The Oxford Handbook of Latinx Christianities in the United States 9780190875763, 9780190875794, 9780190875787, 9780190875770, 0190875763

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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

L AT I N X C H R I ST IA N I T I E S IN THE U N I T E D STAT E S

The Oxford Handbook of

LATINX CHRISTIANITIES IN THE UNITED STATES Edited by

KRISTY NABHAN-​WARREN

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Nabhan-Warren, Kristy, editor. Title: The Oxford handbook of Latinx Christianities in the United States / edited by Kristy Nabhan-Warren. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2022] | Series: Oxford handbooks series | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021047238 | ISBN 9780190875763 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190875794 | ISBN 9780190875787 (epub) | ISBN 9780190875770 | ISBN 97801900050092 Subjects: LCSH: Hispanic Americans—Religion. Classification: LCC BR563. H57 O94 2022 | DDC 277.308/308968—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047238 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190875763.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Contents

Preface Contributors

vii xi

Introduction: Una Historia de perseverancia y resiliencia pueblo (A People’s History of Perseverance and Resilience) Kristy Nabhan-​Warren

1

PA RT I .   DE N OM I NAT IONA L , E T H N OR E L IG IO U S H I ST OR IAS Catholicisms 1. Mexican-​Descent Catholics Timothy Matovina

15

2. Cuban-​Descent Catholics Michelle Gonzales Maldonado

31

3. Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States Alberto Ortíz Díaz

46

4. Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms Elizabeth Pérez

68

5. The Catholic Church and Central American Immigrants in the United States Cecilia Menjívar

87

Non-​Catholic Christianities 6. Latino/​a Protestantisms: Historical and Sociological Overviews Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder

109

vi   Contents

7. Latina/​o Pentecostalism Lloyd Barba

130

8. Latina/​o/​x Mormons Sujey Vega

151

PA RT I I .   T É M AS /​T H E M E S 9. Latinx Conversions to Islam Harold Morales 10. Popular Religion among Latinos/​as: Place-​Based Expressions for Understanding Latino/​a Popular Catholicism Alberto López Pulido

171

192

11. Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje Néstor Medina

207

12. Latinos/​as, Healing, and Christianity Brett Hendrickson

225

13. Latina/​o/​x Pilgrimage and Embodiment Daisy Vargas

242

14. Occupying the Church: The Making of Latina/​o Religious Politics Felipe Hinojosa

258

15. Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity Luís León

279

16. Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity Natalie Avalos

296

17. Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/​as Tony Tian-​Ren Lin

316

18. Christianities and the Construction of Latinx Ethnoracial Identities Jonathan Calvillo

333

Index

353

Preface

Writing Latina/​x/​o Religious Histories and the Politics of Representation When Theo Calderara, sponsoring editor of this handbook, invited me to direct and edit this collection, my response was a mixture of excitement and trepidation. For many years now, I have pondered the meanings and implications of the politics of representation—​in other words, how do we fully represent cultures and people, especially those whose worlds are not our own? How do we conduct our work in an ethical and responsible way? After much reflection and discernment, and discussions with dear colegas, my convictions have been reaffirmed: that one not need be a member of particular ecologies to produce responsible scholarship. I think that we must be open and honest about this, and I have tried to do so in my teaching and scholarship for the past twenty-​ five years. The politics of representation is real, it requires our attention, and we must be

viii   Preface introspective and searching when we research and write about people and their complex lifeworlds. As a white, cisgendered female scholar who has spent much of her scholarly career immersed within US Latinx Christian communities, my mantra as a scholar and person has been to observe carefully, to listen intently, and to write with humility. As an ethnographer of US lived religions, and Latinx Christianity, I have looked to James Clifford and George Marcus’s now classic Writing Culture, and Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon’s equally classic Women Writing Culture as guideposts in how to acknowledge the complex poetics and politics of conducting humanistic and social scientific research.1 These works invite us to ponder the responsibilities we are tasked with when we enter into others’ religious cultural, ethnic, and gendered ecologies. As an ethnographer, I have taken all of these responsibilities to heart. It has been important for me to seek guidance and mentorship from Latinx scholars, friends, and colleagues such as Alberto Pulido and Felipe Hinojosa. Alberto, whose excellent work on lowriders and popular piety is featured in this handbook, has been a mentor to me for many years. Alberto believed in me when I was (aided with the gift of hindsight) an unpolished MA student at Arizona State. He mentored me and supported my ethnographic work with Latinx in South Phoenix way back in the early 1990s. I am forever grateful to Alberto. Now that I am a professor and mentor graduate students at The University of Iowa and elsewhere, I am especially mindful of the importance of modeling responsible and collaborative scholarship. I have worked to mentor and to learn from, in equal parts, my Latinx colleagues, and this handbook is the fruit of such collaborations. Felipe has been a good friend and colleague who has offered his own excellent feedback of my work, making it better, and has pushed the field of Latinx religious studies to new levels with his careful histories of Latinx Mennonites and political mobilizations among Latinx Christians from a broad spectrum of affiliations. Indeed, all of the authors in this handbook have made, and are making, the field of Latinx religious studies better with their work. They are interdisciplinary scholars whose work is charting new territories. While researching and writing can be a solitary endeavor, for a collection like this to be successful, it must rely on the collegiality and community of scholars. Indeed, these twenty scholars have been a pleasure to work with and to learn from, and I am proud to be a part of this communidad. All of these contributors have a deep investment in their scholarship, and to the people and communities they represent; I see what they do as an act of restorative justice. Each scholar in this volume strives to capture the past and present realities and to show the beauty and resilience of Latinx Christianities. I am inspired by their robust individual and collective work, and am confident that their chapters will be the foundation for future scholarship on Latinx Christianities. Researching and writing about Latinx Christianities can indeed be a painful and enervating endeavor, as the systems of racism and oppression are deeply ingrained in Christian traditions. Yet along with the pain and recognition of the harm that has been inflicted is the bright light of hope, resilience, and perseverance on the part of Latinx people.

Preface   ix That the majority of scholars in this handbook are Latinx, many of whom are first-​ generation college graduates and professors, was an important part of my outreach and vision for the handbook. The non-​Latinx contributors invited to be a part of this handbook have demonstrated a concerted commitment to a deep understanding of Latinx Christianities in their scholarship and have mentored many Latinx graduate students over the years. Timothy Matovina is one of those scholars. Tim was one of my earliest mentors who showed me, by example, how a white, non-​Latinx scholar of Latinx Christianities could produce responsible, community-​ focused scholarship. I am deeply honored that Tim’s chapter, along with Brett Hendrickson’s chapter on healing and borderlands Christianities, is part of this handbook. Both scholars have enriched the field of Latinx Christianities with their careful and nuanced histories and ethnographies, and their commitment to social justice. They are acutely aware of the politics of representation and are models of ethical scholarship. I think that what brings all of these scholars, Latinx and non-​Latinx alike, together is that we all have an ethic of accompaniment and a strong commitment to social justice in our work. I admire each of the contributors as people and thank them for their work, as well as for their receptivity to my editorial feedback.

Conclusíon: Para Luís León (1965–​2018) I want to conclude this Preface by dedicating The Oxford Handbook of Latinx Christianities in the United States to our late colleague, a pioneer in Latinx Christian studies, Luís León. Luís was one of the first authors I invited to contribute to this handbook. Given his ability to contribute a variety of chapters to this collection, I asked him what he wanted to contribute to the handbook. Luís decided to contribute a chapter on Latinx Christianities and masculinities as he was working on a new project. He saw this chapter and handbook as an opportunity to gain some feedback on his next book project, and he was excited to be part of this handbook. Luís was one of the first to deliver his chapter, and he went out of his way to recommended several of the authors whose chapters are in the final version of the handbook. Tragically, he died not that long after he sent in what would be his final essay. In consultation with my colleagues, we decided to dedicate this Handbook to Luís to honor his name and work that he did to promote Latinx religious studies and Latinx Christianities. I am particularly honored and thrilled that one of Luís’s former students, Daisy Vargas, is one of the brilliant contributors to this Handbook. Luís’s sudden death deeply impacted the scholars, and one scholar had to pull out due to stress over his death. As I mentioned in the Introduction, my role has been akin to that of an editor-​midwife in helping to bring this Handbook to fruition. I have tried hard to labor alongside my colleagues, encouraging them when they needed it, and providing feedback that I hoped would ease the pains of delivery. The birth of this book was very much a labor of love. It was not easy to produce, and it took longer

x   Preface than expected due to the vagaries of life, the COVID-​19 pandemic, and the particular demands placed on Latinx colleagues. I came to appreciate just how many demands my Latinx colleagues have placed on them, and I am humbled by the strength and endurance that they exhibit. Editing this Handbook was in part a gratifying as well as a grueling endeavor, and I was moved by the commitment to the project that these authors exhibited. My eyes were opened to the existential and physical sufferings by some of my Latinx colleagues, who were not able, in the end, to participate in this collection. The demands placed on my Latinx colleagues and the systems of racism and oppression in which they operate are deeply problematic. I want to call on my white colleagues who are part of this communidad to do whatever we can to draw on our privileges to be allies and to do the work of accompaniment with our Latinx colleagues and students. We must walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Editing and midwifing this edited collection has been, and I suspect will remain, one of the highlights of my professional life. Con gratitud y humilidad.

