanized Church   47

harmonious world, but, Durou admonished, in reality they stood for a vio­ lent revolution, misery for workers, and the erosion of authority and tradi­ tion. The archbishop cited the history of the Soviet Union and Spain during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), when, he argued, socialists and communists, in an attempt to gain control of the state, provoked political rallies, class warfare, and the disintegration of the existing social order.20 Ac­ cording to Durou, Guatemala’s geographical location left it particularly ex­ posed to this leftist threat. In Mexico, the Calles administration had sub­ jected the Catholic Church to violent persecution during the Cristero War. In El Salvador, large sectors of the rural population had succumbed to the infiltration of radical elements, which culminated in La Matanza in January 1932. Indicative of these fears on the part of Guatemalan religious and politi­ cal leaders was the celebration of a public Mass to counter the communist menace on February 11, 1932. This was the beginning of the Ubico dictator­ ship, when state repression of leftist groups intensified. Held on the atrium of the metropolitan cathedral and led by Durou himself, this religious cere­ mony brought together clerics, laypeople, and, in unprecedented manner, a number of public officials. Imbued with much symbolic and political mean­ ing, this event revealed the anticommunist nature of both Durou’s Roman­ ized religious vision and the nascent Church-​state rapprochement of the in­ terwar period.21

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND INCORPORATING THE LAITY

The archbishop’s religious vision and his acknowledgment of the Church’s institutional frailty led him to advocate for the expansion of religious educa­ tion. As evidenced during his pastoral visits, he advanced a sacramentalized form of Catholic practice that called for the incorporation—and subordina­ tion—of lay Catholics into the evangelizing mission of the Church. Accord­ ingly, laypeople played an increasingly central, if not subservient, role in the Church’s struggle against religious indifference and deviance and, more spe­ cifically, Maya “superstition,” Protestantism, and leftist ideologies. Thus, as we shall see, religious leaders’ efforts to integrate the laity into Church-​sanc­ tioned (confessional) associations predated the arrival of foreign missioners such as Maryknoll. Support for religious education characterized Durou’s tenure. Its devel­ opment was most apparent in rural regions, particularly in the western part

48  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

of the country. In 1930 José Leandro Cruz Reyes, the parish priest of Santa Ana Chimaltenango, Chimaltenango, instituted a religious education pro­ gram that was intended to forestall the advance of Protestantism, fight the social “ills” of alcoholism and promiscuity, and, ultimately, disseminate a sac­ ramentalized brand of Catholicism. It taught adults and children the funda­ mentals of Catholic doctrine and prepared them for receiving the sacraments. Three male catechists (two of whom were Maya catechists) and three female catechists assisted Cruz. This small group employed the well-​known cate­ chism (first published in 1618) of the Spanish Jesuit Jerónimo de Ripalda for adult classes and the Resumen de la Doctrina Cristiana, a catechism prepared in the early years of the twentieth century by the renowned Mexican bishop Rafael Guízar y Valencia, to teach children at the parish level. Cruz’s pastoral activities thus placed religious education at the center of parish life.22 Catechetical instruction quickly gained regional (and official) propor­ tions. It became a centerpiece of Durou’s repeated attempts to promote sacramentalism. By the mid-​1930s Church leaders had taken steps to es­ tablish a system designed to direct and monitor the teaching of the cate­ chism among all sectors of the urban and rural population. This structure, headed by the Consejo Directivo Arquidiocesano de la Instrucción Cate­ quística (Archdiocesan Board for Catechetical Instruction), was charged with overseeing all matters related to religious instruction within the Archdiocese of Guatemala. Its members were expected to inform the arch­ bishop about the most effective ways to disseminate the instruction of the catechism and to prepare annual reports detailing the progress of their ac­ tivities and projects.23 They were also charged with organizing periodic na­ tional-​level catechetical congresses intended to study practical ways of reaching the rural population and ensure that religious education was pro­ vided in all parishes.24 By 1935 Church leaders had extended this structure to other parts of the country. That year they established the Oficio Catequístico Diocesano (Di­ ocesan Catechetical Office), which had jurisdiction over the other two eccle­ siastical regions: the Diocese of Los Altos in the western highlands and the Diocese of Verapaz in northern Guatemala.25 This new entity would func­ tion as an intermediary between the Archdiocesan Board for Catechetical Instruction and rural parishes, thus ensuring that the catechism would be taught in private schools and that diocesan-​level catechetical congresses would be held to explore the most efficient means to disseminate religious education throughout the country.26

The Romanized Church   49

This hierarchical edifice soon took hold at the local level. To be sure, parish priests had worked to expand religious instruction prior to 1935, as in the case of Cruz’s catechetical program in Santa Ana Chimaltenango. In the mid-​1930s, however, religious education in rural parishes became tied to re­ gional Church organizations. In the summer of 1935, for instance, Durou urged parish priests in the archdiocese to closely adhere to the directives is­ sued by the Diocesan Catechetical Office, the Board for Catechetical Instruc­ tion, and the Holy See as they pertained to making the catechism the heart of parish activity. He also instructed them to form local chapters of the Con­ gregación de la Doctrina Cristiana (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine), an organization indirectly mandated by Canon Law 711, §2. During these years, the confraternity’s membership, composed of lay catechists who worked under the direction of parish priests, formed the backbone of Church lead­ ers’ efforts to expand religious education at the parish level.27 Indeed, Durou’s sacramentalized vision of Catholicism went hand in hand with the incorporation of the laity into the structures of Church. This development was one of the most enduring—if understudied—legacies of Durou’s tenure. Certainly, it responded to practical concerns: the clergy shortage meant that Church leaders depended on lay catechists to provide religious instruction in most rural areas. But the promotion of lay participa­ tion was also the byproduct of the centralization of Vatican power. It was, after all, papal officials who promoted a spirit of association. In 1932, Carlos Chiarlo, the apostolic internuncio in Central America, exhorted Durou and other Church leaders in the region to integrate laymen and laywomen into the apostolic mission of the Church. In teaching the catechism, lay Catholics would help form a new Catholic “conscience,” one that hinged on devotion to Catholic saints and constant practice of the sacraments. The assimila­ tion of laypeople, in the words of Chiarlo, would “contribute to the unity of Catho­lic forces, which would be then ready to act as a united force to coun­ teract any danger and threat to the principles or rights of the Church.” For the papal representative, the Catholic Action model would help coordinate such forces. This lay association, through its apparatus of lay catechists, rep­ resented the only religious institution capable of advancing the doctrinal and moral influence of the Church.28 Not surprisingly, Durou encouraged his pastors to incorporate lay­ people into parish structures. Priests in Guatemala City soon responded to the archbishop’s call. During these years they promoted a number of associ­ ations, old and new, that linked lay Catholics with the institutional Church.

50  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

This was already the case for existing groups, such as Los Caballeros del Sa­ grado Corazón de Jesús (The Knights of the Sacred Heart of Jesus). It also became the leitmotif of the new urban organizations that appeared in the early 1930s, particularly the Asociación de Defensa Social (Social Defense Association) and La Liga de Cristo (The League of Christ).29 Clerics and the laity also heeded Chiarlo’s recommendations by taking active roles in imple­ menting the Catholic Action model. In July 1935 Durou authorized the cre­ ation of a Catholic Action group in Guatemala City. Its members, mostly drawn from middle-​class sectors, provided classes on the history of the Catholic Church, taught the catechism, and organized spiritual retreats to train lay catechists who would assist in the advancement of a Romanized religious vision.30 Although it was not readily apparent at the time, the linchpin of this project was rural Catholic Action. The origins of this association can be found in the pastoral work of the Guatemalan cleric Rafael González Es­ trada. Ordained priest in 1935, he quickly set out to assimilate rural parish­ ioners in the departments of El Progreso and Zacapa in eastern Guatemala into the evangelizing mission of the Church. In 1936 González, responding to the absence of a religious education program in the region, formed the Apostolado de la Oración (Apostleship of Prayer), an organization that mir­ rored the Romanized worldview of urban lay associations. González’s group, which by 1938 consisted of forty male and thirty female catechists, personi­ fied the beginnings of a systematic rural program of religious education based on the incorporation of the laity. It was meant to bring about a revival of Catholic culture by integrating lay religious instructors, who, by teaching the catechism at the parish level, would lead rural Guatemalans to partici­ pate more fully and consistently in the devotional and sacramental life of the Church. During the 1940s González and other clerics transformed the Apos­ tolado de la Oración and other lay associations that appeared under the aus­ pices of Durou’s Archdiocesan Board for Catechetical Instruction into a na­ tionwide rural Catholic Action organization.31 (For further discussion of the Catholic Action model in Guatemala, see chapter 4.) Therefore, as the 1930s progressed, laypeople, particularly catechists, came to play an increasingly vital role in Durou’s efforts to expand religious education. This reform project, intended to place sacramentalism at the heart of Catholic practice, resulted in the creation of the national, regional, and local structures that allowed the Church to expand its doctrinal influ­ ence in urban and rural Guatemala. In this way, Durou, through his periodic

The Romanized Church   51

pastoral visits, his emphasis on catechetical instruction, and his ability to stay out of political controversy, conformed to the Romanizing impetus of these years. He and the Church he led, in other words, embodied the emer­ gence of a Church increasingly reliant on sacramentalism, hierarchy, and engagement with modern society.

CLERICAL IMPROPRIETY

Romanization prompted religious authorities into action in other areas. During the 1930s and 1940s, Church leaders, reflecting the centripetal na­ ture of Rome’s program in Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America, pro­ jected their hierarchical and sacrament-​driven religious vision onto their assessment of the moral status of the clergy. As Kenneth P. Serbin argues, they “set out to change the model of the priesthood and to differentiate priests from the rest of the populace.” To do so, the Church fostered disci­ pline among the clergy.32 In Guatemala, Durou, citing Pope Pius XI’s 1935 encyclical, Ad Catholici sacerdotii, often invoked a “spirit of discipline” that should reign among the clergy.33 In his view, only well-​trained Catholic priests, through their exemplary behavior and apostolic zeal, could render possible the restoration of Catholic orthodoxy. As the bodily manifestation of God on Earth, priests were called to act as “the shining light” in their re­ spective parishes. As part of their parish responsibilities, they were obliged to bear witness to Jesus Christ’s words to his disciples during his speech on the Mount of Olives: “Your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”34 This required that priests lead saintly lives, in word and deed, and that they avoid any scandal­ ous behavior that might undermine their authority and prestige (and the Church’s) among their flock. If every priest in the country led an incorrupt­ ible life, Durou wrote, “very soon the divine fire would light up the fields of this privileged country, where the faith sown by the missionaries of the colo­ nial period lives on latently but fervently.”35 This priest-​driven vision of Catholic practice—and the accompanying idealized vision of the past—contrasted sharply with Church leaders’ own assessment of the clergy. An examination of the archbishop’s private corre­ spondence provides an entry into deep-​seated divisions within the Church. Durou encountered these fissures among the clergy in Nueva Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa. Its parish priest, Emilio Colomo, had become embroiled in a

52  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

feud with Gregorio Monterroso, the pastor of the adjoining municipality of Cuilapa. Monterroso had reportedly sown division among the parishioners of Nueva Santa Rosa, spreading rumors that Colomo had abandoned his parish and pastoral duties. Colomo responded to these accusations by argu­ ing that Monterroso’s attacks stemmed from his desire to become the pastor of Nueva Santa Rosa. Monterroso, Colomo wrote, promised the local popu­ lation that he would dispense the sacraments without charging them any fees.36 This and similar cases of clerical division highlight, first, the conflicts among the clergy (which, as noted, dated back to the late nineteenth cen­ tury), and, second, the seemingly irreconcilable gap between Durou’s reli­ gious vision and the realities of the Guatemalan Church. This gulf became even more evident as the archbishop came face-​to-​face with numerous cases of clerical insubordination. Durou criticized various Spanish priests who, in his view, had fled revolutionary Mexico and arrived in Guatemala in the late 1920s not to spread Catholic orthodoxy, but rather to improve their own material well-​being. One such pastor, Durou lamented, did not even reside in his parish but rather took in a house in Guatemala City. He had purchased the residence presumably with the proceeds of his pastoral work. The Spanish cleric had turned the priesthood into a profit-​ making enterprise by charging higher fees for administering the sacraments than allowed by ecclesiastical authorities.37 A Vatican report indicated that he “had descended upon Guatemala to enrich [himself], in the process caus­ ing much harm” to the prestige of the Church.38 Failure to follow ecclesiastical prescriptions regarding clerical fees was only one manifestation of clerical insubordination. In the department of To­ tonicapán, some priests simply refused to obey their superiors. In 1930 Jorge García y Caballeros, recently appointed bishop of Quetzaltenango, lamented about the disregard for ecclesiastical authority shown by at least one of his pastors. Agustín Mayer, acting against García’s orders, had refused to take up residence in the town of Totonicapán. Instead, he moved first to the neigh­ boring parish of San Cristóbal and, more recently, another parish.39 Then there was the case of the parish priest of San Francisco El Alto. According to Ildefonso H. Rossbach, the pastor of Chichicastenango, El Quiché, the priest in question had reportedly declared “that he would not obey any bishop, not even the Pope.”40 It was, however, instances of impropriety between priests and laypeople that most clearly exposed the recalcitrance of the clergy. The early years of Durou’s administration brought to light a number of such cases. In February

The Romanized Church   53

1933, for instance, the archbishop reprimanded Narciso Teletor, the parish priest of Palencia, Guatemala Department, for his inability to live a life of celibacy. “You should not have become a priest,” the irate prelate chastised Teletor, “without first learning to dominate those passions.”41 That same year the aforementioned Agustín Mayer also caught the attention of Church offi­ cials, who suspected that he had established a sexual relationship with one of his parishioners.42 Likewise, Gabriel Solares, the parish priest of Escuintla, Escuintla, drew much scrutiny on the part of Church authorities for failing to live by the “spirit of discipline.” In early 1932 Durou ordered Solares to cut all ties with a female parishioner, with whom Solares had maintained an amorous rela­ tionship that “has lasted for too long.” Failure to do so would lead Church authorities to remove him from his parish and suspend him from all clerical duties. This scandalous behavior, the archbishop admonished Solares, con­ travened Canon Law and damaged the Church’s image among the rural pop­ ulation.43 Solares’s case reached new levels during the succeeding months. In 1933 Church officials learned about the arrest of Solares, who was accused of removing, apparently without official authorization, two chalices and a pyx from the parish church of San Juan del Obispo in the old colonial capital of Antigua Guatemala. The local civil authorities eventually dropped the charges against Solares, but this did not prevent Durou from concluding that “Father Solares is one of the worst priests that I have ever known.”44 The growing corpus of evidence against Solares represented “a sad affair” that was further complicated “if one adds the subject of women.” Indeed, by the summer Church leaders had learned about a second female parishioner in Solares’s personal life.45 For Durou, the scandalous behavior of Solares and other rebellious cler­ ics exemplified the many contradictions that existed among the clergy. Just like many Guatemalan parishioners, some clerics demonstrated an almost fervent attachment to various religious devotions, including to the Sacred Heart. This religious fervor, however, merely fell in line with the long-​stand­ ing adherence to the “exterior” aspects of religion that characterized Guate­ malan Catholicism. For Durou, while observance of religious forms consti­ tuted an important aspect of Catholicism, the “sins” of Solares and other undisciplined clerics contradicted the “spirit of discipline” and apostolic zeal that he hoped to instill among his pastors.46 They revealed the deep-​seated divisions within the Church, and, ultimately, an institution far removed from the Romanized religious vision of the interwar period.

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DUROU’S CLERICAL REFORM

As in the case of lay Catholics, Durou expected to instill obedience and unity among his pastors through the dissemination of the Vatican’s Romanized worldview. It is in this light that one must examine Revista Eclesiástica. Founded in December 1929, this official Church publication attempted to remake the clergy in the image of a Romanized project through the dissem­ ination of decrees and other relevant information issued by the Holy See and Guatemalan Church leaders.47 The archbishop envisioned Revista Eclesiástica as a tool to curb some of the “excesses” committed by the clergy. In the fall of 1938, José María Ramírez Colom, the archbishop’s secretary, wrote in Revista Eclesiástica about several complaints that had reached his office regarding priests who continued to charge excessive fees for religious services related to their ministry. Ramírez asked parishioners to keep a watchful eye on such cases and warned clerics that such accusations served to erode their religious standing. The priests’ “dignity and decency were undermined,” he admon­ ished, “by the mere suspicion of greed.”48 These reform efforts extended to clerics’ public image. In 1936 Durou issued a decree instructing priests and seminarians to wear clerical garb in­ side church buildings and in their residences. Anticlerical legislation pre­ vented clerics from wearing clerical garb in public, but the archbishop made a point of insisting that priests and seminarians wear appropriate clothing— black pants, a black shirt, and a clerical collar—in the streets in order to differ­ entiate themselves from the laity.49 A year later the archbishop lamented that these dispositions “had not been observed and that about half of the clergy ignored them using the most futile pretexts.” He reminded his pastors that Canon Law and numerous papal decrees (many of which had been published in Revista Eclesiástica) obliged priests to dress according to their consecrated status and to behave like a “shining light” in the respective parishes.50 In keeping with the Vatican’s centralizing tendencies, Durou and papal officials also focused their energies on the revival of the fledging national seminary. This policy came as no surprise, for in 1934 Durou lamented in his Ad limina report to the Holy See that there were only 83 priests in Guatemala for a population of 2.5 million. To make matters worse, the ecclesiastical for­ mation of the twenty-​six seminarians in the country was wholly “unsatisfac­ tory,” for, in the archbishop’s view, they “lacked training” to become obedient pastors.51 Hence Durou did not mince words in critiquing the seminary’s leadership. He argued that under the direction of Mateo Perrone, the semi­ nary’s de facto rector, “discipline is lacking” among the young seminarians.52

The Romanized Church   55

Given this bleak institutional context, it is not surprising that Durou’s reform project revolved around forming a new generation of Guatemalans clerics. The archbishop distinguished himself as a great promoter of the country’s seminary in Guatemala City. He envisioned a revived seminary as a way to create a disciplined and dedicated corps of priests, to attract young men to the priesthood, and, ultimately, to remake the clergy in the image of his Romanized vision of the priesthood.53 In mid-​1936 the archbishop de­ clared the feast of Pentecost (celebrated on the fiftieth day after Easter Sun­ day) as the Day of the Seminary. During this special day, all Catholics were expected to pray for the expansion of ecclesiastical vocations and contribute financially toward the expansion of the seminary. Simultaneously, Durou, noting the scarcity of funds that plagued the seminary, created the Obra del Seminario (Seminary Society). This was a Church-​controlled organization empowered to raise funds among the population for the sole purpose of funding the seminary.54 From his perspective, only a class of well-​trained and obedient priests would successfully fight the “errors” of Protestantism, communism, and “paganism.” Thus, religious leaders’ efforts to reform Ca­ tholicism and restore the Church’s influence in Guatemalan society partly hinged on the revitalization of the seminary.55 The arrival of a small group of foreign clergymen during Durou’s tenure must be understood as an attempt to spark such a revival. In concert with papal authorities, the prelate looked beyond the borders of Guatemala as a way to prepare seminarians for the task at hand. To be sure, Church leaders were keenly aware of the continuing anticlerical legacy. Durou sought to dis­ count fears among Liberal politicians of “an invasion of priests” by arguing that the arrival of foreign religious personnel was a response to the chronic clergy shortage. This argument fell on deaf ears in early 1929, when govern­ ment officials initially prevented a number of foreign priests from disem­ barking at the country’s major ports. The government, Durou noted, had granted them permission to carry out pastoral work in Guatemala prior to their arrival. Although port authorities eventually allowed the clerics to enter the country, the archbishop wondered why President Chacón had tolerated these actions vis-​à-​vis the Church. After all, the Chacón administration had avoided the uncompromising anticlerical positions of his predecessors.56 Despite these instances of Church-​state friction, Vatican activism and the gradual softening of anticlericalism during the interwar period eventu­ ally allowed a small yet significant number of foreign priests to enter the country. This explains why as early as July 1929 the archbishop invited the Salesians to establish a residence in Guatemala City. Led by Manuel Sicker,

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the Salesians began to arrive later that year, set up their own Catholic school, and took the reins of the Colegio de Infantes, the Catholic school where the members of the clergy traditionally began their academic formation.57 Two years later, Durou, taking advantage of the emerging Church-​state rap­ prochement of the early 1930s, convinced the Marist Brothers to teach at and assume control of the Colegio de Infantes. From the archbishop’s perspec­ tive, both the Salesians and the Marists would emerge as central players in the formation of future generations of Guatemalan pastors and the moral edification of the country.58 It was in this context that the Jesuits returned to the country. They be­ came part of the small yet growing wave of foreign clerics arriving in the country to advance Rome’s religious project. In his 1934 report to the Holy See Durou lamented, “there are not priests capable of running the seminary.”59 In this light, the return of the Jesuits in 1937 highlighted Church leaders’ ef­ forts to improve the ecclesiastical formation of Guatemalan clerics. The mem­ bers of the Society of Jesus had been absent from Guatemala since 1926, when President Orellana, citing their political activism, had ordered their expul­ sion. With the emerging Church-​state rapprochement of the interwar period, however, Church officials began to contemplate the prospect of their return. In the summer of 1937, Alberto Levame, the recently appointed nuncio to Guatemala, invited Ricardo Ponsol, vice-​provincial of the Jesuits in Central America, to visit Guatemala. Ponsol arrived in Guatemala in the summer of that year and, after touring the seminary in Guatemala City and apparently confirming Durou’s bleak accounts of its status, verbally promised to send two Jesuit priests and two seminarians to help revive the seminary.60 The Jesuits, who began to arrive in September 1937, were expected to help form a new generation of well-​trained and obedient priests. This was the mission entrusted to Giuseppe Bearzotti and the others who came to serve as instructors in the seminary.61 But their activities, carried out under the aegis of Durou and the new interim rector of the seminary, Mariano Ros­ sell, would extend beyond the realm of religious instruction. Church officials envisioned the arrival of the Jesuits as a step toward “a complete overhaul of the seminary” and clerical reform.62 Durou hoped that the Jesuits, through their actions, would help instill a “spirit of discipline” among seminarians. The members of the Society of Jesus were required to live as members of a religious community. They were expected to “appear well disposed to the spiritual and scientific formation of the seminary.” Like lay Catholics, they should refrain from all political activity and limit their activities exclusively

The Romanized Church   57

to the spiritual realm. The Jesuits’ example, according to Durou’s religious vision, would guide seminarians and the clerics of the future. In this sense, the Jesuits and their expected contributions to the “Catholic regeneration” of Guatemala fell within the parameters of Rome’s hierarchical and apolitical religious program.63 The return of the Jesuits and the arrival of other foreign clerics was sig­ nificant in other ways. As the institutional history of the Church during the rest of the twentieth century would reveal, Church leaders in Guatemala, encouraged by the Vatican, actively recruited foreign religious orders and communities as a way to address the clergy shortage.64 This strategy made the Church dependent on foreign priests and resources after the 1940s. In the political sense, the arrival of the Jesuits highlighted the character of the emerging Church-​state modus vivendi during the interwar period.65 It took place as President Ubico’s anticommunist policies converged with clerics’ anxieties about the ideological pull of leftist political doctrines. Ubico’s “soft” anticlerical policies, however, came with a set of political expectations. Ubico anticipated that the Jesuits would stay out of politics and that they would carry out their work “with all the caution and restraint necessary.”66 The Je­ suit project, therefore, was possible due to the Church-​state rapprochement of the 1930s and conformed to the hierarchical and apolitical religious imag­ inary projected by Rome.

CONCLUSION

This reform program caused trepidation among clerics. This was evident in the nationalist response of some members of the clergy, who perceived the arrival of an increasing number of foreign clerics as synonymous with the “de-​nationalization” of the Guatemalan Church. Guatemalan clerics resisted the reform efforts undertaken by Durou and papal representatives. In the early 1950s this split burst into the open when Durou’s successor, Mariano Rossell, became entangled in a public dispute with the papal nuncio, Gen­ naro Verolino. This clash partly stemmed from the growing predominance of foreign clergy and the nationalist sentiment among the Guatemalan-​born priests.67 Durou, himself a foreign cleric, proved hesitant to push for rapid or radical institutional change. Part of this attitude no doubt stemmed from his recognition of the limits imposed by the existing anticlerical legislation. In a 1938 report intended for papal consumption, the archbishop noted that,

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despite the arrival of the Jesuits, the entrance of foreign priests continued to be “very difficult.” This meant that, on the whole, Durou did not pressure the government to allow foreign clerics to enter the country; he relied on the Vatican to do so.68 At the same time, the archbishop was reluctant to adopt a radical position vis-​à-​vis the amoral behavior of Guatemalan priests, includ­ ing the seemingly intractable Father Solares. He was, after all, keenly aware of the clergy shortage that plagued the Guatemalan Church and thus unwill­ ing to alienate his pastors, most of whom were born in Guatemala. His reluc­ tance drew the criticism of the papal nuncio, Alberto Levame, who pointed to the “shortcomings” of the archbishop’s reform program, which, he be­ lieved, had perpetuated the crisis of authority within the Church. According to the nuncio, Durou had focused his energies, almost disproportionally, on the ceremonial and liturgical aspects of his position, leaving aside issues such as clerical reform.69 Durou acknowledged this criticism, lamenting that his lack of decisive action in the face of anticlerical legislation and the Church’s retrenchment had gained him a reputation of a “weak” administra­ tor among papal officials.70 Despite these criticisms and the paucity of reform (at least from the per­ spective of papal representatives), the Church of the 1930s was a changing institution. Durou, who passed away in December 1938, had advanced an idealized image of Catholic practice, one that defined lay Catholics and cler­ ics through the lenses of sacramentalism and an apolitical perspective of Ca­ tholicism.71 In so doing, he and other clerics frequently adopted a moderniz­ ing, Roman-​inspired religious program, thus nurturing the beginnings of what might be termed a Romanized Church. As the arrival of the Jesuits (and the discussion in the next two chapters) demonstrates, this Romanizing process depended on external stimuli. We turn now to an exploration of these developments.

PART TWO

Expansion

CHAPTER THREE

The Resurgent Church

The reforms undertaken by Archbishop Durou created the foundations for the institutional expansion of the Guatemalan Church during the middle years of the twentieth century. Responding to the Church’s demoralized status, the archbishop, backed by papal representatives, sought to expand sacramentalism through a centripetal program of religious education and clerical reform. This Romanizing project, which rested on the Church-​state rapprochement of the 1930s, called for the assimilation of laypeople into Church-​controlled lay associations, the rehabilitation of the clergy, and the recruitment of foreign clerics. Although the full ramifications of this project were not entirely visible at the time, it was nonetheless clear as the 1930s came to an end that the Church was a resurgent institution. This was the Church inherited by Durou’s successor, Mariano Rossell y Arellano. Rossell’s tenure (1939–1964) would stand as a link to the past and a bridge to the future. As he assumed his post on April 16, 1939, Rossell embraced his predecessor’s Romanized vision and agenda. In other ways, however, Rossell’s Church embodied a new era of resurgence. He made the “re-​ Christianization” of Guatemala the centerpiece of his administration. This reform project called for a renewal of Catholicism, much as Durou and the papal delegates had done, but, in a much broader sense, it was intended to create the conditions for the transformation of all aspects of Guatemalan society in light of a Catholic hierarchical vision. Rossell’s program conformed 61

62  G U AT EM A L A’ S C AT H O L I C R EV OL UT I ON

to what Enrique Dussell and others have identified as a “neo-​Christendom” model, which, in the Guatemalan case, hinged on Church-​state cooperation and called for the inculcation of Christian values and sacramentalism among the populace.1 Like prelates in other Latin American countries and Vatican officials, Rossell led a Catholic flock and clergy who were expected to respect the existing political order and also to engage their social environment. This policy of engagement was consistent with Pius X’s appeal to “restore all things in Christ.”2 As had been the case under Durou, Rossell’s Church depended on religious education, lay participation, and clerical reform. As we shall see, these reforms were now tied to a resurgent, more public face Catholicism that became increasingly tied to external stimuli, particularly the immigration of foreign missioners. To be sure, institutional resurgence had its limits, for it was ultimately contingent on the ebb and flow of external resources and the continuation of Church-​state cooperation. Yet the Church’s revitalization gave religious leaders freedom to carve out both private and public spaces and thus spur an institutional revival that allowed them to assume increasingly public roles.

THE PRIEST FROM ESQUIPULAS

Rossell had come of age in the context of a demoralized institutional landscape. He was born in 1894 in Esquipulas in the department of Chiquimula, a predominantly ladino region that had served since colonial times as a commercial and military passage between Guatemala City and the rest of Central America. For centuries, the Black Christ of Esquipulas had attracted countless pilgrims from throughout Guatemala and neighboring countries.3 Ordained priest in 1918, Rossell began his pastoral career in Mazatenango, Suchitepéquez. Three years later he became Archbishop Muñoz’s personal secretary. His rise in the ecclesiastical hierarchy halted briefly, however, when the government expelled the archbishop and Rossell joined him in exile. Upon his return to Guatemala a few months later, Rossell served as pastor in various parishes throughout the country, most notably in Palencia, Guatemala Department; San Cristóbal, Totonicapán; and Jocotán, Chiquimula. In 1913, acting as the parish priest of San Sebastián in zone 1 in Guatemala City, he founded a Catholic private school, the Colegio San Sebastián, in an effort to provide religious education to urban youth. Meanwhile, beginning in the late 1920s, Rossell held a number of ecclesiastical posts, including as

FIGURE 2.  Mariano Rossell y Arellano in 1942. Rossell’s tenure (1939–1964) as arch­bishop of Guatemala was one of the longest in the country’s history. He oversaw the arrival of foreign missioners, the creation of Catholic Action, and the institutionalization of the Church’s programs of development in the highlands. Source: Revista Eclesiástica 6 (July–September, 1942), 558.

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secretary, chancellor, and canon of the metropolitan chapter of the Archdiocese of Guatemala. In 1935 Durou elevated him as the vicar general. This appointment gave Rossell executive power over the administration of the archdiocese and paved the ground for his future rise to archbishop.4 By 1939 this experience had gained him a reputation as an efficient pastor and administrator. Only forty-​four years of age when he became archbishop, Rossell was the first secular priest to ascend the archbishopric see since Ricardo Casanova y Estrada in 1886. Although he lived outside Esquipulas the most of his adult life, Rossell never ceased, in the words of his secretary, to have “the mentality of a small-​town parish priest.”5 As the leader of the Guatemalan Church he adopted an assertive and oftentimes uncompromising posture. This was the case even when he came face-​to-​face with the Church’s institutional frailty and the remnants of an anticlerical regime that, though decisively on the decline, served as a reminder of the limits of Church-​state collaboration. Rossell, like papal officials, was keenly aware of the need to take the Church out its retrenchment, and this awareness, as well as his corporatist outlook, guided his tenure. In this way, the archbishop—in his ecclesiastical upbringing and his administrative approach—personified both the weakness and reemergence of Guatemalan Catholicism. Rossell, not unlike his predecessor, spoke the language of a Romanized Church. He described the Church he inherited as a “debilitated organism,” that is, an institution incapable of preventing the advance of the “contagions” of “perverse” political doctrines, such as communism, and the expansion of Protestant missionary activity. This was so because Guatemalans lacked the most elementary knowledge of the basic tenets of Catholic doctrine. Religious ignorance led urban and rural people alike to engage in “superstitious” religious beliefs and practices. It also affected the country’s elite, for whom religious instruction represented almost an accidental matter during the course of their lives. This state of affairs explained why Guatemalans had become susceptible to leftist ideologies and a small number of them had converted to Protestantism. One might be tempted to dismiss Rossell’s writings as the kind of trope common in religious (or political) discourse. During the Ubico years, at least, Catholic leaders had overestimated and inflated the influence of Protestant missionaries and communist activity. Ubico, after all, deployed a forceful response against communist and labor activism and restrained the entrance of Protestant missionaries from the United States.6 At the same time, one must remember that Rossell, like Durou and the papal diplomats, assessed these “threats” through the prism of the Church’s

The Resurgent Church   65

institutional weakness. “Only the debilitated organisms,” the archbishop admonished in his third pastoral letter, “are afraid of contagions.”7 When Church leaders spoke of a “debilitated organism,” they referred to the scarcity of clerics. This became even more evident in 1939, when Rossell proclaimed, “I have no priests,”8 and again in 1940, when he reminded Catho­ lics that “the potential converts are many and the [religious] personnel is few.”9 The 1942 priest-​parishioner ratio of 1 priest for almost every 24,000 parishioners (or 126 priests for a population of over 3 million) was not significantly different from the figures for 1925. That year, papal representatives had recorded 94 pastors for 2,300,000 inhabitants, which produced a priest-​ parishioner ratio of 1 priest for just over 24,000 Guatemalans.10 In linking the Church’s weakened status to the lack of priests, Rossell’s writings and proclamations remained consistent with the Romanized Catholic project of his predecessor and papal officials. In short, his familiarity with the Church’s demoralized condition and the expansion of Rome’s influence in Latin America, coupled with his years of parish work, molded Rossell’s religious and social imaginary, as well as his actions as a Church leader.

RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL RENEWAL

Rossell, a product of the Romanizing project of the 1930s, pursued the activist approach characteristic of the neo-​Christendom model of the interwar years. He promoted religious vocations and sacramentalism through a type of Catholicism of the masses as a way to bring the Church out of its retrenched condition and into the public sphere. To that end, Rossell orchestrated a series of highly choreographed public events designed to promote religious vocations, foster institutional renewal, and ultimately bring Catholic culture into the country’s public life. Although accommodating in nature and thus consistent with the Rome’s religious project, these actions signified the rise of a decisively militant Church that, to be sure, evolved within the parameters of the Church-​state entente of the interwar years. One consequence of this shift was that, in both urban centers and the countryside, lay Catholics came to play an increasingly important, if subordinate, role in the life of the Church and in Guatemalan society. A public type of Catholicism, therefore, began to appear in the early 1940s. By putting forward a Catholicism of the masses, Church leaders called for a religious and social renewal of society. Of particular relevance in this

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respect was the First Congress of Ecclesiastical Vocations, held in Guatemala City on September 3 to 6, 1942. Partly broadcast by the country’s only radio station, this religious gathering brought together Church leaders, including the papal nuncio Giuseppe Beltrami, parish priests, and laypeople.11 Rossell conceived the congress as a way to “purify” Guatemala’s social fabric. Purification required a profound transformation of society in the image of a sacrament-​based form of Catholicism. Only a renewed social (and religious) environment, the archbishop argued, would yield great numbers of practicing Catholics and motivate young Guatemalans to enter the priesthood. To this effect, Rossell directed clerics to convince parishioners to bring “normality” to their marital unions by contracting holy matrimony. This social order, in which the Catholic sacraments became a pillar of Guatemalans’ lives, would produce large numbers of priestly vocations. “The legitimate religious vocation,” the prelate insisted during his inaugural speech at the congress, “cannot emerge when the home is far from being Christian.”12 Thus, the congress on vocations placed the family—that is, the Christian nuclear family—at the center of reform. Rossell urged Guatemalan parents to become practicing Catholics as a way of instilling Catholic values in their children. A genuine Christian formation began at home and continued as children began attending school, when parents were expected to take them to catechism class.13 To reinforce this point, the congress included a series of talks and speeches in which priests reminded parents, first, about the clergy shortage and, second, about their role in cultivating the family environment necessary for the creation of religious vocations. The titles of some of the talks included in the congress’s official program highlight this point: “Duties of a Catholic mother in the campaign of ecclesiastical vocations” and “Parents and the shortage of priests in Guatemala.”14 This call for reform was perhaps best captured by the congress’s slogan, “I work to purify the environment for the re-​Christianization of the family and for the benefit of the priesthood.”15 In this way, the reform of the family became a centerpiece in the Church’s institutional revival and, more broadly, the renewal of society. Likewise, the First Archdiocesan Catechetical Congress allowed clerics to articulate their vision of a renewed environment. Celebrated between December 27, 1942, and January 1, 1943, it emphasized a hierarchical order based on the centrality of the priesthood and the expansion of religious education. Its lay attendees heard talks whose themes centered on catechetical methodology, specifically the various methods for making catechism instruction the centerpiece of the Church’s resurgence at the national and

The Resurgent Church   67

parish levels.16 Such a reemergence, of course, hinged on the participation of “the strayed sheep” (the laity) in the sacramental life of the Church. There was another—perhaps more important—message embedded in the discourse put forward by Church leaders: the congress was ultimately meant to serve as a reminder of Rome’s hierarchical vision, which rested on the incorporation of laypeople under the doctrinal guidance of the clergy. This was revealed by the composition and ordering of the congress’s organizing committees, which were led invariably by clerics who were assisted by laypeople, including prominent male and female Catholic figures in the country.17 The First Archdiocesan Eucharistic Congress, held in December 1943, further reinforced this hierarchical ideal. In the prelate’s view, this event, like the two congresses of 1942, was meant to bring laypeople closer to the institutional Church and inspire them to lead a more “perfect Christian life” through constant engagement with the Catholic sacraments, including communion and holy matrimony. Personal renewal would thus help spark a social revival. Religious leaders and parish priests would be at the forefront of such a transformation.18 The order of the congress’s closing procession underscored this stratified vision. This mass event, whose participants marched through the streets of downtown Guatemala City, began with a procession of children, who were followed by hundreds of lay Catholics (including catechists) from rural and urban parishes, and concluded with members of the clergy and Church authorities. This hierarchical arrangement, which reminded parishioners about the doctrinal authority of clerics and their subordinate role vis-​à-​vis parish priests, stood at the center of Rossell’s reform campaign.19 Hierarchy, in turn, was tied to an idealized vision of the country’s identity. Rossell’s conservative discourse sought to promote the rebirth of the Catholic faith that, in his view, had been heroically planted by the missionaries of the colonial era. The Eucharistic congress, celebrated on the two hundredth anniversary of the creation of the Archdiocese of Guatemala (1743), best epitomized the archbishop’s program. It represented a call for a return to an idealized past, one in which, Rossell argued, Guatemalan nationality had been inseparable from the sacramental life of the Church. At first sight, this nationalistic view seemed at odds with the Romanizing process espoused by papal officials, who tended to criticize the behavior of Guatemalan priests while supporting the arrival of foreign clerics.20 Yet Rossell’s nationalism, like Rome’s religious vision, stressed religious uniformity. Cultural sameness—and, for that matter, an attempt by the archbishop to redefine the country’s identity in

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light of a sacrament-​driven and hierarchical notion of Christianity—was at the heart of reform.21 Ultimately, this project blurred the lines between the private type of Catholicism that flourished since the anticlerical movement of the post-​1870s period and a public type of Catholicism. True, most of the activities of the 1942 and 1943 congresses took place within the confines of church buildings. As we shall see below, it is also important to remember that these events veered away from major political discussions. Still, as approximately two hundred thousand clerics and laypeople marched through the streets of downtown Guatemala City on the last day of the Eucharistic congress in late 1943, they came to embody a resurgent Catholic movement.22 These Catholics advanced a hierarchical and sacramentalized religious vision that sought to reformulate the parameters of Guatemalan nationality. Equally important, they wanted to make a religious and social statement about the role that, in their view, the Church should play in the public sphere. To those accustomed to seeing the Church barricaded behind the walls of convents and churches, this public spectacle contradicted, or even challenged, the anticlerical legacy of the Liberal reform of the 1870s.23 Through this Catholicism of the masses, Rossell sought to fashion a religious space within the public sphere. The Church’s reform campaign extended beyond the celebration of public festivals. It sought to reinsert the Church into the thick of public opinion, even though such participation was predicated (at least initially) on the apolitical consensus of the interwar years. Verbum, a Catholic periodical created in 1942, played an important role in the public resurgence of Catholicism. During the ensuing years, Verbum served as the Church’s mouthpiece, reporting and commenting on a variety of religious topics. Its content often replicated the Romanized discourse put forward by Church leaders. Not surprisingly, Verbum’s editors consistently argued that the congresses of 1942 and 1943 were part and parcel of the re-​Christianization of Guatemala. This was the case of the catechetical congress, which, in their view, would provide Guatemalans with the “redeeming, encouraging, comforting doctrine” necessary for a renewed social environment.24 The editors expounded on this argument when referring to the congress on vocations. For them, the congress was an expression of the Church’s efforts to expand religious vocations, but it was more than a purely “Catholic” event, for it was also meant to create the foundations of a “re-​Christianized” order. It thus followed that catechetical instruction and the Church’s sacramental life formed the basis of a religious and social revival. Such transformation rested on the

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transformation of the individual, the family, and the social life of the country in light of Catholic doctrine. A religious and social revival, in short, was meant to reinforce the country’s Catholic identity.25

THE ARCHBISHOP AND THE DICTATOR

These changes did not happen in a vacuum. Indeed, the Church’s resurgence was contingent on the oscillating nature of Guatemalan politics. Like his predecessor and papal officials, Rossell adhered to a hierarchical social vision. He viewed Catholicism as the source of order and civilization.26 In this conservative and unitary perception of the world, there was no space for the subversive ideology of communism, for the presence of Protestantism, or for the survival of Maya “paganism.” Ubico, who had ruled the country since 1931, welcomed the Church’s conservative discourse. At its very core, the interwar Church-​state rapprochement rested on a corporate and pyramidal conception of society, one in which civil and religious authorities would assure the maintenance of the existing social and political order. Ubico mirrored this position by repressing political dissidents and modifying the constitutional system to extend his administration. It also came to the fore during his famous “presidential trips” to the western highlands, where he sought to style himself as a strong yet paternal and benevolent figure—an image that Rossell himself projected among the Guatemalan population.27 Last but not least, both archbishop and dictator adopted the personalistic and choreographed ruling style that prevailed in other Latin American countries during the 1930s and 1940s.28 Congruence also stemmed from Ubico’s attitude vis-​à-​vis Protestantism. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Guatemalan dictator proved less amicable toward Protestantism than his predecessors. Going against Liberal tradition, in 1932 Ubico set quotas for the number of Protestant missionaries entering the country. This policy effectively prohibited any missionaries from entering Guatemala unless a missionary left the country. He also required Protestants to prove that their funds came from abroad and mandated that all missionaries register with the Ministry of Foreign Relations. In so breaking with tradition, the Guatemalan president was motivated by a number of factors, including his attempt to centralize power in the executive branch of government and tighten his control over the countryside, where a good number of Protestant missioners had been working since the late nineteenth century.29

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While the dictator’s apprehension about Protestant influence and his favorable stance toward the archbishop’s conservative project gave the Church a more public presence, there were also limits to the resurgence of the Church during the interwar period. As we have seen, Ubico opposed any clerical intervention in political or socioeconomic matters. A close look at Rossell’s public pronouncements from 1939 to 1944 reveals this reality; the archbishop’s pastoral letters make no specific mention of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church as outlined in the so-​called social encyclicals, Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931).30 The dictator’s opposition to clerical participation in nonreligious activities also came to the fore just before the start of the Eucharistic Congress of 1943. That year, civil authorities prevented Víctor Sanabria, the archbishop of Costa Rica, from entering the country. In the early 1940s Sanabria was at the forefront in the diffusion of the social doctrine of the Church, particularly as it related to matters of social justice among the popular classes.31 Church engagement with the Liberal state did not preclude conflict. At the end of the day, Catholicism’s revival was dependent on the whims of the dictator, who viewed the Church as a collaborator, not a competitor. Although the Church began to take a more public role during these years, that development rested on the ability of religious leaders to accommodate to Ubico’s policies.