Note 1. James Clifford and George E. Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1986), and Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon, Women Writing Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

Contributors

Natalie Avalos  is as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the Religious Studies and Women and Gender Studies Departments at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is an ethnographer of religion whose work in comparative indigeneities explores urban Indian and Tibetan refugee religious life, healing historical trauma, and decolonial praxis. Dr. Avalos is a Ford Predoctoral Fellow, FTE Dissertation Fellow, and former CU Boulder Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow. She is currently working on her manuscript titled The Metaphysics of Decoloniality: Transnational Indigeneities and Religious Refusal. It argues that the reassertion of land-​based logics among Native and Tibetan peoples not only decenters settler colonial claims to legitimate knowledge but also articulates forms of sovereignty rooted in interdependent relations of power among all persons, human and other-​than human. Avalos is a Chicana of Apache descent, born and raised in the Bay Area. Lloyd Barba  is Assistant Professor of Religion, and Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. Dr. Barba is the recipient of the Louisville Institute’s First Book Grant for Minority Scholars and the recipient of the C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. He has authored numerous peer-​reviewed articles and is the author of the forthcoming book, Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California, 1916–​1966 with Oxford University Press. Barba is active as a peer reviewer for academic journal articles and books, and he is a consultant for archival collections of Latin American and Latina/​ o religious figures and organizations. He is a member of the steering committee of the Latina/​o Religion, Culture, and Society unit of the American Academy of Religion. Jonathan Calvillo  is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion at Boston University. Dr. Calvillo’s teaching and research interests center on the sociological study of religion, race and ethnicity, and immigration. His scholarly work has focused on how religious affiliation influences the manner in which Latinx immigrants construct their ethnic identities. Currently, Calvillo is a research fellow in the Latino Protestant Congregations project, a national study examining the practices and experiences of Latino Protestant congregations. In tandem, he has conducted neighborhood-​based research within urban ethnic enclaves, examining how Latino religions, including formal and “folk” traditions, are lived out in the public arena. This latter work has drawn attention to the interaction between Protestant and Catholic Latinos. Findings from his work shed light on how immigrant incorporation takes place in the United States and, in particular, the role that communities of faith and faith-​based institutions play in these processes. Much of Dr. Calvillo’s research is informed by his nearly two decades of involvement

xii   Contributors in congregational ministry and community development work in urban multiethnic settings. Calvillo is the author of numerous peer-​reviewed articles and is the author of The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City (Oxford University Press, 2020). Brett Hendrickson  is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Dr. Hendrickson’s teaching and research focus is on religion in the Americas, Mexican American religion, healing, and cross-​cultural religious change. He is especially interested in Latino/​a popular religious devotions, the history of religion in the US Southwest, religion and healing, and religion in public life. Hendrickson is the author of numerous peer-​reviewed articles, The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayó: America’s Miraculous Church (NYU Press, 2017), Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American Curanderismo (NYU Press, 2014), and the textbook Religions of the World, 13th ed. (Pearson, 2015). Hendrickson is the author of Mexican American Religions: An Introduction (Routledge, 2021). Felipe Hinojosa  is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Carlos H. Cantú Hispanic Education & Opportunity Endowment at Texas A&M University. Dr. Hinojosa serves as editor for the interdisciplinary, peer-​reviewed, and online moderated forum Latinx Talk. His work has appeared in Zócalo Public Square, Western Historical Quarterly, American Catholic Studies, Mennonite Quarterly Review, and in edited collections on Latina/​o Studies. Dr. Hinojosa’s first book, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), was awarded the 2015 Américo Paredes Book Award for the best book in Mexican American and Latina/​o Studies by the Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College. His new book, Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio (University of Texas Press, 2021), is set in four major cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston), where in 1969 and 1970 Latino radical activists clashed with religious leaders as they occupied churches to protest urban renewal, poverty, police brutality, and racism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Luís León  was a widely known and beloved Professor of Religious Studies who died of natural causes on October 18, 2018. His teaching and scholarship focused on borderlands Latina/​x/​o religions. During his lifetime, Dr. León published numerous peer-​reviewed articles and was working on his third manuscript at the time of his death. His first book, La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the United States-​Mexican Borderlands (University of California Press, 2004), was a groundbreaking book in religious studies and his second book, The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders (University of California Press, 2015), complicated the larger-​than-​life persona of César Chávez. At the time of his death, Dr. León was working on his third major monograph, Spiritual Erotics: Affect and Contagion among Latino Pentecostal Men, for which he received a Louisville Institute grant. The chapter that León wrote for this handbook was meant to be a preview of Spiritual Erotics and is his final published work.

Contributors   xiii Tony Tian-​Ren Lin  is the Vice President of Institutional Advancement and Research at New York Theological Seminary. Dr. Lin brings over two decades of faith-​based leadership and over a decade of experience in higher education. Prior to his arrival at New York Theological Seminary, Lin was a Research Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, where he also served other roles, including Managing Director. He oversaw multiple research projects, including a Louisville Institute-​funded project titled Race and Faith in Community and Churches. His own scholarship focuses on race, ethnicity, immigration, and religion. His book, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream, was published by The University of North Carolina Press (2020) in the Where Religion Lives book series. Lin was born in Taiwan, grew up in Argentina, and later immigrated to the United States. Michelle Gonzales Maldonado  is Dean of the University College of Arts and Sciences at Scranton University and is Professor of Religious Studies. Prior to her arrival at Scranton, Dr. Maldonado served as Assistant Provost of undergraduate education and executive director of the Office of Academic Enhancement at the University of Miami. As a scholar of religious studies, Dr. Maldonado’s areas of specialization include Latino/​ a and Latin American theology; Afro-​Caribbean and Latino/​a studies; US minority, Third World, and feminist theologies; and constructive and cultural theologies. She is the editor, coauthor, or author of ten books and has published more than forty articles in academic journals and book chapters. She has also presented at eighty-​five academic conferences and meetings and contributed more than a dozen book reviews. She has also written a number of articles for the National Catholic Reporter. Gerardo Martí  is the L. Richardson King Professor and the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at Davidson College. His research and teaching focus on race-​ ethnicity, religion, identity, inequality, and social change. Dr. Martí is the author of numerous articles and books, and his work has been supported by funding agencies, which include the Lily Endowment and the Louisville Institute. His published books include A Mosaic of Believers: Diversity and Innovation in a Multiethnic Church (Indiana University Press, 2005), Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church (Rutgers University Press, 2008), Worship across the Racial Divide: Religious Music and the Multiracial Congregation (Oxford University Press, 2012), The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity, coauthored with Gladys Ganiel (Oxford University Press, 2018), Latino Protestants in America: Diverse and Growing, coauthored with Mark T. Mulder and Aida I. Ramos (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral, coauthored with Mark T. Mulder (Rutgers University Press, 2020), and Robert H. Schuller and Church Growth Christianity: Library of Religious Biography, coauthored with Mark T. Mulder (Wm. B. Eerdmans, forthcoming). Dr. Martí has held and holds leadership positions in numerous professional organizations, including president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, editor of Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review, chair of the Religion Section of the American Sociological Association (2019–​2021), co-​chair of the

xiv   Contributors Religion and Social Science Program Unit of the American Academy of Religion (2009–​ 2016), executive council of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (2007–​2010), and board of directors of the Louisville Institute. Timothy Matovina  works in the area of Faith and Culture, with specialization in US Catholic and US Latino theology and religion. Dr. Matovina has authored over one hundred essays and reviews in scholarly and opinion journals. He has also written or edited nineteen books, most recently Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (Princeton University Press, 2014), which won five book awards, including selection as a CHOICE “Outstanding Academic Title,” as well as Theologies of Guadalupe: From the Era of Conquest to Pope Francis (Oxford University Press, 2018). Among his various scholarly awards, in 2010 Matovina received the Virgilio Elizondo Award “for distinguished achievement in theology, in keeping with the mission of the Academy” from the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS). At Notre Dame he has won two teaching awards, including the Julian Samora Award that members of Notre Dame’s La Alianza student organization confer on a faculty member whose research, teaching, and service advance knowledge and empowerment of Latino/​a students and communities. In addition to his scholarly work, Matovina is a public-​facing scholar who offers presentations and workshops on US Catholicism and Latino ministry and theology throughout the United States. Néstor Medina  is Assistant Professor of Religious Ethics and Culture and Director of the Masters in Theological Studies Program at Emmanuel College, The University of Toronto. Dr. Medina is a Guatemalan-​Canadian scholar who engages the field of ethics from contextual, liberationist, intercultural, and postcolonial and decolonial perspectives. He studies the intersections between people’s cultures, histories, ethnoracial relations, and forms of knowledge in religious and theoethical traditions. He also studies Pentecostalism in the Americas. He was the recipient of a Louisville Institute First Book Grant for Minority Scholars (2014) and a Project Grant for Researchers (2018). He is currently working on the ethnoracial relations during colonial Latin America and the influence of religion in those relations. He is the author of numerous peer-​reviewed articles as well as several books, which include Christianity, Empire, and the Spirit (Brill, 2018), the booklet On the Doctrine of Discovery (CCC, 2017), and Mestizaje: (Re)Mapping “Race,” Culture, and Faith in Latina/​o Catholicism (Orbis, 2009), which was the winner of the 2012 Hispanic Theological Initiative book award. Cecilia Menjívar  holds the Dorothy L. Meier Chair in Social Equities and is Professor of Sociology at UCLA. She specializes in immigration, gender, family dynamics, social networks, religious institutions, and broad conceptualizations of violence. She focuses on two main areas: the impacts of the immigration regime and laws on immigrants and the effects of living in contexts of multisided violence on individuals, especially women. Her work on immigration concerns mainly the United States, where she focuses on Central American immigrants, whereas her work on violence is centered on Latin America, mostly Central America. Dr. Menjívar’s work has appeared in the American

Contributors   xv Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, International Migration Review, and Ethnic & Racial Studies, among other journals. Her most recent publications include the edited volume, Constructing Immigrant Illegality: Critiques, Experiences, and Responses (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the book Immigrant Families (Polity Press, 2016), and the edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Immigration Crises (Oxford University Press, 2019). Harold Morales  is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and the City at Morgan State University. His research focuses on the intersections between race and religion and between lived and mediated experience. He uses these critical lenses to engage Latinx religions in general and Latino Muslim groups in particular. His 2018 book, Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion and the Making of New Minority (Oxford University Press, 2018), engages the use of new media technologies by marginalized groups. Dr. Morales is now focusing on developing public scholarship initiatives through his research on mural art and social justice issues in the city of Baltimore and through the Center for the Study of Religion and the City for which he received a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Mark T. Mulder  is Chair and Professor of sociology and adjunct professor of congregational and ministry studies at Calvin College. His teaching and research interests include diversity and inequality in the United States, urban sociology, qualitative methods, and place studies. Dr. Mulder has authored and coauthored numerous books and articles, most recently, with Dr. Gerardo Marti, The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry (Rutgers University Press, 2020); Congregations, Neighborhoods, Places (Calvin College Press, 2018); and Latino Protestants in America: Growing and Diverse (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) with Gerardo Martí and Aida I. Ramos. Kristy Nabhan-​Warren is Professor and V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair of Catholic Studies at The University of Iowa in the Department of Religious Studies. She is currently the Interim Departmental Executive Officer of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Department of Rhetoric at the University of Iowa. Her research and books focus on US Latina/​x/​o Catholics in the United States, and include The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican-​American Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2005), Cursillos in America: Catholics, Protestants, and Fourth-​Day Spirituality (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013), and Américan Woman: The Virgin of Guadalupe, Latinos/​ as and Accompaniment (Loyola Marymount University Press, 2018). Nabhan-​Warren’s newest book is Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (The University of North Carolina Press, 2021), and it is a deep ethnographic study that focuses on the intersections of migration, religion, and work in Iowa. Nabhan-​Warren is Editor of the UNC Press book series Where Religion Lives, which publishes innovative ethnographies of religion.

xvi   Contributors Alberto Ortíz ​Díaz is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington. He was a 2020–​2121 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. During his fellowship year, Dr. Ortíz-​Díaz was based at the University of Puerto Rico-​Río Piedras Institute of Caribbean Studies where he worked on his book manuscript, Raising the Living Dead: Rehabilitative Corrections in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, along with a few other projects. He is the author of Pathologizing the Jíbaro: Mental and Social Health in Puerto Rico’s Oso Blanco (1930s to 1950s), published online by Cambridge University Press in September 2020, and is coauthor, with Diego Armus and Pablo Gómez, of “Stepping Through a Looking-​Glass: The Haitian Healer Mauricio Gastón on the Romana Sugar Mill in the Dominican Republic (1938),” in The Gray Zones of Medicine: Healers and History in Latin America (September 2020). Elizabeth Pérez is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is an ethnographer and historian of Afro-​Diasporic and Latin American religions who specializes in the study of Cuban Lucumí (popularly called Santería) and other systems of belief and practice that crystallized in the Americas: Brazilian Candomblé, Haitian Vodou, Puerto Rican Espiritismo, and Venezuelan Maria Lionza, among others. Dr. Pérez’s first book, Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions, was published in 2016 by New York University Press as a “signature book” in its North American Religions series. Along with several published articles, Religion in the Kitchen draws on several years of participant observation in Ilé Laroye, a predominantly African American community based on the South Side of Chicago dedicated to Lucumí and related Afro-​ Caribbean traditions. Religion in the Kitchen centers on the preparation of food for West and Central African spirits and the exchange of stories about initiation. Pérez’s current research project examines the challenges faced by transgender and transsexual people as religious actors in the contemporary United States. Pérez seeks to illuminate how those doubly marginalized—​for their ethnic/​racial identities and their gender presentation—​make themselves at home in their chosen traditions. Alberto López Pulido  is Professor of Ethnic Studies at The University of San Diego. He is the author of numerous peer-​reviewed publications on Chicanx popular religion, notably The Sacred World of the Penitentes (Smithsonian, 2000) and as coauthor, with Rigoberto Reyes, of San Diego Lowriders: A History of Cars and Cruising (History Press, 2017). Pulido is widely known for his community-​engaged work and scholarship. In 2019, Pulido secured funding from USD to support mobile education and sharing through “The Turning Wheel Project,” a community platform for sharing and documenting histories through stories, poetry, art, and culture. Dr. Pulido sees himself as an educator, researcher, and community storyteller who produces work that lifts lowriders and communities from neighborhood narratives into their rightful place as part of San Diego’s diverse and vibrant history. He is coauthor of San Diego Lowriders: A History of Cars and Cruising and coproducer/​director with Rigoberto Reyes of the award-​winning documentary Everything Comes from the Streets.

Contributors   xvii Aida Isela Ramos is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Mary-​ Hardin Baylor. Dr. Ramos’s research focuses on race-​ethnicity (identity formation), religion (Latinx religion), and education (Latinx and first-​generation student success in Christian higher education). Ramos coauthored the book Latino Protestants in America: Diverse and Growing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). She has published articles in a range of journals, including the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociology of Religion, and Social Science Quarterly. She is also a research fellow for the Latino Protestant Congregation Project. Aida holds a PhD (2013) and master’s degree (2010) in sociology, both from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a bachelor’s of science degree in sociology from Texas A&M University (2007). Daisy Vargas  is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at The University of Arizona. Dr. Vargas specializes in Catholicism in the Americas; race, ethnicity, and religion in the United States; and Latina/​o religion. Her current project, Mexican Religion on Trial: Race, Religion, and the Law in the U.S.-​Mexico Borderlands, traces the history of Mexican religion, race, and the law from the nineteenth century into the contemporary moment, positioning current legal debates about Mexican religion within a larger history of anti-​Mexican and anti-​Catholic attitudes in the United States. She has served as an ethnographic field research for the Institute for the Study of Immigration and Religion since 2012. In 2017, she was awarded a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Dr. Vargas serves as cochair of the Latina/​o and Latin American Religion section for the American Academy of Religion-​Western Region, and as a steering committee member for the Religions in the Latina/​o Americas unit for the American Academy of Religion at the national level. Sujey Vega  is Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and affiliate faculty member in the School of Transborder Studies and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Her research explores the everyday lived experiences of Latina/​os in the United States. By looking to moments of belonging, she traces the way Latina/​os make their own notion of home in the United States. Using ethnography, oral history, and archival analysis, Professor Vega’s research includes race/​ethnic studies, social networks, gendered experiences, and ethnoreligious practices. Her previous work focused on nontraditional Latino settling locations in Indiana to expand the notion of the borderlands to these otherwise “new” or not previously recognized Latino communities. Her book, Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest (NYU Press, 2015), places in dialogue Mexican Hoosiers and non-​Mexican (mostly White) Hoosiers of Indiana as they both come to terms with living in the same communal space. The book’s focus includes ethnoreligious practices, comadrazgo (female social networks), ethnic solidarity, and community organizations that helped Mexicans assert a right to belong in a Midwestern city. Professor Vega’s current project historically locates the growth of Latina/​o LDS members in the Phoenix area and the role the LDS church plays in the lives of current Latino Mormons.

Introdu c t i on Una Historia de perseverancia y resiliencia pueblo (A People’s History of Perseverance and Resilience) Kristy Nabhan-​Warren

This edited collection has been a labor of love, and it is with equal parts humility and pleasure that I offer this introduction.1 It has been an honor to help midwife this book into existence, to work with and to learn from established, field-​changing scholars, as well as early-​career scholars who are rising stars in their fields. What connects all of the scholars in this handbook is their deep commitment to Latinx religious studies, their commitment to mentoring, and their leadership. With the population of Latinx steadily rising in the United States, and a burgeoning interest in US Latinx among academics and nonacademics alike, it is an auspicious time for Oxford University Press to publish this collection. The contributing scholars all point to the richness and complexities of Latinx Christianities and to the sweeping contributions Latinx have made and continue to make to broader American culture. They examine the many hardships and challenges that have faced US Latinx, and they do not shy away from viewing Latinx Christianities in part as a response to the racialized, racist, and colonialist United States and, by extension, white American Christianities. These handbook authors investigate the intersectional lives of US Latinx Christians, who bring their ethnoracialized, religious, diasporic selves and communities to their Christian identities and praxis. Latinx Christianities is a complex historically situated, lived experience that is directly informed by white American Christian colonialisms and empire, the exigencies of everyday life among Latinx, and a future that is yet to be determined. The scholars whose essays grace this handbook are at the forefront of a new, emerging Latinx religious studies that focuses on the complexities of religion and everyday life. Moreover, their chapters draw our attention to our need for scholarship that is unflinching in its cries against oppression and its calls for justice. All twenty scholars featured in this handbook honor the Latinx Christian studies scholarship that comes

2   Kristy Nabhan-Warren before them but also point to ways that the field of Latinx Christian studies, and religious studies more broadly, can be more accountable and more challenging of the interlocking systems of oppression and violence. The story of US Latinx Christians and Christianities, as the authors show us through their exacting scholarship and prose, is one of perseverance and resilience. Because the Oxford Handbooks are geared toward upper-​level college students, graduate students, scholars, and teachers alike, the handbook provides the kind of broad sweep of coverage that would be appropriate for PhD comprehensive examinations. The chapters address denominationalism, gender, geography, and ethnoracial identities—​ all helpful and insightful approaches for framing the study of US Latinx Christianities. While some essays are more historical in scope, others point to the present as well as the future of US Latinx Christianities. This handbook is the first of its kind within Latinx religious studies. A hallmark of this handbook compared with others is its interdisciplinary methodological approaches to the study of Latinx religions; no one method of investigation or orientation dominates the handbook. Handbook authors include scholars who are situated in a variety of disciplines within the arts and humanities and social sciences, including American studies, anthropology, ethnic studies, history, religious studies, sociology, and theology. Such a range of disciplinary perspectives is important for a collection that aims to provide accurate portrayals of lived Latinx Christianities is the United States. Most anthologies or edited volumes focus exclusively on one methodological orientation, and in the case of Latinx religion, it has usually been theological.2 Moreover, those volumes that have been published focus on one theme, such as civic activism.3 Other published volumes and anthologies have focused on themes such as social justice, politics, liberation theology, and migration. The vast majority of published edited volumes on Latina/​x/​o religion have also been limited to a brief history of a particular ethnic and religious group, such as “Mexican American Catholics, Puerto Rican Catholics, or Hispanic Catholics.”4 And, when we turn our attention to stand-​alone monographs of Latinx Christianity, the vast majority of monographs focus on Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican–​descent Catholics. Rarely until now have African influences been foregrounded in such studies. Elizabeth Pérez’s chapter on “Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms” brings to life the richness of lifeworlds that have been understudied and appreciated. Moreover, while there has been a rise in studies of Latinx Protestants in recent years, the vast majority of monographs remain focused on Roman Catholicism.5 While these anthologies and edited volumes have most definitely added to our collective knowledge of Latinx, they have been neither interdisciplinary in orientation nor have they aimed for a broad sweep on issues within the study of Latinx Christianities. While Latinx Christianities in the United States includes some of the themes explored in published handbooks and anthologies, it does not privilege one particular ethnic group, religion, or theme. This handbook aims to provide a more comprehensive sweep of the ethnoracial, national, denominational, and gendered intersectionalities of Latinx Christianities. Moreover, the authors provide in-​depth coverage of specific national groups, denominations, geographies, and theologies, and cover important historical as