NATIVE PRIESTS, THE NUNCIO, AND FOREIGN MISSIONARIES

Yet it was the collaborationist nature of the Church-​state modus vivendi of the interwar years that paved the ground for the Church’s institutional resurgence. On repeated occasions, civil authorities, cognizant of Rossell’s nonconfrontational posture, overlooked the implementation of a number of key anticlerical laws. The closing ceremony of the Eucharistic congress and the public symbolism of this religious event were indicative of the softening of anticlericalism during the interwar years. Church-​state conciliation also allowed religious leaders to address the ongoing clergy shortage. Like Durou, Rossell supported the renewal of the national seminary. This became evident in 1939 when, in his first public pronouncement, Rossell made the promotion of the seminary one of the central pillars of his administration. Like his predecessor, he sought to expand the number of seminarians and competent professors to teach at the seminary.32 The issue also came to the fore during the congress on vocations in 1942. In 1944 the archbishop, seeking to take advantage of enthusiasm generated by this congress,

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declared the feast of Pentecost as the Day of the Seminary to remind Guatemalans about the centrality of the priesthood in society and the role of priests as “soldiers of Christ” whose mission was to “rejuvenate” modern society according to Catholic ideals.33 In the early 1940s, however, Catholic leaders increasingly looked abroad to reverse the Church’s institutional weakness. Even as they continued to promote ecclesiastical vocations and champion the cause of the seminary, they supported the immigration of foreign clerics. Certainly, there was not anything particularly novel about this policy, for a relatively small number of foreign priests had arrived in the country since 1929. At the same time, the early years of Rossell’s administration demonstrated that the revitalization of the seminary, which had animated Archbishop Durou’s tenure, became part of a broader project centered on sparking a religious and social revival through a more public Church presence. The implementation of such a program was dependent on the expansion of the clergy, particularly in the countryside. From the perspective of Church leaders, the number of priests at their disposal (and status of the seminary) made such a proposal unattainable, for in the early 1940s there were only ninety-​nine clerics in the country. This reality was particularly salient in the western highlands. In the Diocese of Los Altos, there were twenty-​four clerics for nearly one million inhabitants, who were scattered throughout a vast, mountainous and sometimes almost inaccessible territory.34 The Church’s retrenchment from rural Guatemala, therefore, motivated Church authorities to adopt an outward-​looking policy that centered on the recruitment of foreign clerics. This position was consistent with the Romanized religious vision espoused by papal representatives. Giuseppe Beltrami, the apostolic nuncio in Guatemala between 1940 and 1945, personified the Romanization of the Guatemalan Church. His tenure helped solidify the ascendancy of Rome in Guatemala.35 Without completely discarding Rossell’s attempts to revitalize the national seminary, Beltrami and other papal diplomats prioritized the recruitment of European and American clerics as a way to remedy the clergy shortage. In this context, Rossell’s efforts to expand native religious vocations—that is, his attempt to spark a revival of sacramentalism and social renewal from within—was subsumed under a broader, global religious campaign that linked Guatemalan Catholicism to the migration of foreign missioners from the United States to Latin America.36 This mission movement was spearheaded by Rome. Following Pope Pius XII’s designation of Latin America as an “evangelization area,” Beltrami favored the immigration of members of foreign religious orders. In his view,

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only foreign clerics could establish nuclei of Catholic orthodoxy and ultimately bring about a re-​Christianization of society. They would do so through the formation of mission territories. This position significantly differed from what Church officials had advocated and supported during Durou’s tenure, when foreign clerics, particularly the Jesuits, had arrived explicitly to revitalize the national seminary and help reform the priesthood. In defining Latin America as an “evangelization area” and promoting the creation of mission territories, Rome was motivated by an undeniable reality: Latin America contained one of the largest constituencies within the Catholic Church. The Vati­ can’s policy was also predicated on the institutional weakness and scarcity of priests that affected national churches in the region, as in Guatemala.37 In promoting this mission movement, particularly from the United States, the nuncio benefited from the Church-​state modus vivendi and the expansion of U.S. political and economic power during the interwar period. As mentioned above, although Ubico did not overturn the country’s anticlerical laws, he allowed Rossell and papal officials to carry out a number of reforms intended to give the Catholic Church a more visible public (although apolitical) role. In addition, Beltrami’s nunciature benefited from the particularities of the international context, particularly from the dominant position the United States had enjoyed in Central America and the Caribbean since the turn of the twentieth century. The rise of el pulpo (“the octopus”), as the United Fruit Company was called due to its overwhelming presence in Guatemala’s economy (and politics), exemplified this influence in Guatemala. The start of World War II in 1939 and Ubico’s decision (made under pressure from the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration) to nationalize German-​owned properties in June 1944 permitted the United States to consolidate its economic and political clout in Guatemala.38 It was against this backdrop that U.S. religious missioners began to arrive in Guatemala. Church officials, including Beltrami, first set their eyes on the members of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, or Maryknoll. Founded in 1911 by James Anthony Walsh and Thomas Frederick Price, Maryknoll had a long-​standing tradition of missionary activity around the world. This history went back to 1918, when the first Maryknoll priests arrived in China. Four years later a Maryknoll mission was started in Korea. The Maryknoll Sisters, a congregation for women religious founded in 1912, arrived in China in 1921. In addition, in 1930 the first member of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners arrived in China.39 With the Japanese occupation of China and Korea in the late 1930s and the triumph of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, Christian missionaries lost access to their mission territories.

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This was the case of Maryknollers, who, upon returning from war-​torn East Asia to the Maryknoll mission center in Ossining, NY, began to see other parts of the world, including Latin America, as evangelization regions.40 Beltrami took the lead in the establishment of a Maryknoll-​controlled mission territory in Guatemala. This became evident in April 1942 when the nuncio started corresponding privately with Walsh, then superior general of Maryknoll. Noting the Church’s demoralized status in the Guatemalan countryside, he asked the superior general for his “valuable cooperation” in the “evangelization work in these intensely necessitated lands.”41 Five months later, Walsh agreed to the nuncio’s request. Looking for an alternate mission territory after the expulsion of Maryknoll missioners from China, the superior general offered to send ten priests within the next year. The first two, Walsh indicated, would arrive in early 1943. They would prepare the ground for the establishment of a permanent mission territory.42 Arrangements for their arrival began soon thereafter, and preparations took place without much public attention. The nuncio understood well the country’s anticlerical legacy. Not surprisingly, he prescribed caution, indicating that “some difficulty may arise” if the arrival of Maryknoll became a public matter before Ubico consented to it.43 Ubico’s approval, which came soon, was influenced by the nature of Maryknoll. Unlike the traditional foreign religious orders that had been the target of anticlericalism in the past, the Maryknoll fathers were diocesan priests and thus were not bound by religious wows.44 To this one must add that Maryknoll was a U.S. religious group. Beltrami highlighted Maryknollers’ nationality as he sought the diplomatic backing of the U.S. government. The nuncio was keenly aware of the lack of consensus among American officials regarding the arrival of U.S. Catholic missioners. While the U.S. ambassador in Guatemala, Fay Allen Des Portes, considered Maryknoll as a counterpoint to the “authoritarian” tendencies within the Church (presumably a reference to Rossell’s hierarchical vision and paternalist outlook) and as a way to soften the image of the United States in Guatemala, members of the U.S. Department of State feared that support for the arrival of Maryknoll might be interpreted as a criticism of Protestant missionaries in Guatemala. The nuncio’s diplomatic maneuvers eventually bore fruit, for in late 1942 Ubico, supported by the Roosevelt administration, approved the entrance of the American priests. On January 7, 1943, the first two American missioners, Fathers Arthur F. Allie and J. Clarence Witte, departed Ossining for Guatemala City. Four more Maryknollers, Walsh noted, would depart for Guatemala within the next two months.45

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CONCLUSION

Other foreign missioners would follow in the footsteps of these American clerics. This was an unprecedented development in modern Guatemalan history, for in ensuing years the Church in Guatemala would become increasingly staffed by foreign clerics. The Church’s resurgence manifested itself in the gradual shift from a private to a more public face of Catholicism. It became reality in the Catholicism-​of-​the-​masses tack adopted by Rossell (as exemplified by the congresses of 1942 and 1943). As this chapter has also shown, Church leaders’ attempts to spark religious and social renewal rested not only on the promotion of a Romanized religious vision, but also on the incorporation of the laity and the expansion of the clergy. As the interwar period came to an end, however, papal representatives viewed Rossell’s—and Durou’s— efforts to revitalize the seminary and expand the number of native vocations as ineffective, at least when it came to the short-​term institutional status of the Church. Given Guatemala’s clergy shortage in the countryside, the Vatican, taking advantage of the Church-​state rapprochement of the interwar years, actively promoted the immigration of foreign clerics. In the coming years, this outward-​looking policy would give way to an increasingly globalized religious institution, one that became tied to the centralizing religious process undertaken by Rome. Resurgence resulted in a more visible face of Catholicism and in the increased internalization of the Guatemalan Church.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Missionary Church

In 1948, the Maryknoll missioner Edmund McClear arrived in the highland town of Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango. Located approximately 220 miles to the northwest of Guatemala City, Santa Eulalia lies at an elevation of 8,300 feet above sea level in the heart of the Cuchumatanes mountain range. As he settled in as Santa Eulalia’s parish priest, McClear, like other foreign clerics, encountered costumbre, the religious system that had flourished among the highland indigenous population since the closing years of the nineteenth century. This religious encounter became manifest as McClear learned about Jolom Conop, a “pagan idol” that, as he wrote, commanded a substantial following among Santa Eulalia’s indigenous population. Its supporters, the missioner recounted, closely guarded this religious figure, keeping it covered with pine branches in a windowless room filled with smoke from the constant burning of incense. For McClear, the popularity of Jolom Conop and similar religious icons in the highlands exemplified the strength of heterodox religious beliefs and practices, which, in his view, stemmed from the clergy shortage. Yet, even as a Roman-​centric and confrontational view animated the writings and actions of foreign missionaries, Maryknollers sought to engage costumbre and its guardians. The image of Jolom Conop, McClear explained, looked like the “bust of some former Santo [saint] with a striking resemblance of an image of Christ.” While he left no doubt about his intention to undermine the religious cult around the indigenous idol, McClear 75

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also believed that he would be able to assimilate Jolom Conop into the pantheon of “orthodox” Catholic saints. “I hope,” he indicated, “to win enough [support] to be able to reinstate Jolom Conop in the church with some such good name as Santiago.”1 The history of the Maryknoll mission in the western highlands was one of engagement with Huehuetenango’s Maya peoples and their religious (and social) milieu. To be sure, Maryknoll missioners arrived in rural Guatemala to expand a Romanized religious project. They examined indigenous religious beliefs and practices through the prism of an ethnocentric and hierarchical ideological matrix. This project had its origins in Rome’s religious vision. Missioners equated Jolom Conop and other local religious figures (and the beliefs and practices that sustained them) with a premodern, “backward” era. This idealized notion of the past likened Maya religiosity (and society) to a pre-​Hispanic indigenous past. As they gradually took charge of Huehuetenango’s parishes, Maryknoll missioners set out to rebuild the spiritual fabric of indigenous society by creating a generation of practicing Catholics. This religious campaign centered on teaching the catechism, fostering pious organizations, promoting marriage campaigns, and implementing a department-​ wide parochial school and catechetical program. As Maryknollers advanced Rome’s religious vision, they encountered a social and physical environment characterized by the predominance of costumbre and its combination of Catholic and indigenous religious traditions, a complex cultural and linguistic setting, and a mountainous and often remote terrain. An examination of this encounter reveals a parallel history of conflict and accommodation involving a protracted religious struggle between foreign missioners and the guardians of costumbre over the control of church buildings and other sacred spaces. Maya parishioners did not accept Mary­ knoll’s pastoral work passively. Given the Church’s long years of retrenchment from the countryside, resistance to the American priests’ attempt to remake Maya religion was inevitable. This chapter investigates the strategies used by indigenous people to resist Maryknoll’s religious campaign. The history of the Church in Huehuetenango, however, was much more than a story of conflict. Context mattered. American missioners came face-​ to-​face with indigenous communities that were far from homogeneous. These rural communities were invariably characterized by a significant degree of social and political stratification. Maya parishioners responded in diverse ways to the Romanized vision supported by foreign missioners, and this often led them to partially accept sacramentalism. Romanization had its

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detractors and adherents, but, ultimately, indigenous peoples responded to Maryknoll’s missionary enterprise in numerous and often unforeseen ways, and not simply within the resistance/assimilation binary put forward by many accounts of popular religiosity.2 In short, indigenous communities were continuously engaged with foreign missioners. The opposite was also true, as demonstrated by McClear’s pastoral experiences and those of other clerics. Their actions vis-​à-​vis Maya religion were shaped not only by Maryknoll’s missionary background in East Asia, but also by Huehuetenango’s geographical and social terrain. This chapter examines the establishment of a Mary­ knoll mission system, the structure of Maya religion, and Maryknollers’ views and actions toward costumbre. In particular, it pays attention to the creation of new spaces for the practice of sacramentalism and the formation of Catholic Action, which, at its very core, represented the Church’s attempt to incorporate Maya laypeople in the sacramental life of the Church and into a Western-​inspired project. I contend that the rise of a missionary Church in Huehuetenango exacerbated community divisions and brought to the fore a largely unexplored religious story of priest-​parishioner engagement.

FIRST ENCOUNTERS, 1943

The arrival of Maryknoll in the highlands in early 1943 marked a turning point in the history of modern Guatemalan Catholicism. It signaled the beginning of a new era of institutional expansion that, in subsequent decades, would allow the Church to play a more prominent role in the lives of rural peoples. The Church’s twentieth-​century resurgence rested on Church-​state convergence, Archbishop Rossell’s Catholicism of the masses, and, equally important, the immigration of foreign clerics. The dependence on foreign religious personnel, in turn, contributed in no small way to a radical remaking of Guatemalan Catholicism. These transformations, however, would not become apparent until the 1950s. They were far removed from the realities encountered in 1943 by Maryknollers in the western highlands, a relatively isolated region where the long-​standing clergy shortage had given way to a multifaceted religious landscape. As we shall see, this context greatly influenced the missioners’ views of indigenous society and the origins and development of their missionary enterprise. The Church’s institutional weakness and the accompanying prevalence of religious heterodoxy shaped the early days of Maryknoll in rural Guatemala.

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The first Maryknollers to arrive in Guatemala, Arthur Allie and Clarence Witte, spent the first part of 1943 exploring Guatemala’s religious landscape. After a brief stay at Rossell’s residence in Guatemala City, Allie and Witte embarked on a weeklong journey to the Diocese of Los Altos in the highlands, where they gained firsthand knowledge of the realities of rural society and its peoples, as well as the condition of the institutional Church.3 The trip gave them access to the apparent strength of sacramentalism. They found a surviving sacramental culture in San Francisco El Alto and Momostenango (both located in the department of Totonicapán). The indigenous communities of these highland towns seemed well instructed in the Catholic faith and generally respectful of the sacraments. In Sololá, Sololá, a town tended by the Paulists, they found “the best evidence of Catholicity among the Indians.” Witte reported that large numbers of indigenous peoples attended Mass on weekdays, many of them received communion during Mass, and “a pretty fair” percentage of Maya couples had contracted holy matrimony. This picture, the Maryknoller remarked, bode well for the future of the rural Church.4 The Maryknollers had a much less optimistic view of other highland Indian towns. In late March they visited Chichicastenango, a highland town located in the southern part of the department of El Quiché. Its K’iche’-​ speaking residents, who formed the majority of the town’s population, practiced a religion that deviated from a Romanized version of Catholicism. Witte described Chichicastenango as dotted with “pagan altars on the hillsides” where the K’iche’ population “burned incense, made offerings and performed prayers that were Greek to us.”5 Witte soon discovered that these deviant practices and customs were not limited to the outskirts of the town. He was amazed, for example, to find out that Maya parishioners constantly burned incense on the floor of the parish church. This took place while Ildefonso Rossbach, the German American priest who attended the parish, prayed in the K’iche’ language on behalf of the indigenous attendees and then sprinkled rose petals alongside a line of burning candles. Rossbach’s blessing of the corn during Mass further shocked Witte. This ceremony, celebrated in anticipation of the planting season, commenced when a delegation of K’iche’ parishioners from the surrounding villages arrived in Chichicastenango to the sound of firecrackers. The members of the delegation then entered the church and knelt and kissed their hands before the altar; they repeated this ritual three times before they reached the altar rail. They carried with them statuettes of Saint Michael (wrapped in a red kerchief), Saint Thomas the Apostle (the town’s patron), and the Virgin Mary. The participants handed these figures to Rossbach, who placed them on the altar.

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Subsequently, they passed baskets containing ears of corn over the altar rail and placed them inside the sanctuary, at which point the leader of the delegation rose, took a handful of rose petals from a handkerchief, and scattered them over the corn. Rossbach concluded Mass by blessing the corn, in the process bringing together, at least on a symbolic level, Catholic practice and the agricultural cycle. For Witte, this ritual, though designed to attract Maya parishioners into the church, represented a superficial form of Catholicism that at best appeared sacrilegious and at worst smacked of “paganism.”6 This coming together of the religious and natural environment led the missioner to conclude that Guatemala’s indigenous population (and Rossbach) was “given to many practices and customs, which, on the surface at least, seem pagan and not reconcilable with Catholic faith.”7 A deep-​seated ethnocentric subtext, therefore, colored Witte’s views. The Maryknoller clung to an idealized notion of Guatemala’s Catholic past. In Santiago Atitlán, Sololá, he and Allie found the church building in a state of almost total disrepair and the adjacent convent building in complete ruins. Given these conditions, Witte tried to imagine “the glory of bygone days” of the colonial period, when Catholics had built the great churches and convents that now stood in shambles. While he did not specify the particularities of Maya religiosity in Santiago Atitlán, he suspected that it had suffered the same fate as the church and the convent. Catholicism among the Maya, he wrote, had “grown cold and its practice desultory.” Witte thus invoked a romanticized religious past, which was central to the Romanized Church led by Archbishop Rossell and staffed at increasing numbers by foreign missioners. “There is something sad and depressing about a glory that is gone,” he wrote, further lamenting that “the [colonial] past here must have been so different from the present.”8 Significantly, here was an American missioner, less than half a century after the Spanish-​American War (1898), linking himself to the legacy of the Spanish missionaries of the colonial period. Yet, despite all the apparent contradictions in this argument, for Witte and other Maryknollers, this “glorious” past was congruent with their vision of a sacrament-​based religious order.

ESTABLISHING A MISSION SYSTEM

Religious leaders called for the establishment of a mission system to revive Catholic orthodoxy in the highlands. This is what papal representatives, including nuncio Giuseppe Beltrami, and Maryknoll officials had supported

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all along. For James Walsh, the Maryknoll superior, a mission among the Maya in the highlands would ensure “that our work will retain that missionary aspect which is an essential characteristic of our Society.” It would also lead to a reawakening of sacramentalism and pave the way for the restoration of the Church’s doctrinal authority.9 By mid-​1943 Allie and Witte had chosen the department of Huehuetenango as a mission territory. Witte highlighted the “mission-​like” character of Huehuetenango, a Nahuatl name meaning “the place of the ancients.” Approximately 73 percent of its 176,000 inhabitants were of Maya descent. The department’s indigenous population was split among four Maya ethnic and linguistic groups: Mam, Awakateco, Chuj, and Jacalteco. While most Maya people lived in scattered rural settlements known as aldeas (“hamlets”), the rest of the population, mostly consisting of ladinos, resided in the department’s towns. As Allie and Witte discovered, the clergy shortage in Huehue­ tenango provided an opportunity for Maryknoll’s expansion in rural Guatemala. There were only three priests in the entire department during the early 1940s. To complicate matters, those clerics wanted to leave their parishes, were absent from their parishes half of the time, or simply were too sick to carry out their pastoral work. Given the scarcity of priests, Huehuetenango presented itself, at least in institutional terms, as a kind of tabula rasa where the Maryknoll missioners trained in war-​torn China could continue their missionary tradition with relative ease.10 But it was not only the Church’s institutional weakness in “the place of the ancients” that made it attractive. Perhaps ironically, Maryknollers were also drawn to the department by its geography. Huehuetenango, which fell within the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Los Altos, covered a total area of approximately 2,858 square miles. It was one of most isolated areas of the country. Only a few functional roads connected its towns. This meant that most travel within the department (and the highlands as a whole) was done on horseback. Travel was further complicated by mountainous terrain. Located on the northwesternmost part of the highlands, Huehuetenango is flanked on the north by the lowlands of the Usumacinta River valley, to the west by the mountainous Mexican state of Chiapas, to the east by the department of El Quiché, and to the south by the departments of San Marcos, Quetzaltenango, and Totonicapán. The Cuchumatanes, which cross Huehuetenango and El Quiché from west to east, can produce elevations ranging from 1,600 to almost 12,000 feet above sea level, putting most of the Cuchumatanes region between 5,000 and 8,000 feet.11

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In many ways, this remote and steep terrain provided an ideal mission territory. Witte recognized the advantages of isolation. The Maryknoller stressed that, in addition to looking for a “mission-​like” territory (with a population supposedly devoid of a true vision and practice of Catholicism), he and Allie sought “the opportunity of free action.” They wanted to expand sacramentalism without much outside interference, particularly from Church leaders in Guatemala City. As a result of its location, the Maryknoll mission in Huehuetenango first emerged as a kind of religious enclave.12 Thus, the department’s ethnic, religious and geographical context, coupled with Mary­ knoll’s missionary tradition, shaped Maryknoll’s decision to establish a highland mission system. The “mountains of Huehuetenango,” Witte wrote, “need more than simple priests”; Huehuetenango needed missioners, for the “abandoned sheep that inhabit those mountains need a shepherd imbued with the missionary spirit to seek out and to save those who are [spiritually] lost.”13

MAYA RELIGION IN HUEHUETENANGO

The “abandoned sheep” that Maryknollers encountered in “the place of the ancients” subscribed to a set of largely autonomous religious beliefs and practices. With the ascendancy of anticlericalism in the late nineteenth century, the institutional Church lost much influence in rural Guatemala. Retrenchment, which became manifest in the clergy shortage in highland parishes, undermined the Church’s ability to control the religious life of Maya communities, paving the way for the expansion of vastly localized religious practices. In particular, the institutional vacuum created by anticlerical policies led to a revival of costumbre, which had become the cornerstone of local religiosity in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest and gained further ascendancy as a consequence of anticlerical policies. Costumbristas occupied prominent religious roles at the local level, in the process eroding and oftentimes challenging clerical authority.14 Costumbre rested on an intricate local civil and religious administration. With few exceptions, its members held office for specific periods, ranging from one-​year to life terms. The civil hierarchy included the town’s mayor (alcalde), councilmen (regidores), municipal assistants (mayores), and other supporting officers. The religious component of this organization consisted of a sacristan (sacristán) and a group of stewards (mayordomos), who maintained the church building and oversaw the celebration of fiestas commemorating

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FIGURE 3.  Costumbrista performing a religious ritual in Huehuetenango. During the postwar years, Maryknoll missioners sought to undermine the religious and social influence of costumbristas at the parish level. Source: Maryknoll Mission Archives, Ossining, NY.

the town’s patron saint and other religious events. In many highland towns, these religious officials formed part of a cofradía, or a religious confraternity. During the colonial period, the Spanish clergy had introduced cofradías throughout the highlands, where (as in other parts of the Spanish American empire) they became a key aspect of local religion. These pious associations allowed the colonial Church to introduce Catholic symbols and images among indigenous communities while at the same time giving Maya parishioners varying degrees of local autonomy. Religious confraternities lent themselves to the adaptation Catholicism to indigenous religiosity, and vice versa, thus paving the ground for the emergence and development of costumbre.15 This administration was part of a much more intricate system of local government. Because the aforementioned civil and religious officers were responsible for managing the day-​to-​day administrative affairs of each

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highland town, they exerted much influence in the highlands. In many instances, however, their authority was superseded by that of a parallel group of leaders who held office for life. These individuals included the principals (principales), a select group of (usually four) elders who had ascended through all positions in the civil and religious hierarchy during the course of their lives. It was these elders who appointed the members of the civil and religious hierarchy, held real political power, and served as intermediaries between Maya communities and the outside world. Alongside these power brokers was the town’s chimán, who advised the principales on community matters and performed a series of religious rituals, including praying to the ancestral gods for the yearly crop and attending to people’s spiritual and physical needs. The chimán, who also served on a lifetime tenure, was largely responsible for maintaining the rituals of costumbre. Needless to say, this indigenous priest figure, like the other costumbristas who followed him, functioned in an unsanctioned domain not recognized by the institutional Church. Maya religiosity was intrinsically tied to local government and poli­ tics, to the extent that in 1937 one anthropologist who did fieldwork in Santiago Chimaltenango described the civil and religious administration he encountered in that town as “one coherent system.”16

“REBUILDING A LOST FAITH” AND “CONVERTING PAGANS”

Maryknollers were confounded by costumbre and the civil-​religious organization that sustained its rituals. This was so because, above all, the Maryknoll mission stood as a projection of the Romanized Church. The American clerics reproduced the sacrament-​driven vision articulated by Archbishop Rossell and papal officials. This position was not unlike that of the American Catholic Church, which, on the whole, stayed faithful to the Romanized Church prior to World War II.17 This perspective shaped the development of the Maryknoll mission during the next two decades. It often led missioners to put forward seemingly contrasting views of Maya religiosity. Upon his arrival in Huehuetenango on August 19, 1943, Witte opined that “of the essentials of the faith [the Maya] know nothing.” Indians had very little or no knowledge of Church doctrine, including the meaning of Mass, and rarely practiced the Catholic sacraments, particularly holy matrimony and confession.18 This perspective led Maryknollers to argue that Huehuetenango’s indigenous population seemed “to have a religion of its own, one which

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requires baptism and nothing more for salvation.”19 At the same time, American missionaries, just like Rossell, acknowledged that a Catholic culture still survived in Guatemala and pointed out that the Maya retained “a spark of faith.” Missioners recognized in costumbre a common ritualistic tradition (including reverence to Catholic saints and symbols), even when they condemned its beliefs and practices. On the surface, these positions appear as mutually exclusive. The best way to understand them, however, is to situate them within a change-​continuum framework. As we shall see, American missioners portrayed costumbre as falling simultaneously within and outside the parameters of Catholic orthodoxy. Their descriptions of indigenous religiosity, moreover, provide an entry point into an unexplored history of engagement between priests and laypeople in the highlands.20 To be sure, then, Maryknollers judged their new flock from a Romanized religious framework. They first set their eyes on the “pagan” religious rituals performed during the fiestas celebrated throughout Huehuetenango. In Todos Santos, where Witte described the population as “poorly instructed” in the Catholic faith, the local fiesta consisted of nothing more than “drunken orgies” and “dancing with carved wooden masks.”21 During his visit to the village of San Rafael, Allie echoed Witte’s views. He complained that the local fiesta amounted to “nothing less than pagan bacchanalian orgies” consisting of the Maya faithful playing marimbas in the main plaza and engaging in an endless cacophony of “drunken shouts, howls and shrieks” throughout the night.22 It was not only these local celebrations that caused Maryknollers to lose sleep. They found that the Maya calendar continued to play a central role in the daily lives of indigenous peoples and that the town’s chimán served as its guardian and sole interpreter. The ancient calendar, which was divinatory in nature, consisted of twenty months, each day having a specific name, with every fifth day and the first day in a series of twenty days representing sacred days. This meant that costumbristas considered Sunday no more meaningful than a market day and not as a day reserved for honoring God. In San Miguel Acatán, for instance, the weekly market day was scheduled according to the Maya calendar, with the consequence that market day might fall on a Sunday, disrupting the sanctity of the holy day. The calendar dictated the rhythm of San Miguel Acatán’s indigenous community in other ways as well. Its costumbristas, following the calendar’s ritualistic aspects, viewed the first day of the calendar in March as an important feast day. They celebrated it by holding a series of rituals that included placing candles on

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the floor of the parish church and at sacred “pagan” sites, or “high places” in the hillsides.23 The costumbrista devotion to the Christian cross surfaced as another point of contention between missioners and indigenous people. The cross, Maryknollers discovered upon their arrival in the highlands, could be found in front of every church in Huehuetenango. One found a measure of solace in the Maya worship of the cross yet wondered what meanings and associations stood behind such devotion.24 Another, George Raterman, the pastor of San Miguel Acatán, further questioned the orthodoxy of the rituals surrounding the veneration of the cross. As in other towns, the cross in his parish was a plain wooden object without the corpus (body of Christ). Costumbristas prayed to a Catholic saint inside the parish church and then stepped outside to burn incense before the “Lord Cross,” as they called it. In Raterman’s estimation, this ritual represented a continuation of “the old religion,” leading him to conclude that for the practitioners of costumbre the cross “means something different from what the Cross of Our Lord means to us [orthodox Catholics].”25 A close reading of Maryknollers’ writings reveals an alternative— although not always contradictory—view of Maya religiosity. The religious practices they encountered in the highlands presented them with a dilemma. To be sure, they examined Maya religiosity through the lenses of the interwar Roman-​inspired religious imaginary. At the same time, missioners recognized that they now inhabited a territory with a long-​standing, if declining, Catholic presence. This multifaceted religious reality presented Maryknollers with circumstances different from what they had encountered in China earlier in the twentieth century. At some point or another, Huehuetenango’s population had come into contact with Roman Catholicism. A large percentage of the Maya, for example, had been baptized and attended Mass during the occasional (often yearly) visit by a priest. Moreover, they held the Catholic saints, the Virgin Mary, and the cross in high regard, even though the meanings behind such reverence confounded Maryknollers. Thus, while costumbre embodied nothing more than “paganism” to the Maryknollers, it still contained Catholic components that could not be completely dismissed. “If a priest is assigned to work in an Indian town that has been without a priest for a long time,” Raterman concluded, “he will find himself in a strange position [for] he can say that he is rebuilding a lost faith but he can also say that he is converting pagans to Christianity.”26

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THE BATTLE OVER SACRED SPACES

This predicament set the tone for the early development of the Maryknoll mission, which almost invariably resulted in a history of conflict and accommodation between clerics and parishioners. Foreign missionaries arrived in the highlands to reestablish the doctrinal authority of the institutional Church and to physically remake Huehuetenango’s Church in a Romanized mold. They sought to do so by reclaiming costumbrista-​controlled religious spaces (particularly church buildings) and images for the practice of sacramentalism. This religious project placed Maryknollers in a protracted battle over sacred space with Maya religious leaders, in the process exposing and exacerbating divisions at the community level. The spatial dimension of the Maryknoll-​costumbrista encounter soon became evident in the town of San Pedro Soloma (often called Soloma), located in the heart of the Cuchumatanes. Upon their arrival, Maryknollers embarked on a reconstruction campaign designed to physically remake the town’s religious landscape. They first focused on repairing what they considered to be a crumbling religious infrastructure. They set out, for instance, to replace the roof and—in a move with great symbolic power, given the Romanized Church’s efforts to eradicate the legacy of religious heterodoxy in the highlands—whitewash the interior adobe walls of the parish church.27 This effort went hand in hand with a prolonged struggle over the control of sacred spaces. In the summer of 1944, Maryknollers and costumbristas clashed over the use of candles inside the church. The missioners were particularly irritated by the fact that indigenous religious leaders insisted on using “monstrous big candles which cannot be used on the altar.” Allie asked them to use smaller candles, but the costumbristas resisted and argued that the use of big candles had been “the custom” since time immemorial.28 A few months later, in the spring of 1945, Allie renewed his reform efforts. He became determined to make the Easter celebrations “more Christian.” To Allie’s dismay, street vendors and marimba music had been a permanent fixture in Soloma’s Easter commemorations and other celebrations. As the holy day approached, the missioner urged parishioners to convince the town’s mayor to prevent street vendors from setting up stalls next to the church. He confronted costumbrista practices in other ways, specifically by removing the marimba players from the plaza located in front of the church.29 In those early days of the Maryknoll mission, Allie, McClear, and other missionaries met with little success in their attempts to reclaim sacred spaces

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for the practice of Romanized Catholicism. The institutional weakness of the Church in the highlands no doubt limited the extent of their pastoral activities. In 1944 three more Maryknollers joined Allie and Witte: William Homrocky, James Hughes, and Paul Sommer.30 This numerical jump still left a large proportion of Huehuetenango’s population untouched by evangelizing efforts. In Soloma, for example, there was one priest for a population of ninety thousand people at the end of 1944.31 Moreover, foreign missioners who found themselves in the highlands soon discovered that Maya respect for Catholic pastors seldom—indeed, rarely—translated into submission to clerical authority. In the town of Huehuetenango, the costumbristas reportedly celebrated Good Friday “the good old way,” namely by reenacting the Crucifixion inside the church and incorporating alcohol into the day’s rituals. Maryknollers voiced their opposition to these practices, but apparently to no avail. Sensing “an undercurrent of rebellion” among the costumbristas, the American missionaries grudgingly permitted them to reenact the Crucifixion, although they did succeed in preventing the constant scenes of drunken parishioners inside and outside the church. These clashes over religious practice and the use of religious spaces shaped the Maryknoll mission and, more generally, the Church’s postwar institutional expansion in the highlands. They underscored the continuing predominance of costumbre and the clergy’s—often ambiguous—attempts to reestablish their doctrinal authority. Reflecting on this religious reality, one Maryknoller complained, “We with our sacramental notions and our concept of the dignity of the priesthood . . . resent this intrusion of the laity in this that pertain directly to the practice of the Faith.”32 These early confrontations pointed to the emergence of parallel religious spaces in which costumbristas and missionaries gradually learned to share a common sacred landscape.

NEW RELIGIOUS SPACES, MAYA YOUTH, AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Far from abandoning the struggle over sacred spaces, Maryknollers in the mid-​1940s and early 1950s expanded their efforts to establish a sacrament-​ driven form of Catholicism. They continued their efforts to reclaim church buildings and also created new religious spaces for the practice of Romanized Catholicism among Maya youth. A central component of this campaign involved the formation of a nucleus of “practicing” Catholics who would “live the faith,” namely by respecting and practicing the sacraments. To foster

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sacramentalism, foreign missionaries initiated a department-​wide religious educational program. This course of action, which took the Maryknoll-​costumbrista conflict outside the confines of church walls, put catechetical education at the center of the Church’s resurgence in Huehuetenango. The Maryknoll educational project unfolded in the context of the expansion of a state-​led educational system in the countryside. This development had its origins on October 20, 1944, when the nascent urban Guatemalan middle class, backed by two military officers, Major Francisco Javier Arana and Captain Jacobo Arbenz, toppled the Ubico dictatorship and marked the beginning of the October Revolution (1944–1954). Now holding the reins of political power, the country’s middle sectors, along with the urban popular groups and progressive military officers, inaugurated a period of reform during which they moved decisively to put an end to what the Guatemalan writer, poet, and critic Luis Cardoza y Aragón once called “the country of eternal tyranny.”33 Between 1944 and 1954, the middle class laid the institutional foundations of a democratic and capitalist nation. Under Juan José Arévalo, the first president of the revolution, Guatemala witnessed the passage of a new constitution (1945), a social security law (1946), and a labor code (1947). This corpus of legislation guaranteed freedom of the press, speech, and association, and it allowed for the creation of a pluralistic political system. It also provided Guatemalan labor, if only in a limited manner, with health benefits and increased bargaining power in the workplace. Arévalo, a university professor turned politician, came to embody the enthusiasm and confidence of a new generation of Guatemalans who aspired to break with the dictatorial past and launch an era of progressive reformism.34 The revolutionary government gave top priority to the expansion of a secular educational system. The motive for this policy was as much ideologi­ cal as it was institutional. Arévalo envisaged the advancement of education as part of an assimilationist program directed toward the Maya. Education, he posited, would help create an “enlightened” indigenous citizenship and advance the power of the revolutionary government in the countryside. A central component of this project was the Instituto Indigenista Nacional (National Indigenous Institute). Created in 1945 and operating under the aegis of the Ministry of Education, this institution sought to solve the country’s “Indian problem” through the incorporation of indigenous peoples into a ladino or Westernized national project. In this respect, it echoed both Liberal ideology and the indigenista discourse prevalent during this period in other Latin American countries, most notably in Mexico. The Arévalo

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administration promoted assimilation through the Misiones Ambulantes de Cultura Inicial (Mobile Missions of Basic Culture), a series of state-​funded campaigns that promoted sanitation and literacy in rural Guatemala. Arévalo saw cultural assimilation as a source of national unity, for he believed it would create a Maya citizenship loyal to the institutions of the state and willing to coexist harmoniously with other societal groups within the parameters of the reform and democratic project of the October Revolution. The president and other ladino leaders saw state-​sponsored education as a means to integrate the Maya population into a national political project inspired by Western norms and values.35 The Maryknoll educational program also benefited from the continuing Church-​state rapprochement that dated back to the Ubico years. To be sure, this convergence was tested during the revolution, as was the case in February 1948, when Arévalo closed the Catholic-​oriented radio station Radio Pax. The president justified his decision on two grounds: Radio Pax did not have a license to operate on the state-​owned Cerrito del Carmen in zone 1 of Guatemala City, and the supposedly educational content of its programming was decisively favorable to the authoritarian regime of Francisco Franco in Spain. In response to the government’s action, Archbishop Rossell famously declared that “in Guatemala there is no religious freedom.” Rumors quickly spread throughout the country that the Arévalo government planned to expel the archbishop from the country, and “thousands of people from all social classes” took to the streets in protest. Tensions finally subsided when Francisco Arana, the chief of the armed forces, assured Church leaders that the Guatemalan military had no intention of reviving the anticlerical past, much less sending Rossell into exile.36 Despite these tensions at the national level, Arévalo and other revolutionary leaders welcomed the educational services provided by foreign missionaries in the highlands. In November 1946 the president asked the Maryknoll superior to send ten more missioners to Huehuetenango. He was “anxious to get as many American priests down here [Huehuetenango] as possible” in order to take over unoccupied parishes, operate a high school for boys and another one for girls, and run a hospital. The superior promised to send more missioners and financial resources for getting these projects started. It is not clear whether Arévalo offered any assistance for getting these projects started, but his request boded well for the Church and the Maryknoll mission. “When one considers the notorious past of Church and State in Guatemala,” remarked one Maryknoller, “one cannot help but look

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upon this request, even if nothing comes of it, as wonderful condescension on the part of the government.”37 The revolutionary government’s position on the public role of the Church notwithstanding, Arévalo might have seen Maryknoll’s educational policies as a way to expand the power of the state and assimilate the Maya population into the revolutionary project. In this way, the Maryknoll missionary enterprise became part of a broader state-​led campaign to expand education in the highlands. Maryknoll, which found itself at the forefront of an expanding Western-​ oriented educational system, advanced, at least initially, a strictly religious project. Following Archbishop Rossell’s lead, Maryknollers made religious education among Maya children and adults a central aspect of their evangelizing mission. Initially, this took the form of catechism classes given by foreign missionaries and a small group of volunteer lay catechists. Held in the town of Huehuetenango, these classes brought parishioners closer to a sacramental life by teaching them about the importance of the Sign of the Cross, the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Creed, the Commandments, and the Commandments of the Catholic Church.38 Allie reported that 94 children attended his catechism class on March 25, 1944. By March 31 the number of attendees had increased to 212.39 To some extent, religious education owed its popularity to the distribution of material and nonmaterial incentives. In Soloma missioners gave “attendance tickets” (which could be exchanged for gifts) to Maya children who attended catechism classes. They also attracted young parishioners by organizing recreational activities such as soccer and Ping-​Pong matches.40 Missioners also sought to assimilate adults into a sacramentalized religious tradition. Like Archbishop Rossell, Maryknollers believed that, if they were to bring about the re-​Christianization of Huehuetenango, they would have to reform the institution of the family. Only when fathers and mothers adhered to Romanized practices would they be willing to send their children to Catholic school and perhaps encourage them to pursue ecclesiastical careers. The American fathers likewise concluded that they could undermine the power of the costumbristas only when adults became active participants in the sacramental life of the Church. Thus, only two months after his arrival in the town of Huehuetenango, on October 6, 1943, Allie offered his first catechism class for adult indigenous men. Five days later he provided the first catechism class for Maya women. Although attendance was initially low (ten men attended the first class), more and more parishioners gradually began to attend the catechism classes. By October 24, fifty-​five women were

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attending catechism class on a regular basis.41 Furthermore, Allie reported that by March 27, 1945, the number of women attending catechism class had risen to seventy. Similarly, in the parish of Soloma, although not one soul showed up to the first men’s religion class in June 1944, between twelve and fourteen men attended a subsequent catechism class on June 16. This number increased to about fifty attendees in March 1945.42 These isolated efforts soon became part of an expanding educational system. This program gradually took the shape of a network of Catholic schools located in the department’s major towns. Parochial schools, Mary­ knollers hoped, would produce a nucleus of practicing Catholics among Maya youth. A Catholic educational system began in earnest in the municipality of San Miguel Acatán, which had a total population of 10,478. The Maya constituted a vast majority of the local population (there were only two hundred ladinos in the municipality). In early 1946 Alfred Smith, the pastor of San Miguel, recruited two indigenous children from each surrounding village to study at the town’s Catholic school. These children lived at San Miguel’s convent and attended school in the same building where a public school had once functioned. They learned about the catechism and, consistent with the assimilationist policy of the national government, were required learn how to read and write in Spanish.43 Later that year Maryknollers founded a second school in the parish of Huehuetenango. Its first enrollees, fifteen children from adjoining villages, likewise learned the contents of the catechism and basic literacy skills. A third Maryknoll-​funded Catholic school was established shortly thereafter in Jacaltenango under the direction of a community of Belgian sisters.44 In establishing this parochial school structure, the American priests both expanded sacramentalism and advanced a Westernized educational system.45 In Huehuetenango, where the influence of the Guatemalan state seldom extended beyond the presence of the municipal government, the Catholic Church as embodied by the Huehuetenango mission now became an agent of cultural change. The Maryknoll parochial school system did not avoid conflict with the assimilationist objectives of the revolutionary government. In San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, Hugo Gerbermann opened an experimental Catholic school that morphed in February 1952 into a permanent school for first and second graders. Initially attended by twenty-​five children, all indigenous boys, the school sought to challenge the religious power of the costumbristas by creating an alternative space for the teaching and practice of sacramentalism. By the early 1950s, moreover, it had begun to compete with the local public

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school. Gerbermann viewed the ladino teachers who staffed the public school as competitors and criticized them for their supposed inability to produce satisfactory literacy results among indigenous students. He argued that those students, despite attending the public school for four or five years, “can’t even recite the alphabet.” This was so because, in Gerbermann’s view, ladinos had “no desire whatsoever of teaching the Indians anything.” It did not take long for these conclusions to reach the ladino instructors, who in turn openly expressed their hostility toward the Maryknoll incursion in the field of education.46 Still, the Maryknoll parochial school system was part of a broader, long-​term religious enterprise and an assimilationist program designed to integrate Maya people into a Western-​inspired national project. For Mary­ knoll, religious education would result in the incorporation of indigenous communities into a Romanized religious order. In the long term, this project not only resulted in a loss of culture and identity for many Maya, but also contributed to the continuing fragmentation of Maya communities.

LAYPEOPLE AND THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION

The expansion of religious education was tied to an emergent spirit of association in the highlands. During the mid-​1940s, Maryknollers planted the seeds of a regional catechetical system consisting of a network of Maya catechists. In distant localities without a resident parish priest, these religious instructors often performed some of the religious functions typically reserved for the clergy. They taught the catechism in indigenous communities and thus became the backbone of Maryknoll’s mission enterprise. Their role, however, went beyond the mere recitation of the contents of the catechism; by spearheading Maryknoll’s program of religious instruction, they often acted as sacramental intermediaries between the institutional Church and the Maya population. This position often required indigenous catechists to serve as translators—from Spanish to the particular indigenous language of each community and vice versa—and thus as cultural intermediaries. Catho­ lic priests may have been, in Rossell’s words, the “soldiers of Christ,” but Maya catechists acted as Romanization’s “shock troops” against costumbre. The incorporation of the indigenous laity was certainly not unique to Guatemala, for Maryknoll and other missioners took a similar tack in other Latin American countries. Maryknoll’s promotion of a spirit of association among the laity was informed by its own history of mission work, which to a

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significant extent replicated models of lay participation advocated by Rome. Maryknollers, after all, had grown spiritually within a context of a Romanized Catholic practice. Thus, although Romanization did not dictate all aspects of the Maryknoll mission in Latin America, Maya lay religious teachers in rural Guatemala epitomized the Romanized religious vision promoted by Durou, Rossell, Maryknoll, and the Vatican diplomats.47 The spirit of association promoted by Maryknoll first took the form of a number of pious organizations for laypeople in the parish of Huehuetenango. On March 15, 1944, Allie organized a chapter of the Hijas de María (Daughters of Mary). Approximately forty women attended the first meeting, during which the organization’s constitution was approved. The next day, the association’s members outlined a program intended to integrate their work into other parish activities, particularly the teaching of the catechism.48 In June of that same year, the American priests formed the Maestras Católicas (Catholic Female Teachers), which was entrusted with teaching the catechism to schoolchildren.49 By the end of the year Maryknollers had organized a similar group for male parishioners: the Caballeros del Sagrado Corazón (Knights of the Sacred Heart). In encouraging the formation and activities of this group they hoped to promote the study of Catholic doctrine among the male adult population, in the process advancing the Church’s sacramentalized religious project.50 The incorporation of laypeople into the evangelizing mission of the Church materialized in an association of lay catechists that soon reached regional and national proportions. An organization of this nature was not without precedent in the countryside: in both structure and function, it constituted an adaptation of the Catholic Action model that had existed for a decade, more or less, in some rural regions. First established in Europe in the late nineteenth century as a counterweight to secularism and communism, Catholic Action soon found its way to the Americas, particularly Argentina, Canada, Chile, and Mexico. In Guatemala, it was the diocesan priest Rafael González Estrada who introduced and became the main proponent of Catho­ lic Action in the mid-​1930s. Initially organized under the name Apostolado de la Oración (Apostleship of Prayer) in the department of Zacapa in eastern Guatemala, this association took the form of other organizations in the western highlands, including local chapters of the Congregación de la Doctrina Cristiana in the department of Totonicapán. When González became auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Los Altos in 1944, these and other lay groups that had been inspired by the Catholic Action model became part of a

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regional-​level Catholic Action structure. In 1946 the Church hierarchy turned Catholic Action into a national organization when it sanctioned its existence and set forth its structure. Two years later it spelled out the association’s statues. This association would henceforth become the main Church-​ sponsored lay organization in the highlands, where it became known as Acción Católica Rural Obrera (Rural Catholic Action).51 Catholic Action became the bellwether of the Romanized religious vision espoused by Church leaders during and after the interwar period. Like the institutional Church itself, it was organized in a hierarchical manner in which religious leaders expected laypeople to follow and assist the Church in its evangelizing mission.52 González used the parish as the focal point of Catholic Action’s development. He set up numerous Catholic Action juntas (chapters) at the parish level. A head catechist and a number of assistant catechists, all working on a volunteer basis, formed the backbone of these juntas. Every Sunday the catechist leaders convened in the parish center to receive a lesson in the fundamental aspects of Catholic doctrine from the parish priest. These sessions were structured around the contents of the catechism. The head catechists, in turn, held a meeting every Monday in their respective villages to explain the contents of these lessons to their assistants. During the evenings from Tuesday to Saturday (when families could be found at home), the assistant catechists, each of whom was assigned five families, were expected to do house-​to-​house visitations. During these visits, the catechists recited the Rosary and taught the catechism in the native language of each locale.53 This catechetical system, which first took hold in the eastern part of the country, rapidly expanded into the western highlands after 1946, in the process becoming a regional and national movement that mirrored the expansion of the Church. It was this association that Maryknoll missionaries implemented in Huehuetenango. True, its development did not always conform to the Catho­ lic Action scheme advocated by González and other Church leaders. Mary­ knoll’s missionary background, as well as Huehuetenango’s physical and religious milieu, determined the unique character of Catholic Action in “the place of the ancients.” It is important to keep in mind that the nature of this organization was ultimately tied to the personal choices made by each Maryknoller, the resistance of the costumbristas, and the political economy of each Maya community. At the outset, therefore, one finds the missionaries divided not over the desirability of Catholic Action, but rather over its modus operandi. Allie and, to a lesser extent, Witte preferred the gradual

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creation of Catholic nuclei throughout the mission by means of a network of volunteer catechists, much as González did. “I prefer,” Allie wrote, “laying a solid foundation, even though the structure be small.” He continued, “Few but good is better than many who are no good.”54 In other words, Allie favored the formation a strong core of orthodox Catholics among the Maya before attempting, in any serious manner, to bring indigenous communities under the mantle of Catholic orthodoxy.55 Other missionaries supported a more activist strategy. Alfred Smith’s arrival in 1945 was a turning point in the history of Catholic Action. As the pastor of San Miguel Acatán (a predominantly Mam territory), Smith adopted a version of the Catholic Action structure promoted by González and incorporated some aspects of the “Chinese method,” the system of native catechists that the Maryknollers had established in their mission in China. This missionary approach dovetailed with the Catholic Action organization promoted by González, with the notable exception that Smith based Huehuetenango’s catechetical system on a network of volunteer and paid catechists. This strategy, Smith argued, would allow Maryknoll to reach the greatest number of parishioners as soon as possible. These native teachers—or maestros de doctrina, as Smith called them—received religious instruction and training every Saturday (at least initially) in the parish center of Soloma and then returned to their respective communities to teach catechism classes among the adult Maya population.56 This entailed identifying couples who had not yet received holy matrimony, encouraging parents to send their children to catechism class, and doing house-​to-​house visitation in the villages surrounding the major towns. In the process they assumed the role of local religious leaders, particularly in distant communities where there was no parish priest present.57 This scheme turned Maya catechists into the linchpin of the Church’s efforts to “re-​Christianize” the highlands. By the late 1940s Smith’s Catholic Action volunteer-​and wage-​based model prevailed throughout the Huehuetenango mission. The Maryknoll catechetical system developed according to local religious circumstances. In some localities, especially where there was a resident priest, catechists complemented rather than supplanted the pastoral work of missionaries. This was the case in Soloma. By 1953 the four Maryknollers living in that parish had implemented a project they called “Operation Aldea” (Operation Hamlet). This religious initiative involved missionaries, assisted by catechists, visiting and teaching the catechism in the same village for a month. During this period, Maryknollers and their assistants offered

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catechism classes at a specified location during the day and visited every house in the village in the evenings, when families gathered for dinner and rest. Operation Aldea lasted for about three years, the time it took Mary­ knollers and catechists to visit the thirty-​one villages surrounding Soloma proper. Almost invariably, the missionaries in Soloma closely monitored the implementation of this program, with catechists playing a secondary role.58 In other communities, however, indigenous catechists played a more central, if not pivotal, role in the expansion of sacramentalism. This was largely the byproduct of geography and the priest-​parishioner ratio. For instance, the region’s difficult terrain worked against Maryknollers’ ability to reach some regions within the parish of San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, particularly San Pedro, Chimaltenango, and San Juan. During the rainy season, between May and October, it was practically impossible to cross the river that cut the parish into two sections. The two Maryknollers stationed in San Ildefonso—Hugo Gerbermann and John Breen—found travel difficult even during the dry season, not necessarily due to geographical factors, but rather as a result of the vast territory under their jurisdiction. As Breen reflected, Sunday Mass and regular work in the parish center left them with little time to reach distant rural communities, much less to attend their spiritual needs. Consequently, the teaching of the doctrine in those locations “was left entirely in the hands of the catechists.” By the early 1950s these Maya religious instructors had become the foot soldiers of Maryknoll’s religious campaign. They were at the forefront in the battle against costumbre.59 There were limits to this Catholic Action system. In part, this had to do with Maryknollers’ inability to control the actions of catechists. Maryknollers often commended catechists for “doing valiant work in arousing interest in the [Maryknoll] mission and the sacraments.”60 There were important exceptions to these kind descriptions. By 1948, Don Sisto Cobón had served as a schoolteacher for thirty years and was a well-​known figure in the parish of San Andrés. Under the direction of Leo Conners, the resident Maryknoller, he became a maestro de escuela. Soon, however, rumors reached Conners about Cobón’s “alcohol problem.” For the American missionary, this behavior greatly undermined the catechist’s ability to act as a reliable instructor.61 Missionaries in Soloma were even less optimistic about the potential of the catechetical system. They often complained that, despite the “glowing account” of the work of catechists, they had done little to rebuild Catholic orthodoxy among the indigenous population.62 These accounts underscore the experimental nature of Catholic Action in Huehuetenango during the late 1940s

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and early 1950s, when religious education remained an evolving religious project. This reality reveals Maryknollers’ inability to completely control the course of Catholic Action and its growing network of Maya catechists. Clerics emphasized constant training as a way to steer religious education and native catechists into the path of religious orthodoxy. Beyond the usual classes on Saturdays or Sundays, Maryknollers provided additional instruction and motivation to catechists. This was the case in the parish of Cuilco, where by December 1953 missionaries had recruited sixty-​three “faithful catechists” from eleven villages from within the parish. These native catechists met on a weekly basis (usually on Sundays) with a Maryknoller. This meeting was usually divided into three parts. The missionary in charge began the session by expounding on the advantages of becoming and remaining a catechist, explaining that catechists played a key role in the dissemination of sacramentalism. This talk was followed by a report from each attendee summarizing their catechizing activities during the week. The missionary concluded the meeting by leading a discussion of a particular doctrinal subject. Maryknollers believed that constant training would keep catechists motivated and focused on their religious mission and thus serve as an inspiration to potential new catechists.63 During these years, the constant presence of priests and continuous training were instrumental aspects of the catechetical edifice, although Maryknoll control over indigenous religious leaders was far from absolute.

CONFLICT AND ACCOMMODATION

Catholic Action resulted in a religious realignment at the community level. This was so because its advancement created and exacerbated existing divisions throughout the highlands. The catechetical project gave way to the emergence of a new generation of religious leaders who, through their catechizing efforts, came to embody the Romanized religious view promoted by Rossell, González, and other clerics. As described earlier, catechists became cultural brokers between Maryknollers and the indigenous population. This brought Catholic Action catechists and Maryknoll into conflict with costumbrista leaders. We cannot separate the realignment caused by Catholic Action within Maya communities from costumbrista resistance to sacramentalism. In the village of San Sebastián (situated in the municipality of San Miguel Acatán),

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Maryknollers planned to implant religious orthodoxy by hiring a full-​time, paid catechist who, in the absence of a priest, held daytime catechism classes for school children five days per week and led the praying of the Rosary during the evenings. The village’s chimanes did not wait long before voicing their opposition to the activities of said catechist. The latter reported that a group of chimanes “had threatened him, saying that they wanted no more of this Doctrine.” Upon his arrival in San Sebastián to investigate the matter for himself, Maryknoller Francis Garvey found a cool reception, which in his view was the result of rumors that the chimanes had spread among the local population. These local religious specialists, in Garvey’s account, had told parishioners that the arrival of the catechist was the prelude to a Church ban on costumbrista rituals, with the consequence that all kinds of evil would befall the community, including sickness, bad crops, drought, frost, and diseases among their animals.64 Although Garvey did not find the chimanes’ threats to be serious, he preferred to avoid a direct confrontation with the costumbristas. He advised the catechist to move the Rosary to a different hour on Fridays so as not to interfere with the Way of the Cross ritual performed by the native prayer leaders during Lent. Since there was no resident priest and Garvey could only visit the village periodically, the missionary thought it “better not to start something that we cannot enforce.” The Maryknoller’s (and the catechist’s) compromising stance allowed the catechist to continue his work in San Sebastián. Certainly, such tactics ensured that the catechist would achieve little in the immediate future in terms of undermining costumbre. This became evident when the chimanes led the image of San Sebastián in procession; as recounted by Garvey, it was accompanied by two marimbas, a drum, and lots of fireworks, and the celebration concluded with lots of drinking. This led him to conclude that the battle against costumbre would be a long-​term affair. Although the costumbristas eventually became “friendly to the priest,” when it came to “giving up superstition and coming to Mass, that is a different thing.”65 In some instances, the costumbrista-​catechist clash transcended the purely spiritual realm, although accommodation was often the end result. This was the case in San Gaspal Ixchil, a small mission station of twelve hundred people in the municipality of San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán. In early 1952 the chimanes in the region responded to the presence of catechists by filing a complaint with the governor of Huehuetenango. They accused Gerbermann, the pastor of San Ildefonso, of mistreating and abandoning the people of San Gaspar and asked that their community be annexed to the parish of Tejutla,

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which was attended by “an old Spanish priest.” Gerbermann responded that he had acted with caution. He had been absent from the mission station and sent a catechist to minister to the population, not only because he “did not have time to give much attention to such a small place,” but mainly because the chimanes had continuously resisted the catechetical system. The Mary­ knoller further accused them of trying to discredit him by telling the population that he was a Protestant missionary, and reported that they had physically attacked and thrown into jail a Catholic Action catechist.66 Given this charged climate, Gerbermann chose not to provoke an open confrontation with the costumbristas. He discontinued the catechetical program and asked the small nucleus of “practicing” Catholics in San Gaspar to make the forty-​five minute walk from San Gaspar to Colotenango in order to continue attending Mass and catechism class. Tension between the two sides continued, however, particularly when the chimanes realized that even with this measure “too many of the San Gaspaneros began to come over [to Colo­ tenango].” The costumbristas—the “witch doctors,” as Gerbermann called them—“didn’t like it, so [they again] asked to be annexed to a parish [Tejutla] where there is no doctrine taught.” Gerbermann concluded that, until the governor and the bishop of Los Altos, Jorge García y Caballeros, settled the dispute with San Gaspar’s costumbristas, Maryknoll should avoid confrontation and adjust to local conditions. He chose to “wait until the [orthodox] Catholics become strong enough to put the witch doctors in their proper place.”67

CONCLUSION

The historical record (or at least the one left to us by Maryknoll missionaries) suggests that even though at the rhetorical level Maryknollers sought to displace costumbre, in reality they adopted a policy of accommodation. A number of factors—including the persistent clergy shortage, geographical factors, and costumbrista resistance—shaped this strategy. Missionaries attempted to de-​emphasize religious deviance, particularly the centrality of local fiestas, which they considered a source of drunkenness and heresy. They also tried to undermine the influence of local “witch doctors,” which they recognized as the bulwark of “paganism.” Maryknollers sought to do so by embracing an assimilationist project that focused on reformation of religious spaces, institution of a system of religious education, and adaption of González’s Catholic Action model to their mission.

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These actions, which conformed to the Romanizing process examined in this and previous chapters, pitted Maryknollers and catechists against the costumbristas, thus fostering religious divisions at the community level. Though often intense, this conflict seldom took a violent turn. Confrontation and outright violence flared up in some instances, but there was no defining moment in this struggle. If one must identify a turning point, it would come in the late 1950s, when the missionary Church and Catholic Action in Huehuetenango expanded significantly. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, the conflict between Maryknollers and their supporters (including catechists), on the one hand, and costumbristas, on the other, took the form of a protracted struggle in which engagement—which brought together a history of compromise and adaptation at the parish level—became the norm. As we shall see in the next chapters, engagement produced new religious and social spaces in which we find not only a continuing story of conflict, negotiation, and accommodation, but also a new era of religious and socioeconomic change in the highlands.

PART THREE

Transformations

CHAPTER FIVE

The Reformist Church

By the early 1950s, the parish Soloma was bustling with activity. Its pastor, Edmund McClear, had embraced Rome’s call to bring about a re-­ Christianization of Latin American societies while moving his parish into a number of social paths. For one, McClear, a native of Royal Oak, Michigan, had introduced a catechetical program modeled after the Catholic Action national organization established by Archbishop Rossell. At the head of Soloma’s Catholic Action were two Maya catechists, Martín and Mateo, who, due to their leadership skills and their proficiency in Spanish and Q’anjob’al (Soloma’s native language), had become religious intermediaries between missioners and parishioners. They lived for extended periods of time in the adjoining villages, teaching catechism classes among children and adults. So far, their evangelizing efforts had yielded seventy marriages, more than five hundred general communions per month, and three thousand baptisms per year, and had resulted in an increased number of first communions and a higher rate of Mass attendance. As a result, McClear argued, a new religious leadership—in his view, “a new social class”—of practicing Catholics had emerged in Soloma.1 Martín, Mateo, and other catechists had come of age in the context of Maryknoll’s programs of socioeconomic development in Soloma. By 1952 McClear had opened a community clinic that provided dental services and vision exams, all at low or no cost. The American missionary had also 103

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established a weaving cooperative, which allowed Soloma’s women to produce a variety of items, including rugs and coasters, for sale in the tourist market in the highlands. This “industrial school” gave them access to cash and thus opened the way for the diversification of the local economy. More recently, McClear had started an experimental farm that, due to the introduction of new crops and fertilizers, promised to spur agricultural productivity, generate previously nonexistent sources of income, and put an end to the migratory labor patterns that had forced the Maya to work in the coffee plantations on a yearly basis.2 These spiritual and social dynamics were not unique to Soloma. The 1950s were years of religious change and adaptation in the western highlands. As more Maryknollers set foot on Guatemalan soil and the Huehue­ tenango mission grew, parishes such as Soloma witnessed the rapid expansion of Catholic Action catechists, who, through old and new teaching techniques, helped disseminate Catholic sacramentalism and weaken costumbre. In the process, these communities, already affected by long-­ standing divisions, became increasingly fragmented along religious lines. The highlands also became the focus of a proliferation of Maryknoll-­ sponsored programs of development. Maryknollers sought to undermine costumbre through the provision of medicines and promotion of agricultural programs. Initially intended to assimilate the Maya into a Romanized religious vision, this pragmatic policy gradually acquired a dynamic of its own. It paved the way for the institutionalization of an array of programs of socioeconomic improvement, with which missionaries and laypeople sought to promote agricultural diversification, steer indigenous people away from subsistence agriculture and the region’s plantation labor system, and, more broadly, improve the material condition of the Maya. In so doing, missionaries and the emerging “new social class” of Catholic Action adherents emerged as both religious and social reformers. Their proselytizing became imbued with the developmentalist discourse that prevailed among political and religious leaders in the postwar years. One can trace the roots of these “secular” undertakings in national and international developments related to the Cold War, anticommunist social pronouncements made by Church leaders, Maryknoll’s own missionary history, and the lived experiences of missionaries and Maya parishioners. The conjuncture of global and local events produced a reformist Church whose members preached in favor of both religious reform and the socioeconomic “modernization” of rural communities.

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This chapter investigates the religious and sociopolitical landscape of Huehuetenango during the 1950s. First, it focuses on the growth the Huehuetenango mission, which was contingent on the continuing arrival of foreign missioners, the rise of Catholic Action Maya catechists as religious leaders, and the incorporation of new technologies into the catechetical program. I argue that the Maryknoll mission was ultimately defined not by the unfettered imposition of Romanization, but rather by the process of mutual adaptation between Romanization’s adherents and costumbristas. By the late 1950s, Catholic communities in the highlands had contributed to the formation of a multilayered religious landscape in which the boundaries between “orthodoxy” and “paganism” were constantly redefined at the parish level. The second (and longer) part of this chapter traces the transformation of the Romanizing process that began in the 1930s into a project of modernization inspired by utilitarian and ideological concerns. During the 1950s, the Maryknollers’ programs and the ideology of modernization of the Cold War paved the way for a program of socioeconomic reform. The former increasingly linked the Huehuetenango mission into transnational networks designed to promote an anticommunist religious worldview. I contend that the confluence of global and local factors helped transform Romanization in unforeseen ways.

COSTUMBRE AND SACRAMENTALISM

The expansion of the Maryknoll mission resulted in increased conflict between the costumbristas and the missioners and Catholic Action members. During the 1950s this religious encounter became regional in scope, affecting Maya communities throughout the highlands. Priests often remarked about the persistence of costumbre and, as Maryknoller Daniel Jensen wrote, its “devout pagan,” or “non-­sacramental Christian,” following.3 Traditionalists resisted Maryknollers’ access to church property, as was the case in the village of San Sebastián, located in the parish of San Miguel Acatán, where in 1958 the chimanes placed locks on the convent doors to prevent the American missionaries from using the convent for the practice of Catholic sacramentalism. The conflict soon transcended the borders of San Sebastián. Maryknoller James Curtin filed a complaint with Huehuetenango’s governor, who in turn ordered the costumbristas to relinquish the keys of the convent to the missionaries. The governor’s order met with opposition from the

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traditionalists. Thomas Melville, a twenty-­six-­year-­old missionary who had arrived in Guatemala in September 1957, then took matters into his own hands by confronting the two leading chimanes and about one hundred of their followers. Confronted with the missioner and a catechist (the latter translating from Spanish to Q’anjob’al and vice versa during the encounter), and faced with the prospect of a prolonged legal battle, the village’s Maya religious leaders finally relinquished the convent keys.4 Yet, at least momentarily, the advance of Romanization was tempered by religious and physical circumstances. To be sure, the costumbristas persisted in their opposition to sacramentalism. Contrary to Curtin’s suggestion “to go slow,” Melville decided to take his campaign against the costumbristas—the “baptized pagans” or “perfect pagans”—a step further. In San Sebastián and San Rafael (also located in San Miguel Acatán), for example, he sought to put an end to long-­standing local religious practices, particularly the burning of incense on the church altar. To do so, he put two heavy locks on the rails that surrounded the altar. This action, Melville reasoned, would prevent the costumbristas from having access to the front of the church. The costumbristas responded by smashing the locks to pieces. Given these circumstances, and thus cognizant that in both San Sebastián and San Rafael “the upper hand is still held by our baptized pagans,” Melville relented, at least temporarily. By tolerating the costumbristas’ incense in the altar area, he fostered unwittingly the formation of parallel religious spaces: costumbristas and Catholic Action members shared the church building and, in the process, helped form a heterogeneous religious landscape.5 Geography, too, hindered a linear expansion of Maryknoll’s religious campaign. Despite the construction of new roads, the highlands’ mountainous terrain obstructed access to remote rural locations. The Maya villages that dotted the parish of Barillas, for example, were situated along rocky mountainsides, and their inhabitants lived scattered across areas that frequently required a three-­hour walk. This landscape, coupled with the lack of reliable horses and the muddy paths left by the heavy rains that fell between May and October, slowed the expansion of Catholic Action and its sacramentalist spirit.6 Huehuetenango’s geographical context, therefore, partly assured the continuing influence of costumbrista power and practices and engendered an uneasy coexistence between Catholic Action members and costumbristas. It was clear, however, that costumbre was losing ground. As Wagley and Watanabe have indicated, in some locations the erosion of traditional

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religious practices and structures dated back to before 1943.7 Nonetheless, Maryknollers and catechists contributed in significant ways to the waning of costumbre. The village of San Gaspar in the parish of Colotenango is instructive in this respect. As in other highland communities, San Gaspar’s chimanes enjoyed much power. In some homes, both husband and wife served as chimanes. The female chimanes had their own rooms (or “huts”) for consultations, which included their “chimanes tables” (divining tables used to perform ceremonies) and other ceremonial objects. After following the usual routine of inviting everyone in the community to attend doctrine class, Maryknoller Joseph Grassi got “a rather hostile reception” among the local population: “Some fled their houses into the fields as we approached,” Grassi related. “One woman chimane,” he continued, “told me that if a catechist entered her home, she would split his head open with a hatchet.” But despite this less-­than-­friendly reception, the missioner concluded that this kind of resistance was a sign that costumbre, though still a formidable force in San Gaspar, was on the decline. Several chimanes had recently burned their divining tables; according to local tradition, it took “tremendous act of the will” for a chimán to allow her or his table to be burned. These burnings “made the others determined to offer resistance to the last,” but, in Grassi’s perspective, the chimanes’ base of support was slowly declining.8 Moreover, by the late 1950s a small yet significant number of chimanes in San Gaspar had converted to Catholic sacramentalism. These conversions were often the byproduct of Maryknollers’ use of medical care and its incorporation into their evangelizing campaign.9 When the chimán Marcos Godinez could not find a cure for his wife (who had been “very sick” for over a year) through the traditional rituals of costumbre and “modern medicine” (which he had ordered from Guatemala City), he asked Grassi to visit his house. Grassi accepted the invitation, blessed the sick woman, and prescribed that she drank a glass of milk every hour. Upon her recovery, Godinez allowed the Catholic Action catechists to burn his chimán table and then agreed to study the catechism. Shortly thereafter, he and his entire family received first communion. Godinez even invited Grassi to teach the doctrine at his house and invited some of his friends, presumably including costumbrista leaders, to attend.10 This changing religious landscape led one Maryknoller to conclude that costumbre found itself “with its back against the wall.”11 Thus, even when traditional religion did not disappear and the costumbrista-­Catholic Action split continued to color local developments,

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sacramentalism had gained a stronghold in Huehuetenango. In part, this was the byproduct of the abovementioned Maryknoll policy of adaptation to the local religious context. In Colotenango, Grassi sought to undermine costumbristas’ influence by emulating their practice of praying for and blessing the yearly corn crop. The rationale behind this strategy was clear enough: the Maya, Grassi wrote, felt the need for “supernatural help” during the planting season. This led them to consult with the chimanes about the best day to plant and to offer them a hen or turkey in sacrifice in order to ensure a successful crop.12 To counter these practices, Grassi encouraged Maya families to present the corn seed before sowing during Mass for a special blessing. In a symbolic reference to the Holy Trinity, he asked the Maya to bring him three ears of corn. After each family approached the altar rail, presented the ears of corn, and received the blessing of the priest, the altar boys then took the ears of corn behind the altar, where they could be seen by all present. Because the corn cycle permeated many aspects of Maya communities, they “took to this [practice] quite naturally.” Grassi hoped that this ceremony would prompt his parishioners to “play a more active role in Mass.”13 As a result, his pastoral work highlighted the unexpected evolution of Romanization, for it demonstrated the extent to which the Church’s Romanizing process became part of a diverse cultural milieu. In part, it was this strategy of accommodation to traditional religious practices—itself part of a long-­term campaign intended to reclaim highland communities for the practice of sacramentalism—that gave Romanization’s adherents a footing at the parish level. Maryknollers generally sought to avoid head-­on confrontation with costumbristas. As the authors of a preliminary missionary manual put it in the 1960s, “it is best not to attack their [the Maya’s] paganism openly.” Persuasion and patience should guide the mission whenever possible. This approach, the authors of the report continued, should to be instilled among the catechists because they “sometimes, being over-­zealous and belligerent, can keep whole aldeas from accepting the doctrine.”14

THE SHOCK TROOPS OF SACRAMENTALISM

Catholic Action members, too, contributed in significant ways to the weakening of costumbre, in the process surfacing as religious leaders and cultural interlocutors in their communities. More so than during the early years of

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the Huehuetenango mission, Maya catechists became bellwethers in the Church’s campaign to expand sacramentalism in the highlands. The network of Catholic Action catechists in the highlands grew significantly. In 1956 Maryknollers estimated that there were 215 catechists in Jacaltenango and another 258 in San Miguel Acatán.15 In 1959 Felix Fournier calculated that there were 2,000 catechists in the department of Huehuetenango.16 Catechists received constant training in Huehuetenango and in the Diocese of Quetzaltenango, where they interacted with laypeople from other highland communities.17 Catechists emerged not only, as Fitzpatrick-­Behrens has argued, as “intermediaries” between Maryknollers and the Maya, but also as a new religious and social group in the western highlands, thus exemplifying the ongoing religious fracturing of indigenous communities.18 The growth of Catholic Action was made possible by the institutional expansion of the rural Church. In 1951 the Vatican mandated the creation of four new dioceses in the western (Sololá and San Marcos) and eastern (Zacapa and Jalapa) parts of the country. This growth was accompanied by the arrival of an increasing number of clerics from Europe and the United States.19 The Huehuetenango mission was not immune to these developments. Largely as a consequence of the continuing decline of anticlericalism as a driving force in national politics and the post-­1954 reaffirmation of the Church-­state rapprochement (discussed below), Maryknollers expanded their ranks and gradually extended their presence throughout Huehue­ tenango. Despite Rossell’s conflictive relationship with the Arévalo and Arbenz administrations, by 1947 twelve missioners joined the mission. By the end of the October Revolution (1944–1954), the American missioners had established ten mission centers (or parishes with a resident priest): Huehue­ tenango (established in 1943), Soloma (1944), Jacaltenango (1945), San Miguel Acatán (1946), Malacatancito (1946), Chiantla (1946), San Andrés Cuilco (1948), San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán (1952), Cuilco (1953), and Santa Eulalia (1954). During the revolution, a total of twenty Maryknollers entered the country. This growth only accelerated after 1954, so that by 1958 there were thirty-­six Maryknollers in the highlands and the number of mission centers had jumped to sixteen. By the end of the decade there were mission centers in San Juan Ixcoy (1955), Santa Cruz Barillas (1955), Aguacatán (1957), La Libertad (1957), San Sebastián (1957), Todos Santos (1957), San Mateo Ixtatán (1958), and Colotenango (1958).20 These new parishes became the loci of an increasingly militant network of Catholic Action catechists who were the face of sacramentalism among

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Maya communities. This was the case of the Maya catechist who taught Catholic doctrine in the village of Ical, a Mam-­speaking community that formed part of the municipality of Colotenango, located approximately twenty-­two miles northwest of Huehuetenango proper. Every month, the catechist, with the assistance of two catechists from Ical, visited seventy homes, inviting adults to become “practicing Catholics” and couples to become married in the Church. Grassi, the Maryknoller who had been assigned to Colotenango, arrived in Ical on a periodic basis and reinforced the evangelizing work of the catechists. As a result of this catechist-­based religious campaign, seventy-­five people signed up to study the sacraments on a nightly basis. On the feast of San Marcos in April 1959, four indigenous couples married in the Church.21 A similar story unfolded in San Antonio Huista. Located to the north of Colotenango and thus even further removed from the more populous centers, this municipality witnessed the emergence of a vibrant Catholic Action organization. By the late 1950s a network of catechists set up by Maryknoller John Breen had become the driving force behind sacramentalism there. The catechetical system, which at its core consisted of five paid native catechists who worked fifteen days per month visiting villages and teaching the doctrine, changed the religious composition of the region. Thanks to the work of these religious teachers, the nucleus of practicing Catholics had increased from ten or fifteen to more than five hundred. Moreover, the catechists themselves had contributed to the expansion of Catholic Action, specifically by recruiting and helping to train other Maya catechists in each of the villages. Upon observing the impact of Catholic Action in San Antonio Huista, Maryknoller Dennis Kraus wrote that catechists “act as the shock troops of the padre, entering into communities, presenting the doctrine, defending it against . . . the false doctrines of the ‘espiritista’ and the superstitions of the pagan cults [costumbre].”22 As the “shock troops” of sacramentalism, catechists fought to displace costumbrista practices. In Santiago Chimaltenango, they did so by building a new roof and facade for the local church and prohibiting the use of alcohol and marimba music inside the church. Through these physical renovations and religious reforms, the catechists gradually displaced the costumbristas from the church building. In the mid-­1950s they struck yet another blow against the traditionalists by confiscating and, in a bold move, burning the caja real (“royal coffer”), a wooden chest containing “all the old documents of the pueblo.” The costumbristas had treated the caja real as an “idol” requiring an intricate set of religious rituals.23

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FIGURE 4.  Catechist in Huehuetenango provides religious instruction to a group of parishioners. During the 1950s and 1960s, Maya catechists became the backbone of the Church’s efforts to disseminate a sacramentalized religious worldview and practice. Source: Maryknoll Mission Archives, Ossining, NY.

Equally significant, in their struggle against costumbre Maya catechists became religious intermediaries. This was possible because, as discussed earlier, they had come to occupy the role of linguistic mediators. In 1955 Santa Eulalia’s catechetical system consisted of a group of 150 volunteer catechists. To be sure, not all catechists had an equal impact on the expansion of sacramentalism. These religious teachers came from a social context in which the illiteracy rate could run as high as 95 percent. Due to limited educational backgrounds, a substantial number of Maya catechists could only teach a few prayers. The situation was different for a smaller number of catechists who, due to their bilingual skills (including the ability to read and write in Spanish), showed a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of the Catholic faith. It was these catechists who prepared Maya parishioners for the practice of the sacraments, particularly first communion, confession, and matrimony. They often performed the key service of translating the priest’s sermon into the native language. In Soloma, Martín—one of the catechists mentioned at

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the beginning of this chapter—often translated the priest’s sermons from Spanish to Q’anjob’al.24 The catechists in Santa Eulalia played a similar role, translating and reading Maryknoller Tito Consani’s sermons from Spanish to Q’anjob’al. Because only a handful of Santa Eulalia’s indigenous population spoke Spanish, Maryknollers were, as Consani acknowledged, “almost completely dependent upon these catechists for teaching the doctrine.”25 In the process, catechists became part of a new generation of local leaders within their respective communities. They personified a crucial link between Maya society and the institutional Church, but as the next chapter will discuss, they also represented the rise of a “new male.” This was an apt description for Patricio Gómez, who, after receiving training from the Mary­ knollers, had come to embody the advance of a sacrament-­driven form of Catholicism in the highlands. Due to his bilingual skills and ability to navigate two religious cultures, Gómez had become more than a religious leader. He was responsible for supervising the distribution of material goods (including medical supplies) and mediating between Maryknollers, practicing Catholics, and local political leaders.26 Like other catechists, Gómez had become a social as well as religious leader, in the process both benefitting and creating divisions within Maya communities. This is not to say that the catechetical system developed without conflict. Cases of insubordination among catechists were not uncommon. By 1960, Nentón, traditionally a stronghold of costumbre, had witnessed “a dramatic revival” of sacramentalism. Approximately 180 children were studying the doctrine. Yet during his visit to Nentón Maryknoller Donald Lansing complained about the behavior of the catechists. “There was,” he wrote, “a certain amount of scandal involving the . . . head catechist and it brought the development almost to a standstill.” In the village of Gracias a Dios (located in Nentón), Lansing soon learned that the leading catechist had been charging ten cents per baptism and allowing the costumbristas to play marimba music and consume alcohol in front of the chapel.27 Similarly, in San Miguel Acatán, Paul Davenport complained about the unreliability of the local catechists. During a monthly meeting at San Miguel’s parish center with the head catechists from the neighboring villages, he found out that most had visited only one or two houses during the previous month. Some, Lansing realized, had not visited a single house.28 In this light, Edmund McClear concluded that reliable catechists were hard to find. “A good catechist,” he declared, “is like the proverbial needle in the haystack and his training is long and arduous.”29 Despite this paternalistic posture on the part of

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Maryknoll priests, however, catechists emerged as a new group of religious and social leaders in the highlands during the 1950s.

CATHOLIC DOCTRINE IN TECHNICOLOR

The expansion of Catholic Action in rural parishes was accompanied by the modernization of religious education. Through a variety of visual technologies, catechists, guided by Maryknollers, sought to make Catholic doctrine more relatable to the Maya. The introduction of new teaching methodologies, which allowed them to reach greater numbers of parishioners, became important because missioners and catechists often found themselves outnumbered and in high demand in remote rural communities. In 1959 Grassi reported that so many people had been attending catechism class that “one of the catechists, in the aldea of Ical has been complaining of lack of sleep.”30 New visual aids, as Seth Fein has argued, served “as a source of images, ideas, forms, and narratives.”31 In the case of rural Guatemala, I argue, visual approaches functioned as a “source” through which the language of sacramentalism—and, as discussed in chapter 6, the language of Cold War modernity—became visible. During the 1950s it became evident that neither priests nor catechists alone, with their traditional religious educational program, could undermine costumbre and expand sacramentalism, much less expect that those who had decided to become practicing Catholics would not revert to the “pagan” ways. Maryknollers concluded that the people of rural Guatemala, thousands of whom were illiterate and had no regular contact with a resident priest for extended periods of time, needed not an exhaustive course on Catholic doctrine, but rather a simpler curriculum. Guatemala’s rural landscape called for “a pared-­down, visual approach explaining the bare essentials” in order to give the Maya something with which to “defend” themselves against costumbre. McClear, the pioneer of this method, summarized the purpose of this new approach: “The whole thing [Catholic doctrine],” he wrote, “must be telescoped into a short (possible two-­week) nightly course with the hope that more can be added later.”32 McClear took the lead in implementing this visual method. He sought to overcome the challenges of a largely illiterate indigenous population, the influence of costumbre, and the mountainous terrain of Huehuetenango through the use of a flashlight projector and filmstrips. He trained Maya

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catechists in how to use a projector to show filmstrips during his visits to remote communities. “The flashlight projector, properly utilized,” McClear reflected, “can truly be called a ‘break through’ as regards” the advance of Romanization. “The flashlight projector and filmstrips,” he continued, “amount to bringing religious T.V. into the last hut in the last mountain valley for about five cents a night.”33 The arrival of “religious T.V.” thus provided a space through which the ideology (and narrative) of sacramentalism became disseminated. It epitomized the extent to which new technologies served to integrate rural Maya populations into transnational religious networks, in this case, the Maryknoll mission and its Romanizing impulse. “Religious T.V.” made the vocabulary and forms of sacramentalism visible and soon became a central component of the catechetical system. Thus, catechists of the 1950s were armed with not only a copy of the catechism but also a variety of visual aids. In the parish of San Mateo Ixtatán, catechists relied on a set of doctrine charts—made from sheets of cardboard that could be rolled or folded—containing visual representations of the importance of the Church’s sacramental life. Though not ideal during the rainy season, these charts, in the words of a missioner, “helped draw the people” of the villages to catechism class.34 In San Pedro Necta, Maryknoller Joseph Rickert employed a projector that worked on doorbell batteries. He bought this setup (which he fondly called the “Rube Goldberg apparatus”), along with the batteries, wires, flashlight, filmstrips, and a carrying case, for twelve dollars in the United States. The catechists soon began to use the projector and filmstrips to hold “slides parties” at night in the surrounding villages. As a result, Rickert reported, “the people flock in for the sugar-­coated classes in Technicolor.”35 Armed with new ways of presenting the doctrine, catechists, in the words of Dennis Kraus, became the “backbone of an effective cate­ chetical system”; this was important because, he concluded, “an effective cate­chetical system is the basis of our successes up to the present.”36

POLARIZATION AND COLD WAR DEVELOPMENT

The missioners’ program of religious reform and the introduction of new technologies cannot be extricated from Cold War ideologies and the polarization of Guatemalan society during the 1950s. That is, the expansion of Catholic Action, the adoption of new teaching methods, the declining weight of costumbre at the parish level, and the concomitant fragmentation

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of Maya communities coalesced at the very same moment when the October Revolution took a leftist turn with the election of Jacobo Arbenz to the presidency. This national context partly shaped the national Church and Mary­ knoll’s Huehuetenango mission. Arbenz, who assumed office in March 1952, pushed forward a second, more radical wave of reform that was inspired in good measure by postwar developmentalism, but also by the president’s nationalism. Following a 1951 World Bank report, the Guatemalan president called for the modernization of the economy through a major public works plan. That program included the construction of a system of paved roads (including one from the Caribbean coast to the capital), a new port facility on the Caribbean coast, and a hydroelectric plant to generate enough electricity to power Guatemala’s modernization. A nationalist, Arbenz hoped that these projects would reduce the influence of foreign economic interests, particularly that of the United Fruit Company (UFCO).37 Arbenz’s reformism also led him to promote the modernization of the agricultural sector, which by the early 1950s was controlled by a small landowning elite. Indeed, 2 percent of landowners (including UFCO) held 72 percent of the productive land in the country. Arbenz questioned the structure of this land tenure system and, throughout the spring of 1952, his administration devised a major agrarian reform project. Supported by leftist groups such as the country’s nascent communist party, the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT), land reform soon became the driving force in Guatemalan politics. It was met with the skepticism and oftentimes the opposition of the major revolutionary parties, which feared that land redistribution might trigger economic chaos and, worse still, cause social and political instability in the countryside. The landowning class viewed land reform as a threat to their economic and political power, while U.S. officials feared that Arbenz’s reformist policies would undermine U.S. interests and pave the way for the “expansion of communist influence.” Despite this opposition, on June 14, the Guatemalan Congress approved Decree 900, the agrarian reform law that was to begin a major distribution of land among the dispossessed peasantry.38 Decree 900 was a capitalist, developmentalist legislation. It allowed the Guatemalan state to expropriate uncultivated land on the latifundios (large private estates) and on state-­owned farms.39 Peasants received the expropriated land either in lifetime tenure or as rented plots of eight to thirty-­three acres.40 For its part, the state pledged to compensate the affected landowners with 3 percent bonds maturing in twenty-­five years. Described by Arbenz as

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the “most precious fruit of the revolution,” Decree 900 was intended to bring about a revolution in Guatemala’s land tenure system.41 With the agrarian reform law, the Arbenz government planned to eradicate underdevelopment—namely “feudal” property and social relations in the countryside— through the distribution of land and the provision of technical assistance and agrarian credit. Thenceforth, Arbenz and his supporters hoped, Guatemala would be transformed from a dependent feudal country to an economically independent capitalist nation. By 1954, Decree 900 had benefited approximately one hundred thousand peasant families, affecting perhaps as many as five hundred thousand people among a population of three million. Moreover, contrary to the claims often made by the landowners, the agrarian law resulted in increased agricultural production, leading officials in the U.S. Embassy to conclude, “the Guatemalan economy is basically prosperous.”42 Given the intensification of Cold War politics, Arbenz’s plan of socioeconomic development increased polarization of Guatemalan society. In June 1954 a military invasion from Honduras—orchestrated and funded by the Dwight Eisenhower administration and led by a Guatemalan military officer, Carlos Castillo Armas—forced Arbenz to resign from office.43 Castillo Armas, as the new head of state, dismantled his predecessor’s land reform policies and reversed the democratic opening of the revolutionary years. The government unleashed a wave of repression against Arbenz’s supporters and suspected communists, namely anyone who had participated in the popular organizations that supported the revolution. Bowing to pressure from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala, on July 12 Castillo Armas instituted the Comité de Defensa Nacional Contra el Comunismo (CDNCC, Committee for National Defense Against Communism), a three-­person commission that ordered the arrest and imprisonment of approximately four thousand suspected communists. Assisted by the Central Intelligence Agency, the CDNCC compiled a blacklist with names of seventy thousand suspected leftists. Decree 59, issued in August 1954, allowed the Castillo Armas government to imprison anyone on this “communist index” and to use force in an indiscriminate fashion against suspected radicals whose names had not made it to the list. On a banana plantation in Tiquisate, Castillo Armas’s supporters shot about one thousand peasants.44 These political ruptures masked the continuity of developmentalist-­ inspired policies. After 1954 Cold War developmentalism, now promoted under the aegis of a fervently anticommunist U.S. policy toward Latin America, increasingly dictated the course of government-­led programs of eco-

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nomic development. Guided by postwar liberal developmentalism, the Eisenhower administration viewed Guatemala as “the showcase of Latin America,” that is, a country where the United States could promote political stability and economic development as a way to prevent the expansion of communism. U.S. officials believed that Latin American countries could achieve economic prosperity—and thus become “developed” nations—if they opened their economies to U.S. trade and investment. They advanced this ideology through a number of international agencies, including the World Bank and International Cooperation Administration. These institutions funneled massive loans and grants to the Guatemalan government to finance the construction of roads (particularly the Pan-­American Highway), promote agricultural diversification and commercial agriculture, and implement vocational training and sanitation programs. In addition, the Guatemalan government replaced Arbenz’s land reform program with a timid colonization project and introduced a number of small-­scale “self-­help” community programs in the highlands as a way to build schools, roads, and other projects of socioeconomic improvement. These initiatives, coordinated by government-­run development agencies such as the Instituto de Fomento de la Producción (Institute for the Promotion of Production) and the Servicio de Fomento de la Economía Indígena (Service for the Promotion of the Indigenous Economy), were based on the premise that Guatemala’s peasant population, particularly the Maya population, was “backward” and therefore should be taught Western (capitalist) values. Only then would rural people become immune to leftist ideologies. Given the influence of the landowning elite and the rampant corruption that afflicted the government, however, Cold War developmentalism did little to improve living conditions for most Guatemalans, including the urban population and highland indigenous communities. It merely reinforced the country’s dependence on U.S. foreign investment and military assistance.45

THE CHURCH, ANTICOMMUNISM, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Guatemalan Church was not immune to these national and international developments. With the advent of the October Revolution, Church leaders became increasingly vocal when it came to political and social matters. Archbishop Rossell took the lead in this respect. He often adopted a confrontational position vis-­à-­vis the revolutionary governments, although

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this stance did not put an end to the Church-­state rapprochement forged in the 1930s. The archbishop partly opposed the revolution because, contrary to his wishes, revolutionary leaders maintained most of the anticlerical laws of the past in the newly drafted constitution of 1945. These included the prohibition on the Church’s ability to own property (including church buildings) and to form labor unions.46 Rossell’s anticommunism also shaped his views of the revolution. On October 1, 1945, the prelate issued the first of a series of pastoral letters warning about the “communist” nature of the 1945 constitution.47 In September 1946, he again went on the offensive, this time not only condemning the “communist” character of the constitution but openly labeling the newly created social security law as a communist-­ oriented legislation.48 In 1948 Rossell attacked the 1947 labor code because he thought it was part of a communist plan designed to create social upheaval. He did not oppose the formation of labor unions, so long as these unions formed part of a Catholic-­oriented labor union movement. Such a movement, in his view, would prevent social turmoil by advocating cooperation, not conflict, with the capitalist classes.49 The archbishop also used the press to voice his criticism of other reforms and changes. For example, he relied on Verbum, the Catholic Church’s mouthpiece, as well as the Catholic weekly Acción Social Cristiana, to criticize Decree 900’s “communist” tendencies, the state’s intervention in the economy and society, and the leftist turn in national politics in the early 1950s.50 Indeed, Rossell emerged as one of the main opponents of the Arbenz administration. In 1952 the archbishop sent a replica of the Black Christ of Esquipulas on a peregrination across the country to combat the communist threat posed by Decree 900. He saw in Arbenz the personification of a communist dictator and in his regime the embodiment of international communism. Rossell would most clearly express his opposition to the Arbenz government in his 1954 pastoral letter, Carta pastoral sobre los avances del comunismo en Guatemala. In it, the prelate called for a national crusade—a crusade of prayers, sacrifice, and unity—against Arbenz’s policies. “The people of Guatemala,” he pronounced, “must rise as one man against the enemy of God and the homeland”; he concluded, “Our struggle against communism must be, therefore, a Catholic and nationalist stance.”51 It came as no surprise, then, that the Church endorsed the 1954 coup and the Castillo Armas regime.52 The new regime rewarded the Church’s anticommunist position. Despite the wave of repression that followed Arbenz’s downfall, Archbishop