Introduction   3 well as contemporary and intersectional themes of gender, sexuality, migration, diaspora, and transnationalism. There are a couple of topics that readers might have expected to have chapters on their own, in a handbook such as this; in particular, women and liberation theology. Instead, discussion of these topics can be found throughout the volume. Within the individual chapters in Part I, where denominations and ethnoreligious congregations and communities are examined in depth, all of the authors—​Timothy Matovina, Michelle Gonzales Maldonado, Alberto Ortíz Díaz, Elizabeth Pérez, Ceclia Menjívar, Gerardo Martí, Mark Mulder, Aida Ramos, Lloyd Barba, and Sujey Vega—​go beyond adding women, to including women, to show the centrality of women in Latinx Christian traditions. Inclusive scholarship begins with the acknowledgment that women and men worked together, sometimes at odds, in the construction of religious histories and sociologies. What the chapters collectively reveal is that even though women were central to congregations and communities, their voices are oftentimes difficult to ascertain from the existing archival and other historical materials. The historian of American religions Catherine Brekus raised the issue of how to include women in her Introduction to the now classic The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past and focused our attention to the difficulty of not only locating women in histories but of incorporating women.6 The chapters in this handbook aim for inclusion of Latinas’ stories in the broader diachronic histories of Mexican-​descent Catholics (Matovina), Cuban-​descent Catholics (Gonzales Maldonado), Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms (Pérez), Catholic Church and Central American immigrants (Menjívar), Latina/​o Protestants (Martí, Mulder, and Ramos), and Latina/​o/​x Mormons (Vega). And with the chapters that focus on themes within Latinx Christianities, the authors place women within the broader narrative, making them neither central nor peripheral but, importantly, as essential components of the warp and weft of the narrative. All of the chapters in the handbook show the ways that women have been important, even central players in the religious lives of US Latinx families and communities. The authors of the thematic chapters, in particular Chapter 9–​18, also show that while not always acknowledged, women’s roles were instrumental in their family’s and community’s efforts to make religion work for them. In his chapter on Latinx conversations/​reversions from Christianity to Islam, Harold Morales shows how Latina Muslim women like Khadija Rivera were part of a network of Latinas who were central players in their burgeoning Latinx Muslim communities. In his chapter on popular religion, Alberto Pulido shows how Latinas/​Chicanas have had key roles in creating “creative sovereign” and “self-​affirming expressions” for Latinx. In his chapter on mestizaje and theoethics, Néstor Medina shows how Latina theologians such as Ada Maria Isasi-​ Diaz have been instrumental in crafting as well as promoting Latina woman-​centered theologies, particularly mujerista theology and ethics. In their respective chapters, both Brett Hendrickson and Natalie Avalos show how women, as curanderas, have been key players in the production of Latinx spiritualties; and Daisy Vargas demonstrates the centrality of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a signpost for Latinx pilgrimage and spirituality.

4   Kristy Nabhan-Warren Felipe Hinojosa and Tony Lin both begin their chapters with Latinas’ stories. Lydia Lopez’s role in the history of church occupations (Hinojosa) and disruptions, and Pastora Bessy’s experiences with prosperity gospel (Lin) introduce the reader to a history and sociology of Latinx Christian experiences in the United States. And for Luís Léon, the cultural construction of machismo has impugned Latinx women and men, and the racist tropes which vilify them as individuals and as a community. In short, the authors all include women as key players in their revisionist historical and sociological narratives because that is who women were and are today—​important and core actors in the unfolding of their community’s histories. Just as women are an integral part of each chapter, so, too, is liberation theology woven into many of the chapters. Liberation theology, in particular, how Latinx Christians have crafted and enacted grassroots theologies that prioritize the poor and oppressed, are part of the narrative of each handbook chapter. The handbook authors draw on their methodological expertise and demonstrate in their individual chapters how Latinx are crafting lived theologies of liberation through their words, actions, and embodied faith. Each contributing author addresses the complex dynamics of established churches and popular manifestations of faith and piety, and the liberation theologies that rise up from the people themselves. From Mexican-​descent Catholics who turn to Guadalupe as a liberating figure (Matovina, Vargas, and Hendrickson), to nontraditional places such as kitchens, streets, and cars that serve as the spaces where liberation theologies are made and lived (Pérez, Pulido, Medina, Hendrickson, and Vargas), to reimagining place-​ bound institutionalized theologies as more focused on the needs of Latinx (Matovina, Maldonado, Ortíz Díaz, Pérez, Menjivar, Martí, Mulder, Ramos, Barba, Vega, Hinojosa, León, Lin, and Calvillo), to leaving Christianity for something more liberatory (Morales and Avalos). Reimagining Christianity and its theological constructs, and proclaiming what it can be for US Latinx, as well as demonstrating what this looks like, is at the heart of all of the chapters. The organization of this handbook provides a thorough examination of interlocking themes within Latinx Christianities. These essays, taken individually and collectively, pay attention to both the diachronic as well as the synchronic. Moreover, the essays cover the major US Latinx ethnic groups as well as major Christian denominations and movements. Finally, essays in the handbook attend to important topics such as empire, migration, diaspora, hybridities, borderlands, and gender. The essays in this handbook, written by leading experts in Latinx religious studies, aim to convey histories and sociologies of religion, migration, and identity that strike a balancing act between the vectors of victimization and agency. The contributing authors all aim to show just how complicated the process of identity formation and community building has been, and continues to be, for a historically marginalized people. Indeed, as I write this Introduction, the United States is coming out of a xenophobic fever pitch against Central American immigrants from the Northern Triangle as well as Mexico. Some social scientists predict that 2021 and beyond will be an era of increased anti–​ Mexican American backlash due to rising poverty, political and physical oppression, and the continuing pandemic of COVID-​19.7 Under the Trump presidency, a racist,

Introduction   5 xenophobic agenda targeted Central American asylum seekers, migrants, and long-​ time US Latinx residents. History, when examined for its vagaries of continuity, shows that Latinx from multiple heterogeneous countries and traditions have had their ethnic, national, and religious identities called into question time and time again. Yet, as we have seen in historic and more contemporary moments, religion and spirituality can be and remain beacons of hope and refuge for a marginalized people and community. Religion and spirituality for Latinx have served as a buffer from the pain of empire, exile, and exclusion. And yet Christianity, for all of its colonial, violent roots, can offer redemption and hope for the millions of Latinx who embrace it and remake it on their own terms. Each chapter in this handbook addresses the creativity and empowerment that is rooted in Latinx communities that in turn provides the resilience to persevere. Popular manifestations of Caridad del Cobre, as we find in the Pérez chapter, and of the Virgin of Guadalupe, in the Matovina, Maldonado, Pulido, and Vargas chapters, offer counternarratives of resistance and fortitude to the more sanitized and institutional ones that the official Church has offered. Latinx-​centered piety works to undo centuries of racist Christianity and is attuned to the gritty realities of life. The chapters written by these handbook authors, including Elizabeth Pérez, Lloyd Barba, Alberto Pulido, Brett Hendrickson, Felipe Hinojosa, Daisy Vargas, Natalie Avalos, Tony Lin, and Jonathan Calvillo, hone in on the ways internalized racist Christianity can be reworked and externalized as something new, bright, and powerful. For some Latinx, as we see in Lin’s chapter, gospels of prosperity offer strength and promise for a better life. For other Latinx, shedding white Christian racist-​infused theology is foremost, as we see in Pérez’s, Hinojosa’s, Avalos’s, and Pulido’s chapters. For some Latinx, as we find in Harold Morales’s and Natalie Avalos’s chapters, Christianity is irreparably tainted with colonialism and racism, beyond redemption, and they seek religious paths that subvert and create something new. What binds all of the chapters is a razor-​sharp focus on the lived reality of Latinx turning inward existentially and outward to their ethnoracial communities to persevere, exhibit agency, and to thrive in what has been an inhospitable, racist country for them. We are introduced to Latinx who exhibit creativity and ingenuity to discover and even rediscover sacred pathways that provide meaning to their temporal existence. And it is a distinctive religio-​spirituality that bears the ingenuity born of their struggles and hopes that pulls them through. On a meta level, what links the chapters in this handbook is that all of the authors point to the perseverance/​perseverancia, strength/​fuerza, and resilience/​ resiliencia of Latinx individuals and communities. Latinx Christianities is a much-​needed resource and will provide students and scholars alike with an anthropologically, historically, and sociologically grounded knowledge of the fastest-​growing ethnic group of people in the United States since 1965. According to a recent PEW report, the number of US Latinos/​as was 55.3 million in 2014, a ninefold increase since 1980, when the Latino/​a population was 6.3 million. The US Census estimates that by 2060 the number of Latinos/​as in the United States will number 119 million.8 The rapid growth of Latinos/​as in the United States and their

6   Kristy Nabhan-Warren tendency to identify as Christian make a strong case for the publication of an Oxford Handbook on US Latinx Christianities. And because more than two-​thirds (68 percent) of US Latinos/​as identify as Roman Catholic, a large portion of the handbook essays will focus on some aspect of US Latino/​a Catholic life and practice. The Handbook will also feature several essays on evangelical Protestantism, since 15 percent of Latinos/​as identify as evangelical Protestant.9

Genealogy of Latina/​x/​o Christian Studies The chapters in this handbook are part of a broader genealogy of Latina/​x/​o studies. The subfield of Latina/​x/​o religious studies emerged in the early 1990s out of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s Chicano/​a studies. While Chicano/​a studies provided the bedrock out of which Latino/​a studies and by relation, Latina/​x/​o religious studies, would emerge, Chicano/​a studies’ scholars tended to focus almost exclusively on Mexican descent/​Mexicanas/​os to the exclusion of other ethnic groups. Moreover, the majority of Chicano/​a studies scholars overlooked religion qua Christianity, in their focus on politics, radicalization, and empowerment. Understandably, for the majority of first-​generation Chicana/​o scholars, Christianity was considered a tool of white colonizers and was not seen as liberatory for colonized peoples such as Latinas/​os/​x. For first-​wave Chicano/​a studies scholars, Christianity was irredeemable and could not be seen as liberatory for Latinas/​os/​x. For personal and political reasons, a generation of Chicano/​ a scholars such as Rodolfo Acuña focused on the all-​encompassing empire of white/​ Anglo colonizers.10 When applied to Chicano/​a studies, the US empire was most visibly seen in the annexation of large swaths of northern Mexico in 1848 to form today’s US Southwest. For these first-​generation Chicano/​a scholars, many of whom were deeply invested as activists in el movimiento, Christianity was anything but forward-​looking, community-​building, and life-​giving. It was a tool of the empire, and it wielded its power to disempower Latinos/​as/​x. Chicana/​o scholars who incorporated religion into their histories and analyses overwhelmingly emphasized pre-​Christian beliefs, particularly Aztec/​Mexica, over Christianity. The mytho-​poetics of Aztlán, the homeland of Aztecs and, by proxy, as seen in Chicano/​a literature, was the focus of Chicana scholars who included religion in their scholarship, as it was deemed indigenous and therefore an authentic mode of being. Within Chicana/​o studies there emerged a subfield of Chicana/​o religious studies which emphasized indigeneity and pre-​Christian cosmologies. Significantly, Chicana/​ o religious and spiritual Christian images were hybridized Aztec-​Christian and female—​from Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/​La Frontera to the artist Yolanda López’s