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Rossell, in a posture reminiscent of Durou’s vis-­à-­vis the Ubico regime, did not waver in his support of Castillo Armas. It was even reported that the archbishop had established friendly relations with the new ruler. More significantly, the 1956 Constitution solidified the existing Church-­state compact by granting the Catholic Church some of the privileges that it had lost with the 1871 Constitution, principally the right to own property and, when asked to do so, provide religious instruction in the nation’s public schools.53 Meanwhile, the post-­1954 regime facilitated the institutional expansion of the Church, as demonstrated by the arrival of numerous foreign missionaries. These included a younger generation of Maryknollers, the Spanish missionaries of the Sacred Heart (who arrived in January 1955), and other foreign religious groups.54 It would be a mistake to examine the postwar Church simply through the prism of Cold War politics. Like that of his predecessors, Rossell’s discourse was deeply imbued with both anticommunist rhetoric and the popu­ list discourse contained in the social doctrine of the Church, particularly Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum and Pope Pius XI’s 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. These encyclicals were the Holy See’s response to secularism, the industrial age (namely urbanization and the rise of an industrial proletariat), and leftist political ideologies.55 In La paz, fruto de la justicia, his pastoral letter of July 2, 1954, Rossell applauded the triumph of Castillo Armas’s “liberation army” in overthrowing the “communist government” of Arbenz. This regime, which allegedly had jailed, tortured, and assassinated hundreds of workers, had demonstrated that international communism had taken root in Guatemala. At the same time, the archbishop argued that the “peace” and “progress” brought about by the Castillo Armas government would soon dissipate unless it was built on solid ground, namely, the fertile soil of the social doctrine of the Church. The use of force alone would not prevent the rise of another leftist regime. As the archbishop admonished, “Dear sons and daughters of Guatemala, you have conquered communism by expelling it from the country, but communism cannot be contained indefinitely with the force of arms; only social justice can root out the seeds of communism, which germinates and develops in an environment of social injustice.” It followed, therefore, that communism would flourish where poverty and exploitation prevailed among the popular classes.56 Thus, the prelate called for an improvement in the material conditions of the population. The country’s political leadership, he contended, was

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compelled to take advantage of the 1954 coup, first, to implement concrete reforms to improve the economic situation of the popular sectors and, second, to preserve the social conquests so far attained by urban and rural laborers. “In this hour of joy,” Rossell warned, “let us not forget that we have cut only one head from the seven-­headed hydra that communism represents.” The archbishop continued, “You have not expelled the communists from Guatemala to haggle the rights of workers, or to take away from them their natural right to own the land on which they toil, and much less to strip them of all of the social gains that they have attained in a just manner: working hours, benefits, etc. . . . a more decisive battle needs to be fought in Guatemala to completely defeat communism, that is, the decisive battle of social and distributive justice.” More than ever, the Cold War context called for the implementation of the Church’s social doctrine and the elimination of the country’s anticlerical legislation. As Rossell concluded, “There is only one road to follow: social justice and the freedom to make it a reality without [anticlerical] restrictions.”57 For the Guatemalan archbishop, the “battle for social and distributive justice” was most urgent in the countryside. This was the position he presented at the Third Congress on Rural Life, held in Panama in April 1955. The organizing force for this international meeting was Luigi Ligutti, director of the U.S.-­based Catholic Rural Life Conference (CRLC). Created in 1923 under the auspices of the National Catholic Welfare Conference in the United States, the CRLC had emerged as a Church institution devoted to addressing the spiritual and social problems faced by rural Catholic populations. By the early 1950s Ligutti had expanded the CRLC’s role in Latin America and brought together Church leaders from throughout the region to discuss the topic of “rural life.”58 At the 1955 meeting in Panama, Rossell argued that the most important problem affecting rural Latin Americans was the advance of leftist doctrines. He saw rural Latin America as the most important battlefield against communism. In Guatemala, he pointed out, communist activists took advantage of the deep socioeconomic inequalities in the countryside—particularly the unequal distribution of land—by espousing the cause of agrarian reform. They did so by discrediting parish priests, often blaming them for the country’s social ills. Furthermore, they extended their influence in the countryside by training a cadre of leftist rural leaders. This all took place in the context of a Church weakened by years of anticlerical legislation, which led to a chronic lack of priests and thus prevented it from implementing the social doctrine of the Church. To reverse

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this situation, Rossell advocated for the creation of an independent, property-­ owning peasantry and the propagation of Christian ideals (including sacramentalism) in the countryside. This strategy would allow the Church to expand its influence among rural people and remove the conditions that resulted in class and racial conflict.59 This religious and social discourse was consistent with the positions of the regional Church. This became evident in August 1955, when Latin Ameri­ can bishops, including Rossell, met in Rio de Janeiro and, in an effort to speak as a unified force and to extend Rome’s sacramentalized religious vision, formed the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (CELAM, Conference of Latin American Bishops). Concerned with the Church’s weakness, these leaders called on clerics to oppose “anti-­Catholic” movements (particularly Protestantism), promote clerical vocations, and incorporate the laity into the evangelizing mission of the Church. They also addressed the so-­called social question, prompting Catholics to seek solutions to poverty in light of the social doctrine of the Church. In the view of the Latin American bishops, this could be done by fostering a climate of social harmony, advancing social charity and involving laypeople in such work, and fighting “Marxist doctrines and the propaganda of communism.” The conference’s attendees believed this agenda should receive top priority when it came to the continent’s rural populations. This meant that clerics should pay attention to “the spiritual and social uplifting” of indigenous peoples who, in countries such as Guatemala, mostly lived in a rural setting.60

A SOCIAL PASTORAL AND RURAL MODERNIZATION

It thus followed that the “spiritual and social uplifting” of rural people entailed more than religious education. It was partly intrinsically tied to the transformation—or modernization—of the material conditions of rural communities. In this sense, the language of the Cold War, particularly as it related to development ideologies, had profound implications for the Guatemalan highlands. During the 1950s the countryside was the site of rapid social transformations and continuing political mobilization, which, as Grandin has argued, was often promoted by leftist organizations such as the PGT.61 In Huehuetenango, social change developed within the context of an expanding Catholic Action movement, a new religious methodology, and an emergent reformist Church. Huehuetenango’s mission was informed by the

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Church’s social doctrine, Cold War developmentalist policies, and the lived experiences of foreign missioners and indigenous parishioners. The confluence of these factors paved the way for the transformation of Maryknoll’s sacramentalized religious vision into a social pastoral that hinged on the “modernization” of medicine, agriculture, and social relations. For the members of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America who arrived to bolster the Church’s influence in highland parishes during this period, the religious and the mundane became inseparable from each other. The product of working-­class, Catholic, immigrant communities in the United States, Maryknollers were deeply shaped by early twentieth-­ century social and political struggles. Catholic immigrants—mainly of Irish, German, Italian, and Polish descent—had taken an active role in the labor movement of the 1930s, in the process backing such hard-­fought gains as labor’s right to strike. In times of need, these immigrants and their American-­ born children (some of whom would join Maryknoll in the 1940s and 1950s) turned to ethnicity-­based associations for material assistance. When the Great Depression undermined the strength of these organizations, they progressively came to view government as the guarantor of economic well-­being and security. Government, they believed, had a duty to attend to the needs of the poor and downtrodden of society. In exchange for the aid that they received, Catholic immigrants and their offspring flocked to the polls in great numbers in the 1930s and 1940s in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his New Deal policies, and the Democratic Party. This reciprocal relationship between government and Catholic communities and the deep-­ rooted sense of solidarity within these communities would greatly influence the perspectives and actions of the Maryknollers who arrived in Latin America after the war.62 These social and political experiences, coupled with the entrance of the United States into World War II, affirmed Maryknollers’ religious sensibilities and identity, in the process making them agents of developmentalist-­inspired policies. The war and the subsequent years of economic prosperity in the United States led them to put forward a Catholic-­based national identity, one that considered solidarity and charity as an integral aspect of the war effort. They saw their role as missionaries—providers of spiritual and material assistance—in foreign lands as intricately linked to U.S. foreign policy. Religious identity and nationalism became almost indistinguishable from each other. Moreover, when Maryknollers reached poverty-­stricken regions of the world, they perceived themselves as intermediaries between the United States and

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local populations. They felt an obligation to give not only because giving had been a central pillar of the immigrant Catholic experience in the United States, but also because, as citizens of the most powerful nation in the world, “Americans could afford to give.” Spiritual and material assistance would lead Third World populations to emulate the social and economic development of the United States. In the case of Latin America, too, it would help cement the call for collaboration inaugurated by the Good Neighbor policy.63 This mentality dovetailed with the Church’s anticommunism and support of Cold War developmentalism. The Huehuetenango mission thus became the epicenter of a “social pastoral” that consisted of a myriad of developmentalist-­informed forms of material assistance. In Huehuetenango, Maryknoll’s social pastoral first appeared in the realm of health care. This policy was originally intended as an instrument to attract Maya people to Catholic sacramentalism while weakening the power of the costumbristas, particularly the curanderos, or healers, who had traditionally administered a variety of “magical charms” and natural remedies to the sick and treated, among other physical ailments, swellings and sprains.64 The provision of medical care, including antibiotics, by Maryknoll had its origins in 1945, when Paul Sommer began to distribute medicines among the Maya of Jacaltenango. This task, Sommer argued, was not only “a work of charity and thus worthy in itself,” but also allowed him to attract previously unseen faces into the Church and “to speak a word [to them] of the necessity of practicing the [orthodox] faith.”65 Curtin, the parish priest of San Miguel Acatán, agreed that the diagnosis of common diseases and the distribution of medicines would allow the Church to come into contact with greater numbers of parishioners than otherwise would have been the case. But he also argued that the provision of health care would help missioners undermine the power of the “witch doctors”—the chimanes—who derived much of their authority from their ability to diagnose and cure illnesses. Curtin did not hide his motive in providing medicines to the Maya: “I am developing a clientele,” he wrote, “which I hope will result in spiritual health along with physical well being.”66 In this attempt to develop a “clientele,” Maryknollers set the stage for the institutionalization of medical care in the highlands. In the 1940s and 1950s this took the form of health clinics, which often took the place of almost nonexistent government medical services in rural areas. In 1950 Edward McGuinness, the parish priest of Jacaltenango, established a small dispensary, where he gave out medicines, including sulfa and Atabrine

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powders for the treatment of malaria during the parasite-­ridden rainy season. The dispensary and the medicines would, McGuinness hoped, help him “win the confidence of the people” and undermine the spiritual and social influence of the chimanes over the local population.67 According to Fitzpatrick-­B ehrens, two years later Maryknoll expanded this initiative into a series of community clinics that provided health education, vaccinations, and maternity care. These clinics treated twenty thousand people on an annual basis.68 Echoing the social pronouncements made by Archbishop Rossell and CELAM—that is, the call for the “spiritual and social uplifting” of indigenous people as a way to eliminate conditions conducive to social unrest— and determined to gain the trust of the Maya, Maryknollers also undertook a program of agricultural modernization. In 1946, in an effort to steer the Maya away from subsistence agriculture (that is, corn and bean production), they began to teach the indigenous population of Malacatancito (located to the south of the city proper of Huehuetenango) how to grow soybeans and cowpeas. The American priests saw this project as a means to diversify agricultural production, which, from their perspective, would in time provide a new source of income for the Maya and also improve nutrition in the highlands. The cultivation of subsistence crops, mainly corn and beans, had resulted in soil erosion and low productivity that negatively affected the diet of Malacatancito’s population.69 By the late 1940s Mary­ knollers had started similar endeavors in San Miguel Acatán, Chiantla, San Lorenzo, and Huehuetenango. As with the provision of medicine, these agricultural projects were originally intended to gain the goodwill of the Maya. Yet they also reflected the notion that, through material assistance, missioners could help modernize agriculture and improve the socioeconomic conditions of rural people.70 A central and more structured aspect of these land-­oriented programs surfaced in the form of a network of cooperatives. With these projects, missioners sought to gain converts for the practice of sacramentalism, but they also hoped to erode the economic power of local (usually ladino) lenders. In July 1953 Maryknollers, led by Fournier, founded a credit cooperative in Malacatancito. Known as the Santa Ana Cooperative, it was the first credit cooperative in Huehuetenango. Fournier required its initial members to deposit ten cents every week until each of them owned a share of five dollars. The cooperative was designed to create a new source of credit for Maya farmers who needed cash to buy corn until the arrival of the harvest season

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in August and September. It would also allow indigenous people to bypass the ladino loan sharks who traditionally provided credit at exorbitant rates, often with interest of 5 to 10 percent per month.71 The case of Gregorio Soni’q illustrates the nature of Maryknoll’s agricultural projects. Soni’q, a member of the credit cooperative in Malacatancito, could now avoid borrowing fifteen dollars from a local lender at an excessive rate of 10 percent. Instead, he could rely on the Santa Ana Coop­ erative for access to cash, and in doing so, he would owe only 1 percent (or fifteen cents) per month for the same fifteen dollars.72 By September 1954 the Santa Ana Cooperative was thriving. It had fifty-­four members and raised an accumulated capital of $340. The largest loan had been of twenty-­ five dollars and the smallest of five dollars. There were a couple of delinquent loans, but Fournier was confident that they would eventually be repaid. Soni’q had paid off his loan and the interest accrued and had already requested another loan. The cooperative, Fournier concluded in 1954, was accomplishing one of its stated goals, namely to generate new sources of credit for the Maya and undermine the power of local lenders.73 The creation of cooperatives led Maryknollers and Maya parishioners into a broader field of socioeconomic reform. This was the goal of McGuinness, a native of Brooklyn, as he outlined his plans in December 1954 to establish a credit cooperative in the city of Huehuetenango. As he put it, he was “anxious to help his people [the Maya],” especially “in the social and economic sphere.” To get this project off the ground, McGuinness solicited financial assistance from the CRLC. By 1956 Fournier had followed McGuinness’s lead by forming a credit cooperative of forty-­six members in San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán. In the process, both Maryknollers reinforced the notion that physical works would result in an improvement in the lives of the Maya and thus emerged as agents of socioeconomic change.74 Religious and socioeconomic reform became part of the same vision. This convergence of spiritual and material objectives was most evident in Cuilco, located approximately forty-­eight miles west of Huehuetenango proper. By late 1955 Fournier had established a credit cooperative in that locality. As in other highland communities, Cuilco’s economy greatly depended on the ebb and flow of the agricultural cycle (particularly the cultivation of corn and sugarcane), which meant that a poor harvest often resulted in increasing levels of poverty among the indigenous community. As discussed above, this situation left Maya farmers searching for sources of cash in order to buy food and other basic necessities for their families. They

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resorted to borrowing money—often at extremely high interest rates—from local lenders, which in turn created an endless cycle of indebtedness. McGuinness hoped that the credit cooperative would help Maryknoll attract the Maya of Cuilco to sacramentalism. At the same time, he realized that the Maryknoll mission could not be dissociated from the local socioeconomic environment. McGuinness thus set out to work “on the premise that not all problems here are religious.” In his view, Maryknollers should seek to understand the Maya’s spiritual and material realities. As he put it, “if we try to put ourselves in the place of the ordinary man in Cuilco, we realize that he is beset with social and economic difficulties, and alongside these difficulties are his religious problems.”75 Another Maryknoller, Albert Esselborn, echoed McGuinness’s conclusions. He argued that the revitalization of sacramental practice must proceed in conjunction with the “widespread material progress” of the western highlands.76 These initiatives of socioeconomic improvement formed part of the developmentalist-­oriented policies of the postwar years. Although Mary­ knollers did not take part in the application of Decree 900, the contours of their social pastoral were not completely incongruous with the social reforms (including land reform) undertaken during the October Revolution. It is true that Maryknoll mission diaries contain very few references to national developments. Whatever missioners wrote about the Arbenz years generally conformed to the pronouncements made by Archbishop Ros­ sell.77 They also complained about the Arbenz government’s delay in extending official recognition to their cooperatives, although government approval of these projects invariably materialized. This was the case of Malacatancito’s Santa Ana Cooperative and other Huehuetenango cooperatives in the late 1940s and the 1950s.78 The proliferation of Church-­ created cooperatives in the highlands reflected what Fitzpatrick-­Behrens calls the “Maya Catholic cooperative spirit” and, more broadly, the expansion of the cooperative movement at the national level during and after the revolution.79 Many peasants chose to form agricultural cooperatives on the national fincas (plantations) that were affected by Decree 900. In this respect, the Maryknoll-­sponsored cooperatives in Huehuetenango should be seen as part of a more general trend to change the country’s land tenure system and social relations in the countryside.80 The Maya population of Soloma and San Miguel Acatán was not immune to the intense clashes over the control of community-­owned land that engulfed rural Guatemala during and after the Arbenz years. These conflicts were inexorably linked

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to “the agrarian question” and the metamorphosis of social relations in the countryside caused by religious-­inspired and secular modernizing trends during the 1950s.81

CONCLUSION

Such transformations affected a number of highland parishes. Soloma is instructive in this respect. This Maya community had witnessed the appearance of a “new social class” of practicing Catholics, who, led by Catholic Action catechists, acted as a bulwark against costumbre and personified the advance of Catholic sacramentalism. The expansion of the Maryknoll mission, the accompanying growth of Catholic Action, and the introduction of new teaching technologies thus contributed to the religious fragmentation of highland communities. Certainly, the rituals of costumbre continued to influence indigenous society, but, as the 1950s progressed, it was evident that Maryknollers and Catholic Action leaders had succeeded in carving out new religious spaces for the practice of sacramentalism, with the consequence that traditional religion had lost its monopoly over the daily lives of the Maya and a multilayered religious landscape had expanded in highland communities.82 One consequence was that Maryknoll’s efforts to expand a Romanized vision and practice of Catholicism progressed in unforeseen ways. Romanization, which depended on Catholic Action and new teaching methodologies, came to occupy a shared cultural matrix in which costumbre and other religious traditions, including Protestantism, had thrived since the nineteenth century.83 During the 1950s, these religious spaces and the process of accommodation became the engine for a shift in social relations. Here, again, Soloma is representative of the transformations affecting the highland Church. In establishing a community clinic, McClear had contributed to the erosion of costumbrista power and given the institutional Church (including priests and catechists) a more visible and tangible presence. Similarly, Soloma’s newly created textile cooperative, which opened new sources of income for the community, had brought the Maya, particularly women, closer to the Church.84 Behind these social projects was the recognition that the fate of sacramentalism hinged on the alteration—or modernization—of social conditions. There was, in other words, a utilitarian aspect to the creation of clinics, cooperatives, and other socioeconomic projects, for they were intended to

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bolster the authority of the institutional Church. Yet, during the 1950s, clerics and catechists saw them as a way to forestall the advance of communism and, as McGuinness argued, “to enable people to help themselves and their neighbors.”85 This social pastoral, which brought together the goals of religious and social reform and exemplified the “self-­help” mantra of Cold War developmentalism, flourished into a centrist and transnational movement of socioeconomic reform during the 1960s. We now turn to an examination of this movement and its ramifications in the highlands.

CHAPTER SIX

The Progressive Church

By the late 1960s, Juan Martínez, a Maya peasant, had emerged as a religious and social leader in his hometown of La Libertad, located in the western highlands of Guatemala. The twenty-​six-​year-​old Martínez had assumed a number of responsibilities in the local church, including teaching the catechism, preaching the Gospel, directing the Liturgy of the Word, and distributing communion during Mass. He was also known for his work on the loan committee of the local credit cooperative. This position turned Martínez into a “Christian community leader” who strived to give his fellow parishioners the tools necessary for solving the problems affecting their daily lives. In 1972 these experiences led him into the realm of politics. Martínez, whose politics were partly shaped by the progressive spirit of Vatican II (1962– 1965) and liberation theology, decided to run for La Libertad’s mayorship in order to inject a sense of community into municipal politics. Although he lost the election, Martínez gained a new perspective on his religious and social reality: he came to see the value of a reformist path for building a new social order that would be guided by respect for the common good of society and would see “the people working together in their communities.”1 Martínez’s life course—his transformation from a religious to a community (and political) leader—exemplifies the rise of a progressive Church during the 1950s and 1960s. It reflected broader changes affecting the Maryknoll mission, the Guatemalan Church, and global Catholicism. Maryknoll’s 129

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missionary project, which began as a way to expand sacramentalism in the highlands, had morphed into a social enterprise in the postwar years. It is true that neither missionaries nor Catholic Action catechists abandoned their objective to displace costumbre and other competing religious groups from the religious landscape of Huehuetenango. The dissemination of modern teaching methods (including the use of visual materials and the radio) attests to this reality. Maryknollers’ socioeconomic projects—namely clinics and cooperatives—continued to coexist with a program of religious reform. Yet, as we have seen, by the 1950s a new set of pastoral priorities had led the missioners to promote the socioeconomic modernization of rural society. Consistent with the developmentalist ideology of the Cold War, this position progressively became an intrinsic part of a Christian-​inspired grassroots reform movement. The development of this path was not a linear one, for the impetus for social reform coexisted with a Romanized vision and an attempt to re-​Christianize society, which was evident in the persistence (albeit a declining one) of the Catholic Action model in the 1960s. During the 1950s, Maryknoll’s social projects had followed the Church’s anticommunist blueprint and were originally created to attract greater numbers of indigenous parishioners into the Romanized Church. By the 1960s, however, these projects had evolved, oftentimes in unexpected ways, into a transnational and progressive program of development. “Romanization,” as Kenneth P. Serbin observes, “thus illustrated how an essentially conservative movement can lead to political and social change.”2 This movement called not just for a campaign to expand sacramentalism in order to “re-​Christianize” the Maya and spur the material modernization of the highlands, but also for a concerted movement to “Christianize the environment.” During the 1960s Maryknollers and catechists alike recognized that their evangelizing work must transcend their initial attempts to create a new generation of practicing Catholics and improve living conditions among the Maya. They became increasingly devoted to instilling the environment— the whole of Maya society—with the tenets of Catholic doctrine and Christian ideals of service. Within these changes one can discern an evolving definition of and approach to “conversion.” Maryknollers and Catholic Action members now strived to “serve” their Maya parishioners, promote the common good, and create a “servant community” in the image of Christ, as opposed to imposing, in paternalistic fashion, the tenets of Catholic orthodoxy and the ideology of development among indigenous peoples. This religious and social order required the creation of self-​sufficient rural communities,

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expansion of cooperatives and other social projects, greater (and more central) involvement of the laity in the affairs of the Church, and formation of local leaders who, like Juan Martínez, would actively work to construct a more just world. One cannot disassociate these transformations from national and international developments. With the advent of the Vatican II, Maryknollers began to speak a new language of conversion, questioned the hierarchical nature of their mission, and became determined to address the entrenched conditions of poverty that afflicted Maya communities. At the same time, I argue, the dictates of Vatican II reaffirmed the contours of the emerging “social pastoral” of the 1950s, validated the lived experiences of missionaries and laypeople, and accelerated the coming together of the various facets of the Christian-​inspired grassroots reform movement already evident, if in an incipient form, in the Guatemalan highlands. By the end of the 1960s, this movement would coalesce around the “progressive” form of Catholicism and the “popular Church” that nourished the “preferential option for the poor” position that stood at the heart of liberation theology.3 Moreover, the Maryknoll mission did not always mirror the course of national politics. Maryknoll’s projects of socioeconomic reform dovetailed with the anticommunist and developmentalist-​oriented policies of the U.S. and Guatemalan governments during the 1950s and 1960s. Missioners and indigenous laypeople advocated for a nonviolent reformist movement through a revolution in agriculture and strategic cooperation with the Guatemalan state. In the context of persistent social problems (particularly poverty), the continuing fragmentation of highland communities, and expanding Cold War polarization and violence, however, they also worked to instill a new set of Christian values in the “developmentalist” philosophies of the postwar period. Missioners and laypeople, in other words, imbued developmentalism with a renewed sense of the common good of rural society. This chapter investigates how, by the second half of the 1960s, this evolution set the stage for a reform-​minded progressive movement—what missioner William Price called a “Christian Revolution”—in the Guatemalan highlands.4 It does so, first, by examining the interaction between the Hue­ hue­tenango mission, Vatican II, and Maryknoll’s use of new technologies designed to humanize, not simply transmit, Catholic doctrine. The chapter next delves into Huehuetenango’s “green revolution,” the rise of “self-​sufficient” (although not isolated) Maya communities, and the decline of Catholic Action and its replacement with a less paternalistic and confessional program

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intended to form a cadre of community indigenous leaders. By the end of the decade, these transformations had crystallized into a progressive trajectory in the highlands.

NEW “THINKING PATTERNS”

The progressive Church in the highlands surfaced against the background of a changing meaning of religious conversion. Maryknollers, influenced by their interaction with Maya communities and changes affecting global Catholicism, ascribed a religious and social (or material) meaning to conversion. Missioners and catechists often brought large numbers of rural people closer to Catho­ lic sacramentalism. Yet, even with continuous instruction, they had failed to convince many Maya parishioners to undergo a meaningful “conversion” process that would lead them to engage the institutional life of the Church and change their outlook on the world in which they lived. Edmund McClear summarized well this position when he stated, “large numbers of . . . catechists may bring in great numbers for marriage and First Communion but seldom do they bring about the ‘conversion’ that we are looking for.” Conversion, in this respect, entailed more than agreeing to take an active part in the Catholic sacraments. For a more profound conversion to take place among the Maya, McClear argued, “religion must reach down to the very roots and change their thinking patterns, their morality in the market place, their attitude toward the sick and hungry.”5 As this chapter demonstrates, a transformation of Maya “thinking patterns” was at the heart of the “Christian Revolution” that unfolded in the Guatemalan highlands during the 1960s. This progressive outlook arose in the midst of an expanding and increasingly divided national Church. The growth of the Church rested in large part on the immigration of foreign clerics and the social and economic resources they brought into the country. By 1966 an estimated 1,235 out of the total 1,432 priests and nuns in the country were foreign born. Most of these clerics—approximately 95 percent (or 1,180)—were part of a religious order or community. The Maryknoll mission was part of this trend.6 Archbishop Rossell, who understood the need for more priests given the institutional weakness of the Church, grudgingly accepted this foreign presence and influence while at the same time trying to maintain his position as the leader of the Church.7 Other Guatemalan clerics proved less welcoming. In early 1969 a group of about sixteen Guatemalan diocesan priests formed the

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Confederación de Sacerdotes Diocesanos de Guatemala (COSDEGUA, Confederation of Diocesan Priests of Guatemala) as a response to the prominence of foreign religious personnel. It is true that COSDEGUA failed to find much support among the members of the Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala (CEG, Guatemalan Conference of Bishops), the group of religious leaders that functioned as the ruling body of the Church. Its emergence, however, was certainly symptomatic of the rapid expansion of non-​ Guatemalan elements and the resultant divisiveness within the Church.8 These divisions, too, became manifest in the realm of theology and ideology. On the death of Archbishop Rossell in December 1964, the Vatican appeared to send a contradictory message to the Guatemalan faithful in its choice of successor. Pope Paul VI (1963–1978) settled on Mario Casariego y Acevedo (1964–1983), a candidate who was in many respects at odds with the spirit of Vatican II.9 A mentee of Rossell, the new Guatemalan archbishop provided much continuity, in theological and ideological terms, with his predecessor. Born in Asturias, Spain, in 1909, he joined the Somascan Fathers in 1924. Sixteen years later, while studying at the Somascan seminary in San Salvador, El Salvador, Casariego was ordained as a priest. From that year to 1958 he served in various positions, including as provincial superior of the Somascans in Central America. In 1958 he became auxiliary bishop of Guatemala, thus paving the way for his ascension to the country’s archbishopric see in 1964.10 The selection of Casariego exposed the existing discord within the Church. By the late 1960s the national Church found itself divided among four major groups: traditionalists, reformists, revolutionaries, and nationalists. Representative of the hierarchical vision of society supported by Casariego, the first group espoused an anticommunist perspective and generally supported the maintenance of the country’s social, economic, and political structures. Reformists opposed communism but argued that political extremes could be prevented through socioeconomic change, which they envisioned through developmentalist-​inspired projects. This bloc consisted of most members of the CEG and, as we shall see, clerics who drew their inspiration from the progressive turn in international Catholicism during the 1960s. Among this group one finds religious communities such as Mary­ knoll. A smaller group, the so-​called revolutionaries, found themselves increasingly tired of peaceful change and supported direct involvement in the small revolutionary movement of the 1960s. The four Maryknollers who were expelled from Guatemala in December 1967 formed part of this group.

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Finally, the nationalists, best embodied by COSDEGUA, agreed with the reformists about the need to forestall the advance of communism though socioeconomic reform while at the same time taking a “rebellious” stance vis-​ à-​vis the Church hierarchy. They resented the archbishop’s “conniving” and “divisive” actions.11 Given the heterogeneous character of the Guatemalan Church, Casariego often seemed out of touch with reality. Just like his predecessors, he found irritating the fact that many priests disregarded “traditional forms of perfection” such as prayer and that other clerics failed to wear proper clerical garb, in the process undermining the prestige of the priesthood.12 Moreover, his pastoral letters, like those of Durou and Rossell, stressed the need to protect the institution of the family, called on the wealthy of society to practice more charity, and found suspicious the efforts by many priests and nuns to effect socioeconomic change. “It is not the business of the Church to become involved in the technical aspects of the social question,” Casariego admonished; he further stressed, “Its mission is to guide people’s consciences and to urge them to comply with their [moral] obligations toward others.”13 Moreover, not unlike his predecessors, he proved hostile to any kind of social or political activism on the part of the clergy. In a speech directed to the CEG, the archbishop left no doubt about his distaste for non-​spiritual work: What kind of religious does our archdiocese need? Do we need the [socially] maladjusted priest or nun in his or her country of origin? The religious that because of his or her strong and difficult character is not tolerated even by his or her own people? Do we need the adventurous religious who seeks to go beyond the dispositions of the Church hierarchy both in the liturgical and pastoral realm? A priest who arrives [in Guatemala] to carry out his pastoral duties with his ecclesiastical vocation in a state of crisis and with a resentful and bitter spirit will only discourage his fellow clergymen and scandalize the faithful. . . .14 While it would be wrong to assume that all clerics who supported the transformation of the country’s socioeconomic structures underwent such a “crisis,” many of them were questioning, experimenting, and searching for ways to transcend sacramentalism, at least among the reformist, nationalist, and the revolutionary wings of the Church. The members of Maryknoll in the highlands were part of this evolution. They followed the reformist and, to a much lesser extent, revolutionary trajectories within the Church.

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This questioning and experimenting on the part of Maryknollers mirrored the progressive movement that appeared within global Catholicism during the 1960s. The aggiornamento (updating) encouraged by Pope John XXIII (1958–1963) and his call for an ecumenical council (which eventually became known as Vatican II) were instrumental in fomenting such a turn. In Latin America, Vatican II, which often reinforced changes already affecting the Church, motivated Catholics to engage, not oppose, modernity. More specifically, it prompted clerics to redefine their relationship to the laity and in the process led them to question the paternalistic models that had guided the neo-​Christendom movement. Vatican II, moreover, set the stage for the rise of the “preferential option for the poor” stance that coalesced in the aftermath of the CELAM meeting at Medellín in 1968 and with the rise of liberation theology.15 In the highlands, Vatican II caused both ruptures and continuities in the pastoral work of missioners and Maya catechists and in the overall direction of the rural Church. On the one hand, Vatican II validated the existing missionary approach that called for the propagation of practicing Catholics and adaptation to the religious and social context of Huehuetenango. In accordance with Sacrosanctum Concilium (December 4, 1963), proclaimed by Paul VI, William Price, the pastor of San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, reminded his fellow missioners that the Church must accept certain local traditions and make certain pastoral adaptations according to local religious circumstances. In this respect, he found much relevance in the pope’s assertion that “Anything in these peoples’ way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she [the Church] studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit.” In Hue­ hue­tenango, Price noted, such “things” included the incorporation of the marimba at appropriate times during the liturgy and use of Maya languages in parts of the liturgy and the general pastoral program. Needless to say, this position would have alarmed, if not shocked, the first missioners who had arrived in Huehuetenango in the early 1940s. Still, the missioner established concrete boundaries to this process of accommodation, for adaptations could be made only when they did not contradict the essence of religious orthodoxy. As the Maryknoller contended, “The Church does not have a closed mind; she has her windows open and we as missioners have to have our minds open too, and wide, but always making sure that the screens are on the windows, lest the flies come in.” Adaptation to local culture, therefore,

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must coexist with a continuing support for sacramentalism.16 In this way, the windows of the Guatemalan Church were not always open after 1965. Vatican II did more than affirm and encourage Maryknoll’s ongoing accommodationist policy. Its pronouncements and theological innovations encouraged Maryknollers to question the nature and purpose of missionary work. Perhaps one of the better-​known effects of Vatican II resided at the sacramental level. This was evident in the Maryknollers’ use of the vernacular (Spanish) in Mass. Maryknollers and catechists now sought to transmit the doctrine in “a language the people understand” and “not with the retention of the dead language [Latin] in the Mass.”17 At a more profound level, Vatican II caused missioners to conceptualize “conversion” as a communal, rather than individual, action and process. Price, reflecting on its conclusions, contended that the members of the Huehuetenango mission should aim to create a Christian community in the image of Christ. Like Jesus Christ himself, this social body would transcend traditional charitable approaches and the observance of the sacraments. “A mere reception of the sacraments,” the Maryknoller contended, was no longer sufficient, for, “Of what value are crowded Masses here at Ixtahuacán or any place, full of communion rails, long and frequent confessional lines, if these same sacraments do not basically change the individual and collective lives of these Indian people? A mere reception of the sacraments, in the light of the condition of the Church in Huehuetenango, of which Ixtahuacán is part, would be useless, if not harmful.” For Price, an emphasis on the “individual and collective lives” of the Maya would bring forth a “commitment to Christ in community.”18 It thus followed that missioners must focus on “Christianizing the environment,” particularly by refashioning existing religious and social values—or “thinking patterns”—and propagating projects of socioeconomic development. These programs would bring about an integral transformation of Maya towns and villages. This metamorphosis received validation in Populorum progressio, Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical on “the development of the peoples.” In it the pope pronounced, “The progressive development of peoples is an object of deep interest and concern to the Church.”19

MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE

The 1960s, therefore, witnessed the crystallization of a new discourse—one that viewed religion as part of a broader social, economic and political

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matrix—and thus opened the way for an era of experimentation. Maryknollers, following the dictates of Vatican II, began to use the vernacular in Mass and further adapted Catholic Action to the cultural context of Huehuetenango. Missioners who lived among speakers of the various Maya languages now strived to humanize the visual religious method they had adopted during the 1950s. “In so far as we are always dealing with the invisible [faith in the sacraments],” McClear concluded, “[we] hit upon the idea of making the invisible visible.”20 During the 1960s missioners and catechists continued “making the invisible visible.” However, they sought to move beyond a straightforward transmission of the culture of sacramentalism; rather, they strove to humanize the Gospel through a variety of technologies that might be categorized under the rubric of a new “religious media.”21 It was through these methods that indigenous communities often encountered and experienced a vernacular form of Catholic doctrine and modernity.22 Maryknollers still relied on a flashlight projector and a series of color filmstrips that presented a three-​dimensional representation of humankind’s spiritual journey. This visual medium, which they called the “salvation history approach,” constituted an adaptation to the religious context of the highlands and amounted, as mentioned in chapter 5, “to bringing religious T.V. into the last hut in the last mountain valley.” This religious program consisted of three nights of instruction. During the first night, Maryknollers showed a filmstrip containing a lesson titled “The Three Trials,” which encouraged the Maya to keep attending catechism class. This lesson depicted God creating, trying, rewarding, and punishing the angels during the “first trial”; God creating, trying, and punishing Adam and Eve during the “second trial”; and Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God during the “third trial.” The lesson likened the story of Moses to that of the Maya. Maryknollers then asked the attendees whether they had been married in the Church, drank during the fiestas, attended Mass on Sunday, and confessed their sins. From McClear’s perspective, this method put the Maya themselves on “trial,” prompting them to ask whether or not they deserved salvation.23 But it was not only fear that missioners sought to inculcate among the Maya. The second and third nights of the course highlighted the promise of human salvation and, from the perspective of Maryknollers, sought to make the Maya protagonists in their spiritual lives. During the second night, McClear used a series of filmstrips to portray humans as the sons and daughters of God. The class introduced the concepts of mortal sin, venial sin, hell, and purgatory, and concluded by stressing how indigenous people could reach

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heaven by “restoring to their souls the Life of God.” The third and final night introduced the life of Jesus Christ and explained why he had come to Earth. Already familiar with the concepts of “grace” and the loss of the Life of God (or the loss of Catholic orthodoxy), the attendees were now in a position to appreciate the need for Jesus Christ in their lives and his promise of personal salvation. The course, therefore, stressed “the lower motives of fear and hope of reward” in order to arrive at the highest of all motives, namely to give Maya parishioners a deeper appreciation of Christ, his example of sacrifice, and his offer of salvation.24 Maryknollers also relied on the airwaves to give a more palpable dimension to sacramental practices. The introduction of new teaching technologies became evident in the parish of Santa Cruz Barillas, which was located in the northeastern corner of Huehuetenango, covered about eight hundred square miles, and had a population of fourteen thousand—of which 95 percent was Maya—and was attended by two Maryknollers, Daniel McLeod and William Woods. Upon their arrival, McLeod and Woods encountered a series of “pagan” religious practices associated with costumbre and a Protestant congregation of about eight hundred people. They also found the difficult physical terrain, long distances, rain-​soaked roads, and lack of access to reliable horses that made travel to and from the Maya villages difficult.25 To overcome these religious and physical barriers, Maryknollers introduced a radio program. The program had its beginnings in the early 1960s, when the missioners first visited the aldeas with a tape recording in the Q’anjob’al language as well as a series of slides illustrating the topics covered in the recording. This recording contained conversations with costumbristas and Protestants in which they explained to Catholic Action catechists why they opposed sacramentalism. It also included the Maryknollers’ responses to these objections, which the catechists had translated into Q’anjob’al.26 Soon thereafter the missioners expanded this recording system into a radio program that ran for two hours between five and seven o’clock in the evenings. Maryknollers trained Maya catechists to take radios to their respective villages and show the slides used in the salvation history course. They were to use these images during catechism class while the accompanying recording was transmitted over the airwaves. The slides revealed the life of a person with a changing soul. The first slide displayed a baby with a black soul, but then the image of God appeared in it after the baby had been baptized. A second slide illustrated how, as the baby became an adult, began to drink alcohol, and lived with a partner without contracting holy marriage, God left the person’s soul

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and the Devil replaced God. A third slide then projected a person in hell as a way to demonstrate to the “pagans” what would happen if anyone died in a “state of mortal sin.” Another slide revealed an individual, in search of God’s favor, mistakenly praying to a “pagan cross.” In order to emphasize the importance of the sacraments, a fifth slide told the story of an individual leaving the confessional and a couple getting married with the grace of God in their soul. A last slide showed two souls, one with the Devil in it and the other with grace and God in it.27 This approach had implications beyond the religious realm. By 1963 the radio system had functioned on 75 nights, during which 2,600 “pagans” had been reached. On an average, a total of 6 radios worked every night, with 6 adults listening to each radio. Of those who had heard the program, 136 families signed to attend catechism class. According to Maryknoll accounts, conversions to sacramentalism tripled with the introduction of the radio program. The use of visuals and radio was important in another important respect: “What we have proved is that a radio station,” McLeod wrote, “can be a tremendous help to a missionary in communicating his message to his people without wasting his time playing birthday songs to people and trying to entertain them.” It allowed missioners to minimize the time they spent traveling, often on horseback, from village to village, and, more importantly, diversify their missionary work into programs of socioeconomic improvement. Finally, for the Maya who attended catechism classes in Barillas during these years, this was often the first time they had seen anything that resembled a television or heard religious instruction over the radio. Like members of Catholic communities elsewhere in Latin America in the aftermath of Vatican II, many of them were now able to visualize and conceptualize the invisible in an entirely different manner, and they began to imagine themselves as part of a broader religious world.28 Roldán has argued that the Church’s introduction of a radio network in Colombia in the postwar period became part of “the paradigm for multimedia mass education among rural populations.”29 The Barillas radio allowed highland communities to gain access to networks of knowledge and, in the process, experience the religious and mundane realities of the Cold War.

MILITARIZATION AND DEVELOPMENTALISM

The Barillas radio program existed within the context of the militarization and polarization of Guatemalan society. As we have seen, during the 1940s

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and 1950s Maryknollers had established programs in the areas of literacy, agriculture, education, hygiene and nutrition, and catechetics, to name a few. With the advent of a “new tomorrow” propagated by Vatican II, they gradually realized that they “were just scratching the surface with these projects.” Influenced by Cold War developmentalism and anticommunism, they began to take more radical steps to bring indigenous people—who, according to one Maryknoller, were “still living in the fifteenth century”—into a modern age. This assimilationist position required a continuing campaign to establish the fundamentals of sacramentalism in the highlands but also called for a policy that addressed “all aspects of our brother’s life.”30 Or, as William Price put it, “We have to give man bread and the sacred host. We have to teach them the alphabet and the doctrine of Christ. We have to offer them social security and the providence of God. We have to save men, not only souls.” Price’s call for a more integral missionary approach, of course, did not mean that missioners discarded sacramentalism. This was evident in the use of new technologies. Rather, it signified a shift that called on the rural Church to rethink existing definitions of conversion by engaging modernity—to “read the sign of the times,” as Vatican II announced—and to take concrete actions to address the social ills affecting remote rural communities.31 This new meaning of religious conversion evolved in the midst—and sometimes as part—of an expanding state-​directed military project of development. In the aftermath of the assassination of President Carlos Castillo Armas in 1957, Guatemalan political life became increasingly militarized. His successor, General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes (1958–1963), permitted limited political participation and encouraged the economic development of unexploited lands in northern Guatemala. During his tenure in office, the conservative Reconciliación Democrática Nacional (National Democratic Reconciliation), Ydígoras Fuentes’s political party, shared seats in congress with the rightist Movimiento Democrático Nacional (National Democratic Party). The latter had functioned as the only legal political party during the Castillo Armas years. To the left of these two right-​wing political parties were the reform-​oriented Partido Revolucionario (Revolutionary Party), the center-​of-​left Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca (Christian Democratic Party of Guatemala) and Unidad Revolucionaria Democrática (Revolutionary Democratic Unity). On the economic front, in September 1962 the Guatemalan congress approved Decree 1551, the Law for Agrarian Transformation. Among its many provisions, Decree 1551 sanctioned the establishment of the Instituto Nacional de Transformación Agraria (INTA, National

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Institute for Agrarian Transformation), which was responsible for coordinating the colonization and economic development of northern Guatemala and, more generally, promoting the agricultural export sector. This area included the region of El Petén and the northernmost parts of the departments of Huehuetenango, El Quiché, Alta Verapaz, and Izabal, a region that became known collectively as the Franja Transversal del Norte (FTN, Northern Transversal Strip).32 This developmentalist project was colored by continuing political polarization and Cold War violence. Rampant corruption plagued the Ydígoras Fuentes administration. Under the provisions of Decree 1551, the president rewarded his friends and political allies with the national plantations. At the same time, Ydígoras Fuentes faced mounting political opposition, to which he responded with force. In the spring of 1962, for instance, government forces repressed a student demonstration against fraudulent congressional elections. Meanwhile, the president faced elite nationalism when he accepted increased U.S. military assistance. Ydígoras Fuentes’s willingness to alienate nationalist sectors in the country stemmed from his efforts to boost the defense budget to fight the nascent guerrilla movement. The latter officially surfaced in February 1962 from a failed 1960 coup attempt by nationalist sectors within the Guatemalan army. With the exception of a few high-​profile kidnappings and assassinations, this insurrection would make little headway in military terms during the 1960s. Nonetheless, under the leadership of Luis Turcios Lima and Marco Antonio Yon Sosa (both former second lieutenants in the army), guerrilla forces gave the army generals and the conservative political establishment justification for bolstering the power of the Guatemalan army.33 The ascendancy of the generals gained further momentum with the advent of the Cuban Revolution, U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s effort to combat the advance of communism through the Alliance for Progress, and the rise of the National Security Doctrine in the aftermath of the Brazilian coup of 1964. Although the Kennedy administration highlighted the Alliance for Progress’s emphasis on economic development and political reform as an antidote to communism, at the end of the day, particularly under the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, it was the National Security Doctrine—with its enshrinement of the notion that the army was the only institution capable of fighting communism and defending the “national” interest—that guided political life in Guatemala and other Latin American countries.34 In this way, development became intrinsically tied to Cold War politics. Weakened by political instability, Ydígoras Fuentes fell in 1963 to a coup led

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by his minister of defense, Enrique Peralta Azurdia, who immediately dissolved congress, proscribed all political activity, and decreed a stage of siege. The new military government continued Ydígoras Fuentes’s developmentalist policies, specifically by encouraging cattle production, logging, and the extraction of cobalt and nickel deposits in the FTN. It also promoted the formation of peasant leagues and cooperatives, and, in an attempt to increase grain production for domestic consumption and relieve problems such as population growth in the countryside, created the Sebol-​Chinajá colonization project in northern Alta Verapaz. The colony and the surrounding territory became an important area of development and a conduit from the FTN to the department of El Petén.35 By the mid-​1960s these developmentalist policies had become subsumed under a broader counterinsurgency campaign. As Way reminds us, “Counterinsurgency and development, the army’s two missions, are not analytically separate.”36 The state’s twin objectives became evident during Julio César Méndez Montenegro’s administration (1966–1970), which saw its ability to implement meaningful social and political reform thwarted by the ascendancy of the army. Méndez Montenegro, a civilian who had come of age during the years of the October Revolution, permitted congress to perform its traditional legislative functions but found himself without much effective power, for the military remained very much in control of national political life. During his presidency the Guatemalan army, largely propped up by U.S. military assistance, expanded its counterinsurgency capabilities. On the agrarian front, congress approved Decree 1653, which authorized the transfer of national plantations to INTA. The latter was to form and monitor production cooperatives at the national plantations and then distribute national plantation lands among the members of these cooperatives. The Méndez Montenegro government also expanded the number of legalized peasant cooperatives. But this expansion occurred in the aftermath of army’s 1968 Zacapa campaign. This military operation effectively dismantled the guerrilla movement in the eastern part of the country, in the process causing about ten thousand civilian casualties and earning its leader, Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio, the nickname “the Butcher of Zacapa.” In a few years, Maya communities in the highlands would start bearing the brunt of state-​sponsored violence. The number of government-​sanctioned cooperatives now jumped from twenty-​seven in 1966 to eight-​one in 1968.37 In sum, the militarization of the state and presence of a leftist insurgency combined to shape the contours of the state-​sponsored developmentalist

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project of the 1960s. More than ever, the army now assumed the role of final political arbiter in the country. Developmentalism and the accompanying anticommunist ideology paralleled the social projects promoted by Maryknoll in the highlands. As in the post-​1954 military state, Maryknollers formed cooperatives, implemented sanitary and health programs, and promoted the colonization of the northwestern part of the country. In addition, the specter of communism as embodied by the Cuban Revolution and the appearance of a communist-​inspired insurgency in Guatemala were very much present in the minds of the American missioners. Ronald Hennessey, who arrived in Huehuetenango in 1964, left no doubt about his anticommunist worldview when he wrote, ”The commies will never forget that they securely had Guatemala until the United States armed the exiles in Honduras and Castillo Armas started his march north with his small army of liberation. . . . [T]he U.S. commitment crushed the courage of the murderous clandestine communist regime [Arbenz’s government] and the survivors of the victims welcomed the liberation with open arms.”38 This position was not surprising, for the Mary­ knollers who arrived in Guatemala during the 1950s and 1960s were imbued with the Cold War ethos that pervaded postwar U.S. society. Maryknollers’ anticommunism and developmentalism did not mean that, in pursuing projects of socioeconomic development, they invariably shared the goals and policies of the Guatemalan state. The state’s efforts to promote socioeconomic development were largely motivated by the emergence of the guerilla movement and the broader Cold War ideological and military conflict. The Maryknollers’ “social pastoral,” although also influenced by Cold War ideology, partly stemmed from missioners’ desire to attract a greater number of converts to Catholic sacramentalism. It also originated in the social realities that Maryknollers encountered in Huehuetenango and, more specifically, in their attempts to address the conditions of poverty and exploitation that prevailed in the highlands. By the late 1950s Maryknoll’s provision of material assistance had become a central aspect of the Huehuetenango mission. Maryknollers’ campaign to expand sacramentalism continued to guide the activities of the rural Church. Yet, the early 1960s witnessed the birth of religious-​inspired progressive movement of reform that recognized the humanity of indigenous peoples and therefore sought to instill in the western highlands a set of religious and social values that gave priority to the common good of society. Missioners promoted development not merely for utilitarian purposes but also, in Price’s words, “to save men, not only souls.”39

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HUEHUETENANGO’S FARMING REVOLUTION

This reform movement was guided by a new and continuously evolving meaning of conversion, one that conceived Maya peoples as souls to be conquered but also as individuals who formed part of a rural setting affected by a variety of long-​standing social ills. It fostered the formation of “mature” Christian communities in which laypeople promoted projects of socioeconomic development and social justice. To create and nurture such communities, missioners and Maya laypeople (including Catholic Action catechists) initiated and pushed forward a revolution in agricultural production and diversification. As a consequence, during the 1960s the highlands witnessed a farming revolution, or a “green revolution,” that resulted in greater agricultural productivity, the cultivation of new crops, and the increased incorporation of Maya communities into local and regional markets.40 This revolution hinged on the adoption by Maya communities of chemical fertilizers and new agricultural techniques, which decreased migration to the coast, led to improved living standards, and spurred self-​sufficiency in some parts of the highlands.41 This Maryknoll-​supported revolution differed in seemingly imperceptible ways to the programs of modernization of the previous decade. After all, it was motivated by the ideological imperatives of the Cold War.42 Yet, in the 1960s more than ever, clerics expected Maya laypeople to actively participate in bringing about a shift in the agricultural cycle and social relations within and outside their own communities. This revolution in the agricultural cycle, moreover, existed, not merely for utilitarian purposes (that is, to expand sacramentalism’s supporters), but rather to transform the material conditions of indigenous communities and create a more just rural society. Equally significant was the fact that during the 1960s the “green revolution” in the highlands became part of a transnational program of development— what Arturo Escobar calls the “development apparatus.”43 This transformation in agriculture was initially rooted in subsistence agriculture. Maryknollers emphasized increased corn production as a way to improve nutrition levels among the indigenous population. Corn, they had learned since their arrival in the highlands, constituted the basis of Guatemala’s subsistence economy. Missioners also discovered that the average Maya farmer in Huehuetenango owned about an acre and a half of land, which yielded an average of 1,200 pounds of corn per year, and that a family of five (the typical family size) required about 3,000 pounds of corn per year in order to obtain an adequate amount of minerals and vitamins. By the

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early 1960s Maryknollers had instituted Project San José, an experiment partly intended to increase corn production in the town of Huehuetenango. To meet the nutritional needs of the population, Felix Fournier, assisted by a Maryknoll lay missioner, Brother Carl Puls, encouraged local farmers to plant local varieties of corn, five synthetic varieties provided by the Guatemalan government’s pro-​development agricultural extension agency, the Instituto Agrario Nacional (IAN, National Agrarian Institute), and a hybrid variety from Lincoln, Nebraska.44 They also distributed packages containing chemical fertilizers and the insecticide Aldrin (which was widely used to treat the soil and kill white larvae and other worms) among the project’s participants. Fournier and Puls then provided training to Maya farmers on how to spray the cultivated corn at regular intervals in order to combat the corn borer. Participants were to plant a tenth of an acre of their lands using the newly introduced methods and the rest of their soil using traditional agricultural methods. This agricultural experiment soon bore fruit. In spite of a dry spell of forty-​five days that befell Huehuetenango in 1961, the corn crop tripled from the previous year’s planting. Not surprisingly, the number of indigenous farmers interested in the new methods increased substantially. Responding to the popularity of Project San José, Maryknollers bought a farm of ten acres and small tractor as a way to expand the use of fertilizer and insecticide. Such was their confidence in Project San José that they soon began to make plans to extend it to the entire department.45 At the same time, Huehuetenango’s green revolution caused a gradual move away from corn cultivation. Corn remained an important aspect of the agricultural cycle and Maya society, but soon a number of nontraditional crops emerged as an antidote to malnutrition and a source of additional income for highland communities. Thus, although Project San José sought to improve corn production, it mainly functioned to foster agricultural diversification. Fournier and Puls encouraged the Maya to grow a variety of U.S.-​ imported apples, peaches, pears, plums, apricots, and cherries, approximately five hundred grapevines, local varieties of orange, lemon, mango, avocado, apple, and peach trees, and twenty-​five different kinds of vegetables. The missioners distributed insecticides and fertilizers among the project’s participants and put a tractor at their disposal. A representative from IAN arrived in Huehuetenango to teach participants how to plant these new crops. These new agricultural products, the missioners reasoned, would help improve the daily diet of indigenous peoples and make the Maya less dependent on subsistence agriculture.46

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FIGURE 5.  Training and nontraditional crops. During the 1960s, Maryknoll missioners promoted the cultivation of nontraditional crops (including cabbages, as shown in this photograph) and the formation of a new class of Maya community leaders. Source: Maryknoll Mission Archives, Ossining, NY.

The town of San Antonio Huista also experienced an alteration in the pattern of agricultural production. Not unlike other highland communities, San Antonio’s economy was primarily based on corn cultivation. By 1961 Maryknollers had introduced the use of insecticides and fertilizers and encouraged the population to switch from corn to soybean cultivation. To their surprise, the residents of San Antonio found the soybeans palatable, and, after a period of study as to the best ways for convincing people to cultivate them, the missioners began distributing between half a pound and a pound of soybeans to each of the project’s participants, about two hundred Maya men, most of whom were Catholic Action catechists or practicing Catholics. The

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soybean harvest produced up to three times more food than the traditional corn yield. Furthermore, the soybean-​growing season only lasted three months, as opposed to the four-​to-​nine-​month period that corn farming entailed, which made soybeans an attractive crop among the local population.47 Agricultural diversification resulted in the commercialization of agriculture and generated alternative sources of income. Maryknoller Edward Doheny anticipated that soybean cultivation in San Antonio Huista would result in substantial profit for the community. In his view, any surplus soybeans (with a commercial value three times higher than that of corn) could be sold in the market, which would bring in an added profit to San Antonio’s population.48 This was also the case of Project San José in Huehuetenango. In May 1963 one of its participants had sold his surplus vegetable crop for $50 in the local market.49 Missioners, therefore, saw these socioeconomic projects as a way to improve the social conditions of their Maya parishioners and to connect indigenous communities to local and regional markets.

SELF-​S UFFICIENT COMMUNITIES

As part of Huehuetenango’s reform-​oriented agricultural revolution, clerics and laypeople worked to foment self-​sufficiency among Maya communities. Self-​sufficiency, missioners reasoned, would allow indigenous people to interact in new ways with the broader religious and socioeconomic world. It would make the Maya less dependent on subsistence agriculture, ladino power brokers at the local level, and the migratory patterns that led them on a yearly basis to coastal plantations. By adopting this policy, Maryknollers did not seek to isolate rural communities or to preserve an illusory “closed corporate community.” Instead, they sought to pave the way for the dissemination of Western values and the integration of Maya towns and villages into emerging markets on terms that would give indigenous people the ability to positively affect their daily lives.50 Support for self-​sufficiency became evident in the lime-​rich parish of Cabricán, Quetzaltenango. Maryknollers, who by the 1960s had expanded their mission to Quetzaltenango, established a lime cooperative there as a way to make people “a little less dependent on the whim of their overworked lands” and generate new sources of cash for the community. This project was made possible in part by the influx of outside resources. In 1963 United Nations technicians arrived in Cabricán to draw up plans for the construction

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of a wood-​burning oven to make limestone into usable lime. Cabricán’s pastor, Thomas Melville, also obtained funding from the National Catholic Welfare Conference in the United States in order to acquire grinding equipment for the hydration of lime. Soon the lime cooperative had generated an estimated $4,000, all of which had been reinvested in the cooperative. A substantial portion of the cooperative’s profits, for example, permitted Cabricán’s population to buy a GMC truck for $5,600. The truck gave them the ability to ship about 1,250 tons of lime to the coffee plantations and other markets and consequently avoid doing seasonal work in the plantation export sector.51 The cooperative movement—including agricultural, credit, and production cooperatives—created new sources of income within Maya communities. The profits of Cabricán’s lime cooperative permitted Maryknollers and parishioners to promote other community projects. The cooperative’s truck gave Cabricán’s inhabitants the means to buy truckloads of corn in regional markets at a discounted price. By 1963 they were in the process of building two 1,000-​bushel silos to store this surplus corn. The cooperative’s members also used some of their profits to cultivate wheat. Cabricán’s altitude, Melville pointed out, gave the local population a comparative advantage, for it made the climate there highly suitable to wheat cultivation. Surplus wheat could be stored in the new silos until it was sold as a cash crop to other communities.52 The lime cooperative also allowed its members to plan investment for the “common good” of Cabricán. In 1963 they planned to use some of their profits to acquire a threshing machine from the United States to replace the “most laborious” and “antiquated method” of separating grain from stalks and husks by hand.53 Community members also intended to employ some of the profits from the lime cooperative to build a housing cooperative, a hospital, and a catechetical school, and to make improvements to the roads in and around Cabricán.54 An additional project would consist of starting a technical school to train people in such trades as carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electricity, mechanics, shoemaking, tailoring, and cooking. Although there was not demand for such trades in Cabricán as of 1963, Melville hoped that the growth of the cooperative would generate more sources of revenue and eventually create such a demand.55 Melville’s optimism, which was characteristic of the supporters of the cooperative movement in the 1960s, would dissipate four years later when he, along with three fellow missioners and a small group of radicalized laypeople, decided to abandon developmentalism in favor of a revolutionary path. For the moment, however, support for gradual

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change and cooperatives predominated among clerics in the highlands. Indeed, by the mid-​1960s the cooperative movement was rapidly expanding and thriving, a development in no small way affected by the construction of the Pan-​American Highway and secondary road networks that connected cooperatives to regional and national markets.56 Just as missioners sought to diversify local economies as a way to promote self-​sufficiency, they aimed at the transformation of “thinking patterns” among Maya communities. This signified the diffusion of development (and capitalist) values in the highlands. In Barillas, William Woods established the Malin Cooperative, a woodcarving project intended to promote the value of saving money and putting it into productive enterprises at the local level. The cooperative started in 1964 when Woods asked a Maya parishioner from one of the surrounding villages to produce a few woodcarvings in exchange for an outstanding debt of four dollars. The parishioner had recently fallen ill, which prevented him from working and thus left him without money to feed his family. In order to help him without just giving him a “handout,” Woods gave him his pocketknife so he could start working. When a visitor offered to buy a few pieces of what the parishioner had carved, Woods decided to start a woodcarving cooperative. He allocated a room in the parish center to serve as a workroom, bought tools from Guatemala City, and hired four additional men to work in the cooperative. After three months of operation, the Malin Cooperative had received government recognition, sold all of its products, and received additional orders. By 1965 a total of twenty-​five parishioners in Barillas had joined the cooperative. They had elected their first president, who was responsible for training new members in the craft of woodcarving. The cooperative also employed twenty-​five men year round, each of whom earned a salary ranging from $4.50 to $10 per week. In 1965 the cooperative sold a total of $11,000 worth of woodcarvings and made a profit of $2,000, which its members reinvested in the project.57 The Malin Cooperative not only opened new sources of employment and income (which was not directly tied to agriculture), but also cultivated a transformation in values among community members. Its success encouraged the Maya to save money and spend this revenue in what missioners considered to be productive ways. For example, Woods, who was imbued with the developmentalist ethos of the postwar period, sought to instill among the cooperative’s members the importance of saving money to buy their own Japanese-​made transistor radios. Soon the woodcarvers were saving a portion of their profits to buy radios and plots of land.58 In this sense,

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the impact of the Malin Cooperative extended beyond the creation of alternative sources of employment and income, for it played an integral role in the propagation of Western consumer values and lifestyles in the highlands. The formation of self-​sufficient indigenous communities also challenged local power structures. In some communities it undermined the power of ladino commercial middlemen, who had traditionally acted as interlocutors between Maya communities and national or international markets. In San Pedro Necta, a Maryknoll-​sponsored coffee cooperative became the epicenter of local conflict. Before the formation of the cooperative, the inhabitants had relied on ladino economic power brokers who made a 100 percent profit by buying and collecting the coffee crop from San Pedro and delivering it to the export houses in Guatemala City. These buyers paid sixteen cents per pound of coffee to producers in San Pedro and then sold it for thirty-​two cents per pound in the country’s capital. By 1965 the coffee cooperative, which had started with two members and three hundred pounds of coffee, had bypassed these middlemen by selling its coffee directly to exporters in Guatemala City. When the cooperative’s first two members sold the first three hundred pounds of coffee and received their profit, other men in the community showed an interest in joining the new organization. Maryknoller Joseph Rickert considered this interest “the beginning of [the Maya population’s] education in the value of Cooperatives.” After a two-​year period, the cooperative had 245 members and the capacity to handle about 500,000 pounds of coffee on a yearly basis. Rickert estimated that in the near future the cooperative would bring into San Pedro Necta a total of $150,000 in profits. These results were encouraging for the community, he wrote, “except for a few [ladino] coffee buyers who stand to lose 75 grand on the deal.”59 In the process, the Maya of San Pedro, like those in Cabricán, began to contest the power of the commercial brokers while establishing new links with the national and international economy. In the mid-​1960s, self-​sufficiency became tied to the colonization movement that spread throughout the northern and western part of the country. Such was the case of Colonia Juan XXIII (Pope John XXIII’s Colony) in the department of El Petén. Its main architect was Thomas Melville, who had been the major force behind the limestone cooperative in Cabri­ cán. With this colonization project, which drew inspiration from the aggiornamento supported by John XXIII, Melville sought to address the land shortage that plagued highland communities. By 1967 fifty Maya families had petitioned the national government for land and joined the colony, in

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the process settling a territory that spanned some ten thousand acres. Each colonist was expected to pay the government two hundred dollars for the land over a twenty-​year period. They had cleared the land and begun to cultivate a combination of traditional (e.g., corn and beans) and nontraditional (e.g., black pepper) crops, which then they sold in the market for profit. Each family could expect to receive as much as $150 from a single pepper harvest. The colony’s members had organized themselves as a cooperative, which meant that they were expected to develop and nurture a “real feeling of community.” As Melville reminded the members of John XXIII’s Colony in 1967, “There is no room here for any selfishness. We’ve come here to worship God together and help one another.” This notion required the colony’s population to share the work of building houses, collaborating on community projects, and making decisions at the community level through a democratic process, which required the input of all members. Only then would they become less reliant on subsistence agriculture and the paternalistic guidance of foreign clerics.60 The Maryknoll-​sponsored “Resettlement Project” in the Ixcán region also emerged as an example of a self-​reliant community. During the 1960s, the Ixcán, located in the northeastern part of the department of El Quiché and some 150 miles northeast of Huehuetenango proper, became the epicenter of Church-​and state-​directed colonization programs. Created in 1965 under Doheny’s leadership, the Resettlement Project, which initially covered an area of eighteen thousand acres, surfaced as an attempt to give landless Maya families access to land. Doheny, a native of Milwaukee and an architect by training, envisioned the project as a way to create a new group of middle-​ class farmers. Doheny provided training to Maya families who joined the project to petition the government for land and, upon the acquisition of a land title, prepare it for cultivation. Thus, he coordinated interactions between the settlers and the state agencies involved. The missioner hoped the Maya would establish approximately eighteen model communities, each containing a maximum of twenty-​four families, residential areas, community centers for worship and socialization, family farms, and common areas designated as communally owned pasture. These colonies would have their own school, clinics, and markets. The Maya would use the land to grow food crops, as well as expensive spices for export such as vanilla, black pepper, and allspice. By 1969 the colonization project, which started with sixteen men, had its own 1,400-​foot airstrip, which allowed Doheny to land a four-​seat Piper Cherokee plane for the transportation of certain products in the event

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of emergency. For Doheny, the Resettlement Project constituted “the ideal Christian Community now and for the future.”61 These efforts to establish self-​sufficient communities led Maryknollers and Maya parishioners to cooperate with the Guatemalan state. The national government, as mentioned above, was interested in opening the FTN (where the Ixcán was located) as a way to stimulate the export-​oriented economic sector and alleviate the pressures caused by population growth in the countryside. Military leaders benefited from this project by gaining access to land and resources. INTA, one of the government’s major agrarian agencies, emerged during the 1960s to coordinate the various colonization projects in the region. Propped up by the Kennedy administration and its Alliance for Progress programs, this developmentalist policy had its ideological underpinnings in the anticommunist policies promulgated in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution and, more immediately, the rise of the guerrilla movement in Guatemala. Maryknollers, for their part, pursued a parallel line of work—one greatly imbued in the developmentalist and progressive spirit of the decade—to help combat the advance of leftist political doctrines and foster a sense of “Christian” community in the highlands. This confluence of objectives led missioners to collaborate with the government in the fields of education and sanitation. It also led Doheny to establish a line of communication with INTA’s president, Leopoldo Sandoval Villeda.62 As a result, General Peralta Azurdia’s government promised to provide land titles and agricultural assistance and to construct roads, schools, and medical care installations in the newly formed settlements of the Ixcán. Maryknollers, therefore, conceived cooperation with secular institutions as an integral part of their plan to create self-​reliant Christian communities. The “apartheid” movement of competition with the government agencies, the argued, “must come to an end.”63 In many respects, cooperation was a byproduct of the Church-​state rapprochement that emerged during the 1930s and 1940s. These convergences would gradually disappear by the early 1970s, when Maryknollers opposed the government’s “indiscriminate means for combating” communism. By the late 1960s, missioners also came face-​to-​face with the power of ladino landowners in the Ixcán. José Luis Arenas, along with other ladino landowners, stood in fierce opposition to the Church’s colonization projects. Arenas, a fervent anticommunist, was the owner of finca La Perla. Known in the region as “El Tigre del Ixcán” for his ruthless treatment of his workers, he had expanded the size of his landholdings via his support of the post-​1954 anticommunist state and by displacing rural communities.64

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But the cooperative spirit of the 1950s and 1960s also disappeared because Maryknollers’ pastoral activities had their roots in a progressive religious campaign intended to “re-​Christianize the environment” through the formation of self-​sufficient Maya communities. These religious and social prerogatives, as well as the progressive turn within the rural Church, often clashed with the increasingly violent counterinsurgency policies of the state after the late 1960s.

CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY LEADERS

Perhaps more important was the transformation of the religious and social landscape of the highlands that went hand in hand with the formation of a new cadre of community leaders. Several factors contributed to this development. For one, by the mid-​1960s it was clear that missioners saw lay Catholic associations as more than a vehicle for the creation of practicing Catholics. In a critique of the hierarchical and confessional modus vivendi of Catholic Action, Maryknoller Greg Roberts remarked, “We’re overpopulated with followers, not doers.” In addition, Vatican II’s insistence on giving the laity a greater voice and participation in the affairs of the Church nurtured a policy of providing the Maya with the tools necessary to change their socioeconomic circumstances. Given this context, Catholic Action now became a vehicle through which Maya parishioners became active participants in the direction of the rural Church. Maryknollers now strived to engage in more dialogue with indigenous peoples. They sought, in the words of William Donnelly, “to talk less and listen more.”65 This perspective clashed with the Catholic Action model of the 1940s and 1950s. Church leaders, especially Catholic Action’s main proponent, Bishop Rafael González Estrada, had actively promoted its expansion throughout the highlands. Maryknollers had adapted González’s model to their mission because they saw it as the only way to expand sacramentalism in remote locations. Yet missioners such as Edmund McClear became increasingly critical of Catholic Action. The catechetical system, McClear argued, “does not appear to be the ideal system and does not seem to work in all places.” This was so because, in his view, Catholic Action was often based on “great numbers of poorly trained catechists.” The success of the catechetical system depended on dedicated individuals who taught the catechism on a regular basis and prepared individuals for the reception of first communion

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and marriage. But, McClear argued, many catechists simply lacked the intellectual ability to turn Catholic Action into an effective association of religious and social reform.66 Perhaps more importantly, a good percentage of the catechists were illiterate. This was precisely the case of the head catechist of the village of Subajasun in the parish of Barillas. Although Daniel McLeod described him as a “respected, elderly man” who worked “well with his young helpers,” his inability to read and write undoubtedly limited the effectiveness of his work.67 This critical position signaled a broader shift in the pastoral direction of the rural Church. It originated in missioners’ recognition that self-​sufficiency required continuous participation on the part of local indigenous leaders. Maryknollers encouraged Maya leaders (often Catholic Action catechists) to take more active roles in the social projects of the Church. They did so as a way to give Maya peoples the tools necessary to address and solve the social problems that affected them on a daily basis. The everyday operation and management of credit and production cooperatives brought to light this policy. As cooperatives gained momentum, it became clear that illiteracy levels among the Maya population, including catechists, posed an obstacle to the creation of self-​reliant communities.68 For example, at the woodcarving cooperative in Barillas, members recognized that they must learn to read and write as the process of fulfilling orders, shipping, and billing became increasingly intricate. By August 1965 the carvers had begun to learn to read and write in Spanish as a way of interacting in more meaningful and beneficial ways with the market and outside ladino world.69 With an eye toward developing community leaders and “Christianizing the environment,” Maryknollers instituted a number of training initiatives. In San Miguel Acatán, Maryknollers provided opportunities for greater participation of the laity, in particular in the realm of health care. By 1964 San Miguel’s health clinic, which was run by the Maryknoll Sisters, had tended to more than ten thousand people. The sisters trained two lay assistants to expand the clinic’s impact among the local population and a number of catechists in the neighboring villages to administer first aid and basic medicines in case of emergency. This meant that the catechists now carried both doctrine charts and medicine kits to the villages they visited on a weekly basis. By giving the Maya a role in the provision of medical care, missioners sought to convince indigenous communities “that they must take an interest in their parish, and to be less dependent upon the Padre for everything.”70 “This is the Hour of the Laity,” Edward Moore remarked, and further reflected, “Our

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Indians, illiterate though they may be, must share the burden of putting the Church here in Guatemala upon a solid foundation.”71 Self-​sufficiency and the formation of local leaders dovetailed with the “self-​help” ideology of the 1960s. Self-​help was partly inspired by the developmentalist ideology promoted by the Cold War state and the U.S. government. It was aptly summarized by Walt Rostow, author of The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-​Communist Manifesto (1960) and one of the main proponents of modernization theory. For Rostow, who served as an advisor in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the main objective of U.S. policy should be to “help other countries learn how to grow.”72 Self-​help also stemmed from evolution of the Catholic Action movement. In Guatemala this perspective had become the driving force of urban Catholic Action groups such as the Juventud Obrera Católica (JOC, Young Christian Workers). Archbishop Rossell had created JOC in the late 1940s as a way to expand the Church’s influence among young urban workers. At the core of JOC’s self-​help outlook was the “see-​judge-​act” method, with which clerics sought to equip workers to observe their social circumstances, analyze the causes and consequences of their impoverished condition, and take concrete steps to improve their lives at home and in the workplace. It “taught moral self-​empowerment” and told workers that they “had the power to transform life.”73 Echoing the “see-​judge-​ act” method, Maryknollers focused on giving indigenous people the tools for seeing, analyzing, and solving problems affecting them on a daily basis. They hoped that this methodology would allow the Maya to gain a new consciousness about social ills in the highlands and prompt them to assume greater control over the social programs of the Church, particularly in the fields of literacy, health care, and agriculture. In the process, missioners increasingly looked for ways to remove themselves from leadership positions in these projects and become facilitators or mediators by providing indigenous peoples with the technical and economic assistance they needed to find solutions to problems in their own communities.74 It was in this context of concientización (consciousness raising) that the Cursillo movement expanded in rural Guatemala. In the postwar period, clerics relied on cursillos (“courses,” usually lasting for a few days) to form local leaders. In western Guatemala, Maryknoller Hugo Gerbermann, who in 1962 was consecrated as a bishop and the leader of the newly formed Prelature of Huehuetenango (established in 1961), took a leading role in organizing cur­ sillos for Maya leaders. In the Ixcán region, for instance, Gerbermann aimed to make self-​sufficiency reality by serving as coordinator of an agricultural

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cursillo sponsored by the state’s main agricultural agency, the Department of Agriculture. The cursillo’s participants, five to ten people from each parish in the department of Huehuetenango, received training on matters of agriculture, group leadership, and problem solving. The Peralta Azurdia regime sent engineers to the Ixcán to teach additional cursillos in March, April, May, September, October, and November 1965. By Maryknollers’ own estimation, it took participants three cursillos “to realize that they are capable to solve problems.”75 The Cursillo movement became an important aspect of Project San José, whose members learned in these courses to plant new varieties of corn and other crops and use fertilizers and insecticides.76 Juan Martínez, the catechist from the parish of La Libertad whom we encountered at the beginning of this chapter, also benefited from this training, in the process becoming a “Christian community leader” who, in parallel fashion with his duties as a Catholic Action catechist, worked to help his fellow parishioners to find solutions to the problems affecting their daily lives.77 By decade’s end, the formation of indigenous leaders had become an institutionalized aspect of the Maryknoll mission. In 1968 Church leaders established the Centro de Capacitación, a training center located in the city of Quetzaltenango, the seat of the Archdiocese of Quetzaltenango. Three years later, Maya leaders from all eighteen parishes had enrolled in courses provided by this community center. Headed by the Maryknoller Edward Moore, it offered a variety of religious-​and social-​oriented courses. Students learned how to become catechists, literacy and health workers, and community organizers. They also became acquainted with the use of fertilizers and the cultivation of nontraditional crops. The center’s curriculum was inspired by the “see-​judge-​act” method, and students were thus expected to apply the Gospel message to the socioeconomic conditions in rural Guatemala and develop a broader social perspective. This meant that “even though they go their separate ways, each to his own town to share what he learned, the men know they are an intricate part of something bigger than themselves.”78 They were expected to effect change and promote the “common good” in their respective communities.

A CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION

The emergence of these local leaders points to the early stages of a new expansion of the Church in the highlands. During the first phase, which took

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place roughly between 1943 and the early 1950s, Maryknollers focused almost exclusively on expanding sacramentalism. A second period, which spanned most of the 1950s, saw missioners expanding Catholic Action and venturing into a variety of social-​oriented areas intended to expand Romanization, or “re-​Christianize” rural society. A third stage, during the 1960s, witnessed the modernization of religious education and the emergence of progressive Christian communities in which clerics and laypeople, sometimes in conjunction with military governments, promoted a revolution in agriculture, self-​sufficient communities, and service to the community. The period after 1968, which might be described as a fourth stage, would be one of continuing institutional expansion, increased lay participation in the evangelizing mission of the Church and its socioeconomic programs, and the crystallization of the “popular Church” inspired by liberation theology. Despite Archbishop Casariego’s conservatism, by the late 1960s the Church in Huehuetenango and other parts of the highlands would strive more than ever to spread the “Good News” to all men and women and carry out effective work in the realm of “social action.” As Price wrote in February 1968, The primary mission of the Church, and therefore of the Church in Guatemala is to proclaim the Good News to all men, and this is the world’s most basic need, but social action carried out by the Church’s members, priests, Brothers, Sisters and laity, will be the sign of the Good News for men in a changing world, just as Christ’s solicitude for the sick and the poor was the sign of His mission to the men of His time. In other words, the sign of the Church of Christ, will be her social preoccupation—her social concern and social action. “Christ’s solicitude for the sick and the poor” and “social concern and action” called for a collective effort. The latter went beyond the construction of schools, clinics, hospitals, and other social services; it entailed transcending the traditional “parochialism” and “congregationalism” of the past, and, more importantly, collaborating with Christians of other faiths, including nonsacramental Christians and non-​Christians.79 Collective action, in turn, would result in particular social transformations and eventually in a “Christian Revolution.” This revolution, based on the peaceful “socialization” of religious values in light of Vatican II and scientific knowledge of societies, would preserve Catholic sacramentalism and prevent the advance of communism in rural society. Price—echoing John F. Kennedy’s

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argument that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”—best summarized this centrist position: “a Christian Revolution in Guatemala—peaceful, constructive and educational, is the only effective answer to the Communist threat [for] if a peaceful revolution in Guatemala is impossible, a violent revolution is inevitable.”80 The crystallization of this reformist perspective constituted a response to the Cuban Revolution and the Guatemalan state’s counterinsurgency campaign, but was also symptomatic of the progressive turn that affected global Catholi­ cism beginning in the 1960s. Price’s “Christian revolution” encapsulated the development projects of the Maryknoll mission of the 1960s, when Maryknollers and Maya laypeople valued existing institutions and the gradual progress of social reform. They opposed attempts to create change through armed revolution. Violent revolution, they concluded, denied the value of “the long patient labor of human frustration and economic development.” Their “Christian Revolution” was moderate in nature; it embodied a middle-​of-​the-​road developmentalist position between guerrilla fighters and military governments.81 For a reform movement of this nature to have a meaningful impact among the poor of society, it would have to move beyond the traditional emphasis on Christian charity. In tackling the issue of social justice, missioners and laypeople would have to embrace change and adapt the Gospel to changing times. As Price concluded, “Not to see this [change] and to pretend that the Church can carry out its pastoral labors exactly as she had done during the first four centuries of Christianity in this area of the globe is to neglect the very mission of the Church, which is to prolong the teaching and the incarnation of the Word in the different and changing circumstances of time and of place.” This was precisely the spirit that guided missioners and laypeople in the Huehuetenango mission. They saw the Maya as that which they were: human beings with spiritual, socioeconomic, political needs and concerns. They envisioned themselves making reality “a society, composed of distinct human persons, each of whom loves and is loved by men in the love of God. But to love, a man must eat, he must work, he must learn, he must become every day more human, which is to say more spiritual—through his free control of material nature.”82 It was this progressive Church—whose roots predated Vatican II and the Medellín meeting of 1968—that guided the farming revolution, cooperative movement, and the formation of community leaders during the 1960s.83

Epilogue

By 1968 a total of approximately ninety-​nine members of Maryknoll had arrived in the highlands. Largely as a consequence of this growth, the Maryknoll mission had undergone substantial changes since its early days in 1943. We can discern the appearance of a “specialized” Church in which priests and nuns focused most of their energies not on multiple tasks at once, but rather on their own specific areas of expertise. For example, by 1968 Mary­ knoll had experts in such traditional fields as catechetics and parochial schools and in relatively new areas such as cooperatives, mass communication (radio), linguistics, maintenance of mechanical equipment, and colonization projects, to name a few. At the root of these projects was a changing meaning of conversion, one that viewed the Maya as individuals with spiritual and social concerns. Inspired by Maryknollers’ own adaptation to local circumstances, the spirit of Vatican II, and the anticommunist and developmentalist impulse of the postwar years, this perspective led Maryknollers and indigenous leaders to become part of a “Christian revolution,” which in turn prompted them to introduce modern teaching technologies in the highlands and undertake a full-​fledged social program of social reform. The latter emphasized agricultural diversification, community self-​sufficiency, and leadership training among the Maya. Thus, during the 1960s Maryknollers pursued an assimilationist project—through their literacy and agricultural programs— while giving Maya leaders the tools they needed to see, analyze, and solve long-​standing socioeconomic problems. 159

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During the 1970s this “Christian revolution” became fragmented. Catho­ lics who had come of age within the resurgent Church decided to move beyond, if not completely abandon, the confessional structures that had long sustained Guatemalan Catholicism. Partly motivated by Archbishop Casa­ riego’s opposition to Church involvement in social matters, these Catholics left lay associations such as Catholic Action and joined broader social moments. Other Catholics resisted Church leaders’ conservatism and the socioeconomic structural obstacles they encountered in the countryside by adopting a more radical perspective and position. The four Maryknollers who were expelled in 1967 and the lay Catholics who, along with them, visualized the creation of a Christian revolutionary movement epitomized this radical stance.1 Other Catholics became radicalized due to Cold War violence. In other words, as state-​sponsored repression reached clerics and laypeople, the reformist Church splintered. 1976 marked a turning point in this respect. In November of that year, Maryknoller William Woods, who had taken a leading role in the cooperative and colonization movements and received numerous death threats reportedly from top commanders in the army, died in a mysterious plane crash. His death, which several accounts attribute to the army, was followed by state-​sponsored violence against an increasing number of clerics and laypeople.2 This became especially evident in the aftermath of the earthquake of 1976, which heightened poverty among highland Maya communities and led to the resurgence of the guerrilla movement. In response, the Guatemalan army, propped up by the U.S. government, launched a series of military campaigns that led to the assassination of centrist activists and politicians and the massacre of hundreds of indigenous villagers in the highlands. It was in this context that the Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC, Committee for Peasant Unity) came into existence. CUC members were mostly Catholic Action members who had organized themselves in opposition to the militarization of the highlands and the intensification of state-​sponsored repression against indigenous communities.3 The violence of the Cold War, therefore, shattered the consensus favoring the religious reformism of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet the “Christian revolution” of the highlands did not disappear. In many ways it became increasingly relevant in the aftermath of the CELAM meeting at Medellín in 1968 and with the crystallization of liberation theology. Peruvian Catholic priest and theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez popularized this perspective with the publication in 1971 of Teología de la liberación. In

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this work, Gutiérrez sought to update Christian teachings in light of the conclusions reached in Medellín and the social, economic, and political reali­ ties of Latin America. As formulated by Gutiérrez and other like-​minded theologians, liberation theology provided a critique of Latin American society, particularly with regard to the region’s long history of political exclusion and socioeconomic inequality. It called on the Church to rethink development programs, abandon its traditional alliance with the upper classes, adopt what eventually became known popularly as the “preferential option for the poor,” and embrace the “liberation” of societies.4 At its most basic level, this revisionist Christian analysis of society put forward an “interpretation of Christian faith out of the experience of the poor.”5 It nurtured a series of grassroots religious moments, including the comunidades eclesiales de base (CEBs, Christian base communities). The CEBs gave the poor and marginalized groups community-​level spaces where they could join together to find solutions to the social problems that affected them on a daily basis. In the process, these base communities embodied the rise of the laity within the Church and brought to the fore the transformative aspects of religion during the Cold War, as described in chapter 6.6 This progressive ethos continued to guide the pastoral work of Mary­ knoll after the 1960s. Woods, a native of Texas who was affectionately known among his parishioners as el padre Guillermo, was largely responsible for a colonization project in the Ixcán consisting of 2,500 to 3,000 families. Most of them had left their communities in Huehuetenango in search of land and freedom from the labor system that sustained the country’s plantation economy. By the mid-​1970s Woods, who had worked as a missioner in the highlands since the late 1950s, had become known for using a two-​engine Cessna plane to carry equipment and supplies from the United States to the Ixcán. Other foreign clerics followed a similar reformist path. Ron Hennessy, a native of Iowa, arrived in Guatemala in 1965 and soon became an advocate of the colonization movement in the highlands.7 In other cases the “Christian revolution” took a cultural turn, as was the case of “inculturation theology,” which represented an attempt by sectors within the rural Church to engage Maya culture on its own terms and give indigenous people a greater say over their own religious lives. Inculturation theology contrasted sharply with previous clerical attempts (as discussed in chapters 4 and 5) to assimilate indigenous societies into a Westernized worldview and social order, as encapsulated by the Romanizing process undertaken first by Vatican officials and Church leaders and later by Maryknoll.8 Although the missioners and

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laypeople who formed part of the reformist Church often became increasingly critical of state-​sponsored violence and recognized the limits of development, they nonetheless continued to work within the parameters of a progressive religious and social movement. As the 1960s and 1970s progressed, this progressive tack became less paternalistic and confessional in nature. It is important not to romanticize the pre-​1970s years or to portray the individuals who formed part of the “Christian revolution” simply as idealists of a bygone era. The vision and actions of foreign missionaries often converged with those of the Cold War state, particularly as they pertained to the spirit of development of the 1950s and 1960s. Maryknollers’ missionary enterprise, moreover, embodied a Romanized imaginary that examined indigenous culture from the perspective of an ethnocentric vision—a view that in many respects harked back to the colonial period. Yet developments during the previous two decades remind us of alternative visions of society that existed in Latin America prior to Vatican II, the Medellín conference, and the generalized climate of repression of the post-​1960s period.9 In the case of the Guatemalan highlands, development and the lived experiences of missioners and lay Maya Catholics resulted in a third way, a path that coalesced in the critical perspective intrinsic to liberation theology and in some cases gained a political voice through Christian-​informed and centrist political groups such as the Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca (Christian Democratic Party of Guatemala), which during the 1970s became one of the few opposition parties that enjoyed much support among broad sectors of the population. The Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca’s popularity became evident during the 1974 presidential election, when it recruited retired general and future dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and social democrat Alberto Fuentes Mohr as its presidential and vice-​presidential candidates, respectively. Although the party lost an electoral process that by all credible accounts was fraudulent, it remained an influential political force at the local level. During the 1970s the party recruited Catholic Action members, who often ran for politi­ cal office at the municipal level in the highlands.10 A transnational approach allows us to conceptualize this centrist position not simply as an aberration or a natural outcome of Vatican II or the Medellín conference of 1968, but rather as an expression of a long-​standing international Catholic progressive movement. The latter had its origins in the centralization of papal power during the interwar period, the expansion of the Romanized Church in the Guatemalan countryside, and the coalescence of a reformist trajectory among missioners and Maya people. This

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book has brought together the experiences of clerics and indigenous parishioners between the 1920s and 1960s as a way to provide a much-​needed global and local perspective about the resurgence of Catholicism during the twentieth century. It has shown that the Catholic Church was (and has been) a constantly evolving and diverse institution whose conservatism did not preclude profound and often unforeseen transformations during the Cold War. The revolutionary path taken in the late 1960s by Sister Marian Peter, Blasé Bonpane, Arthur and Thomas Melville, and Guatemalan laypeople attests to this reality.

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1995), 4.