Introduction   7 familial depictions of Guadalupe as a liberator for Chicanas, to Alma López’s “Our Lady of Controversy” image of the hybridized Coyolxauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess-​ Guadalupe-​López woman.11 For Chicana/​o scholars and artists alike who depicted Chicano/​a religion, most especially Catholicism, it was hybridized and feminized warrior imagery. The Virgin of Guadalupe of the Spanish Empire was seen not as a European Catholic Christian icon looking down demurely, but instead was depicted as an Aztec goddess who came to represent her indio children in a way they would recognize from their gods. The 1980s and 1990s featured scholarship of reclamation, that is, Chicanx and Latinx scholars reclaiming their history and rethinking the role and significance of religion, most especially Christianity, in the process of reclamation. Chicano/​a literature, art, and scholarship influenced what emerged as Latina/​x/​o religious studies in the early 1990s. With the publication of the groundbreaking Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the United States, a three-​volume series that focused on Mexican-​, Puerto Rican–​, and Cuban-​descent Catholics, the next chapter of Latina/​x/​ o studies of religion was born.12 Latina/​x/​o religious studies began as a subfield that focused on Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Catholicism in the United States. The series emphasized traditions, transplantation, and transnationalism, as well as religion’s role in migrants’ acclamation within the United States. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Latina/​x/​o religious studies was de facto Latina/​x/​o Catholic studies. This was analogous to the 1960s–​1980s Chicano studies referring primarily to Mexican-​descent individuals and communities. The focus of 1990s Latina/​x/​o religious studies scholarship was on particular groups and traditions—​Mexican American Catholicism; Puerto Rican Catholicism; Cuban American Catholicism—​and much of the emphasis was a Catholic Church–​centered approach. What was called popular religion/​piety was examined by pioneers in Latinx religious studies, but the trend in the scholarship was on the parish and its people. This Catholic parish–​focused historiographical perspective gave way to other case study approaches of the mid-​late 1990s and 2000s that sought to find a greater balance between the Catholicism of the parish/​Church and of the people.13 While Latina/​x/​o religious studies of the 1980s and 1990s tended to be broader sweeps of denominational histories with some popular piety added for levity, by the mid-​2000s Latina/​x/​o religious studies had taken an ethnographic turn.14 While still mostly focused on Catholicism, Latina/​x/​o studies scholarship began to turn toward evangelical Protestantism as well as primarily Pentecostal studies, mirroring broader trends in religious studies. Significantly, Latina/​x/​o studies by the mid-​2000s had taken a decisive ethnographic turn with a focus on lived religion, popular piety, and finely grained investigations of everyday people.15 Scholarship on Latinx Christians and Christianities has greatly expanded in the past twenty years, as issues of race, gender, hybridities, and politics have taken on a greater centrality. As I write this introduction, Latinx religious studies is undergoing its next iteration, as scholars are focusing on why Latinx leave Christianity for other traditions or none at all.

8   Kristy Nabhan-Warren

Organization and Focus This handbook is organized into two parts: Part I: Denominational, Ethnoreligious Historias (subdivided into Latinx Catholicisms and Non-​Catholic Christianities) and Part II: Témas/​Themes. It made sense to begin with Latinx Catholicisms, as Latinx Christian histories are historically and contemporaneously rooted in Catholic traditions. The plural Catholicisms is intentionally used to indicate the nuances and pluralities of Catholicism, as well as the agency and creativity exhibited by Latinx Catholics. Appropriately, the prolific theologian and historian of Latinx Catholicisms Timothy Matovina provides the inaugural chapter “Mexican-​Descent Catholics,” followed by the Latina theologian Michelle A. Gonzales Maldonado’s “Cuban-​Descent Catholics”; the Latino historian Alberto Ortíz-​Díaz’s chapter on “Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States”; the Latina anthropologist Elizabeth Pérez’s “Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms”; and rounded off with the Latina sociologist Cecilia Menjívar’s “The Catholic Church and Central American Immigrants in the United States.” The second section of Part I, Non-​Catholic Traditions, builds off of the denominational focus of the first section, and offers historical and sociological into the experiences of Latinx Christians who have crafted religio-​spiritual lives outside of Catholicism. “Latino/​a Protestantisms: Historical and Sociological Overviews” by the sociologists of Christianity Gerardo Martí, Mark Mulder, and Aida Ramos sets the tone for this section, and it is followed by Latinx scholars Lloyd Barba and Sujey Vega, whose “Latina/​o Pentecostalism” and “Latina/​o/​x Mormons,” respectively, provide crucial perspectives about Latinx Christians whose non-​Catholic traditions and lifeworlds have been vastly understudied. Part II of the handbook, Témas/​Themes, focuses on some of the most prevailing themes within the study of Latinx Christianities. While these are among the most salient topics in the study of Latinx Christianities, they are not exhaustive. The chapters that round off this volume point to the complex relationship and entanglements of oppression, survivalism, and creativity that are born out of struggle. How Latinx have negotiated agency and outside forces that have weighed them down existentially, socially, and politically is a thread that runs through these chapters. Latinx religious studies scholar Harold Morales opens up this final handbook section with his “Latino Conversions to Islam,” in which he delves into the reasons why a growing number of Latinx Christians are leaving their traditions and embracing a new way of living and believing. The Latinx ethnic studies scholar Alberto Pulido offers a powerful examination of lived Latinx popular religion rooted in communities’ focus on justice, followed by Néstor Medina’s deep dive into the importance of mestizaje as a conceptual framework for understanding the creativity and power of Latinx Christianities. A focus on fluidity and permeability within Latinx Christianities along US-​Mexico geographic and cultural borderlands continues in the religious studies scholar Brett Hendrickson’s chapter on healing. The Latinx ethnographer of religion Daisy Vargas, like Hendrickson,

Introduction   9 focuses on the body as a site of meaning making within Latino Christian traditions. In her chapter on pilgrimage, Vargas argues that “Pilgrimage traditions among Latina/​o/​x communities in the United States are as much about religious traveling on the bodies of migrants as they are cultural descriptors of migrant communities in diaspora.” The theme of how Latinx have reworked white Christian normativity and have claimed it as theirs is a thread that the Latinx historian Felipe Hinojosa hones in on in his chapter, “Occupying the Church: The Making of Latina/​o Religious Politics.” Hinojosa illuminates a history of Latinx religio-​political activism, and the centrality of social justice to Latinx Christianity, and calls for increased attention to grassroots community movements, church occupations, and other religious outsiders who have been instrumental in defining what Hinojosa calls the “political edge” of Latina/​o religiosity. The late Luís León, in his posthumously published chapter “Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity,” examines the harm that cisgendered normativity has inflicted on Latino men and Latinas, and the ways that cisgendered norms, religion, and culture have worked in tandem in systems of oppression. His chapter is an exploration of what he deemed the “complex mythological dimensions of the macho within the broad context of Christianity.” The Apache-​Chicanx religious studies scholar Natalie Avalos also delves into the harm that Christian, gendered, and theological normativities have been brought against indigenous and Latinx people. In examining the relationship between indigeneities and Christianities, Avalos picks up on the theme of hybridity/​mestizaje/​creativity that all of the authors in the handbook refer to in their chapters. What has emerged from the depths of pain and oppression-​-​-​caused in part by oppressive white Christian structures-​-​-​is something mediated by Christianity. Yet this new iteration of religio-​spirituality is not quite Christian in the typical ways we think about Christianity and what it means to be Christian. For indigenous and Latinx Christianities and post-​Christianities alike, “They are something more, something unique—​something entirely of their own. They evince strategic survivals of Native metaphysical worlds that continue with and for the people.” The underlying tensions between surviving and thriving that are explored throughout this volume are examined in the Latinx sociologist Tony Tian-​Ren Lin’s chapter on the prosperity gospel, which has been and continues to be embraced by Latinx as a means of thriving in the United States as the theology requires the “synchronization of every aspect of life toward the formula.” The Latinx sociologist of religion Jonathan Calvillo provides a brilliant final chapter to the handbook with his investigation of the intersectionalities of race, ethnicity, and religion among Latinx Christians. Latinx ethnoracial identities, Calvillo argues, involve “ongoing negotiations that are both macro-​level and micro-​level social processes; identities that are deeply personal in one sense and highly imposed by external forces in another.” In particular, Calvillo spotlights three social dynamics through which Christian traditions shape Latinx ethnoracial identities—​temporal-​spatial relations, authenticity policing, and political engagement—​and shows in rich detail how “Latinxs negotiate ethnoracial identities and signal their place in US society.” This handbook represents some of the best scholarship in Latinx Christianities today, and my hope is that it helps promote the beauty, power, and resilience of Latinx

10   Kristy Nabhan-Warren Christianities. The chapters in this collection are revisionist histories, sociologies, and anthropologies, written by some of the finest scholars of US Latinx Christianities. I am confident that they set a new benchmark for future scholarship.