INTRODUCTION

1. Thomas Melville and Marjorie Melville, Whose Heaven, Whose Earth? (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 257–77; Thomas R. Melville, Through a Glass Darkly: The U.S. Holocaust in Central America (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2005), 15– 16, 326–38; and Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens, “From Symbols of the Sacred to Symbols of Subversion to Simply Obscure: Maryknoll Women Religious in Guatemala, 1953 to 1967,” The Americas 61, no. 2 (October 2004), 224–28. 2. For an introduction to Vatican II and its impact on the Latin American Church, see Phillip Berryman, Liberation Theology: Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America and Beyond (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987); Edward L. Cleary, ed., Born of the Poor: The Latin American Church since Medellín (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); Daniel H. Levine, ed., Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Scott Mainwaring and Alexander Wilde, eds., The Progressive Church in Latin America (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1989); and Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People: The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America— The Catholic Church in Conflict with U.S. Policy (New York: Penguin, 1980). 3. For an examination of this context and Catholic activism, see Anna L. Peterson, Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion: Progressive Catholicism in El Salvador’s Civil War (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997); and Margaret Randall, Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution (Vancouver, BC: New Star Books, 1983). For a more recent appraisal, see Joaquín M. Chávez, “Catholic Action, the Second Vatican Council, and the Emergence of the New Left in El Salvador (1950–1975),” The Americas 70, no. 3 (January 2014), 459–87. 165

166   Notes to Pages 3 –  4

4. Levine, Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism, 33. This is not to suggest that the existing historiography portrays the Church as unchanging prior to Vati­can II. Levine, Phillip Williams, and Berryman, among others, point to important pre-1962 innovations within the Church. Yet examination of these changes is often cursory and secondary in nature. For a Vatican- and Medellín-centric perspective, see, for instance, Cleary, Born of the Poor; Mainwaring and Wilde, eds., Progressive Church in Latin America; Phillip J. Williams, The Catholic Church and Politics in Nicaragua and Costa Rica (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989); and Phillip Berryman, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolutions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984). Important exceptions include Jeffrey L. Klaiber, The Catholic Church in Peru, 1821–1985: A Social History (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), and Brian H. Smith, The Church and Politics in Chile: Challenges to Modern Catholicism (Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 1982). 5. Stephen J. C. Andes and Julia G. Young, eds., Local Church, Global Church: Catholic Activism in Latin America from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), xiv–xv. 6. Susanne H. Rudolph, “Religion, States, and Transnational Civil Society,” in Transnational Religion and Fading States, ed. Susanne H. Rudolph and James Piscatori (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 1. The term transnational has sparked debate among historians, especially American historians. For an introduction to this debate, see Christopher A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed, “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006), 1440–1464. See also Micol Seigel, “Beyond Compare: Comparative Method,” Radical History Review 91 (Winter 2005): 62–90, cited in Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church, xiv. 7. See, for example, Mary P. Holleran, Church and State in Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949); J. Lloyd Mecham, Church and State in Latin America: A History of Politico-Ecclesiastical Relations, rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), chapter 14; Anita Frankel, “Political Development in Guatemala, 1944–1954: The Impact of Foreign, Military, and Religious Elites” (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1969); Hubert J. Miller, “Catholic Leaders and Spiri­ tual Socialism during the Arévalo Administration in Guatemala, 1945–1951,” in Central America: Historical Perspectives on the Contemporary Crises, ed. Ralph Lee Woodward Jr. (New York: Greenwood, 1988), 85–105; Blake D. Pattridge, “The Catho­ lic Church in Revolutionary Guatemala, 1944–54: A House Divided,” Journal of Church and State 36, no. 3 (Summer 1994), 527–40; Ricardo Bendaña Perdomo, La Iglesia en Guatemala, vol. 1 of Síntesis histórica del catolicismo guatemalteco (Guatemala City: Artemis Edinter, 2001); Bendaña Perdomo, Ella es lo que nosotros somos y mucho más, vol. 2 of Síntesis histórica del catolicismo guatemalteco, 1951–2001 (Guatemala City: Artemis Edinter, 2001); José Luis Chea, Guatemala, la cruz fragmentada

Notes to Pages 4 – 5   167

(San José, Costa Rica: Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, 1988); Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, updated ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 78–84; and Douglas Sullivan-González, The Black Christ of Esquipulas: Religion and Identity in Guatemala (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), chapter 5. 8. Oliver La Farge, Santa Eulalia: The Religion of a Cuchumatan Indian Town (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947); Charles Wagley, The Social and Religious Life of a Guatemalan Village (Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association, 1949); John Philip Gillin, The Culture of Security in San Carlos: A Study of a Guatemalan Community of Indians and Ladinos (New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, 1951); Richard N. Adams, Political Changes in Guatemalan Indian Communities: A Symposium (New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, 1957); Robert Wasserstrom, “Revolution in Guatemala: Peasants and Politics under the Arbenz Government,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17 (1975): 473–78; Ricardo Falla, Quiché rebelde: Estudio de un movimiento de conversión religiosa, rebelde a las creencias tradicionales, en San Antonio Ilotenango, Quiché (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 1978); Douglas E. Brintnall, Revolt against the Dead: The Modernization of a Maya Community in the Highlands of Guatemala (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979); Kay B. Warren, The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978); Sheldon Annis, God and Production in a Guatemalan Town (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987); John M. Watanabe, Maya Saints and Souls in a Changing World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992); Jorge Murga Armas, Iglesia católica, movimiento indígena y lucha revolucionaria (Guatemala City: Impresiones Palacios, 2006); and relevant chapters in Carol A. Smith, ed., Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540 to 1988 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), particularly Arturo Arias, “Changing Indian Identity: Guatemala’s Violent Transition to Modernity,” 230–57. 9. An exception in this regard is the work of Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, who has linked the history of Maryknoll in Huehuetenango and U.S. expansion in Latin America. See “From Symbols of the Sacred”; “Maryknoll Sisters, Faith, Healing, and the Maya Construction of Catholic Communities in Guatemala,” Latin American Research Review 44, no. 3 (2009): 27–49; and “The Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit of Capitalism in Guatemala: Civil-Religious Collaborations, 1943–1966,” in, Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church, 275–309. 10. For background on the Church-state conflicts of the nineteenth century, see Hubert J. Miller, La Iglesia y el estado en tiempo de Justo Rufino Barrios, trans. Jorge Luján Muñoz (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 1976); Holleran, Church and State; and Mecham, Church and State in Latin America, chapter 14. For descriptions of these religious beliefs and practices, see relevant sections in La Farge, Santa Eulalia; Wagley, Social and Religious Life; and Gillin, Culture of Security in San Carlos. The tally of priests comes from a Vatican report from the mid-1920s. See Archivio

168   Notes to Pages 6 –  8

Segreto Vaticano (hereafter ASV), Archivio della Sacra Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari (hereafter AES), Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen de lo explicado en estas notas e ideas acerca de lo que podría hacerse. 11. Hubert J. Miller, “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el Estado, 1927– 1944,” Anales de la Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala 71 (1996): 121–52. 12. Here I draw on the work of Kenneth P. Serbin, who, in his work on seminaries in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Brazil, has equated this Romanizing to the “Europeanization” of the Church. See Needs of the Heart: A Social and Cultural History of Brazil’s Clergy and Seminaries (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 56–57. 13. The term ladino is both a racial and cultural denominator that refers to a racially mixed person and to indigenous peoples who have adopted Western-style dress and other cultural elements, including the Spanish language. As such, the term denotes a process of assimilation into the dominant ladino culture. For a historical background to this category, see Arturo Taracena Arriola, Etnicidad, estado y nación en Guatemala, 1808–1944, vol. 1 (Antigua, Guatemala: Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, 2002); Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000); Clara Arenas Bianchi, Charles R. Hale, and Gustavo Palma Murga, eds., Racismo en Guatemala?: Abriendo debate sobre un tema tabú (Guatemala City: Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala, 1999); and Carol A. Smith, “Origins of the National Question in Guatemala: A Hypothesis,” in C. Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 72–95. 14. Peter D’Agostino, Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 15. See, for instance, D’Agostino, Rome in America; Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes 1830–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); John Coleman and Gregory Baum, Rerum Novarum: A Hundred Years of Catholic Social Teaching (London: SCM Press, 1991); Paul Misner, Social Catholicism in Europe: From the Onset of Industrialization to the First World War (New York: Crossroad, 1991); and Joe Holland, Modern Catholic Social Teaching: The Popes Confront the Industrial Age, 1740– 1958 (New York: Paulist Press, 2003). 16. For the Romanization of the Latin American Church, see Pablo Mijangos, The Lawyer of the Church: Bishop Clemente de Jesús Munguía and the Clerical Response to the Mexican Liberal Reforma (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015); Stephen J. C. Andes, The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Lisa Edwards, Roman Virtues: The Education of Latin American Clergy in Rome, 1858–1962 (New York: Peter Lang, 2011); Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church; and Serbin, Needs of the Heart. 17. The Church-state rapprochement during the interwar years has been discussed by M. Caimari, Perón y la Iglesia Católica: Religión, Estado y sociedad en la Argentina (1943–1955) (Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia, 1995); Anthony James Gill,

Notes to Pages 8 – 9   169

Rendering unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Scott Mainwaring, The Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916–1985 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986); and Margaret Todaro Williams, “Integralism and the Brazilian Catholic Church,” Hispanic American Historical Review 54, no. 3 (August 1974), 431–52. Generally speaking, these works tell us little about the influence of papal diplomacy. Exceptions include Emelio Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective (Plymouth, UK: Rowan & Littlefield, 2007); Andes, The Vatican and Catholic Activism; and Bonar L. Hernández, “Reforming Catholicism: Papal Power in Guatemala during the 1920s and 1930s,” The Americas 71, no. 2 (October 2014), 255–80. 18. Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922–1945 (London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973); Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard, eds., Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994); and Frank J. Coppa, The Modern Papacy, 1798–1995 (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1998). 19. Enrique Dussel, Historia de la iglesia en América Latina: Medio milenio de coloniaje y liberación (1492–1992) (Madrid: Mundo Negro-Esquila Misional, 1992), 179–92. For more background on the “new Christendom” movement, see Christian S. Smith, The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 14–15; and Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, chapter 2. 20. Adriaan C. van Oss, Catholic Colonialism: A Parish History of Guatemala, 1524–1821 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Although one should be careful to compare the colonial and the twentieth-century periods, it is important to keep in mind that, as chapter 3 discusses, missioners in the 1940s and 1950s often made such comparisons and saw themselves as building upon the pastoral work of colonial missioners. 21. Fitzpatrick-Behrens has studied the history of the Maryknoll sisters in Guatemala. See “Maryknoll Sisters” and “From Symbols of the Sacred.” For an examination of other foreign Catholic and non-Catholic missioners who arrived in Guatemala during this period, see Carlos Santos, Guatemala. El silencio del gallo: Un misionero español en la guerra más cruenta de América (Barcelona: Debate, 2007); Jesús Lada Camblor, Pasaron haciendo el bien: Historia de los Misioneros del Sagrado Corazón en Centroamérica, vol. 1 (Guatemala City: Ediciones San Pablo, n.d.); and Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998). 22. José Andrés-Gallego, “El catolicismo social mexicano: Estudio preliminar,” in Catolicismo social en México: Teoría, fuentes e historiografía, ed. Manuel Ceballos Ramírez and Alejandro Garza Rangel (Monterrey: Academia de Investigación Humanística, 2000), 17–29. For recent treatments of popular religiosity and the history of Latin American Catholicism from a multifaceted perspective, see Paul J. Vanderwood, “Religion: Official, Popular, and Otherwise,” in Estudios Mexicanos 16, no. 2 (Summer

170   Notes to Pages 10 –  1 1

2000): 411–42; Reinaldo L. Román, Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898–1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); and Edward Wright-Ríos, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887–1934 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 23. Erick D. Langer, Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree: Franciscan Missions on the Chiriguano Frontier in the Heart of South America, 1830–1949 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 8. The history of Catholic missions in modern Latin America has also been studied by David Block, Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon: Native Tradition, Jesuit Enterprise, and Secular Policy in Moxos, 1660–1880 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994); Victor Daniel Bonilla, Servants of God or Masters of Men?, trans. Rosemary Sheed (Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1972); and Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, The Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 1943–1989 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). 24. Studies on costumbre and its “syncretic” character are numerous. See, in particular, La Farge, Santa Eulalia; Wagley, Social and Religious Life; and Gillin, Culture of Security in San Carlos. For an overview of the status of the scholarship on the relationship between European and native religion and what historians have referred as “syncretism,” see Reinaldo L. Román and Pamela Voekel, “Popular Religion in Latin American Historiography,” in The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History, ed. Jose C. Moya (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 454–64. 25. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985). 26. Román, Governing Spirits, 80–81. See also Vanderwood, “Religion,” 213. 27. On the labor regime and coffee economy, see David McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 28. On the concept of the “closed corporate community,” see Eric R. Wolf, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 1–18. For a discussion of this concept in relation to Guatemala, see Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). Carol Smith and John Watanabe have examined the limits of this concept. See Carol A. Smith, “Introduction: Social Relations in Guatemala over Time and Space,” in C. Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 19–20; and John M. Watanabe, “Enduring Yet Ineffable Community in the Western Periphery of Guatemala,” in C. Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 183–204. It should be noted Wolf himself revisited the idea of the closed corporate community in “The Vicissitudes of the Closed Corporate Community,” American Ethnologist 13 (1986), 325–29. 29. See Handy, Revolution in the Countryside, 17–19, 144; Robert Wasserstrom, “Revolution in Guatemala”; and Carol Smith, “Class Position and Class Consciousness in an Indian Community: Totonicapán in the 1970s,” in C. Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 205–29.

Notes to Pages 12 – 13   171

30. Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” in C. Smith, Guatemalan Indians; Greg Grandin, “To End with All These Evils: Ethnic Transformation and Community Mobilization in Guatemala‘s Western Highlands, 1954–1980,” Latin American Perspectives 24, no. 2 (March 1997): 7–34; Betsy Konefal, For Every Indio Who Falls: A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala, 1960–1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010); Carlota McAllister, “Rural Markets, Revolutionary Souls, and Rebellious Women in Cold War Guatemala,” in In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 350–77; and Carlota McAllister, “A Headlong Rush into the Future: Violence and Revolution in a Guatemalan Indigenous Village,” in A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War, ed. Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 276–308. 31. Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre, chapter 5, and 196–98. 32. For examples of this historiography, see Pamela Voekel, Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); João José Reis, Death is a Festival: Funeral Rites and Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Brazil, trans. H. Sabrina Gredhill (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Patricia Londoño-Vega, Religion, Culture, and Society in Colombia: Medellín and Antioquia, 1850–1930 (Oxford: Oxford Historical Monographs, Clarendon Press, 2002); Robert M. Levine, Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Canudos Massacre in Northeastern Brazil, 1893–1897 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Paul J. Vanderwood, The Power of God against the Guns of Government: Religious Turmoil in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Douglas Sullivan-González, Piety, Power, and Politics: Religion and Nation Formation in Guatemala, 1821–1871 (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 1998); Matthew Butler, Popular Piety and Political Identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1927–29 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Román, Governing Spirits; and Wright-Rios, Revolutions. 33. See especially Joseph and Spenser, In from the Cold; Joseph and Grandin, A Century of Revolution; and Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Julio E. Moreno, eds., Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow: New Histories of Latin America’s Cold War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013). 34. Stephen M. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954–1961 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000); and J. T. Way, The Mayan in the Mall: Globalization, Development, and the Making of Modern Guatemala (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), especially chapters 3 and 4. For a discussion of the ideological aspects of developmentalism during the early 1960s, see Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

172   Notes to Pages 14 –  1 5

35. Bruce Calder, “Interwoven Histories: The Catholic Church and the Maya, 1940 to the Present,” in Resurgent Voices in Latin America: Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change, eds. Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 97–98; Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maryknoll Sisters”; and Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” in Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church. See also Calder, Crecimiento y Cambio de la Iglesia Católica Guatemalteca, 1944–1966 (Guatemala City: Seminario de Integración Social Guatemalteca, 1970), chapter 4. 36. Falla, Quiché rebelde; Ricardo Falla, “Hacia la Revolución Verde: adopción y dependencia del fertilizante químico en un Municipio del Quiché, Guatemala,” Instituto de Ciencias Político-Sociales, Universidad Rafael Landívar, Estudios Sociales 6 (1972), 16–51; David Carey, “Guatemala’s Green Revolution: Synthetic Fertilizer, Public Health, and Economic Autonomy in the Mayan Highland,” Agricultural History 83, no. 3 (2009): 283–322; Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” in Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church; Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” in C. Smith, Guatemalan Indians; and Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution, chapter 5. For the impact of the Good Neighbor policy on the Maryknoll mission in the case of Peru, see Fitzpatrick-Behrens, Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru. 37. Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “The Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” in Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church, 294–303. 38. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), xix. Other works that explore the relationship between missioners and U.S. assistance include Dan C. McCurry, “The U.S. Church-Financed Missions,” in U.S. Foreign Policy and Peru, ed. Daniel A. Sharp (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), 379–415; Angelyn Dries, The Missionary Movement in American Catholic History (Ossining, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 200; and Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 35–36. For a discussion of historiographical debates about development, see Gilbert M. Joseph, “Close Encounters: Toward a New Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations,” in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, eds., Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand and Ricardo D. Salvatore (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), 10–13. 39. The historiography on the quotidian religious experiences of Latin Americans has focused on the history of popular religious expressions. For representative examples, see Paul Vanderwood, Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004); Jennifer Hughes, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local Faith from the Conquest to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Reis, Death is a Festival; Levine, Vale of Tears; Butler, Popular Piety; Román, Governing Spirits; and Wright-Rios, Revolutions.

Notes to Pages 15 – 24   173

40. William Price, “New Wine in Old Bottles,” undated, Personal Papers, William Price, Central America, Guatemala, Maryknoll Mission Archive, Ossining, NY. 41. See, for example, Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” in C. Smith, Guatemalan Indians; Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre; Konefal, For Every Indio Who Falls; McAllister, “Rural Markets,” in Joseph and Spenser, In from the Cold; and McAllister, “A Headlong Rush into the Future,” in Grandin and Joseph, Century of Revolution. 42. Garrard-Burnett, Lawrence, and Moreno, introduction to Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow, 6. 43. Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 132.

CHAPTER 1.  PAPAL POWER AND CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS

1. ASV, Archivio della Nunziatura Apostolica, America Centrale (hereafter Arch. Nunz. America Centrale), indice 1156, fascicolo 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1922: Expulsione di Mons. Muñoz. 2. For an examination of the anticlerical movement of the late nineteenth century and its effect on the Church, see Holleran, Church and State; Miller, La Iglesia y el estado; and Mecham, Church and State in Latin America. 3. Miller, “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el Estado,” 121–52; and Bendaña Perdomo, La Iglesia en Guatemala, 121–22. 4. Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala, 57–59. 5. Miller, “La Iglesia Católica y el protestantismo,” in Historia general de Guatemala, ed. Jorge Luján Muñoz (Guatemala City: Asociación de Amigos del País, Fundación para la Cultura y el Desarrollo, 1993–1999), 5:255. 6. Agustín Estrada Monroy, Datos para la historia de la Iglesia en Guatemala (Guatemala City: Sociedad de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1973), 3:363–64. 7. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1920–1922: Lettere di Mons. Riveiro. 8. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 303–4, 309–10, 363; Miller, “La Iglesia Católica y el protestantismo,” 255–56. Estrada Cabrera set the foundations of this evolving relationship when, on July 25, 1911, he sent a personal note to Casanova congratulating him on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his consecration as archbishop. Then, when the archbishop passed away three years later in Cantel, Quetzaltenango, the president allowed Casanova to be buried with full honors. 9. Over the course of twenty-two years, Estrada Cabrera, in the words of Catherine Rendón, a specialist on the Estrada Cabrera years, “weaved a spider web of power, in which he occupied the center, from which he controlled almost all aspects of the nation’s life.” In its complicity with this tightly controlled political order, the Church was certainly not alone, for Estrada Cabrera’s influence and power extended

174   Notes to Pages 24 –  2 5

to almost all sectors of society. See Catherine Rendón, “El gobierno de Manuel Estrada Cabrera,” in Luján Muñoz, Historia general de Guatemala, 4:15–32; and Minerva y la palma: el enigma de don Manuel (Guatemala City: Artemis Edinter, 2000). For a much more critical description of Estrada Cabrera, see Rafael Arévalo Martínez, ¡Ecce Pericles!, 3rd ed. (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1983). 10. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 386–88; and Miller, “La Iglesia Católica y el protestantismo,” in Luján Muñoz, Historia general de Guatemala, 5:256. 11. Joseph A. Pitti, “Jorge Ubico and Guatemalan Politics in the 1920’s” (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1975), 20. The Unionist Party brought together a heterogeneous amalgam of groups ranging from traditional landowning, industrial, commercial and banking interests on the one hand and, on the other, members of the Liga Obrera, which consisted of urban skilled workers such as artisans. The party also included elements from the popular sectors, but these were largely subordinate to the two leading groups. The Unionist Party, in this respect, was largely “classist” and po­ liti­cally conservative, as became evident when its members contemplated naming it Partido Conservador. What made it unique, however, was its rejection of the dictatorship of Estrada Cabrera and its support for the recreation of the Federal Republic of Central America. See Hernán del Valle Pérez, “El partido ‘unionista’ de Guatemala: Su participación en el derrocamiento de Manuel Estrada Cabrera y en el gobierno de Carlos Herrera, 1919–1921.” (Thesis, licenciatura en historia, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 1975), 57–58; and Clemente Marroquín Rojas, Historia del movimiento unionista (Barcelona: Talleres Gráficos R. Llauger, 1929), 70–93. 12. Pitti, “Jorge Ubico,” 30. 13. Pitti, “Jorge Ubico,” 20–21; Marroquín Rojas, Historia, 14–46; and Estrada Monroy, Datos, 371–79. Piñol’s clash with the Estrada Cabrera regime in 1919 had a precedent in 1906, when he had been expelled from Guatemala for criticizing the dictator. More immediately, he had indirectly criticized the Estrada Cabrera regime in a sermon delivered at the city of Quetzaltenango on the occasion of the Feast of El Rosario in October 1917. See Rendón, “El gobierno de Manuel Estrada Cabrera,” 29–30. 14. For a glimpse of Piñol’s fate and his perspective on Guatemalan politics, see the correspondence between Piñol and Luis Javier Muñol y Capurón, who replaced Riveiro as Guatemalan archbishop, as found in Archivo Histórico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala (henceforth AHAG), Fondo Diocesano, Expolios de Obispos, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón. 15. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1921–1929, pos. 64, fasc. 6: Ordine a Mons. Riveiro. 16. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1920–1922: Monsignor Rafael Álvarez. 17. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1922, pos. 54, fasc. 1: Comunicazioni sulla Bolla di nuova organizzazioni ecclesiastica. 18. AHAG, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón, Correspondencia, 1921–1927: Proyecto de división de la Arquidiócesis de Guatemala, 1921.

Notes to Pages 25 – 29   175

19. Pitti, “Jorge Ubico,” 37, 29–33. 20. Ibid., 30. 21. Guillermo Díaz Romeu, “Del régimen de Carlos Herrera a la elección de Jorge Ubico,” in Luján Muñoz, Historia general de Guatemala, 4:39; Del Valle Pérez, Carlos Herrera, 132–141; and Juan de Dios Aguilar de León, José María Orellana, presidente de Guatemala, 1922–1926: Compilación documentada de la vida y obra del fundador de la moneda guatemalteca (Guatemala City: Delgado Impresos, 1986). For a discussion of Estrada Cabrera and Orellana’s policy vis-à-vis U.S. economic interests, see Paul J. Dosal, Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala, 1899–1944 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1993), chapters 4–7. 22. Pitti, “Jorge Ubico,” 81–82, 103–4. 23. Ibid., 81. 24. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. 25. President Herrera and the Unionist Party actively sought to revive the nineteenth-century federalist project of a Central American union through the creation of the Federal Republic of Central America, which, had it become a reality, would have brought together the republics of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica under a single, central state. Herrera’s fall from power, however, effectively put an end to such a project. The Federal Republic’s constitution, approved on September 9, 1921, did, however, uphold the liberal prohibition on the establishment of religious orders and the supremacy of civil marriage (article 38). For the complete text of the constitution, see Estrada Monroy, Datos, 391–426. 26. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. 27. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 434. 28. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. For Cobos Batres’s criticism of the economic policies of the Orellana administration, see AHAG, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón, Correspondencia, 1921–1927: Manuel Cobos Batres, “A los guatemaltecos,” December 8, 1922. 29. For a discussion of the political leanings of the Batres Cobos family, see Pitti, “Jorge Ubico,” 81, 114. 30. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1922: Javier Muñoz, Notizie varie, Questione Mons. Riveiro. 31. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Expolios de Obispos, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón: José Piñol to Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón, Washington, DC, December 24, 1921. 32. Pitti, “Jorge Ubico,” 83–86. 33. Aguilar de León, José María Orellana, 190. 34. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1922–1931, pos. 54, fasc. 1: Apuntes, 1923. 35. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1922: Expulsione di Mons. Muñoz; and ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1922– 1931, pos. 54, fasc. 1: Apuntes, 1923.

176   Notes to Pages 29 –  3 2

36. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1922: Lettera di Mons. Muñoz del suo esilio. At the time, Rossell y Are­ llano served as Muñoz’s personal secretary. See Estrada Monroy, Datos, 514. 37. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1922: Lettera di Mons. Muñoz del suo esilio. 38. For some of the details of Lemus’s case, see AHAG, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón, Correspondencia, 1921–1927; and AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría, Cartas, 1922, no. 269. 39. AHAG, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón, Correspondencia, 1921–1927: Antonio Bengoechea to Luis Muñoz y Capurón, Guatemala, April 12, 1923; and AHAG, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón, Correspondencia, 1921–1927: Guillermo Fuente to Luis Muñoz y Capurón, Guatemala, October, 1923. 40. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 68, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1922: Javier Muñoz. 41. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Expolios de Obispos, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón: Piñol to Muñoz, Washington, DC, December 24, 1921. 42. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. 43. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 65, fasc. 7: Circa le condizioni economiche morali, religiose e politiche dell`Arcidiocesi di Guatemala. In addition to the fees required by the civil authorities, parishioners were expected to pay a fee to parish priests, who often charged more than allowed by ecclesiastical authorities for the cele­bration of holy matrimony. 44. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. For the creation of the communist party in Guatemala in the early 1920s, see Arturo Taracena Arriola, “El primer Partido Comunista de Guatemala (1922–1932),” Araucaria de Chile 27 (1984): 71–91. For the context that gave birth to this encyclical, see Chadwick, History of the Popes, , 273–331. 45. Van Oss, Catholic Colonialism, chapter 1. 46. Wagley, Social and Religious Life, 50, 68–75. 47. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. It is likely that papal officials had in mind here the figure of Maximón, which has been often depicted as an example of a “syncretic” religious figure. See Michael Mendenson, Los escándalos de Maximón: Un estudio sobre la religión y visión del mundo en Santiago Atitlán (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1965); and William G. Douglas, “Santiago Atitlán,” in Los pueblos del Lago de Atitlán, ed. Seminario de Integración Social Guatemalteca (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, Seminario de Integración Social Guatemalteca, 1968), 253–59. 48. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. Casanova’s opponents rallied around the Mexican priest Ildefonso Albores, who had assumed control over the administration of the Church after 1887. Initially supported by Casanova, Albores ran afoul of the exiled archbishop when he apparently discussed

Notes to Pages 32 – 36   177

with President Manuel Lisandro Barillas the possibility of becoming the archbishop of Guatemala. 49. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. For a critique of this division by a Guatemalan cleric, see AHAG, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón, Correspondencia, 1921–1927: Guillermo Fuente to Luis Muñoz y Capurón, Guatemala, October 1923. 50. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 65, fasc. 7: Circa le condizioni. For an examination of the Cristero War (1926–1929) and the Church, see Matthew Butler, Popular Piety and Political Identity. 51. For a discussion of this background, see Lisa Edwards, “Messages Sent, Messages Received?: The Papacy and the Latin American Church at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” in Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church, 3–20; Edwards, Roman Virtues; Wright-Rios, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism; and Langer, Expecting Pears from an Elm Tree. 52. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. 53. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1926, pos. 57, fasc. 1: Informazioni politico-religiose di Guatemala. A similar discussion about the importance of recruiting foreign religious personnel appears in other papal reports. See, for instance, ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924, pos. 62, fasc. 3: Condizioni. 54. Holleran, Church and State, 235. 55. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 69, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1923–1925: Informazioni su Guatemala date da P. Durou. 56. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. 57. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 469. 58. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 65, fasc. 7: Circa le condizioni economiche morali, religiose e politiche dell`Arcidiocesi di Guatemala. 59. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 65, fasc. 7: Circa le condizioni; and AHAG, Luis Javier Muñoz y Capurón, Correspondencia, 1921–1927: Rafael Álvarez to Luis Muñoz, Guatemala, July 29, 1925. 60. “Decree 917,” in ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1925–1929, pos. 65, fasc. 7. 61. Pitti, “Jorge Ubico,” 275. 62. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 71, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926: Luis Durou to Caruana; and “Decree 936,” in ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 71, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926. Caruana confirmed this reality when he reported to the Vatican that Chacón “had had the good sense of surrounding himself with men of moderate political persuasions.” ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 65, fasc. 7: Circa le condizioni. 63. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 69, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1927: Morte di Mons. Muñoz. Informazioni sulla situazione di Guatemala. 64. Bendaña Perdomo, La Iglesia en Guatemala, 106.

178   Notes to Pages 36 –  3 7

65. For Piñol’s popularity among certain sectors of the Guatemalan clergy, see ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 69, fasc. 1: Circa la candidatura di Mons. Piñol ad Arcivescovo di Guatemala. The government’s support for Piñol’s candidacy is discussed in Vatican correspondence. See, for example, ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1925, pos. 57, fasc. 1: Condizioni religiosi in Guatemala. Lettera confidenziale ricevuta dal R. P. Durou. In 1925 the Guatemalan minister of foreign relations, Adrián Recinos, traveled to Rome, where, on orders from Orellana, he not only discussed the state of affairs of Church-state relations with papal officials, but also sought to convince them of the benefits of appointing Piñol as archbishop. For a discussion of this episode, see ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 69, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926: Visita S. Recinos a Roma. 66. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1927, pos. 59, fasc. 9: Mons. Piñol candidato a Guatemala; and ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 71, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1927: Relazioni della Visita Apostolica. 67. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. Caruana and other officials considered the possibility of recommending the nomination of a U.S.born prelate who would allow the Church to adopt a socially oriented pastoral, establish closer links with Guatemalan workers, and thus transcend its social lethargy in the face of the advance of leftist ideologies. This idea, however, did not gain much traction, for Caruana feared that a U.S.-born prelate would spark a nationalist response among the clergy and therefore contribute to the split. See Bendaña Perdomo, La Iglesia en Guatemala, 106. 68. “The Holy See Ends Trouble,” in ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 70, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926–1928; and ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1924–1925, pos. 62, fasc. 5: Resumen. 69. “The Holy See Ends Trouble,” in ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 70, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926–1928. 70. For a more detailed discussion of the local and global context that allowed for this Church-state rapprochement, see Hernández, “Reforming Catholicism,” 255–280. For the European context, see Rhodes, Vatican in the Age of Dictators. 71. For a general overview of the rise of military dictatorship in Latin America during this period, see Alain Rouquie and Stephen Suffern, “The Military in Latin American Politics since 1930,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 9:233–304. For specific case studies, see Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 7 (especially parts 2 and 3). For other specific case studies, see Eric Paul Roorda, The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998); and Lauren H. Derby, The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 72. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 8–22; Kenneth

Notes to Pages 38 – 39   179

Grieb, Guatemalan Caudillo: The Regime of Jorge Ubico, Guatemala, 1931–1944 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979), chapter 12; and Dosal, Doing Business with the Dictators, chapter 10. Sergio Tischler Visquerra analyzes Ubico’s policies to revive the coffee sector; see his Guatemala 1944: Crisis y revolución, ocaso y quiebre de una forma estatal (Guatemala City: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Antropológicas y Arqueológicas de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 1998). For a more recent treatment of Ubico’s economic policies, see Way, Mayan in the Mall, chapter 1. 73. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 8–10. For a highly critical firsthand account of the most controversial and repressive aspects of the Ubico regime, see Rafael Arévalo Martínez, Ubico (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1984). 74. Grieb, Guatemalan Dictator, 210–11. 75. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1921–1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9: Crisi di autoritá nel­ l’archidiocesi di Guatemala. The papal diplomats’ position was of course a reflection of the Vatican’s anticommunism, which was best exemplified during the 1930s by Pius XI’s encyclical on “atheistic communism,” Divini Redemptoris (1937), https://w2 .vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19370319_divini -redemptoris.html, accessed March 27, 2015. 76. Bendaña Perdomo, La Iglesia en Guatemala, 119. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Esquipulas, the home the Black Christ, had been a site of religious pilgrimage for Guatemalans, other Central Americans, and even Mexicans. See Sullivan-González, Black Christ of Esquipulas. 77. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1921–1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9: Crisi di autoritá nell’archidiocesi di Guatemala. 78. Miller, “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el Estado”; and Estrada Monroy, Datos, 488. 79. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to José Fietta, Internuncio Apostólico de Centroamérica, 1929; and AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure: Valentín Nalio to Luis Durou, San José, Costa Rica, August 25, 1932. Even before his arrival, Fietta had encouraged Durou to work toward a political rapprochement. See AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure, Nunciatura: José Fietta to Luis Durou, San José, Costa Rica, August 22, 1928. 80. Grieb, Guatemalan Caudillo, 114–25. 81. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1932–1935, pos. 79, fasc. 11: Relazione diplomatiche fra Santa Sede e Guatemala. Levame first visited the country in the fall of 1934. This visit was reported in the Church’s mouthpiece, Revista Eclesiástica 53 (September– October 1934): 65. The volumes of Revista Eclesiástica are found in the library of the Teologado Salesiano (the Salesian seminary) in Guatemala City. 82. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1932–1935, pos. 79, fasc. 11: Relazione diplomatiche. 83. Diario de Centro América, 30 March, 1936, in Estrada Monroy, Datos, 506.

180   Notes to Pages 41 –  4 6 CHAPTER 2.  THE ROMANIZED CHURCH

1. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1933–1946, pos. 77, fasc. 13: Ritorno dei Padri Gesuiti in Guatemala, no. 2372. 2. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1933–1946, pos. 77, fasc. 13: Ritorno dei Padri, no. 2300. 3. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 71, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926: Luis Durou to Caruana; and “Decree 936,” in ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 71, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1926. See also ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 69, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1923–1925: Informazioni su Guatemala date da P. Durou. 4. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 475–79. 5. Luis Durou y Sure, Carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Luis Durou y Sure, C.M., Arzobispo de Guatemala y Administrador Apostólico de Verapaz y Petén, con motivo del santo tiempo cuaresma en defensa de la fe (Guatemala City: Tipografía Sánchez y de Guise, 1935), 3. 6. Luis Durou y Sure, Carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Luis Durou y Sure, C.M., Arzobispo de Guatemala con motivo del santo tiempo de cuaresma sobre la Doctrina Cristiana (Guatemala City: Tipografía Sánchez y de Guise, 1936), 1. 7. ASV, Congregazione Conscistoriale, Relationes Diocesium, fasc. 372: Diocesis Guatemalensis, 1934, 6–7. 8. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Diócesis, n.p., n.d. 9. Van Oss, Catholic Colonialism, 149–53. 10. ASV, Congregazione Conscistoriale, Relationes Diocesium, fasc. 372: Diocesis Guatemalensis, 1934. 11. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Salvador Diéguez to Luis Durou, Carchá, October 6, 1934. 12. ASV, Congregazione Conscistoriale, Relationes Diocesium, fasc. 372: Diocesis Guatemalensis, 1934. For contemporary ethnographic descriptions of costumbre and the role of chimanes, see Wagley, Social and Religious Life, 50, 68–75; Ruth Bunzel, Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village (Locust Valley, NY: American Ethnological Society, 1952), 164–97; and Oliver La Farge, Santa Eulalia, 82. Upon observing some of these practices, anthropologist Jackson Steward Lincoln echoed Durou’s views when he remarked, “The combination of Roman Catholic setting [and] pagan worship was something to be remembered.” See Lincoln, An Ethnological Study of the Ixil Indians of the Guatemalan Highlands (Chicago: University of Chicago Library, 1945), microfilm, 127, 138, 132. 13. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 482–83. For brief descriptions of other pastoral visits, see ibid., 487, 489, 507–9.

Notes to Pages 46 – 48   181

14. Revista Eclesiástica 78 (November–December 1938): 226. 15. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, indice 1156, fasc. 69, Arcidiocesi di Guatemala, 1923–1925 (1922, 1926–1932): Relazione de la S. Visita. There were so few priests that, as Durou noted in this same report, it was not unusual for a priest to be responsible for multiple towns and parishes. Thus, the parish priest of Livingston was in charge not only of the spiritual care of the inhabitants of Livingston, but also of those in the town of Morales and its surrounding areas. 16. Luis Durou y Sure, Carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Luis Durou y Sure, C.M., Arzobispo de Guatemala y Administrador Apostólico de Verapaz y Petén sobre la Iglesia Católica (Guatemala City: Tipografía Sánchez y de Guise, 1934), 6; and Carta pastoral sobre la Doctrina Cristiana, 1–2; Revista Eclesiástica 53 (September–October 1934): 77. For a discussion of the status of Protestantism during the interwar period, see Garrard-​Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala, 66–78; and Everett Wilson, “Guatemalan Pentecostals: Something of Their Own,” in Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America, ed. Edward L. Cleary and Hannah W. Stewart-​Gambino (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 142. 17. ASV, Congregazione Conscistoriale, Relationes Diocesium, fasc. 372: Diocesis Guatemalensis, 1934. 18. Revista Eclesiástica 53 (September–October 1934): 65, 77. 19. ASV, Congregazione Conscistoriale, Relationes Diocesium, fasc. 372: Diocesis Guatemalensis, 1934. 20. Luis Durou y Sure, Carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Luis Durou y Sure, C.M., Arzobispo de Guatemala con ocasión del santo tiempo de cuaresma (Guatemala City: Tipografía Sánchez y de Guise, 1937), 5–7. For a discussion of the Spanish case, see William J. Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 282. 21. Luis Durou y Sure, Recuerdo de la solemne Misa de Acción de Gracias a Dios (Guatemala City: Talleres Tipográficos San Antonio, 1932), 6. Vatican representatives in Guatemala expressed a similar position. One official believed that the leftist threat was particularly relevant among the indigenous population, which, in his view, “was seriously exposed to the dangers of the communist propaganda.” ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1921–1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9: Governo di Mons. Durou, Arcivescovo di Guatemala/Crisi di autorità nell`archidiocesi di Guatemala (con allegato). 22. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Informe emitido por José Leandro Cruz Reyes al Ilmo. y Rvmo. Sr. arzobispo Luis Durou y Sure de la doctrina cristiana que se enseña en ésta de su cargo, Parroquia de Santa Ana Chimaltenango, October 3, 1930. That same year, in Antigua Guatemala, the old colonial capital, Federico Nanne reported about a catechetical program for children and adults. Like Cruz, Nanne relied on lay catechists, noting that without their assistance, “it would be impossible” to teach the catechism. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Nanne to Luis Montenegro y Flores, October 7, 1930.

182   Notes to Pages 48 –  5 2

23. Revista Eclesiástica 59 (September–October 1935): 164–65. 24. Revista Eclesiástica 58 (July–August 1935): 154. 25. As of the fall of 1935 there were three ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the country: the Archdiocese of Guatemala in the central part of the country, the Diocese of Los Altos in the west, and the Diocese of Verapaz in the north. As will be discussed below, the Holy See sanctioned the establishment of the Diocese of Verapaz in January 1935. The Archdiocesan Board for Catechetical Instruction, therefore, had jurisdiction over the Archdiocese of Guatemala. 26. Revista Eclesiástica 58 (July–August 1935): 152–53. 27. Ibid. These prescriptions, the editors of Revista Eclesiástica stressed, had been mandated by the Holy See in a letter dated April 23, 1924, and by Canon Law 1332 and 1335. 28. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure: Carlos Chiarlo to Luis Durou, San José, Costa Rica, November 24, 1932. 29. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Carlos Chiarlo, Guatemala, June 24, 1933. 30. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 504. 31. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Rafael Gonzáles to Luis Durou, San Agustín Acasaguastlán, June 17, 1938; Bendaña Perdomo, La Iglesia en Guatemala, 120–21; and Ricardo Bendaña Perdomo, interview by author, Guatemala City, March 20, 2006. The Apostolado became the basis of what later became known as Acción Católica Rural Obrera (ACRO, Rural Catholic Action). 32. Serbin, Needs of the Heart, 8. 33. Pius XI, Ad Catholici sacerdotii (1935), http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius -​xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-​xi_enc_19351220_ad-​catholici-​sacerdotii.html, accessed March 27, 2015. 34. Revista Eclesiástica 56 (March–April 1935): 126; Revista Eclesiástica 70 (July–August 1937): 64; and Revista Eclesiástica 53 (September–October 1934): 77. The quotation comes from Matthew 5:16. 35. Revista Eclesiástica 73 (January–February 1938): 126; and Revista Eclesiástica 74 (May–June 1938): 157. 36. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Emilio Colomo to Luis Durou y Sure, Nueva Santa Rosa, September 26, 1934. See also AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Emilio Colomo to Luis Durou y Sure, Nueva Santa Rosa, November 8, 1934. 37. Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, fasc. 69, 1922–1925 (1922, 1926–1932): Durou y Sure to Nolio, personal letter dated March 20, 1932. 38. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1932–1935, pos. 73–76, fasc. 11: La Rappresentanza Pontificia nelle Repubbliche di El Salvador, Honduras e Guatemala.

Notes to Pages 52 – 54   183

39. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Jorge García Caballeros to Luis Durou, Quetzaltenango, May 16, 1930. 40. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Ildefonso H. Rossbach to Luis Durou, Chichicastenango, January 28, 1928. 41. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Narciso Teletor, Guatemala, February 24, 1933. 42. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: unknown author, n.p., n.d. 43. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Gabriel Solares, Guatemala City, January 14, 1932. 44. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Carlos Chiarlo, Guatemala City, June 27, 1933. Durou was more direct in another letter. Solares, who was responsible for various scandalous actions, “was nuts.” (“está chiflado”). AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Carlos Chiarlo, Guatemala City, August 13, 1933. 45. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Carlos Chiarlo, Nuncio Apostólico, Guatemala City, July 7, 1933. 46. Ibid. 47. Estraday Monroy, Datos, 481–82; and Miller, “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el Estado,” 126. 48. Revista Eclesiástica 77 (September–October 1938): 202; and Revista Eclesiástica 70 (July–August 1937): 63. 49. Revista Eclesiástica 61 (January–February 1936): 195–96. Durou cited a Vatican document, De habitu ecclesiastica a clericis deferendo (July 28, 1931), and a decree issued by the Guatemalan ecclesiastical authorities on October 22, 1931. 50. Revista Eclesiástica 70 (July–August 1937): 61. As Miller indicates, the Ubico regime continued to insist that clerics could not wear clerical garb in public; see his “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el Estado,” 127. 51. ASV, Congregazione Conscistoriale, Relationes Diocesium, fasc. 372: Diocesis Guatemalensis, 1934, 1, 4, 6. In a letter from 1932, the archbishop put the number of seminarians at thirty. See AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Rafael Guizar, Guatemala City, September 6, 1932. 52. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Carlos Chiarlo, Guatemala City, October 15, 1933.

184   Notes to Pages 55 –  5 7

53. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia Seminario, Luis Durou y Sure: Reglamento del Seminario Conciliar de Santiago de Guatemala, n.p., n.d. 54. Luis Durou y Sure, Edicto arzobispal a nuestro venerable Cabildo Metropolitano, a los sacerdotes y fieles de la arquidiócesis, salud y bendición en el señor (Guatemala City: Tipografía Sánchez y de Guise, 1936), 2. For Durou’s discussion of lack of funds, see AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Mateo Perrone, Guatemala City, February 1, 1938. 55. “Carta del Excmo. Señor Arzobispo a los Señores Sacerdotes sobre el DIA DEL SEMINARIO,” in Revista Eclesiástica 57 (May–June 1935): 13. 56. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Sinforoso Aguilar, Guatemala, February 25, 1929; and AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Sinforoso Aguilar, Guatemala, March 13, 1929. 57. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to José Fietta (Internuncio of Central America), Guatemala City, 1929; and Estrada Monroy, Datos, 481. 58. ASV, Arch. Nunz. America Centrale, fasc. 69, 1922–1925 (1922, 1926– 1932): Durou y Sure to Nolio, personal letter dated March 20, 1932; and Miller “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el Estado,” 126. 59. ASV, Congregazione Conscistoriale, Relationes Diocesium, fasc. 372: Diocesis Guatemalensis, 1934, 4. 60. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1933–1946, pos. 77, fasc. 13: Ritorno dei Padri Gesuiti in Guatemala, no. 2300. 61. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1933–1946, pos. 77, fasc. 13: Ritorno dei Padri Gesuiti in Guatemala, no. 2372. 62. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure, Correspondencia Seminario: Luis Durou to Rafael Ramírez, San Salvador, 1938; AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure, Correspondencia Seminario: Luis Durou to Félix Areitio, Guatemala City, February 27, 1938. 63. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1933–1946, pos. 77, fasc. 13: Ritorno dei Padri, no. 2300. 64. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure, Nunciatura: José Fietta to Luis Durou, San José, Costa Rica, August 22, 1928. 65. See Hernández, “Reforming Catholicism,” 276–78. 66. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1933–1946, pos. 77, fasc. 13: Ritorno dei Padri, no. 2300.

Notes to Pages 57 – 65   185

67. Francisco Javier Gómez Díaz, “Factores de tensión en la Iglesia católica de Guatemala: El informe de monseñor Rossell a la Santa Sede (1954–1956),” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 52, no. 2 (1995): 179–97. 68. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure, Nunciatura: Luis Durou to Giuseppe Bearzotti, Guatemala, June 22, 1938. 69. ASV, AES, Guatemala, 1921–1938, pos. 69, fasc. 9: Governo di Mons. Durou. 70. AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia general, Luis Durou y Sure: Luis Durou to Gabriel Solares, Guatemala City, January 14, 1932. 71. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 510. For the documents pertaining to his birthplace and death, see AHAG, Fondo Diocesano, Secretaría de Gobierno Eclesiástico, Correspondencia, Luis Durou y Sure: Documentos del Ilmo. Sr. Luis Javier Durou y Sure.

CHAPTER 3.  THE RESURGENT CHURCH

1. Dussel, Historia de la iglesia en América Latina, 179–92. On “neo-​Christendom,” see also Thomas Bruneau, The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), chapter 2; and Scott Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916–1985, chapter 2. 2. Pius XI, E Supremi (1903), http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-​x/en/encyclicals /documents/hf_p-​x_enc_04101903_e-​supremi.html, accessed October 22, 2017. 3. Rossell took this religious background with him as he took reins of the Guatemalan Church and, as discussed later, often inserted the Black Christ into the thick of political events. For a recent examination of the historical significance of the Black Christ of Esquipulas (including its relation to racial and ethnic discourse), see Sullivan-​González, Black Christ of Esquipulas. 4. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 514–15; Celso Narciso Teletor, Síntesis Biográfica del Clero de Guatemala (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1965), 268–71; and John Frank Sliwinski, interview by the author, Guatemala City, November 16, 2005. Sliwinski served as Rossell’s personal secretary in the early 1960s. 5. Sliwinski interview; and Estrada Monroy, Datos, 514–15. 6. For an overview of Ubico’s policy toward Protestantism, see Garrard-​Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala, 71–72, 79–99. 7. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Tercera carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano, XV arzobispo de Guatemala sobre la ignorancia religiosa en la primera Dominica de Cuaresma (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1940), 2–6. 8. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Primera carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano, XV arzobispo de Guatemala con

186   Notes to Pages 65 –  6 7

ocasión de su consagración episcopal en la Dominica in Albis (Guatemala City: Sánchez & de Guise, 1939), 6. 9. Rossell, Tercera carta pastoral, 7. 10. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Discurso pronunciado por el Arzobispo de Guatemala, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, en la sesión inaugural del Primer Congreso Nacional de Vocaciones Eclesiásticas (Guatemala City: Unión Tipográfica, 1942), 3. 11. AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, 1938– 1941: “El primer congreso nacional de fomento de vocaciones,” Verbum, September 13, 1942, 1, 2. 12. Rossell, Discurso pronunciado por el Arzobispo de Guatemala, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, en la sesión inaugural del Primer Congreso Nacional de Vocaciones Eclesiásticas, 5. Rossell reinforced this vision in Instrucción pastoral del Excelentísimo Señor Arzobispo de Guatemala al clero y fieles, sobre el Congreso de Vocaciones Eclesiásticas (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1942), 4. 13. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Cuarta carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano, XV arzobispo de Guatemala sobre la instrucción religiosa en la primera Dominica de Cuaresma (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1941), 4–5. Rossell had introduced these points in his first pastoral letter, Primera carta pastoral, 6. 14. Rossell, Instrucción pastoral sobre el Congreso de Vocaciones Eclesiásticas, 4–5. 15. AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, 1938– 1941: “El primer congreso nacional de fomento de vocaciones,” Verbum, September 13, 1942, 2. 16. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano XV arzobispo de Guatemala con ocasión del Primer Congreso Catequístico Arquidiócesano en la cuarta Dominica de Adviento (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1942), 6–7; and AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943: “Magnas solemninades del Primer Congreso Catequístico Guatemalense, programa oficial,” Verbum, December 27, 1942, 4, 6. 17. AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943: “Comités y subcomités del 1er. Congreso Catequístico Nacional,” Verbum, December 27, 1942, 8, 6; and AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943: Letra del Himno Catequístico declarada digna de publicarse, autora: Magdalena Spínola V. de Aguilar. 18. Cruzada de dolor por el congreso eucarístico, in AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943: Mariano Rossell Arellano, Cruzada de dolor por el

Notes to Pages 67 – 69   187

congreso eucarístico (1943); Mariano Rossell, Circular del Excelentísimo Señor Arzobispo de Guatemala acerca de facilitar el sacramento del matrimonio, con ocasión del Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano, 12–16 de diciembre de 1943, in AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943; and AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943: Programa del Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala del 12 al 16 diciembre de 1943. 19. AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943: Orden de la procesión eucarística del 16 de diciembre de 1943. 20. As noted above, the Vatican’s outward-​looking strategy caused a rift in the Guatemalan Church, for native clerics such as Rossell came to resent, although not always in a public manner, the growth and influence of the foreign clergy. See Gómez Díaz, “Factores de tensión en la Iglesia católica de Guatemala”; and Chea, Guatemala, la cruz fragmentada, 77. 21. Rossell y Arellano, Cruzada de dolor por el congreso eucarístico, in AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943. 22. AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943: Programa del Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala del 12 al 16 diciembre de 1943. 23. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 549; Miller, “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia y el estado,” 137; and Bendaña Perdomo, “Guatemala,” in Dussel, Historia general de la Iglesia en América Latina, 6:367. 24. “Gran acontecimiento nacional ante el Primer Congreso Catequístico Nacional,” Verbum, December 27, 1942, 4, in AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943. 25. “Primer Congreso Catequístico Nacional,” Verbum, December 27, 1942, 1, in AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943. 26. Anita Frankel, “Political Development in Guatemala,” 172–76. 27. Federico Hernández de León, a journalist and director of Nuestro Diario in the 1920s, gives the most thorough account of Ubico’s presidential trips across the country. See Viajes presidenciales: Breves relatos de algunas expediciones administrativas del General D. Jorge Ubico, Presidente de la República (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1940). 28. One might also point to Ubico’s fascistic proclivities, which correlated with Rossell’s admiration for Franco’s Spain. Contrary to the position of the U.S. government (but in line with that of other Latin American dictators), Ubico did not

188   Notes to Pages 69 –  7 2

consider fascism as serious of a threat and indeed saw the rise of Hitler’s Germany as a counterpoint to U.S. hegemony in Central America. See Grieb, Guatemalan Caudillo, 248–64. 29. Garrard-​Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala, 71–72. 30. For a description of these Church documents, see Chadwick, History of the Popes, 273–331. 31. Eugene D. Miller, A Holy Alliance? The Church and the Left in Costa Rica, 1932–1948 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996); and Eugene D. Miller, “Labour and the War-​Time Alliance in Costa Rica, 1943–1948,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 25 (October 1993), 515–41. For the Sanabria incident in 1943, see Miller, “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia y el estado,” 139. 32. Rossell, Primera carta pastoral, 6; and Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Segunda carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano, XV arzobispo de Guatemala con ocasión del Día del Seminario en la Dominica de Pentecostés (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1939), 4. Rossell expressed the same sentiment about the need for a well-​trained clergy in his third pastoral letter. See Tercera carta pastoral, 6. 33. Exhortación pastoral del Excelentísimo Señor Arzobispo de Guatemala, con motivo del Día de Pentecostés (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1944), 3. 34. AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano de Guatemala, 1939–1943: Lista de los sacerdotes de la República de Guatemala, 1943. 35. AHAG, Monseñor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Correspondencia, 1938– 1941: Cardinal Maglione to Mariano Rossell, Vatican City, May 16, 1940. 36. Giuseppe Beltrami, April 12, 1942, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, Maryknoll Mission Archives (hereafter MMA), Ossining, New York. For a discussion of this movement, see Angelyn Dries, The Missionary Movement in American Catholic History (Ossining, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), chapter 8. 37. Dussel, “The Catholic Church in Latin America Since 1930,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 6, Latin America Since 1930, Part 2: Politics and Society, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 549. In large part due to rapid population growth, Latin America would soon surpass Europe as the region with the largest proportion of the world’s Catholic population. By 1960 it had 35 percent—compared to 33 percent in Europe—of the world’s Catholics. In the 1940s, the movement of missioners found a voice in Maryknoller John Considine, who called on the U.S. Catholic Church to send priests to Latin America; see his Call for Forty Thousand (London: Longmans, Green, 1946). 38. For Ubico’s actions vis-​à-​vis German interests in Guatemala, see Grieb, Guatemalan Caudillo, 255–63; and Regina Wagner, Los alemanes en Guatemala, 1828–1944 (Guatemala City: Editorial IDEA, La Universidad en su Casa, Universidad Francisco Marroquín, 1991), 366–83.

Notes to Pages 72 – 78   189

39. Together, the Maryknoll fathers, sisters, and lay missioners became known as “Maryknoll.” For an overview of the history of Maryknoll in China, see Jean-​Paul Wiest, Maryknoll in China: A History, 1918–1955 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1988); Cindy Yik-​yi Chu, The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921–1969: In Love with the Chinese (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Glenn D. Kittler, The Maryknoll Fathers (New York: World Publishing, 1961); and, for an inside account, Raymond A. Lane, The Early Days of Maryknoll (New York: David McKay, 1951). See also Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 21–37. 40. For an overview of the Guatemalan case, see Dave C. Kelly, Maryknoll History, 1943–1969: Guatemala-​El Salvador Region (Guatemala City: n.p., 1969); Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, “Maryknoll Sisters”; and Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, “From Symbols of the Sacred.” For Peru, see Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru. 41. Giuseppe Beltrami, April 12, 1942, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, MMA. 42. James E. Walsh, M.M., September 12, 1942, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, MMA. 43. Giuseppe Beltrami, November 11, 1942, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, MMA. 44. Giuseppe Beltrami, September 23, 1943, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, MMA. The Maryknoll Sisters, in contrast, were bound by religious vows. 45. James E. Walsh, January 7, 1943, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, MMA; and Miller, “Las relaciones entre la Iglesia Católica y el Estado,” 142–43. As Miller notes, Guatemalan clergymen, including Rossell, harbored sympathies for European authoritarian regimes, including Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain.

CHAPTER 4.  THE MISSIONARY CHURCH

1. Edmund McClear, Soloma Diary, September 1948, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1947–1950, Box 1, File 5, MMA. The town’s elevation comes from La Farge, Santa Eulalia, 3. 2. In this sense, this chapter draws from recent works on popular religiosity that challenge a resistance/assimilation binary. See, for instance, Román, Governing Spirits; Wright-​Ríos, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism; Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); and Kenneth Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Religion and Extirpation, 1640–1750 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 3. Clarence Witte, M. M., Account of a Trip through the Highlands, March 24 to April 2, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA.

190   Notes to Pages 78 –  8 0

4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Another ceremony described by Witte in this document involved altars set up in a mountain just outside Chichicastenango. These altars consisted of a “Mayan idol” surrounded by “an assortment of stone crosses of various sizes.” The Maya burned incense around the crosses and covered the idol with pine branches. Indigenous priests “then knelt before the idol and recited a series of incantations, at which point the name ‘Jesu Christo and sacramento’ [Jesus Christ and sacrament]” was constantly recited. Clarence Witte, Guatemala Diary, March 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. 7. Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip through the Highlands, March 24 to April 2, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. 8. Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip through the Highlands, March 24 to April 2, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. Witte found a similar scenario in other localities: “At San Cristóbal [Totonicapán], as in so many places here in a country where faith has failed and grown cold, where faith has all but been lost,” he remarked, “the glory that was is now gone, and there remains but sad reminders of a past greatness. Not only the great churches and cathedrals of the past but also the faith that once raised them up must now be rebuilt. These ruins are at once a reproach to past faithlessness and a challenge to our present apostolate to rebuild a lost faith.” Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip to the West Coast and the Northwest Highlands, June 9 to 26, 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. 9. James E. Walsh, September 12, 1942, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, MMA. 10. Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip through the Highlands, March 24 to April 2, 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA; and Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip to the West Coast and the Northwest Highlands, June 9 to 26, 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. For a more detailed description of the makeup of the population of Huehuetenango, see Adrián Recinos, Monografía del Departamento de Huehuetenango, República de Guatemala (Guatemala City: Tipografía Sánchez y de Guise, 1913), 219–26. There had been 369 Maryknoll missioners in China prior to the Japanese invasion in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Not all of them left their mission during these years; their final exit from China would come in 1949, when the communists gained control of the country. See Timothy Bart Jafek, “Community and Religion in San Miguel Acatán, Guatemala” (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1996), 49. 11. Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip through the Highlands, March 24 to April 2, 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA; and Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip to the West Coast and the Northwest Highlands, June 9 to 26, 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA.

Notes to Pages 81 – 84   191

12. Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip through the Highlands, March 24 to April 2, 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. 13. Clarence Witte, Account of a Trip to the West Coast and the Northwest Highlands, June 9 to 26, 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. For geographical descriptions of Huehuetenango, see W. George Lovell, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500–1821 (Montreal, Quebec: McGill-​Queen’s University Press, 2005), 11–22; La Farge, Santa Eulalia, 1–2; and Recinos, Monografía, 3–11. 14. Garrard-​Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala, 11; and La Farge, Santa Eulalia, chapters 4 and 7. 15. Only the sacristan held office for life. La Farge, Santa Eulalia, chapter 12; and Frank Cancian, “Political and Religious Organizations,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians: Social Anthropology, ed. Manning Nash (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967): 283–98. 16. Wagley, Social and Religious Life, 85. La Farge, Santa Eulalia, chapter 12; and Cancian, “Political and Religious Organizations,” 283–98. 17. Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 20, 48; and Gene Burns, The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 76, 83. 18. First Days in Huehuetenango, August 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. Maryknoller Paul Sommer agreed with this assessment; he noted that the indigenous population was well aware of the existence of God, the Virgin Mary, and the Catholic saints, but that they practiced none (except baptism) of the Catholic sacraments and rarely attended Mass. Paul Sommer, Jacal­ tenango, Diary for the month of September, 1945, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945, Box 1, File 3, MMA. 19. Arthur Allie, August 1945 in Soloma, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945, Box 1, File 3, MMA. 20. Here I draw on the work by Román, who, in his analysis of man-​gods in late-​nineteenth-​century Cuba, cautions against interpretations that “distinguish too sharply between orthodox doctrine and Creole belief.” See Governing Spirits, 24. For a discussion of engagement in the case of Maryknoll Sisters in Guatemala, see Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, “Maryknoll Sisters,” 34. 21. Clarence Witte, Guatemala Mission Diary, October 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. 22. Ibid. Maryknollers reproduced ladino views about Maya culture and alcohol. See Garrard-​Burnett, “Indians are Drunks,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 19 (2000), 341–56; and David Carey, “Distilling Perceptions of Crime: Maya Moonshiners and the State, 1898–1944,” in Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History, ed. David Carey (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 120–56.

192   Notes to Pages 85 –  8 8

23. George Raterman, San Miguel Acatán Diary, April 1953, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. Here Raterman gives a description of the “short count” of the calendar. For a much more detailed description of the Maya calendar (including the long count), see Michael D. Coe, The Maya, 7th ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005), especially chapters 3 and 9; Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (New York: Morrow, 1990), chapter 2; and Barbara Tedlock, Time and the Highland Maya (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), chapters 4 and 5. 24. Paul Sommer, Jacaltenango, Diary for the month of September, 1945, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945, Box 1, File 3, MMA. 25. George Raterman, San Miguel Acatán Diary, April 1953, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 26. Ibid. 27. Joseph Halpin, Soloma Diary for the month of October, November 15, 1953, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945–1946, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 28. June in Soloma, 1944, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1944, Box 1, File 2, MMA. In San Miguel Acatán, James Scanlon undertook a similar project a few years later. See James M. Scanlon, “Box Score,” Maryknoll, December 1956, 11. The volumes of Maryknoll magazine, which was intended to publicize and promote the missionary work of Maryknollers, are found in MMA. 29. Guatemala Diary, Soloma, March 1945, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945, Box 1, File 3, MMA. 30. John J. Considine, M.M., July 29, 1944, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, MMA; and Giuseppe Beltrami, August 31, 1944, Central America, Apostolic Nuncio Correspondence, 1942–1968, MMA. 31. In making these observations, Maryknollers had in mind the priest-​parishioner ratio in some parts of the United States. They pointed out that in the town of Evansville, Indiana, there were 95 priests for a total population of 52,000, most of which was well instructed in the Catholic faith. See Soloma Diary, December 1944, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1944, Box 1, File 2, MMA. 32. Huehuetenango Diary, 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. The local attitude of disregard for the authority of the priest was also common in other localities. In the village of San Rafael, Allie complained that although he succeeded in removing a marimba from the church building and forbade the locals from using the church building again, they ignored his order, for “no sooner had I turned my back to leave but another marimba goes in.” See Clarence Witte, Guatemala Mission Diary, October 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. 33. Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Guatemala: Las líneas de su mano (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 2002), 392. 34. For the 1945 constitution, see Kalman H. Silvert, A Study in Government: Guatemala (New Orleans: Tulane University Press, 1954), 13–18, 28–29, 18;

Notes to Pages 89 – 91   193

for the social security law and the labor code, see Archer C. Bush, “Organized Labor in Guatemala, 1944–1949: A Case Study of an Adolescent Labor Movement in an Underdeveloped Country” (M.A. thesis, Colgate University, 1950), 40–44 (part 1), 1–4 and 77 (part 3), 3 (conclusion). For an overview of the revolutionary years, see Eduardo Antonio Velásquez Carrera, La Revolución de Octubre: Diez años de lucha por la Democracia en Guatemala, 1944–1954, vols. 1 and 2 (Guatemala City: Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Regionales, 1994). 35. Juan José Arévalo, Guía del método nacional (Guatemala City: Goubad, n.d.), 8. Arévalo viewed literacy campaigns as a way to stimulate the intellectual and artistic abilities of the Maya, but also as a way to incorporate them into the nation. In this he borrowed from the Mexican indigenista model of the Casa del Estudiante Indígena. Juan José Arévalo, “La nación mejicana y los problemas de la educación,” Escritos pedagógicos y filosóficos (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1945), 47–69. For a discussion of the Liberal roots of this assimilationist discourse, see Grandin, Blood of Guatemala. For discussions of indigenismo during the revolutionary period, see Richard N. Adams, “Ethnic Images and Strategies in 1944,” in Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 141–62; Way, Mayan in the Mall, 33–35; and Handy, Revolution in the Countryside, 48–52. 36. Bendaña Perdomo, Ella es lo que nosotros somos y mucho más, 123–24. 37. William W. Fletcher, M.M., November 19, 1946, Central America, Guatemala Group/Society Superior Correspondence, 1946, MMA. Supposedly, Arévalo had not informed the local ecclesiastical authorities about his request for more priests. Garrard-​Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala, 80–86. 38. See “Oraciones principales,” Guatemala Group/Society Superior Correspondence, 1943–1944, MMA. 39. Arthur Allie, Guatemala Mission Diary, March 1944, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1944, Box 1, File 2, MMA. 40. Guatemala Diary, Soloma, March 1945, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945, Box 1, File 3, MMA. Maryknollers would punch the “attendance ticket” every time an individual attended catechism class and give out a prize when the ticket was filled. Interestingly enough, among the first youngsters to take part in these recreational activities were two brothers, José Efraín Ríos Montt, later military dictator of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983, and his brother, Mario Ríos Montt, who went on to become bishop of Escuintla and then auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Guatemala. See Melville, Through a Glass Darkly, 96–97. 41. Clarence Witte, Guatemala Mission Diary, October 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. 42. Guatemala Diary, Soloma, March 1945, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945, Box 1, File 3, MMA. 43. Alfred Smith, San Miguel Acatán, January–February 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA; and AHAG, Fondo Diocesano,

194   Notes to Pages 91 –  9 4

Archivo arzobispal, Monseñor Mariano Rossell, Correspondencia, 1920–1964: Los Padres de Maryknoll, John F. Lenahan, M.M., Huehuetenango, August 1, 1950. 44. Jacaltenango, November–December 1951, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 45. Huehuetenango Diary, 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. 46. Hugo Gerbermann, Ixtahuacán Diary for February 1952, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA; and Hugo Gerbermann, Ixtahuacán Diary for January 1952, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951– 1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 47. Fitzpatrick-​Behrens points to other factors (including the history of immigration, labor unionism, ethnic identity, and the Good Neighbor policy) that shaped the Maryknoll vision of the world. See Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, chapter 1. 48. Arthur Allie, Guatemala Mission Diary, March 1944, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1944, Box 1, File 2, MMA. 49. Huehuetenango Diary, June 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. 50. Huehuetenango Diary, 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. The Maryknolls organized a similar group among Maya laborers in Huehuetenango by the end of 1946. See Huehuetenango Diary, December 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. 51. Bendaña Perdomo, La Iglesia en Guatemala, 120–21; and Bendaña Perdomo, interview by author, Guatemala City, 20 March 2006. For the creation and development of Catholic Action outside Guatemala, see Junta Central de la Acción Católica Argentina, 50 años de apostolado en la Argentina 1931–1981 (Buenos Aires: Acción Católica Argentina, 1981); Richard Jones, L’idéologie de l’Action catholique, 1917–1939 (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1974); Oscar Domínguez Correa, El campesino chileno y la Acción Católica Rural (Fribourg, Switzerland: Oficina Internacional de Investigaciones Sociales de FERES, 1961); María Luisa Aspe Armella, La formación social y política de los católicos mexicanos: La Acción Católica Mexicana y la Unión Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos, 1929–1958 (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, Instituto Mexicano de Doctrina Social Cristiana, 2008); Dennis Michael Robb, “Specialized Catholic Action in the United States, 1939–1949: Ideology, Leadership, Organization” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1972); Tom Truman, Catholic Action and Politics (Melbourne, Australia: Georgian House, 1959) for the Australian case; Gianfranco Poggi, Catholic Action in Italy: The Sociology of a Sponsored Organization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967); and Diana Velez, Regeneration and Pacification: Modernization and the Agents of Social Control, Spain, 1895–1917 (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1977). The official document detailing the statues and organization of Catholic Action was produced in 1946. See AHAG: Proyecto de organización de la Acción Católica de Guatemala, 1946; and

Notes to Pages 94 – 96   195

AHAG: Estatutos generales de la Acción Católica de la Arquidiócesis de Santiago de Guatemala, 1948. 52. AHAG: Proyecto de organización; and AHAG: Estatutos generales. 53. Joseph Rickert, Chiantla, n.d., Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA; Bendaña Perdomo, interview by author, Guatemala City, 20 March 2006; and Lada Camblor, Pasaron haciendo el bien, 1:145–46. Additional information was collected from Marco Antonio de Paz (priest in the Diocese of Los Altos in the 1950s and 1960s and a key player in the Catholic Action movement and the formation of agricultural cooperatives), interview by author, Guatemala City, November 14, 2006; and José Félix Muralles (who served as secretary to González Estrada in the 1970s), interview by author, La Lagunilla, San Pedro Ayampuc, Department of Guatemala, February 14, 2007; Jesús Lada Camblor, interview by author, Guatemala City, 26 April 2006. 54. Soloma Diary, December 1944, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1944, Box 1, File 2, MMA. 55. Arthur Allie, August 1945 in Soloma, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945, Box 1, File 3, MMA. 56. Alfred Smith, M.M., San Miguel Acatán, January–February 1946, Mary­ knoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945–1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. 57. Clarence Witte, Guatemala Mission Diary, October 1943, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1943, Box 1, File 1, MMA. 58. Joseph Halpin, Soloma Diary for the month of October, November 15, 1953, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. A similar development took place in San Pedro Necta when John Breen spent seven months in residence instructing the people in the doctrine in order to start a Catholic nucleus. He had appointed a number of catechists for each village (there were fourteen main villages) and then visited the aldeas, living for two weeks in the larger ones and one in the smaller ones. After Mass, Breen held four-​hour doctrine classes—one hour for the sacraments, another for the Commandments, a third hour for the prayers, and a fourth for religious songs and the Rosary. This case shows that Maryknoll played a more central role in the direction of the catechetical system where the priest-​parishioner ratio allowed them to do so. See John Breen, San Mateo Ixtahuacán, Diary from the Center of San Pedro Necta, May 1953, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 59. John Breen, San Mateo Ixtahuacán, Diary from the Center of San Pedro Necta, May 1953, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. Given San Ildefonso’s close proximity to San Pedro Necta and its geographical location (which is crossed by two rivers east to west), Breen was likely referring to San Ildefonso here. San Mateo Ixtatán is located in the northern part of the department. 60. Arthur Allie, Guatemala Mission Diary, March 1944, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1944, Box 1, File 2, MMA.

196   Notes to Pages 96 – 106

61. Leo Conners, San Andrés Cuilco, May 1948, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1947–1950, Box 1, File 5, MMA. 62. Soloma Diary, December 1944, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1944, Box 1, File 2, MMA. 63. Cuilco Diary, December 1953, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 64. Francis Garvey, Diary of San Miguel Acatán, March–June, 1955, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 65. Ibid. For a brief Maryknoll description of the strength of the costumbristas in San Sebastián, see Felix Fournier, “How Witch Doctors Operate,” Maryknoll, January 1962, 25–28. 66. Hugo Gerbermann, Ixtahuacán Diary for March 1952, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 67. Ibid.

CHAPTER 5.  THE REFORMIST CHURCH

1. Albert Nevins, “The Sun Shines Bright,” Maryknoll, January 1952, 3; and Edmund McClear, “Martin and Mateo: A Portrait of Soloma’s Two Men Friday,” Maryknoll, December 1955, 17–18. 2. Albert Nevins, “The Sun Shines Bright,” Maryknoll, January 1952, 3–4. 3. Daniel Jensen, Santa Eulalia, February 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA; and Felix Fournier, “How Witch Doctors Operate,” Maryknoll, January 1962, 25–28. 4. Thomas Melville, San Miguel Acatán, March 1958, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1957–1958, Box 1, File 7, MMA. 5. Thomas Melville, San Miguel Acatán, September 1958, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1957–1958, Box 1, File 7, MMA. 6. Daniel McLeod, Barillas Diary, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. By the same token, during the rainy season the inhabitants of the villages of Barillas often found it difficult, if not impossible, to attend catechism class in the parish center. When the heavy rains began, McLeod indicated, only the members of two households from the surrounding villages attended catechism class. Daniel Jensen, parish priest of Santa Eulalia, also described the difficult terrain in which he had to work. With a population of about 10,000 inhabitants, the parish of Santa Eulalia covered about 135 square miles, most of which consisted of mountainous terrain. He complained that the nine villages that surrounded Santa Eulalia were separated from the remaining villages that composed the parish by high mountains and deep valleys. See Daniel Jensen, Santa Eulalia, February 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA.

Notes to Pages 107 – 109   197

7. Wagley, Social and Religious Life, 73; and Watanabe, Maya Saints, 204–5. 8. Joseph Grassi, Colotenango, June 1959, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1959, Box 1, File 8, MMA. 9. Fitzpatrick-Behrens has examined the establishment of medical programs by the Maryknoll Sisters. As she notes, these programs expanded rapidly in the highlands because they “resonated with Maya traditions linking faith and healing.” See “Maryknoll Sisters,” 46. 10. Joseph Grassi, Diary, Parish of the Assumption, Colotenango, April 1959, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1959, Box 1, File 8, MMA. In some cases, the erosion of costumbre happened in conjunction with the decline of the traditional civil-religious hierarchy. Watanabe traces the decline of traditional political structures among the Maya in Santiago Chimaltenango to the advent of electoral politics after 1944, which opened new ways of political legitimization, particularly among a younger generation of Maya people. From Watanabe’s research, is not entirely clear whether the emergence of this younger generation of politically active individuals accepted the presence of Maryknollers and their brand of Catholicism during the 1950s. See Watanabe, Maya Saints, 174–75. 11. Joseph Rickert, Diary for Barillas and San Mateo, 1955, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 6, MMA. 12. Joseph Grassi, Colotenango, March 1960, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1960–1961, Box 2, File 1, MMA. 13. Joseph Grassi, Colotenango, October, November and December 1958, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1957–1958, Box 1, File 7, MMA. 14. “Preliminary Papers towards a Mission Manual,” Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 1, File 5, MMA. 15. Albert L. Reymann, Key Men,” Maryknoll, January 1956, 56; and James M. Scanlon, “Box Score,” Maryknoll, December 1956, 11. 16. Felix Fournier, December 27, 1959, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/Creative Writings MFBA, MMA. Fitzpatrick-Behrens, citing the work of Leigh A. Fuller, puts the number of catechists at one thousand in 1958. See “The Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 294. 17. For descriptions of training received by catechists, see Edward J. McGuinness, “Adding It All Up,” Maryknoll, November 1955, 52; Albert L. Reymann, “Key Men,” Maryknoll, January 1956, 56; Felix Fournier, “A Man of His People,” Maryknoll, September 1962, 2–5; and “Cursillo anual para dirigentes de Acción Católica,” July 8, 1959, Parroquia de San Francisco El Alto, Totonicapán, Cartas del Señor Obispo Monseñor Luis Manresa, 1958–1960, Archivo de la Provincia Franciscana, Guatemala City, Guatemala (hereafter APF). 18. Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 292. 19. Calder, Crecimiento, 53; and Bendaña Perdomo, Ella es lo que nosotros somos y mucho más, 7.

198   Notes to Pages 109 – 113

20. Growth took place during the revolution despite the turn toward the Left and fears that this development would negatively impact Maryknoll in Guatemala. James Scanlon, for example, wrote in September 1954 that he hoped that the fall of Jacobo Arbenz would lead to “a favorable government” when it came to the Mary­ knoll enterprise in Guatemala and that this in turn would permit Maryknoll to “make definite plans for the future.” No Maryknollers had arrived since 1952, but it is difficult to say whether this was due to the radicalization of the revolution, for there had been two other years (1947 and 1950) during which no new Maryknollers had arrived in Guatemala. See James M. Scanlon, Diary for San Miguel Acatán, July, August, and September 1954, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 7, MMA. Even when the Arbenz government had not renewed the six-month visas of seven Maryknollers, thus making them “in effect invaders subject to prison or expulsion,” no such imprisonment or expulsion had taken place. See Albert L. Reymann, Jacaltenango Diary, October 20, 1954, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 7, MMA. 21. Joseph Grassi, Diary, Parish of Assumption, Colotenango, April 1959, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1959, Box 1, File 8, MMA. 22. Dennis R. Kraus, Diary of San Antonio Huista, September 25, 1959, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1959, Box 1, File 8, MMA. 23. Watanabe, Maya Saints, 203–4. 24. Edmund McClear, “Martin and Mateo: A Portrait of Soloma’s Two Men Friday,” Maryknoll, December 1955, 17. 25. Tito Consani, Santa Eulalia, April, May, and June 1960, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1960–1961, Box 2, File 1, MMA. 26. Felix Fournier, “A Man of His People,” Maryknoll, September 1962, 5. 27. Donald Lansing, Jacaltenango Diary, Visit to aldeas of Nentón, August 1960, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1960–1961, Box 2, File 1, MMA. 28. Paul J. Davenport, San Miguel Acatán, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1960–1961, Box 2, File 1, MMA. 29. Edmund McClear, San Carlos Sija, Quetzaltenango, April 23, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. Given this critical view of the Catholic Action system, it is not surprising that Maryknollers viewed priests as central figures and catechists as playing a complementary role in the campaign to expand sacramentalism in the countryside. See Albert L. Reymann, “When the Valley Flowers,” Maryknoll, August 1956, 56–57. 30. Joseph Grassi, Colotenango, August 1959, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1959, Box 1, File 8, MMA. 31. Seth Fein, “Everyday Forms of Transnational Collaboration: U.S. Film Propaganda in Cold War Mexico,” in Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds., Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 437.

Notes to Pages 113 – 116   199

32. Edmund McClear, San Carlos Sija, August 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. This approach had its origins in the parish of San Miguel Acatán, where the Maryknoller Alfred Smith encountered high levels of illiteracy. In 1946 Smith began to use a battery-operated, fifteen-millimeter movie projector to show a number of slide films on the life of Christ, stories from the Old and New Testament, and doctrinal illustrations from the catechism. Alfred Smith, San Miguel Acatán, April 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. 33. Edmund McClear, San Carlos Sija, Quetzaltenango, April 23, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 34. James P. LaCoste, San Mateo Ixtatán, August 4, 1958, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1957–1958, Box 1, File 7, MMA. 35. Joseph Rickert, San Pedro Necta, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 36. Dennis R. Kraus, Diary of San Antonio Huista, September 25, 1959, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1959, Box 1, File 8, MMA. 37. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 165–66. 38. Ibid., 143–47. 39. Ley de Reforma Agraria, Decreto Número 900 (Guatemala City: Publicaciones del Departamento Agrario Nacional, 1952), article 10. 40. Ibid., articles 4, 37, and 39. 41. Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, “Informe del Ciudadano Presidente de la Re­ pública, Coronel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, al Congreso Nacional en su primer perí­ odo de sesiones ordinarias del año 1953,” as published in El Guatemalteco, March 4, 1953, 1. 42. Ley de Reforma Agraria, article 3; Alfonso Bauer Paiz, interview by James Wallace Wilkie and Marta Cehelsky, Interviews on Recent Guatemalan History, CD recording, disc 2 (Guatemala City, 1968); and, for a vivid portrayal of Arbenz and his epoch, Devils Don’t Dream!, VHS, directed by Andreas Hoessli (New York: Icarus Films, 1995). For more detailed scholarly accounts of the land reform process in rural Guatemala, see Handy, Revolution in the Countryside; and Cindy Forster, The Time of Freedom: Campesino Workers in Guatemala’s October Revolution (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001). 43. The classic studies on the 1954 coup are Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 1999); Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Policy of Foreign Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Gleijeses, Shattered Hope; and, more recently, Nick Cullather, Secret History. The CIA’s Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 44. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution, 34–41.

200   Notes to Pages 117 – 120

45. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution, chapter 6; and Way, Mayan in the Mall, chapter 4. 46. Bendaña Perdomo, La Iglesia en Guatemala, 129–32. 47. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Carta pastoral colectiva del episcopado de la provincia eclesiástica de Guatemala, sobre la amenaza comunista en nuestra patria (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1945). 48. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, A las clases laborante y patronal. Mensaje del Arzobispo de Guatemala, Monseñor Mariano Rossell Arellano (Guatemala City: Unión Tipográfica Castañeda, Ávila y Cía, 1946), 7. 49. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Carta pastoral del excelentísimo y reverendísimo señor Don Mariano Rossell Arellano, Arzobispo de Guatemala sobre la justicia social, fundamento del bienestar social: Ante el tiempo del adviento en el ano del Señor de mil novecientos cuarenta y ocho (Guatemala City: Unión Tipográfica Castañeda, Ávila y Cía, 1948), 12. 50. Frankel, “Political Development in Guatemala,” 226–28. 51. Rossell, Carta pastoral sobre los avances del comunismo en Guatemala, 6, 14. 52. For Rossell’s position in the coup’s aftermath, see Oración fúnebre pronunciado por el Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Monseñor Mariano Rossell Arellano, Arzobispo de Guatemala, en los funerales celebrados en la catedral metropolitana por el eterno descanso de las almas de todas la víctimas asesinadas en Guatemala durante el terror comunista y de los muertos en los campos de batalla (Guatemala City: n.p., 1954). For secondary accounts of the Church’s position vis-à-vis the Arbenz government (and the October Revolution in general), see Miller, “Catholic Leaders and Spiritual Socialism”; Pattridge, “The Catholic Church in Revolutionary Guatemala”; Calder, Crecimiento y cambio; Frankel, “Political Development in Guatemala”; Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, chapter 10; and Sullivan-González, Black Christ of Esquipulas. 53. Bendaña Perdomo, Ella es lo que nosotros somos y mucho más, 18. 54. Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 52–53; Lada Camblor, Pasaron haciendo el bien, volume 1; and Santos, Guatemala. 55. Chadwick, History of the Popes, 273–331. 56. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, La paz, fruto de la justicia, as reproduced in Avance Juvenil, September 1954, 1–2. 57. Ibid., 2–3. 58. During this period, Church leaders met in Colombia (1953), Panama (1955), Chile (1957), and Venezuela (1961). For a discussion of the CRLC and Lugutti, see David S. Bovee, The Church and the Land: The National Catholic Rural Life Conference and American Society, 1923–2007 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 177–78; Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 298–99; Mary Roldán, “Popular Cultural Action, Catholic Transnationalism, and Development in Columbia before Vatican II,” in Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church, 266–68, 270–72; Gerald Costello, Mission to Latin America: The

Notes to Pages 121 – 124   201

Successes and Failures of a Twentieth Century Crusade (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979), 27–29, 33; and Mary M. McGlone, Sharing Faith across the Hemisphere (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 83. 59. Conferencia del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Monseñor Mariano Rossell Arellano, Arzobispo de Guatemala, en el Tercer Congreso Católico de la Vida Rural, el 21 de abril de 1955, en la Ciudad de Panamá (Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1955), 9, 19, 13, 12, 8. 60. Primera Conferencia General del Episcopado Latinoamericano, Río de Janeiro, 1955, Conclusiones, http://www.celam.org/conferencia_rio.php, accessed April 20, 2016. For a discussion of the broader context, see Enrique Dussel, A History of the Church in Latin America: Colonialism to Liberation, trans. Alan Neely (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1981), 114–15; Jeffrey Klaiber, Catholic Church in Peru, 253–54: and Fernando Torres Londoño, “Río de Janeiro, 1955: Fundación del CELAM,” Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia 5 (1996), 405–16. This anticommunist worldview pervades other Church pronouncements during the 1950s. In 1957 Church leaders, led by Rossell, cautioned Guatemalans about the dangers of “atheistic communism.” See “Exortación pastoral del episcopado de Guatemala al pueblo católico,” in Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, Al servicio de la vida, la justicia y la paz (Guatemala City: Ediciones San Pablo, 1997), 4–5. 61. Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre, chapter 4. 62. Fitzpatrick-Behrens, Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 25–37. 63. Ibid., 25–37. 64. For descriptions of the costumbristas and the provision of medical care, see LaFarge, Santa Eulalia, 155–56; and Maud Oakes, The Two Crosses of Todos Santos: Survivals of Mayan Religious Ritual (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 182–83. 65. Paul Sommer, M.M., Diary of Jacaltenango, October 1945, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945, Box 1, File 3, MMA; and Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maryknoll Sisters,” 32. For the role of chimanes curanderos in the realm of medicine in San Miguel Acatán, see Brintnall, Revolt against the Dead, 91–92. 66. Alfred Smith, San Miguel Acatán, April 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945–1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. 67. Edward McGuinness, Jacaltenango Diary, September 1950, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1947–1950, Box 1, File 5, MMA. Watanabe observed a similar development in Santiago Chimaltenango. See Maya Saints, 204. 68. Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maryknoll Sisters,” 32. 69. James Curtin, M.M., Malacatancito Diary, 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945–1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA; and Huehuetenango Diary, 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945–1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. 70. Alfred Smith, San Miguel Acatán, April 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945–1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA; Brother Felix Fournier, personal

202   Notes to Pages 125 – 126

letter, August 24, 1947, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/Creative Writings, MFBA, MMA; James Hughes, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945–1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA; and Huehuetenango Diary, 1946, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1945–1946, Box 1, File 4, MMA. 71. Felix Fournier, July 1, 1953, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/ Creative Writings, MFBA, MMA. Fitzpatrick-Behrens notes that by 1956 Maryknoll had created six cooperatives, including the one in Malacatancito. See “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 293. 72. Felix Fournier, August 12, 1953, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/ Creative Writings, MFBA, MMA. 73. Felix Fournier, September 4, 1954, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/ Creative Writings, MFBA, MMA. Fournier established a similar cooperative in San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, where the going credit rate was 10 percent a month and went up to 1 percent per day in other towns. By January 1956, twenty people, all Maya, had signed up and deposited a total of twelve dollars for this project. See Felix Fournier, January 19, 1956, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/Creative Writings, MFBA, MMA. Fitzpatrick-Behrens has discussed the slow approval process by the Guatemalan government. See “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 292. 74. Felix Fournier, December 5, 1954, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/ Creative Writings, MFBA, MMA; and Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 293. 75. Edward J. McGuinness, “Adding It All Up,” Maryknoll, November 1955, 53. 76. Albert H. Esselborn, “This is Guatemala,” Maryknoll, April 1960, 5. 77. Melville, Through a Glass Darkly, 243–44; and Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 289. For one of the few examples of the Maryknoll interpretation of the Arbenz regime, see James M. Scanlon, Diary for San Miguel Acatán, July, August, and September 1954, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 7, MMA; and Albert L. Reymann, Jacaltenango Diary, October 20, 1954, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1951–1957, Box 1, File 7, MMA. 78. Felix Fournier, August, 1953, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/Creative Writings, MFBA, MMA; and Felix Fournier, July 1, 1953, Brother Felix Fournier, Personal Papers/Creative Writings, MFBA, MMA. 79. Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit.” 80. Outside the national fincas, the great majority of peasants chose to control their own land. This was of course contrary to the platform of the Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala (CGTG), the country’s major labor confederation during the early 1950s. CGTG’s leader, Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, favored, not the emergence of a new class of landowners (as Decree 900 mandated), but the formation of land cooperatives. For this background, see Handy, Revolution in the Countryside, 96–97, 86–87.

Notes to Pages 127 – 133   203

81. Handy, Revolution in the Countryside, 161. 82. Albert Nevins, “The Sun Shines Bright,” Maryknoll, January 1952, 2–3. 83. For a discussion of the postwar expansion of Protestantism, see Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala and Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982–1983 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Annis, God and Production; David Stoll, Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Henrick Shäfer, Entre dos fuegos: Una historia socio-política de la iglesia evangélica nacional presbite­ riana de Guatemala, trans. Violaine de Santa Ana (Guatemala City: CEDEPCA, 2002); Linda Green, “Shifting Affiliations: Maya Widows and Evangélicos in Guatemala,” in Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America, ed. Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1993), 159–79; and Miller, “La Iglesia Católica y el protestantismo, 1945–1956,” in Luján Muñoz, Historia general de Guatemala, 5:235–50. 84. Ibid., 4. 85. Edward J. McGuinness, “Adding It All Up,” Maryknoll, November 1955, 53.

CHAPTER 6.  THE PROGRESSIVE CHURCH

1. Felix Fournier, “Driven into Politics,” Maryknoll, September 1972, 34–37. 2. Serbin, Needs of the Heart, 294. 3. For an examination of “progressive Catholicism,” see Cleary, Born of the Poor; Levine, Popular Voices; and Mainwaring and Wilde, Progressive Church. 4. William J. Price, “Social Pastoral Renewal,” San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, February 1968, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. 5. Edmund McClear, San Carlos Sija, Quetzaltenango, April 23, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 6. Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 59. 7. Gómez Díaz, “Factores de tensión en la Iglesia católica de Guatemala,” 194–97. 8. Chea, Guatemala, la cruz fragmentada, 207–32. 9. In hindsight, the selection of Casariego is not surprising, for the international Church also witnessed increasing divisions in the 1960s. After all, Paul VI built upon but also slowed the pace of the reform program initiated by his predecessor, John XXIII. The latter had shocked many, including members of key Church circles, when, upon becoming the spiritual leader of the universal Church, he called for an aggiornamento (updating), or a coming to terms with the modern world. The historiography on the Second Vatican Council is extensive, to say the least. For its origins,

204   Notes to Pages 133 – 136

development and consequences, Raymond F. Bulman and Frederick J. Parrella, eds., From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Matthew L. Lamb, Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); and René Latourelle, ed., Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives: Twenty-​Five Years After (1962–1987) (New York: Paulist Press, 1989). For the internal debates and conflicts among the council’s participants and the documents that resulted from them, see Giuseppe Alberigo, ed., History of Vatican II, vols. 1–3, trans. Joseph A. Komonchak (New York: Orbis Books, 1996). 10. Estrada Monroy, Datos, 665–71; and Chea, Guatemala, la cruz fragmentada, 156. 11. Chea, Guatemala, la cruz fragmentada, 149–55. For the CEG’s official anticommunist position, which continued to draw inspiration from the social doctrine of the Church, see “Carta pastoral del episcopado guatemalteco sobre los problemas sociales y el peligro comunista de Guatemala,” in Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, Al servicio de la vida, la justicia y la paz, 8–38. 12. “Carta pastoral a los sacerdotes seculares y regulares de la Arquidiócesis con motivo de la Navidad, December 4, 1976,” in Mario Casariego y Acevedo, Cartas pastorales y discursos, 1975–1980, vol. 4 (n.p., n.d), 86. 13. “En la caridad será el consuelo para todos, March 3, 1965” in Mario Casariego y Acevedo, Cartas pastorales y discursos, 1965–1967, vol. 1 (San Salvador, El Salvador: Escuela Tipográfica Emiliani, 1967), 19. 14. “Discurso a los religiosos y religiosas en presencia del venerable episcopado guatemalteco, February 29, 1968,” in Mario Casariego y Acevedo, Cartas pastorales y discursos, 1967–1969, vol. 2 (San Salvador, El Salvador: Escuela Tipográfica Emiliani, 1969), 253. 15. Berryman, Liberation Theology; Cleary, Born of the Poor; Levine, Popular Voices; Mainwaring and Wilde, Progressive Church; and Manuel A. Vásquez, Anna L. Peterson, “Progressive Catholicism in Latin America,” in The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America, ed. Virginia Garrard-​Burnett, Paul Freston, and Stephen C. Dove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 376–77. 16. William J. Price, San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, January 1966, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. The full citation of the papal document is Pope Paul VI, Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy) , December 4, 1963, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii _vatican_council/documents/vat-​ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-​concilium_ en.html, accessed March 27, 2015. 17. Greg Roberts, Todos Santos, February 11, 1966, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. In February 1965, Bishop Hugo Gerbermann had celebrated Mass in Huehuetenango for the catechists with the new changes in the liturgy as mandated by Vatican II. The new changes would go into effect on March 7 of that same year. See Albert H. Esselborn, Huehuetenango, February 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA.