Notes 1. There is currently a plurality of ways to refer to US Latinos, including Latino, Latina/​o, Latina/​x/​o, and Latinx, among others. Rather than imposing a standard form of usage for this volume’s authors, I invited them to use the terminology that they prefer, and to be consistent in their usage. Throughout this introduction, I will utilize the crisp Latinx, as well as Latina, where appropriate. 2. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/​a Theology, ed. Orlando O. Espín (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2015), Handbook of Latino/​a Theologies, ed. Edwin David Aponte and Miguel de la Torre (Chalice Press, 2006), and In Our Own Voices: Latino/​a Renditions of Theology, ed. Benjamín Valentín (Orbis Books, 2010) as recent examples of theologically focused handbooks. 3. Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States, ed. Virgil Elizondo, Gastón Espinoza, Jesse Miranda (Oxford University Press, 2005). A strong collection of essays that focus on one theme, civic activism, and US Latino/​a emplacement within the activism. Handbook of Latina/​o Theologies, ed. Edwin Aponte and Miguel A. De La Torre (Chalice Press, 2006). 4. The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the US series (3 vols.) is solid scholarship but limited to Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban-​descent Catholics. See Hispanic Catholic Culture in the U.S.: Issues and Concerns (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900–​1965 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); and Puerto Rican and Cuban Catholics in the United States, 1900–​1965 (Notre Dame. IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). See Gastón Espinosa and Mario T. Garcia, Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998) and Timothy Matovina and Gary Riebe-​Estrella, Horizons of the Sacred: Mexican Traditions in U.S. Catholicism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002) for edited volumes that focus on one ethnic group and variations of religion and spirituality among that group. 5. For examples of monographs focused on Latinx Catholics as well as particular geographic areas, see Ana María Díaz-​Stevens, Oxcart Catholicism on Fifth Avenue: The Impact of the Puerto Rican Migration Upon the Archdiocese of New York (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); Thomas A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Kristy Nabhan-​Warren, The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2005); and Roberto Treviño, The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-​Catholicism in Houston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).   Monographs that follow a case study approach and cover specific groups of Latino/​a Protestants include Felipe Hinojosa, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); David Maldonado, Crossing Guadalupe Street: Growing Up Hispanic and Protestant (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001); Gastón Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America (Oxford: Oxford

Introduction   11 University Press, 2016); Arlene Sánchez Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); and Juan Francisco Martinez, Sea La Luz: The Making of Mexican Protestantism in the American Southwest, 1829–​1900 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2006). 6. Catherine Brekus, The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 7. https://​www.bloomberg.com/​opinion/​articles/​2020-​07-​22/​mexican-​migration-​could​be-​first-​crisis-​of-​2021 8. Renee Stepler and Anna Brown, “Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States,” Pew Research Center, Hispanic Trends, April 19, 2016, http://​www.pewhispanic.org/​2016/​04/​ 19/​statistical-​portrait-​of-​hispanics-​in-​the-​united-​states-​key-​charts/​ 9. “Changing Faiths; Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion,” Pew Research Center, Religion & Public Life, April 25, 2007, http://​www.pewforum.org/​2007/​04/​25/​ changing-​faiths-​latinos-​and-​the-​transformation-​of-​american-​religion-​2/​ 10. Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (New York: HarperCollins, 1981). 11. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/​la Frontera: The New Mestiza (New Mexico: Aunt Lute Books, 1987). For an excellent overview of the significance of Yolanda López’s work, see Karen Mary Davalos, Yolanda M. López (Chicano Studies Research Center, 2009) and Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Alma López, Our Lady of Controversy; Alma Lopez’s “Irreverent Apparition” (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011). 12. See Hispanic Catholic Culture in the U.S.: Issues and Concerns (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900–​1965 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); and Puerto Rican and Cuban Catholics in the United States, 1900–​1965 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). 13. Ana María Díaz-​Stevens, Oxcart Catholicism on Fifth Avenue: The Impact of the Puerto Rican Migration Upon the Archdiocese of New York (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); Thomas A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2002); Gary Riebe-​Estrella and Timothy Matovina, eds., Horizons of the Sacred: Mexican Traditions in U.S. Catholicism (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002); Timothy Matovina, Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, From Colonial Origins to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Luís León, La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-​Mexico Borderlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Kristy Nabhan-​Warren, The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2005); Roberto Treviño, The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-​Catholicism in Houston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Alyshia Gálvez, Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights Among Mexican Americans (New York: New York University Press, 2009); and Elaine Peña, Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred With the Virgin of Guadalupe (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2011). Another characterizing attribute of the late 1990s and 2000s scholarship on Latina/​ x/​o religion was that it was mostly Catholic and Mexican descent, with notable exceptions of Díaz-​Stevens and Tweed, who study Puerto Rican and Cuban Catholics, respectively. Latino Protestant studies was just emerging. 14. For examples of monographs focused on Latino/​a Catholics as well as particular geographic areas, see Ana María Díaz-​Stevens, Oxcart Catholicism on Fifth Avenue: The Impact of the Puerto Rican Migration Upon the Archdiocese of New York (Notre Dame, IN:

12   Kristy Nabhan-Warren University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); Thomas A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Kristy Nabhan-​Warren, The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2005); and Roberto Treviño, The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-​Catholicism in Houston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Matovina, Guadalupe and Her Faithful. 15. See Gastón Espinosa and Mario T. Garcia, Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998) and Matovina and Riebe-​Estrella, Horizons of the Sacred, for edited volumes that focus on one ethnic group and variations of religion and spirituality among that group. For recent studies of Latino Catholics and Guadalupan devotions, see Elaine Peña, Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with. the Virgin of Guadalupe (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2011), Alyshia Gálvez, Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizen Rights Among Mexican Immigrants (New York: New York University Press, 2009), and María del Socorro Castañeda-​Liles, Our Lady of Everyday Life: La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Catholic Imagination of Mexican Women in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Pa rt I

DE N OM I NAT IONA L , E T H N OR E L IG IOU S H I ST OR IAS Catholicisms

Chapter 1

Mexican-​D e s c e nt Cathol i c s Timothy Matovina

Catholic subjects of the Spanish Crown arrived in the territories that later became the Southwest United States a decade before the establishment of the first British colony at Jamestown. In 1598, eight members of the Franciscan religious order, which founded numerous missions among native peoples in the Americas, crossed into present-​day El Paso, Texas, as part of the Juan de Oñate expedition and established the initial Catholic foundations in the region. Two and a half centuries later, Mexicans living in the area became US residents after the war between the United States and Mexico (1846–​1848) resulted in Mexico’s loss of nearly half its territory: the present-​day states of Texas, Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming. Subsequently Mexicans continued to reside in and cross the border between Mexico and the United States, an immigration pattern that accelerated during the Mexican Revolution (1910–​1917) and continues to the present. Many historians divide the history of ethnic Mexicans in the Southwest into three major eras: the “golden age” of the Spanish missions, a period of decline when the region was part of Mexico, and progress once Anglo-​Americans conquered and ruled the land. Historians today criticize such interpretations in various ways. The focus on a golden age in which Spanish missionaries selflessly taught Christianity, Spanish culture, and European civilization to native peoples fails to account for indigenous perspectives on the mission system, including the cultural shock, harsh treatment, and death from European diseases that many Native Americans experienced in mission communities. It also leads to the false presumption that the only Catholic religious institutions in the Spanish colonies were the missions, when in fact parishes and military chapels have been the homes of Catholic faith communities from colonial times until the present day. These enduring communities of faith reveal that, even after Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821 and then lost the war with the United States, many Mexican Catholic communities in what is now the Southwest persevered despite the upheaval all around them. Indeed, for many the arrival of US rule did not represent the advent of

16   Timothy Matovina progress, but a tumultuous period of social, political, economic, religious, and demographic change, forcing established Mexican residents into a defensive posture that continued well into the twentieth century and in some ways even to the present. Today ethnic Mexicans are the largest group in the United States with ancestral roots in Spanish-​speaking countries, groups that have been referred to collectively as “Hispanics,” “Latinos/​as,” or more recently “Latinx.” Ethnic Mexicans comprise about two-​thirds of all US Latinos and number more than 35 million, about one-​fourth of all people of Mexican descent in the world. Scholarship on Mexican-​descent Catholics expands standard historical depictions and reveals their struggles and contributions in four major time periods: colonial foundations, enduring communities of faith in the wake of the war between Mexico and the United States, subsequent immigration that rejuvenated conquered communities and led to the spread of the ethnic Mexican population to new locales in the Southwest and eventually across the nation, and the struggle for rights in church and society that accelerated during the second half of the twentieth century and continues to the present. In all these developments, ethnic Mexican Catholic faith traditions have been a primary means for communities to forge and express their collective identities. Contemporary theologians have engaged these realities—​their personal and communal histories as well as the faith expressions of their people—​as essential starting points for theological analyses of the Mexican American experience.

Colonial Foundations The origins of Mexican-​descent Catholicism in the United States occurred in the Spanish colonial and Mexican republic periods in what is now the Southwest. Examining these foundational periods is essential for understanding subsequent events, time periods, and developments. The “arrival” of Christianity in this region began with Spanish expeditions into the area, such as the fated Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, from which only Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and a handful of companions survived after an eight-​year ordeal of hunger, captivity, and an overland trek from Florida to New Spain (present-​day Mexico). Later Spanish subjects established settlements to stake territorial claims for the Spanish Crown, pursue economic gain, and propagate Catholicism among native populations. Pueblos (towns) with formal civil and church institutions, military garrisons, and missions provided historically tested structures around which Hispanic frontier communities emerged. Catholic missionaries, usually Franciscan friars, accompanied exploratory expeditions and then were an integral part of Spanish efforts to establish settlements. Sometimes the friars founded missions within or near settled indigenous communities. In other cases, they induced nomadic peoples to settle down at newly established missions, usually near Spanish pueblos and military garrisons. While initially the prospect of entering the missions to stave off enemies, starvation, and harsh winters seemed

Mexican-Descent Catholics   17 attractive to some Native Americans, many eventually found mission life too alien and coercive. Not only were they not accustomed to the Spanish work routines and religious lifestyles, they also found unacceptable the friars’ demands that they shed their traditional ways. Many natives became resentful and left the missions at the earliest opportunity. In some cases outright rebellion ensued, such as in 1680 when New Mexico’s Pueblo Indians exploded into open violence under the leadership of a shaman or spiritual leader named Popé, driving the Spaniards and their loyal indigenous subjects from the region and purging their communities of Catholic symbols and everything Spanish. Though the Spanish reconquered them once again beginning in 1692 and Franciscan missionary efforts resumed, the revolt illuminated the clash of civilizations often evident in mission life. Despite the drawbacks and difficulties of mission life, however, some Native Americans remained within the world of the missions, accepted Christianity, and took on Hispanic and Catholic identities. For the missionaries, Hispanicizing the natives entailed creating living spaces for their charges around impressive churches and chapels that became the center of everyday life. The missionaries worked diligently inculcating Catholicism, defining work regimes, establishing predictable daily life routines, teaching the Spanish language, overseeing social interactions, enforcing Christian-​appropriate gender relations, and generally changing or modifying any and all cultural practices among the natives that they deemed contrary to Christianity. The role of the missions was to prepare Native Americans to become good Catholics and good Spanish subjects. Spanish officials envisioned the missions as temporary institutions destined for secularization, that is, transference from missionary to civil authority once the friars completed the work of Hispanicizing the natives. A number of missions were already being secularized in New Spain’s northern regions by the end of the eighteenth century. At that same time, however, new mission establishments emerged in California that were not secularized until the 1830s. Secularization, then, varied from region to region, depending on government policies, interests of local officials, the socioeconomic realities of the communities and the missions, the level of cooperation among Native Americans, and the interests of the missionaries themselves. In various cases the missions became pueblos and diocesan priests—​that is, clergy primarily trained to serve existing Spanish-​speaking Catholic communities rather than to work for the conversion of the natives to Catholicism—​took the place of the friars in ministering to the former mission communities. In theory, the indigenous people at the mission were to receive individual land allotments and other assets in the secularization process. These material possessions would aid them in their transition to a new status as Hispanicized Catholics. However, in numerous cases this did not occur; the Native Americans simply lost everything in their former missions to unscrupulous officials or other Hispanic residents, often moving into the Hispanic pueblos where they occupied the bottom of the social structure. However, the mission residents fared, the secularization process transformed their communities from corporate entities under the authority and protection of specific missionary orders to independent communities that became another element of Hispanic civil society.