Notes to Pages 136 – 141   205

18. William J. Price, San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, January 1966, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. 19. The full citation of this encyclical is as follows: Pope Paul VI, Populorum progressio (On the Development of Peoples), March 26, 1967, http://www.vatican.va /holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-​vi_enc_26031967_populorum _en.html, accessed March 27, 2015. The Guatemalan episcopate reinforced this point in its 1967 message, “Mensaje del episcopado guatemalteco” in Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, Al servicio de la vida, la justicia y la paz, 50–67. 20. Edmund McClear, San Carlos Sija, August 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 21. Karina Kosicki Bellotti, “The Religious Media and Visual Culture in Latin America,” in The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America, ed. Virginia Garrard-​Burnett, Paul Freston, and Stephen C. Dove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 451. 22. Fein, “Everyday Forms of Transnational Collaboration,” 437. 23. Edmund McClear, San Carlos Sija, August 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 24. Ibid. 25. Daniel McLeod, Barillas Diary, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. McLeod makes no reference to the language used to run this radio program, though, if the use of the flashlight projector, the filmstrips, and the salvation history method in Barillas serves us as a guide, it seems likely that the Maryknollers had no option but to use both Spanish and the native language of each locality (Q’anjob’al in the case of Barillas) to make any headway among the Maya population. 28. Ibid. 29. Mary Roldán, “Popular Cultural Action,” in Andes and Young, Local Church, Global Church, 271. 30. San Antonio Huista, January 1967–December 1967, San Antonio Huista Diaries, 1964–1967, MMA. 31. William Price, “New Wine in Old Bottles,” undated, Personal Papers, William Price, Central America, Guatemala, MMA. 32. Susan A. Berger, Political and Agrarian Development in Guatemala (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 104–14; and Way, Mayan in the Mall, 125–28. For a political history of the Ydígoras Fuentes years, see Francisco Villagrán Kramer, Biografía política: Los pactos políticos de 1944 a 1970 (Guatemala City: FLACSO, 1993), 327–77. Villagrán Kramer, who would serve as vice president during the administration of Romeo Lucas García (1978–1982), had initially formed part of the Partido Revolucionario. Discontented with its support of Ydígoras Fuentes, however, he quit the organization to form the Unidad Revolucionaria Democrática in 1958. The FTN

206   Notes to Pages 141 – 145

encompassed the northern part of the departments of El Quiché (Ixcán) and Alta Verapaz, as well as the northwestern section of the department of Izabal. See C. Smith, introduction to Guatemalan Indians and the State, 6. 33. Berger, Political and Agrarian Development, 114–16; and George Black, Garrison Guatemala (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984). 34. For an overview of the Alliance for Progress, see Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Latham, Modernization as Ideology; and Jeffrey F. Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin America (New York: Routledge, 2007). 35. Berger, Political and Agrarian Development, 139–40; and Villagrán Kramer, Biografía política, 415–416. 36. Way, Mayan in the Mall, 125. 37. Berger, Political and Agrarian Development, 121–33, 139–50. This counterinsurgency campaign had one of its first manifestations in Operación Limpieza (Operation Cleanup), which succeeded in eliminating over thirty leftists, including Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez, one of the main labor leaders during the October Revolution and member of the communist Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo. In The Last Colonial Massacre, Grandin argues that this operation effectively served to splinter the Left in Guatemala. In the highlands, Adams notes that the expansion of the cooperative movement at the national level had been hampered by the association of the term cooperative with communism. In the 1960s, however, the number of cooperatives expanded, in part due to the work of progressive clerics, such as the Maryknollers, and government and nongovernmental agencies, such as the Peace Corps, but others emerged under the banner of the Christian Democratic Party. See Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944–1966 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 200–201. 38. Melville, Through a Glass Darkly, 318. 39. Chea, Guatemala, la cruz fragmentada, 156; Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 160–62; and Jennifer Schirmer, The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). 40. Felix Fournier and Carl Puls, “Guatemala’s Farming Revolution,” Mary­ knoll, May 1963, 2–6. 41. Carey, “Guatemala’s Green Revolution,” 293–95; Way, Mayan in the Mall, chapter 5; and Falla, Quiché rebelde; and Falla, “Hacia la Revolución Verde.” 42. Carey and Way have pointed to the Cold War prerogatives that motivated the “green revolution.” See Carey, “Guatemala’s Green Revolution,” 293; and Way, Mayan in the Mall, 125. 43. Escobar, Encountering Development, xix. 44. Proyecto de San José, Huehuetenango, circa 1962, Printed Material, Box 5, Projects, MMA.

Notes to Pages 145 – 148   207

45. Ibid. The use of synthetic fertilizers in the Huehuetenango mission dated back to 1952, when Edmund McClear had opened an experimental farm and introduced fertilizers in Soloma. Albert J. Nevins, “The Sun Shines Bright,” Maryknoller, January 1952, 4. The Jesuit priest Ricardo Falla documented a similar development— involving the introduction of chemical fertilizers together with a campaign to convert the Maya population to Catholic orthodoxy—in the department of El Quiché. See his Quiché rebelde and “Hacia la Revolución Verde.” 46. Proyecto de San José, Huehuetenango, circa 1962, Printed Material, Box 5, Projects, MMA; and Felix Fournier, “Guatemala’s Farming Revolution,” Maryknoll, May 1963, 5. Likewise, Carey, in his study of Maya-​Kaqchikel communities, has linked the introduction of nontraditional crops to a national and international program of development. See Carey, “Guatemala’s Green Revolution,” 297. 47. Edward Doheny, San Antonio Huista, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. One finds a similar approach in Cabricán’s Operación Ascensor (Operation Elevator), a proposed program that sought “to elevate the social, cultural and economic levels of the people” through, among other means, agricultural diversification. The project encouraged the cultivation of new crops, including fifteen varieties of fruits imported from the United States. See Operación Ascensor, Cabricán, Quetzaltenango, circa 1962, Printed Material, Box 5, Projects, MMA. 48. Edward Doheny, San Antonio Huista, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. In addition to the higher yield, soybean cultivation presented a nutritional advantage: the soybeans cultivated in San Antonio consisted of 38 percent protein and 20 percent oil. Maryknollers created a similar project in San Francisco La Unión. See James Flaherty, Diary for San Francisco La Unión, Quetzaltenango, 1962, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1962, Box 2, File 2, MMA. 49. Felix Fournier, “Guatemala’s Farming Revolution,” Maryknoll, May 1963, 5. 50. Wolf, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities”; Wolf, “The Vicissitudes of the Closed Corporate Community; Handy, Revolution in the Countryside; Smith, introduction to Guatemalan Indians and the State; Watanabe, “Enduring Yet Ineffable Community,” in Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 183–204; and Blake D. Pattridge, “The Catholic Church and the Closed Corporate Community during the Guatemalan Revolution, 1944–1954,” The Americas 52, no. 2 (July 1995): 25–42. Fitzpatrick-​Behrens examines the idea of self-​sufficiency in the Maryknoll Mission in rural Peru; see her Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru. 51. Thomas Melville, Cabricán, February 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA; and “Breve noticiario,” January 1962, Parroquia de San Francisco El Alto, Totonicapán, Cartas del Señor Obispo Monseñor Luis Manresa, 1958–1960, APF. 52. Thomas Melville, Cabricán, February 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 53. Ibid.

208   Notes to Pages 148 – 152

54. Donald J. Casey, Report on Cabricán Cooperative, 12, Cabricán, Guatemala, undated, Printed Material, Box 5, Projects, MMA. 55. Thomas Melville, Cabricán, February 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 56. Watanabe, “Enduring Yet Ineffable Community,” in Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 188–89; and Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 299–300. 57. William Woods, Santa Cruz Barillas, 1966, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. The Malin Cooperative was one of the few cooperatives that the Peralta Azurdia administration sanctioned. Without access to government sources, it is not easy to discern why the military regime legalized the cooperative, but as the Malin Cooperative was not an agricultural cooperative (which was often associated with communism) but rather a production cooperative, the government may not have seen it as a threat, at least during the mid-​1960s. 58. Barillas, August 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA. In Jacaltenango, too, the Maryknoll Sisters, under the direction of William Mullan, sought to teach the local population the value of saving money through the parish’s credit union. See Jacaltenango Diary, January 1965–January 1966, Jacaltenango Diaries, 1965–1966, Maryknoll Sisters Diaries, MMA. 59. Joseph Rickert, San Pedro Necta, November 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA. The coffee cooperative of La Libertad had the same effect. Dennis Kraus, La Libertad’s pastor and representative of the cooperative, had begun to travel to Guatemala City to sell coffee directly to exporters. By early 1966 he had secured a contract to sell 34,000 pounds of coffee beans at $30 per hundredweight and made a bank loan of $3,500 to help the members of the cooperative with harvest costs. Dennis R. Kraus, La Libertad, Huehuetenango, February 1966, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. 60. Felix Fournier, “Pope John’s Colony,” Maryknoll, June 1967, 37–44. 61. Edward Doheny, Ixcán, September 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA; and John M. Goshko, “The Beginning of Heaven,” Maryknoll, April 1969, 2–6. 62. They met at the Ixcán colonization project sometime in 1966 or 1967. See Instituto Nacional de Transformación Agraria, Informativo gráfico de un año de labores (Guatemala City: INTA, 1967); and John M. Goshko, “The Beginning of Heaven,” Maryknoll, April 1969, 2–6. For a more detailed discussion of the opening up of the FTN and how the army benefited from it, see Way, Mayan in the Mall, 128. 63. Melville, Through a Glass Darkly, 324. Another example of Church-​state cooperation can be found in the field of education and sanitation. See San Antonio Huista, January 1967–December 1967, San Antonio Huista Diaries, 1964–1967, Maryknoll Sisters Diaries, MMA; and Diary Digest, San Miguel Acatán, November 1963–November 1964, San Miguel Acatán Diaries, 1960–1966, Maryknoll Sisters

Notes to Pages 152 – 155   209

Diaries, MMA. For a discussion of cooperation in the “Resettlement Project” in the Ixcán, see Goshko, “The Beginning of Heaven,” Maryknoll, April 1969, 2–6. 64. Melville, Through a Glass Darkly, 353–61; Garrard-​Burnett, Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit, 45. 65. William J. Donnelly, Chiantla, November 1968, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. Roberts specifically referred to Pope Paul VI, Apostolicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity), 18 November, 1965, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council /documents/vat-​ii_decree_19651118_apostolicam-​actuositatem_en.html, accessed March 15, 2016. 66. McClear’s comment about the intelligence of Maya catechists—or as he put it, their lack of “at least an average or better than average intelligence”—pointed to the continuity of Eurocentric and paternalistic perceptions of indigenous peoples. Edmund McClear, Diary of San Mateo Ixtatán, November 1958–March 1959, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1959, Box 1, File 8, MMA. 67. Daniel McLeod, Barillas Diary, 1963, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1963, Box 2, File 3, MMA. 68. Donald J. Casey, Report on Cabricán Cooperative, 11, Cabricán, Guatemala, undated, Printed Material, Box 5, Projects, MMA. 69. Barillas, August 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA. 70. Edward Moore, San Miguel Acatán, September 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA. 71. Ibid. 72. As quoted in Taffet, Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy, 22. 73. This methodology—of giving laypeople the tools to see, judge, and act to solve their problems—was the work of Joseph Cardijn, the priest who founded JOC in Belgium in the 1920s. See Bonar L. Hernández, “‘Restoring All Things in Christ’: Social Catholicism, Urban Workers, and the Cold War in Guatemala,” in Garrard-​ Burnett, Lawrence, and Moreno, Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow, 251–80; and Deborah Levenson-​Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954–1985 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). 74. William Price, “New Wine in Old Bottles,” undated, Personal Papers, William Price, Central America, Guatemala, MMA; and Hugo Gerbermann, Maryknoll Community Development, circa 1961–1962, Printed Material, Box 5, Projects, MMA. Self-​help, which, according to Don Lansing, seemed “to be no more than the age-​old search for informed, competent, and dedicated leaders,” in some instances became known as “concientización” (consciousness raising). See Don Lansing, “Current Effort of Maryknolls’ Central American Mission to Restructure Apostolic Activities According to Theology of Sign,” Colotenango, Huehuetenango, January 17, 1968, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA.

210   Notes to Pages 156 – 160

75. Edward Doheny, Ixcán, September 1965, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1964–1965, Box 2, File 4, MMA. 76. Proyecto de San José, Huehuetenango, circa 1962, Printed Material, Box 5, Projects, MMA. 77. Felix Fournier, “Driven into Politics,” Maryknoll, September 1972, 34–37. See also Felix Fournier and Carl Puls, “Guatemala’s Farming Revolution,” Maryknoll, May 1963, 2–6. 78. Mary Mendola, “Quest for Leaders,” Maryknoll, April 1971, 58. The establishment of the Centro de Capacitación was part of a broader Church initiative to train leaders in the highlands. See Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, “Maya Catholic Cooperative Spirit,” 301–2. 79. William J. Price, “Social Pastoral Renewal,” San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, February 1968, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. 80. Ibid. For Kennedy’s view of reform as a way to forestall the advance of communism in Latin America, see John F. Kennedy, “Address on the First Anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962,” http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-​Viewer /Archives/JFKPOF-​037–026.aspx, accessed May 14, 2016. 81. William J. Price, “Social Pastoral Renewal,” San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, February 1968, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Diaries, 1966–1968, Box 2, File 5, MMA. 82. Ibid. 83. Scholars have investigated the pre-​1962 origins of a progressive trajectory in other countries in Latin America. See, for example, Mainwaring, Catholic Church and Politics, chapters 3 and 4; B. H. Smith, Church and Politics in Chile, chapter 4; Bruneau, Political Transformation, chapter 4; and Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 88, 131.

EPILOGUE

1. Melville and Melville, Whose Heaven; Melville, Through a Glass Darkly; Fitzpatrick-​Behrens, “From Symbols of the Sacred”; Hernández, “‘Restoring All Things in Christ,’ ” in Garrard-​Burnett, Lawrence, and Moreno, Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow, 251–80; and Levenson-​Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror. 2. The literature on state-​sponsored violence during the 1970s and 1980s is extensive. Good starting points include Ricardo Falla, Masacres de la selva: Ixcán (1975–1982) (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria, 1992); Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre; Garrard-​Burnett, Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit; Kristen Weld, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). Two truth commissions, one produced by the Catholic Church and another by the United Nations, also provided a detailed history of the violence of the civil

Notes to Pages 160 – 162   211

war. See Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG), Informe: Proyecto Interdiocesano de la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (REHMI), vols. 1–4 (Guatemala City: ODHAG, 1998); and Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), Guatemala memoria del silencio: Tz’nil na’tab’al (Guatemala City: CEH, 1999). On the death of Woods, see Melville, Through a Glass Darkly, 373–96; Diócesis del Quiché, Padre Guillermo Woods (Ixcán, Quiché, Guatemala: Diócesis de Santa Cruz del Quiché, 2000); and Diócesis del Quiché, Tierra, guerra y esperanza: Memoria del Ixcán (1966–1992) (Ixcán, Quiché, Guatemala: Proyecto Interdiocesano Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, REHMI, 2000). 3. This fragmentation is discussed in Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” in Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 230–57; Diócesis del Quiché, El Quiché: El pueblo y su iglesia (Santa Cruz del Quiché, Quiché, Guatemala: Diócesis de Santa Cruz del Quiché, 1994); Diócesis del Quiché, Tierra, guerra y esperanza; McAllister, “Rural Markets,” in Joseph and Spenser, In from the Cold, 357–61; and McAllister, “A Headlong Rush into the Future,” in Grandin and Joseph, A Century of Revolution, 279–84; and Konefal, For Every Indio Who Falls, chapter 2. 4. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Teología de la liberación: Perspectivas (Lima: Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, Instituto Bartolomé de las Casas, 1971). 5. Phillip Berryman, Liberation Theology, 4. 6. For Christian base communities, see also Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986). 7. For this continuing reformism, see Melville, Through a Glass Darkly; and Diócesis del Quiché, Tierra, guerra y esperanza. 8. Virginia Garrard-​Burnett, “‘God Was Already Here When Columbus Arrived’: Inculturation Theology and the Maya Movement in Guatemala,” in Resurgent Voices in Latin America: Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change, ed. Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 125–53; and C. James MacKenzie, “An Interstitial Maya: The Life, Legacy, and Heresies of Padre Tomás García,” Anthropos 109 (2014): 119–34. 9. Grandin, Last Colonial Massacre. A more recent study on the sociopolitical polarization caused by the Cold War is Joseph and Grandin, Century of Revolution. 10. For an examination of the Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca, see Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” in Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 242; Garrard-​Burnett, Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit, 42–43; and Watanabe, “Enduring Yet Ineffable Community,” in Smith, Guatemalan Indians and the State, 199.

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NEWSPAPERS

Avance Juvenil Verbum

ORAL INTERVIEWS

Bendaña Perdomo, Ricardo. Guatemala City, March 20, 2006. Lada Camblor, Jesús. Guatemala City, April 26, 2006. Muralles, José Félix. La Lagunilla, San Pedro Ayampuc, Department of Guatemala, February 14, 2007. Paz, Marco Antonio de. Guatemala City, November 14, 2006. Sliwinski, John Frank. Guatemala City, November 16, 2005.

PUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCES

Note: Sources are listed by author in chronological order for ease of reference. Arévalo, Juan José. Escritos pedagógicos y filosóficos. Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1945. ———. Guía del método nacional. Guatemala City: Goubad, n.d. Casariego y Acevedo, Mario. Cartas pastorales y discursos, 1965–1967. Vol. 1. San Salvador: Escuela Tipográfica Emiliani, 1967. ———. Cartas pastorales y discursos, 1967–1969. Vol. 2. San Salvador, El Salvador: Escuela Tipográfica Emiliani, 1969. ———. Cartas pastorales y discursos, 1975–1980. Vol. 4 (n.p., n.d).

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———. Exposición del ceremonial para la consagración de los obispos. Con motivo de la consagración del Exmo. y Rvmo. Monseñor doctor Mariano Rossell y Arellano, celebrada el 16 de abril de 1939 en la Santa Iglesia Catedral Metropolitana por Alberto Levame. Guatemala City: Unión Tipográfica Muñoz Plaza, 1939. Montenegro y Flores, Luis. Discurso pronunciado el 18 de diciembre de 1934 en la S.I. Catedral, fecha del IV centenario de la erección de la Diócesis de Guatemala, por S.S. Paulo III. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1934. ———. Primera carta pastoral del Obispo de la Verapaz Luis Montenegro y Flores dirigida a su clero y fieles diocesanos con motivo de su ingreso y posesión a la sede. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1935. ———. Segunda carta pastoral del excelentísimo y reverendísimo Monseñor D.D. Luis Montenegro y Flores sobre el santo sacrificio de la misa. Cobán, Guatemala: Sánchez y de Guise, 1935. ———. Tercera carta pastoral sobre el pontificado. Cobán, Guatemala: Tipografía Sánchez y de Guise, 1936. Rossell y Arellano, Mariano. Circular del excelentísimo señor arzobispo de Guatemala a sus sacerdotes, con motivo del Día de las Misiones. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1939. ———. Primera carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mari­ ano Rossell y Arellano, XV arzobispo de Guatemala con ocasión de su consa­ gración episcopal en la Dominica in Albis. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1939. ———. Segunda carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano, XV arzobispo de Guatemala con ocasión del Día del Seminario en la Dominica de Pentecostés. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1939. ———. Tercera carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano, XV arzobispo de Guatemala sobre la ignorancia religiosa en la primera Dominica de Cuaresma. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1940. ———.Cuarta carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano, XV arzobispo de Guatemala sobre la instrucción religiosa en la primera Dominica de Cuaresma. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1941. ———. Reglamento de la Congregación de la Doctrina Cristiana, acordado para la arquidiócesis de Guatemala por el Excmo. y Revmo. señor arzobispo don Mariano Rossell Arellano. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1941. ———. Carta pastoral del Excelentísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell y Arellano XV arzobispo de Guatemala con ocasión del Primer Congreso Cate­ quístico Arquidiócesano en la cuarta Dominica de Adviento. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1942. ———. Discurso pronunciado por el arzobispo de Guatemala, monseñor Mariano Ros­ sell Arellano, en la sesión inaugural del Primer Congreso Nacional de Vocaciones Eclesiásticas. Guatemala City: Unión Tipográfica, 1942.

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———. Instrucción pastoral del Excelentísimo Señor Arzobispo de Guatemala al clero y fieles, sobre el Congreso de Vocaciones Eclesiásticas. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1942. ———. Carta pastoral con motivo de la Santa Cuaresma de 1943, sobre la santidad de la familia cristiana. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1943. ———. Circular del Excmo. señor arzobispo de Guatemala acerca de facilitar el sacra­ mento del matrimonio, con ocasión del Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidioce­ sano, 12–16 de diciembre de 1943. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1943. ———. Circular del excelentísimo señor arzobispo de Guatemala, en preparación del Primer Congreso Eucarístico Arquidiocesano. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1943. ———. Carta circular del excelentísimo señor arzobispo de Guatemala a sus sacerdotes y declaración de principios acerca de la presente situación. Guatemala City: Gutenberg, 1944. ———. Carta intima del excelentísimo señor arzobispo de Guatemala a sus sacerdotes, con ocasión del recién pasado Primer Congreso Eucarístico. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1944. ———. Exhortación pastoral con ocasión de los últimos acontecimientos. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1944. ———. Exhortación pastoral del Excelentísimo Señor Arzobispo de Guatemala, con motivo del Día de Pentecostés. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1944. ———. A las clases laborante y patronal. Mensaje del Arzobispo de Guatemala, Mon­ señor Mariano Rossell Arellano. Guatemala City: Unión Tipográfica Castañeda, Ávila y Cía, 1946. ———. Carta pastoral colectiva del episcopado de la provincia eclesiástica de Guate­ mala, sobre la amenaza comunista en nuestra patria. Guatemala City: Guatemala: Sánchez y de Guise, 1945. ———. Carta pastoral sobre la Acción Católica. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1946. ———. Carta pastoral sobre la construcción del seminario de Guatemala. Guatemala City: Sánchez y de Guise, 1947. ———. Carta pastoral del excelentísimo y reverendísimo señor Don Mariano Rossell Arellano, Arzobispo de Guatemala sobre la justicia social, fundamento del bienestar social: Ante el tiempo del adviento en el año del Señor de mil novecientos cuarenta y ocho. Guatemala City: Unión Tipográfica Castañeda, Ávila y Cía, 1948. ———. Exhortación al pueblo católico, sobre el deber de la caridad en la práctica del sufragio electoral. Guatemala City: Gutenberg, 1948. ———. Instrucción pastoral al pueblo católico de Guatemala sobre el deber y condi­ ciones del sufragio. Guatemala City: Sansur, 1948. ———. Carta pastoral sobre los avances del comunismo en Guatemala. Guatemala City: Acción Católica Guatemalteca, 1954.

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INDEX

Acción Católica Rural Obrera (ACRO). See Catholic Action Aguacatán, 109 Alliance for Progress, 14, 141, 152 Allie, Arthur F., 73, 78–81, 84, 86–87, 90–91, 93–95, 192n.32 Alta Verapaz, 45–46, 141–42, 205–6n.32 Álvarez, Rafael, 25, 30 Andes, Stephen J. C., 3 Andrés-Gallego, José, 9 anticlericalism, 5, 6, 23–30, 34–35, 38, 39, 54, 81, 118, 119 Apostolado de la Oración, 50, 93, 182n.31 Arana, Francisco Javier, 88–89 Arana Osorio, Carlos, 142 Arbenz, Jacobo Catholic Church and, 109, 118 and Decree 900, 115–16 Maryknoll and, 126, 143, 198n.20 1954 overthrow of, 13, 116, 119 the October Revolution and, 88 and Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT), 115 and the United Fruit Company, 115 U. S. views of, 115, 117 Archdiocese of Quetzaltenango, 156 Arenas, José Luis, 152 Arévalo, Juan José Catholic Church and, 89, 109 and Instituto Indigenista Nacional, 88 231

and Maryknoll, 89–90 and Maya, 88–89 and Misiones Ambulantes de Cultural Inicial, 89 and Radio Pax, 89 Arias, Arturo, 12 Asociación de Defensa Social, 50 Barrios, Justo Rufino, 39 Bearzotti, Giuseppe, 41, 42, 56 Beltrami, Giuseppe, 66 on clergy shortage, 71 on foreign clerics, 71–72 and Maryknoll, 72–73, 79 and the United States, 72, 73 Benedict XV, 24 and Suprema quam gerimus, 25 Bengoechea, Antonio, 30 Black Christ of Esquipulas, 38, 62, 118, 179n.76, 185n.3 Bonpane, Blasé, 1, 2, 16–17, 133, 160, 163 Breen, John, 96 and Maya catechists, 110, 195n.58 Caballeros del Sagrado Corazón, 93 Caballeros del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, 50 Cabricán, 147–49 Calder, Bruce, 14 Cardijn, Joseph, 209n.73

232  Index

Caruana, Jorge José, 34, 36, 178n.67 and anticlericalism, 34–35 in Mexico, 34 and sacramentalism, 34 Casanova y Estrada, Ricardo, 22–23, 28, 64 and clerical divisions, 32, 176n.48 See also Estrada Cabrera, Manuel Casariego y Acevedo, Mario, 133–34, 157, 160, 203n.9 Castillo Armas, Carlos, 116, 118–19, 140 Maryknoll views of, 143 Catholic Action, ix, 15–16, 77, 121, 157, 162, 195n.53 in Argentina, 93 in Canada, 93 in Chile, 93 and community fragmentation, 11–12, 97, 100, 104, 112, 114–15 decline of, 131, 160 and development, 144, 146 in Europe, 93 Maya catechists, 94–97, 103–4, 108–13, 129–31, 138, 153–54, 156, 195n.58, 198n.29, 209n.66 and Maya religion, 12, 18, 92, 96, 97–100, 104, 105–8, 127, 130 in Mexico, 93 origins of, 49–50, 63, 93–94, 182n.31, 194n.51 and self-help, 155 teaching methods of, 113–14, 127, 130–31, 136–39, 159, 199n.32, 205n.27 See also Apostolado de la Oración; Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll); Chiarlo, Carlos; Comité de Unidad Campesina; Congregación de la Doctrina Cristiana; Democracia

Cristiana Guatemalteca; Durou y Sure, Luis; González Estrada, Rafael; Rossell y Arellano, Mariano Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll), 1, 3, 7 accommodation to costumbre, 10–11, 76, 86–87, 97–99, 100, 105, 108, 127, 135–36 and anticommunist views, 14, 104, 130, 140, 143, 152, 159 arrival in Guatemala, 73 and the Catholic Church in Guatemala, 90, 124, 126, 193n.35 and changing meaning of conversion, 132, 136, 139–40, 159 in China, 72, 73, 80, 85, 95, 190n.10 and the colonization movement, 14, 143, 150–53, 159, 160–61, 208n.62 and community fragmentation, 11–12, 92, 114–15, 127, 131 and the cooperative movement, 14–15, 18, 103–4, 124–27, 130–31, 143, 147–51, 154, 159–60, 202n.73, 208n.57–59 immigrant experience in the United States and, 122–23 in Korea, 72 and ladinos, 80, 91–92, 124–25, 147, 150, 152, 154 and laity, 92–97, 112, 131–32, 153–56, 159, 193n.40 Maryknoll Sisters, 72, 154, 208n.58 mission life cycle, 9–12 mission system, establishment of, 79–81 mission system, growth of, 87, 109, 157, 159, 198n.20 and the New Deal, 122–23 and the October Revolution, 89–90, 126 in Ossining, 73

Index  233

promotion of agricultural diversification, 104–5, 124, 144–47, 159, 207nn.46–48 promotion of market economy, 144, 147–49 provision of health care, 104, 107, 122–24, 143, 154–55 and re-Christianizing the environment, 130, 136, 153–54, 156 and the Second Vatican Council, 13–14, 15–16, 18, 129, 131, 135–37, 139–40, 153, 157–58, 159, 204n.17 support for development, ix, 12–16, 18, 63, 103–5, 121–28, 130–32, 140, 143–47, 148–49, 152, 158, 159, 162 support for religious education, 87–88, 90–92 support for sacramentalism, 9–12, 13, 16, 76–78, 80–81, 82, 83–88, 90–92, 93, 104, 105–6, 110, 122–24, 126–27, 130, 132, 134–39, 140, 143–44, 153, 156–57, 198n.29 support for self-sufficiency, 130–31, 144, 147–56, 159, 207n.50 and the United States, 14–15, 73, 122–23, 131 views of Maya calendar, 10, 84–85 See also Arbenz, Jacobo; Arévalo, Juan José; Catholic Action; Peralta Azurdia, Enrique; Rossell y Arellano, Mariano Catholic Rural Life Conference, 120, 125 Centro de Capacitación, Quetzaltenango, 156 Chacón, Lázaro, 55 decline of anticlericalism, 35, 37, 41, 44, 177n.62 and Decree 936, 35, 44

Chiantla, 109, 124 Chiarlo, Carlos, 38, 49, 50 Chichicastenango, 52 costumbre in, 78–79, 190n.6 Chimaltenango, 29, 48, 49 Chiquimulilla, 28 Church-state rapprochement, 5, 23–24, 37, 39, 42, 47, 56–57, 61, 69–70, 74, 89, 109, 118, 152 Clendinnen, Inga, 17 clergy shortage, 33–34, 40, 54, 57, 58, 65, 70, 74, 77, 81, 181n.15, 192n.31 closed corporate community, 11, 147, 170n.28 Cobón, Sisto, 96 Cobos Batres, Manuel, 28, 34 cofradías, 22, 32, 82 Colomo, Emilio, 51–52 Colonia Juan XXIII, 150–51 Colotenango, 107, 109–10 Comité de Defensa Nacional Contra el Comunismo (CDNCC), 116 Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC), 160 Communist Party, 31, 38 comunidades eclesiales de base (CEBs), 161 Confederación Católica Latinoamericana, 27 Confederación de Sacerdotes Diocesanos de Guatemala (COSDEGUA), 132–33, 134 Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala (CEG), 133 Congregación de la Doctrina Cristiana, 49, 93 Conners, Leo, 96 Consani, Tito, 112 Consejo Directivo Arquidiocesano de la Instrucción Catequística, 48, 50

234  Index

Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (CELAM), 2, 5 Medellín, Colombia, 2, 135, 160, 162 Río de Janeiro, Brazil, 121, 124 costumbre, ix, 10–13, 18, 31–32, 45, 75–77, 81–88, 90–92, 94, 97–100, 104–8, 110–13, 114, 123–24, 127, 130, 138, 197n.10 See also Durou y Sure, Luis; Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll); Rossell y Arellano, Mariano; Vatican, the Cristero War, 32, 46 Cruz Reyes, José Leandro, 48, 49 Cuban Revolution, 141, 143, 152, 158 Cuilapa, 29, 52 Cuilco, 97, 109, 125 Cursillo movement, 155–56 and Enrique Peralta Azurdia, 156 Curtin, James 105–06, 123 D’Agostino, Peter R., 7 Davenport, Paul, 112 Decree 798, 29, 30 Decree 900, 115–16, 118, 126, 202n.80 Decree 917, 34, 35 Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca, 140, 162 and Catholic Action, 162 and Alberto Fuentes Mohr, 162 and Efraín Ríos Montt, 162, 193n.40 Diocese of Jalapa, 109 Diocese of Los Altos, 48, 52, 93, 182n.25, 195n.53 and clergy shortage, 71 creation of, 25, 36 and Maryknoll, 78, 80, 99 Diocese of Quetzaltenango. See Diocese of Los Altos Diocese of San Marcos, 109 Diocese of Sololá, 109

Diocese of Verapaz, 48, 182n.25 Doheny, Edward, 147, 151–52 and Instituto Nacional de Transformación Agraria (INTA), 152 Donnelly, William, 153 Durou y Sure, Luis, ix, 5, 35–36, 42–47, 61–62, 134 and anticommunism, 46–47, 181n.21 clerical divisions under, 51–52 clerical insubordination under, 52–53, 183n.44 and foreign clergy, 55–57, 58 and laity, 42, 49–51, 181n.22 Revista Eclesiástica under, 54 revitalization of seminary and, 54–57 and sacramentalism, 44–46, 47–51, 58, 61 support for clerical reform, 42, 54–57 support for religious education, 47–49 and the Vatican, 35, 36, 44, 49, 51, 57–58 views of Maya religion, 45, 47, 180n.12 See also Casariego y Acevedo, Mario; Chacón, Lázaro; Perrone, Mateo; Rossell y Arellano, Mariano; Ubico, Jorge Dussell, Enrique, 62 Eisenhower, Dwight, 116–17 Elías Calles, Plutarco, 34, 47 El Imparcial, 27 El Petén, 46, 141, 142, 150–51 El Progreso, 26, 50 Empresa Eléctrica, 26, 28 Escobar, Arturo, and the development apparatus, 14, 144 Escuintla, 29, 34, 53, 193n.40

Index  235

Esselborn, Albert, 126 Estrada Cabrera, Manuel, 23–26, 35–36, 37, 173n.8–9, 174n.13 and Catholic Church, 23–24 the Unionist Party and, 174n.11 See also Piñol y Batres, José; Riveiro y Jacinto, Julián Federal Republic of Central America, 27 the Unionist Party and, 174n.11, 175n.25 Fein, Seth, 113 Fietta, José, 38, 46, 179n.79 First Vatican Council (Vatican I), 7, 33 Fitzpatrick-Behrens, Susan, 14, 109, 124, 126, 169n.21, 194n.47, 202n.71 Fournier, Felix, 109, 124–25, 145, 202n.73 Franja Transversal del Norte (FTN, Northern Transversal Strip), 141–42, 152, 205n.32, 208n.62 Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, xi, 16 Garvey, Francis, 98 Gerbermann, Hugo, 91–92, 96, 98–99 Prelature of Huehuetenango under, 155 González Estrada, Rafael, 50, 93–95, 97, 99, 153 Good Neighbor policy, 14, 123 Grandin, Greg, 12, 121, 206n.37 Grassi, Joseph, 107–8, 110, 113 Guatemala City, 1, 7, 21, 24, 27, 30, 38, 39, 41, 42, 49, 50, 52, 55–56, 62, 66–68, 73, 75, 78, 81, 89, 107, 149–50 Guatemala Department, 29, 53, 62 guerrilla movement, 16, 141, 142, 152, 160 Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 160–61

Hennessey, Ronald, 143, 161 view of Carlos Castillo Armas, 143 Herrera, Carlos, 24, 25, 35, 175n.25 Hijas de María, 93 Homrocky, William, 87 Huehuetenango, Huehuetenango, 90–91, 93, 109, 110, 124–25, 145, 147, 151, 156 Huehuetenango Department and geography, 76–77, 80, 81, 96, 106, 113, 138, 196n.6 Hughes, James, 87 inculturation theology, 161 indigenismo, 88 Instituto Agrario Nacional (IAN), 145 Instituto de Fomento de la Producción, 117 Instituto Nacional de Tranformación Agraria (INTA), 140–41, 152 International Cooperation Administration, 117 Internunciature of Central America, 25, 28, 39, 49 See also Chiarlo, Carlos; Fietta, José; Levame, Alberto; Marenco, Juan Ixcán, 155–56, 161, 208n.62 Resettlement Project in, 151–52 Izabal, 141, 205–6n.32 Jacaltenango, 91, 109, 123, 208n.58 Jensen, Daniel, 105 Jesuits, 41, 42, 56–58, 72, 181n.22 See also Bearzotti, Giuseppe; Durou y Sure, Luis; Ponsol, Ricardo Johnson, Lyndon B., 141 John XXIII, 1, 135, 150, 203n.9 Juventud Obrera Católica (JOC), 155, 209n.73 See also Cardijn, Joseph; Rossell y Arellano, Mariano

236  Index

Kennedy, John F., 141, 152, 155, 157–58 Kraus, Dennis, 110, 114, 208n.59 La Libertad, 109, 129, 156, 208n.59 La Matanza (El Salvador), 47 Langer, Erick D., 9–10 Lansing, Donald, 112, 209n.74 Lawrence, Mark A., 16 Leal, José Miguel, 27 Lemus, Juan, 29 Leo XIII, and Rerum Novarum, 7, 31, 70, 119 Levame, Alberto, 179n.81 and Catholic Church in Guatemala, 58 and Church-state relations, 38–40 and Jesuits, 56 See also Durou y Sure, Luis; Ubico, Jorge Levine, Daniel H., 3 liberation theology, 2, 129, 131, 135, 157, 160–62 Liga de Cristo, 50 Liga de la Mujer Católica para la Defensa de Cristo, 27, 28 and La Verdad, 27 Ligutti, Luigi, 120 Maestras Católicas, 93 Malacatancito, 109, 124–25, 126, 202n.71 Malin Cooperative, 149–50, 208n.57 Marenco, Juan, 25 Marist Brothers, Colegio de Infantes under, 56 Martínez, Juan, 129–31, 156 Maryknoll. See Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll) Maya. See Arévalo, Juan José; closed corporate community; Durou y Sure, Luis; Catholic Foreign

Mission Society of America (Maryknoll); Rossell y Arellano, Mariano; Vatican, the Mayer, Agustín, 52, 53 McClear, Edmund, 75–76, 77, 86, 103–4, 112, 113–14, 127, 132, 137, 153–54, 207n.45, 209n.66 McGuinness, Edward, 123–26, 128 McLeod, Daniel, 138–39, 154, 196n.6 Melville, Arthur, 1, 2, 16, 133, 160, 163 Melville, Thomas, 1, 2, 16, 106, 133, 148, 150–51, 160, 163 Méndez Montenegro, Julio César counterinsurgency and, 142–43, 158, 206n.37 and Decree 1653, 142 support for cooperative movement, 142 support for development, 142 Mexican revolution, 31, 38, 47, 52 See also Cristero War; Elías Calles, Plutarco; indigenismo Miller, Hubert J., 6 Momostenango, 78 Monterroso, Gregorio, 51–52 Moore, Edward, 154–56 Moreno, Julio E., 16 Movimiento Democrático Nacional, 140 Muñoz y Capurón, Luis Javier, 21–22, 25, 27–30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 41, 62 See also Cobos Batres, Manuel; Orellana, José María; Riveiro y Jacinto, Julián; Rossell y Arellano, Mariano; Vatican, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, 120, 148 National Security Doctrine, 141 Nentón, 112 neo-Christendom, 8–9, 61–62, 65, 135

Index  237

October Revolution, the, 13, 88–89, 109, 115 See also Arana, Francisco Javier; Arbenz, Jacobo; Arévalo, Juan José Oficio Catequístico Diocesano, 48 Operation Aldea, 95–96 Orellana, José María, 21, 25–30, 34, 35, 56 Palencia, 27, 30, 53, 62 Pan-American Highway, 149 Partido Revolucionario, 140 Paul VI, 133 and Populorum progressio, 136 and Sacrosanctum Concilium, 135 and Second Vatican Council, 203n.9 Peralta Azurdia, Enrique, 142, 152, 156, 208n.57 Perrone, Mateo, 54 Peter, Marian, 1, 2, 16, 133, 160, 163 Piñol y Batres, José, 24–25, 29, 30, 35–36, 174nn.13–14, 178n.65 See also Caruana, Jorge José; Orellana, José María Pius XI, 6, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 51, 62, 71 and Quadragesimo Anno, 7, 70, 119 revival of Suprema quam gerimus, 36 Pius XII, 6, 71–72 Ponsol, Ricardo, 56 popular religiosity, 5, 9, 12, 77, 169n.22, 188n.37 Price, Thomas Frederick, 72 Price, William, 131, 135–36, 140, 143 anticommunist views of, 157 and Kennedy, John F., 157–58 and Vatican II, 157 progressive Catholicism, 1–5, 15–16, 18, 129, 130–33, 135–36, 143, 152, 153, 157–58, 161–62 Project San José, Huehuetenango, 144–45, 147, 156

Protestantism, 4, 28–29, 46, 47, 48, 55, 64, 69, 70, 73, 99, 121, 127, 138 Puerto Barrios, 46 Puerto San José, 21, 29 Puls, Carl, 145 Ramírez Colom, José María, 54 Raterman, George, 85 Reconciliación Democrática Nacional, 140 Rickert, Joseph, 114, 150 Riveiro y Jacinto, Julián, 23–25, 28, 36 Roberts, Greg, 153 Román, Reinaldo L., 11, 139, 191n.20 Rossbach, Ildefonso, 52, 78–79 Rossell y Arellano, Mariano, 5, 55–56, 57, 79, 97, 109, 133, 134 and Acción Social Cristiana, 118 anticommunist views of, 64, 69, 118–21, 201n.60 and Black Christ of Esquipulas, 118 and Catholic Action, 63, 94, 103 creation of Colegio San Sebastián, 62 in Esquipulas, 62, 179n.76 and First Archdiocesan Catechetical Congress, 66–67 and First Archdiocesan Eucharistic Congress, 67–68 and First Congress of Ecclesiastical Vocations, 66 and institution of the family, 66 in Jocotán, 62 and laity, 66–67, 74 in Mazatenango, 62 nationalist views of, 67–68, 187n.20 and neo-Christendom, 62, 65–69, 77, 135 and the October Revolution, 89, 117–18 in Palencia, 62 participation at Third Congress on Rural Life, Panama, 120–21

238  Index

Rossell y Arellano, Mariano (cont.) promotion of religious vocations, 65, 66 promotion of seminary, 70–71, 74 and re-Christianization of society, 61–62, 66 relation with Maryknoll, 90, 124, 126, 193n.35 and sacramentalism, 65–69 in San Cristóbal, Totonicapán, 62 support for post-1954 government, 118–19, 140 and Ubico dictatorship, 69–70 and Verbum, 68–69, 118 See also Arbenz, Jacobo; Arévalo, Juan José; Castillo Armas, Carlos; Chacón, Lázaro; Durou y Sure, Luis; Muñoz y Capurón, Luis Javier; Ubico, Jorge Rostow, Walt, 155 Rudolph, Susanne H., 3 Sacatepéquez, 29 Sacred Heart missionaries, 119 Salesians, 55–56 Colegio de Infantes under, 56 San Andrés Cuilco, 109 San Antonio Huista, 110, 146–47 San Bartolomé Milpas Altas, 28 San Cristóbal, Totonicapán, 52, 62, 190n.8 Sandoval Villeda, Leopoldo, 152 San Francisco El Alto, 52, 78 San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, 91, 96, 98, 109, 125, 135, 195n.59, 202n.73 San José Pinula, 28 San Juan del Obispo, Antigua, 53 San Juan Ixcoy, 109 San Lorenzo, 124 San Lucas Sacatepéquez, 28 San Mateo Ixtatán, 109, 114, 195n.59

San Miguel Acatán, 84–85, 91, 95, 97–98, 105–6, 109, 112, 123–24, 126–27, 154–55 San Pedro Necta, 114, 150, 195n.58 San Pedro Soloma, 86–87, 90–91, 95–96, 103–4, 109, 111–12, 126–27, 207n.45 Santa Ana Cooperative, 124–25, 126 Santa Cruz Barillas, 106, 109, 138–39, 149–50, 154, 196n.6 Santa Eulalia, 75–76, 109, 111–12, 196n.6 Santa Rosa, 29, 51–52 Santiago Atitlán, 79 Santiago Chimaltenango, 83, 110, 197n.10 Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), 1–6, 8, 14–16, 18, 129–31, 133, 135–37, 139, 140, 153, 157, 158, 159, 162, 204n.17 Serbin, Kenneth P., 51, 130 Servicio de Fomento de la Economía Indígena, 117 Sicker, Manuel, 55–56 Smith, Alfred, 91, 95, 199n.32 Solares, Gabriel, 53, 58 Sololá, 78 Sommer, Paul, 87, 123, 191n.18 Soni’q, Gregorio, 125 Spanish clergy, 32, 52, 79, 82, 99, 119 state violence, 2, 12, 16, 116, 142–43, 160–62 Streeter, Stephen M., 13 Taxisco, 28 Teletor, Narciso, 53 Tello, Alvarado, 29 Todos Santos, 84, 109 Totonicapán, Totonicapán, 52, 62 Totonicapán Department, 78, 80, 93 Turcios Lima, Luis, 141

Index  239

Ubico, Jorge, 6, 41, 47, 88, 89, 187n.28, 189n.45 and anticommunism, 37–38, 64 and Black Christ of Esquipulas, 38 diplomatic relations with Vatican, 39 and First Archdiocesan Eucharistic Congress, 70 and foreign clergy, 71, 74, 77, 132 presidential trips of, 69 and Protestantism, 69 and the United States, 72, 73 Unidad Revolucionaria Democrática, 140, 205n.32 Unionist Party, the, 24, 25, 174n.11, 175n.25 United Fruit Company, the, 37, 46, 72, 115 United States, the and anticommunism, 116–17, 131, 141–43 and development, 13, 14, 116–17, 131 economic interests in Guatemala, 26, 37, 39, 72, 115 missionaries from, 33, 41, 46, 64, 71–72, 109 and self-help, 117, 128, 155, 209n.74 support for counterinsurgency, 16, 160 See also Arbenz, Jacobo; Castillo Armas, Carlos; Eisenhower, Dwight; Méndez Montenegro, Julio César; Ydígoras Fuentes, Miguel Vatican, the Church-state rapprochement, 3, 6, 8–9, 22, 37–40, 42, 57, 61, 179n.79

on clerical divisions, 32–33 on clerical insubordination, 52 and Diocese of Jalapa, 109 and Diocese of Los Altos, 25, 36 and Diocese of San Marcos, 109 and Diocese of Sololá, 109 and Diocese of Zacapa, 109 diplomacy, 7–8, 34–35, 37–40 and foreign clergy, 42, 55, 58, 74 and laity, 49 on Maya religion, 31–32 and sacramentalism, 7, 9, 30–32, 40, 42 sources, xiv, 7, 17–18, 22, 24, 31, 39, 40, 42 support for clerical reform, 58 and transnationalism, 7–8 See also Durou y Sure, Luis; Muñoz y Capurón, Luis Javier; Rossell y Arellano, Mariano Verolino, Gennaro, 57 Volio y Jiménez, Claudio, 34 Wagley, Charles, 106–7 Walsh, James Anthony, 72, 73, 80 Watanabe, John, 106–7, 197n.10 Way, J. T., 13, 142 Witte, J. Clarence, 73, 78–79, 80, 81, 83–84, 87, 94–95, 190n.6, 190n.8 Woods, William, 138, 149, 160–61 World Bank, 117 Ydígoras Fuentes, Miguel, 140–42 Yon Sosa, Marco Antonio, 141 Young, Julia G., 3 Zacapa, 50, 93, 109, 142

BONAR L. HERNÁNDEZ SANDOVAL is assistant professor of history at Iowa State University.