18   Timothy Matovina Extant mission records were almost entirely produced by men and tend to accentuate the perspectives, accomplishments, and struggles of the male friars. Nonetheless, the missions reveal an element of Catholicism among ethnic Mexicans and other Latinos that has been significant throughout their history: the faith and leadership of women like Eulalia Pérez, who became a prominent figure at Mission San Gabriel (near Los Angeles). A native of Loreto, Baja California, Pérez moved to the mission in the early nineteenth century with her husband, who was assigned there as a guard. After her husband’s death, Pérez lived at the mission with her son and five daughters, where she became the head housekeeper (llavera), a leadership position in the mission community that grew increasingly significant as the number of friars decreased. Her duties included overseeing supplies and their distribution, as well as supervising Native American workers. Though the scores of missions founded in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California were clearly the predominant Catholic institution in the northern stretches of New Spain, parishes and military chaplaincies also played a crucial role in establishing and maintaining Catholicism. Unlike the missions in which the population consisted exclusively of Native Americans save for a few friars and Hispanic military personnel, parishes and military chaplaincies provided for the spiritual welfare of Hispanic civilian and military settlers and their descendants, as well for some natives who eventually joined these communities. Parishes first appeared with the establishment of formal towns and grew in number as some missions were secularized and became ordinary parishes. Local residents built the churches and sought to obtain the services of priests, either priests assigned to nearby missions or directly to the parishes themselves. In Spanish colonial times, Hispanic Catholics established parishes in places like San Antonio, Laredo, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles, along with military chapels in other locales, such as Monterey, California, where the current Catholic cathedral has its origins in a colonial military chapel. During the Spanish colonial era and the period the Southwest was under Mexican rule (1821–​1836 in Texas; 1821–​1848 elsewhere), New Mexico was the most populous territory and thus the one with the largest number of Catholics. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the diocesan clergy in New Mexico had begun the process of slowly displacing the Franciscan missionaries who had served in the region since the late sixteenth century. This was, of course, an expected course of events since the missions had always been viewed as temporary institutions dedicated to preparing the indigenous communities for parish life as Hispanic citizens. In 1798, the Diocese of Durango, which encompassed New Mexico, introduced the first diocesan pastors to the region, one for the parish at Santa Fe and the other at Santa Cruz. As the Franciscan numbers declined, particularly after Mexican independence when many Spanish friars left the new republic out of loyalty to their native Spain, the diocesan priests increased thanks to recruitment of local youth who went to seminary in Durango. Between 1823 and 1826, four New Mexicans completed their training and returned home to begin their ministries. By the end of the 1840s, the Franciscans had all left or died and some seventeen or eighteen diocesan priests (most recruited locally) served the spiritual needs

Mexican-Descent Catholics   19 of New Mexico’s parish communities. In the end, the church’s viability in New Mexico depended on the communities themselves, including their ability to recruit their youth into the priesthood. Though New Mexico was the most successful of the Spanish and, later, Mexican northern borderlands territories in training priests for staffing the local churches, parishes across the region developed grassroots cultural ways and traditions that included Catholic religious expressions. Communities drew on rituals, devotions, and celebrations that their ancestors initiated and fostered such as the celebration of saints days and other feasts, processions, Mass, initiation rites, compadrazgo (god parentage), dramatic proclamations of Christ’s death and removal from the cross, among others. Many of these religious expressions that shaped and defined ethnic Mexican Catholic identity within borderlands communities endured and are part of the living legacy of the colonial foundations their ancestors established in territories now part of the United States.

Enduring Communities of Faith Padre Antonio José Martínez was the leading figure among nineteenth-​century New Mexican priests. His numerous accomplishments include a distinguished academic career as a seminarian in Durango, the establishment of a primary school and seminary preparatory school in his hometown of Taos (from which some thirty students went on to be ordained for the priesthood), the operation of the first printing press in what is now the western United States, authorship of numerous books and pamphlets, formal certification as an attorney, and extensive service as an elected New Mexican representative in legislative bodies under the Mexican and later the US governments. In 1854, Frenchman Jean Baptiste Lamy, the newly arrived first bishop (and later first archbishop) of Santa Fe, instituted mandatory tithing and decreed that heads of families who failed to comply be denied the sacraments. Martínez publicly contested the prelate’s action in a newspaper article and a series of letters, actions that eventually led to Lamy’s excommunication of Martínez from the Catholic Church and to a schism between Martínez’s supporters and the official leaders of the Santa Fe diocese. The struggles of Father Martínez and his backers illustrate the efforts of Mexican-​descent Catholics to endure and defend themselves—​both within the Catholic Church and within the wider society—​during the turbulent half century following the US takeover of northern Mexico. US military victory led to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought an official end to this war, but military defeat merely initiated the process of United States conquest and expansion. After the territories changed hands, law enforcement personnel, judicial officials, and occupying troops imposed US rule. Anglo-​ American newcomers also consolidated the conquest by asserting their dominion over political and economic life. Violence against ethnic Mexican residents was at times rampant, but the judicial system afforded them little if any protection.

20   Timothy Matovina Mexican hegemony in religious life and public celebrations also dissipated as population growth among Anglo-​Americans and other groups facilitated the formation of new congregations and public festivities. Protestant leaders attributed US expansion to divine providence and adopted a view of religious “manifest destiny.” They saw Mexican Catholicism as inherently inferior and Protestantism as a force that would inevitably conquer all of the Americas. One minister wrote that the Anglo-​American takeover of Texas was “an indication of Providence in relation to the propagation of divine truth in other parts of the Mexican dominions[,]‌. . . Guatemala and all South America” as well as “the beginning of the downfall of [the] Antichrist, and the spread of the Savior’s power of the gospel.” Frequently, differences in culture and religious practice even led newly arrived Catholic leaders to misunderstand and criticize their Mexican coreligionists. One French priest claimed that, among the Mexican-​descent Catholics he encountered in Texas during the 1840s and 1850s, “the religion of the great majority is very superficial, the great truths of the faith are overlooked, and the most essential duties of a Christian neglected.” To be sure, in some instances foreign clergy acclaimed the religious practices of Mexican Catholics. Bishop Jean Marie Odin, the first bishop of Texas, participated in Mexican religious feasts like local celebrations in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe and spoke enthusiastically of the religious zeal demonstrated in these celebrations. Nonetheless, criticism and conflict frequently marked the relations between established Mexican Catholic communities and the Catholic religious leaders who arrived in the wake of US conquest. Conquered Mexicans resisted the US takeover in various ways. Some offered military resistance to the foreign invaders. In other instances, they defended their rights in the political arena. Lay Catholic leaders also took initiative to defend their religious traditions and faith communities. At Nacogdoches in east Texas (near the Louisiana border), where Spanish-​speaking Catholics first established a settlement in 1716, Anglo-​ American ascendancy led to ethnic tensions and outbreaks of violence with Mexican Catholics. The local pastor, Father José Antonio Díaz de Léon, died mysteriously in 1834, probably at the hands of an Anglo-​American assassin. Subsequently Anglo-​Americans expelled or killed numerous Mexican-​descent residents and burned the local Catholic house of worship to the ground. No resident priest replaced Father Díaz de Léon until 1847, but in the thirteen years the local community was without a priest they continued to conduct Sunday services on their own and organized rituals for feast days and funerals, gathering in private homes after their parish church was destroyed. The resilience of Nacogdoches residents illuminates that, far from eradicating their will to persevere, fear and anger at their subjugation could perpetuate and even intensify religious fervor and the desire to maintain Mexican Catholic pride and identity. Some Mexican priests and their parishioners contested the policies and decisions of new bishops appointed to the region, such as Franciscan priest José González Rubio and his parishioners at Santa Barbara, California. A native of Guadalajara, González Rubio came to Alta California in 1833 and was the most important Catholic leader in transitional California. Mexican Catholics held him in such high regard that, when his

Mexican-Descent Catholics   21 Franciscan superiors reappointed him to Zacatecas in 1856, some 1,000 parishioners and other supporters “kidnapped” him by blocking his entrance to the boat on which he was to depart. They then enlisted the support of Archbishop Joseph Alemany in San Francisco and remained firm in their resolve to keep their priest until his superiors changed his appointment and allowed him to stay. Despite his outstanding service and reputation, however, in 1858, Bishop Thaddeus Amat removed him as his vicar general. The prelate also revoked the priestly faculties of González Rubio and his two fellow Franciscans at Santa Barbara, effectively suspending them from public priestly ministry. During the ensuing controversy, Amat even called for the removal of González Rubio and his fellow Franciscans from California. Amat’s accusations directed at the Franciscans included his claims that they permitted moral laxity, fostered superstitious devotions among their parishioners, and incited the people to rebel against his episcopal authority. As the leader of the local Franciscans, González Rubio diplomatically but resolutely protested Amat’s decision on both canonical and moral grounds. The case went to Rome, where Archbishop Alemany and superiors of the Franciscan order emphatically denied all charges against the Santa Barbara Franciscans. Faced with formidable opposition, in 1861, Amat restored the Franciscans’ faculties. Subsequently González Rubio continued his priestly ministrations in California until his death in 1875. Many residents in conquered territories sought to endure as Mexican Catholic faith communities by celebrating and asserting their collective identity through their long-​ standing rituals and devotions. From Texas to California, various Mexican Catholic communities continued to enact established local traditions such as pilgrimages, devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, los pastores (a festive proclamation of the shepherds who worshiped the newborn infant Jesus), Holy Week, Corpus Christi, and established patronal feast days. The persistence of established religious traditions is particularly striking in light of newly arrived Catholic leaders’ attempts to ban, replace, and condemn these traditions. In the face of such efforts, as well as military conquest and occupation, indiscriminate violence and lawlessness, political and economic displacement, rapid demographic change, the erosion of cultural hegemony, and the appointment of Catholic leaders from foreign lands, Mexican Catholic feasts and devotions had a heightened significance. These religious traditions provided an ongoing means of public communal expression, affirmation, and resistance to Anglo-​Americans and other newcomers who criticized or attempted to suppress Mexican residents’ ethnic and religious heritage. Women frequently played a key leadership role in public worship and devotion. In various locales young women served in public processions as the immediate attendants for the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the principal ritual object in annual Guadalupe feast-​ day celebrations. Young women occupied similar places of prominence in processions at Los Angeles for the feasts of the Assumption and Corpus Christi; at Ysleta, Texas, for the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel; and in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, for the feast of St. John the Baptist. The contribution of women in preparing and enacting public religious traditions illuminates what Ana María Díaz-​Stevens calls the “matriarchal core” of Latino Catholicism, that is, women’s exercise of autonomous

22   Timothy Matovina authority in communal devotions despite the patriarchy of institutional Catholicism and Latin American societies. The most renowned lay group that served as the protectors of treasured local traditions was the brotherhoods of Los Hermanos de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno (Brothers of Our Father Jesus the Nazarene), or Penitentes. Penitente brotherhoods evolved in towns and villages of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado well before the US takeover of the area. Their most noticeable function was to commemorate Christ’s passion and death during Lent and, in particular, during Holy Week, although they also provided community leadership and fostered social integration. Organized as separate local entities, Penitente brotherhoods had a leader named the Hermano Mayor (literally “older brother”) and a morada (literally “habitation”) or chapter house where they held meetings and religious devotions. Despite the sharp criticism they often received from outsiders and some Santa Fe archdiocesan officials’ attempts to suppress the brotherhoods and their ritual and devotional practices, the Penitentes (and their female collaborators) continued to provide leadership for prayer and social life in numerous local communities. To be sure, some communities in the Southwest struggled for their very survival; in the process their observance of long-​standing traditions often abated or even ceased. Nonetheless, as Bishop Henry Granjon of Tucson noted in 1902 during his first pastoral visit to Las Cruces, New Mexico, in the Southwest Mexican-​descent Catholic initiatives “to observe their own traditions and customs as they did before the annexation of their lands by the American Union” enabled them to “maintain the unity of the Mexican population and . . . resist, to a certain extent, the invasions of the Anglo-​Saxon race.” The story of Mexican Catholicism in the Southwest after the US-​Mexican war is primarily a tale of initiatives that were part of ethnic Mexicans’ struggle to endure as communities of faith.

Immigrants Following the end of the US Civil War, railroad construction, mining, and agriculture in the regions from Texas to California, and then in Mexico itself, linked the regions economically, creating the conditions for increased migration of Mexican laborers. The Porfirio Díaz regime in Mexico (1876–​1911) promoted economic growth linked to foreign interests, leading to prosperity for some but displacement and migration for others who went to the United States looking for work. Mexican immigration accelerated substantially after the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Intermittent periods of relative calm followed the enactment of the 1917 Mexican Constitution, but spontaneous violence erupted once again in central and western Mexico when President Plutarco Elías Calles enforced and expanded anticlerical articles of that constitution. The resulting guerrilla war, known as the Cristero Rebellion (1926–​1929), drove even more émigrés north to the United States, many fleeing religious persecution. During

Mexican-Descent Catholics   23 the Depression era of the 1930s, Mexican migration all but came to a halt, and in fact deportations created a significant return migration. But the northward flow of Mexicans resumed during World War II, a trend strongly influenced by the infamous guest worker or Bracero Program (1942–​1964), which brought some five million contracted workers north from Mexico, a number of whom stayed or eventually returned to establish homes in the United States. Many undocumented migrants also crossed the Mexican border into the United States. A number of them stayed permanently. After the Bracero Program ended, the number of undocumented workers as well as documented immigrants increased yet further, a trend that has continued to the present. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero Rebellion fostered the expansion of Mexican Catholic parishes in the Southwest by accelerating the existing migration from Mexico. For the first time large numbers also migrated beyond the borderlands region, especially to Midwest destinations where emigres helped establish the first ethnic Mexican parishes in places such as Kansas City, Detroit, Toledo, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. Thereafter the number and geographic spread of the ethnic Mexican population continued. It has been especially pronounced since 1990, as global economic forces helped facilitate the need for workers in locales across the United States, many of which previously had few if any Mexican-​descent residents. The spread of the population coincided with a number of parishes offering Spanish Masses and Spanish-​language ministries for the first time. Today the ethnic Mexican population and the Catholic parishes where they participate extend from Seattle to Boston, from Miami to Alaska. The widespread policy of establishing national or ethnic parishes, which had served a variety of European Catholic immigrant groups during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, began to change by the 1920s. Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago became the first major US prelate to reverse this policy. Mundelein contended that these parishes increased nativist anti-​Catholic sentiment and that the rise of the second generation among many immigrant groups warranted a greater use of English and a more integrationist approach. Soon other bishops followed Mundelein’s lead in seeking both to prohibit new national parishes and “Americanize” existing parishes. Nonetheless, from the World War II era to the present, a number of Mexicans and other Latinos have comprised territorial parishes that in effect are national parishes since their congregations are overwhelmingly Hispanic. Many ethnic Mexicans gravitate to such parishes because they feel more en su casa (at home) in them. These parishes engage people at multiple levels, providing social services and sacraments, English classes and traditional devotions, religious education and legal aid, parenting classes and prayer groups. Ethnic Mexican priest Ezéquiel Sánchez, former director of Hispanic ministry for the Archdiocese of Chicago, noted about one Mexican faith community: “A lot of people are not very welcoming toward Hispanics, and, consequently, Mission Juan Diego ends up being an island of refuge for them. It’s their own place.” Similar dynamics often ensue when ethnic Mexicans are congregated in multicultural rather than national parishes: they establish and support feast-​day celebrations, devotional practices, renewal movements, and parish organizations that enable them to

24   Timothy Matovina formulate and express their Mexican Catholic faith and identities on their own terms. The most prominent feast is the December 12 celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They also celebrate traditions like the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), Good Friday rituals such as public processions for the Way of the Cross, and the posadas, which commemorate the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem where Jesus is born. Like the national parishes of yesteryear, ethnic devotions like these serve both a religious and a social purpose: they foster faith but also provide a sacred ambiance in which Mexican-​descent Catholics can feel at home in a church and society that often appear unfamiliar and distant. Similarly, parish associations like the Guadalupanas, Hijas de María (Daughters of Mary), Santo Nombre (Holy Name Society), and Adoración Noctura (Nocturnal Adoration Society) have provided both spiritual sustenance and organizations that affirm ethnic heritage and a sense of belonging. Over the past six decades, the popularity of these devotional societies has shifted toward renewal movements like the Cursillo de Cristiandad (Brief Course in Christianity), which has had a significance among Mexican-​descent and other Latino Catholics that is impossible to exaggerate. Spanish-​speaking Catholics organized the first Cursillo retreat in the United States at Waco, Texas, in 1957. As a lay-​run movement that trained participants to actively live and spread their Catholic faith, the Cursillo has offered numerous Latinas and Latinos the opportunity to exercise spiritual leadership. One major goal of the Spanish lay leaders who founded the Cursillo was to provide a retreat experience that would correct the deficiencies they perceived in Hispanic popular Catholicism. In practice, however, the Cursillo almost always gave ethnic Mexican Catholics a “turf ” of their own where they could express themselves in their own language, customs, and devotional style. The popularity of Cursillos among Mexican-​descent Catholics is intimately linked to its significance as a means of collective self-​expression. Similarly, the Charismatic Renewal, a movement of Pentecostal-​type prayer and formation for Christian living that emerged among English-​speaking US Catholics in 1967, has provided a means for numerous ethnic Mexicans to form prayer groups and express their faith in their own way. Scholars have deemed the growth of Spanish-​speaking Catholic Charismatics one of the most overlooked and understudied grassroots apostolic movements in the United States. The continuing vitality of the Charismatic Renewal among ethnic Mexicans and other Latinos reveals not just their desire for spiritual renewal but also for ecclesial structures that provide them with a sense of ownership and belonging. Mexican-​descent Catholics’ participation in parish life and organizations since World War II could be deemed the “national parish dynamic.” Consciously or not, like European immigrants who built national parishes, ethnic Mexicans and other Latinos attempt to establish and nurture structures of Catholic life that enable them to move from at best feeling hospitality in someone else’s church to a sense of homecoming in a church that is their own. Their widespread initiatives in activities ranging from feast day celebrations to renewal movements reflect their ongoing desire to stake out their

Mexican-Descent Catholics   25 own turf within US Catholicism, just as Germans, Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Czechs, Ukrainians, and others did previously in their national parishes.

Struggles for Justice Whether entering the United States as enduring communities of faith during US territorial expansion or as émigrés, ethnic Mexicans have long faced the common challenge of adapting to life in a new country. One of their most defining challenges has been confronting the persistent rejection of the dominant society. At a very practical level, the dominant society’s derisive stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes led to discriminatory practices that have been historically debilitating and isolating and have had severe implications for daily life. Mexican-​descent Catholics have often expressed outrage at Euro-​American supremacist attitudes and struggled to defend themselves from a generally aggressive anti-​Mexican attitude in the United States. Both émigrés and the native-​ born have actively combated racism, poverty, and other social maladies. Through their community organizations and activism, which included mutual aid societies, newspapers, labor unions, political organizations, and civil rights groups, they have struggled to ensure dignity, self-​determination, and the right of full participation in US society. Like the struggles of African Americans and other “minority” groups, during the 1960s the activism of ethnic Mexicans increased dramatically. Many called themselves Chicanos and Chicanas, a designation Mexican Americans embraced to express pride in their ethnic heritage and to signal their struggle for justice on behalf of their people. While this activism was most visible to the general public in the efforts of Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers (UFW), it was also evident in predominately Chicano groups like the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), La Raza Unida Party, and the Crusade for Justice. This increased activism, along with the reforms of the worldwide meeting of Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council (1962–​1965), the 1968 Latin American episcopal conference at Medellín, and the inspiration of Latin American liberation theology, influenced many Chicano and other Latino church leaders who consequently initiated efforts for ecclesial and social reform. The expanding Mexican-​descent population and their growing number of leaders and professionals also facilitated activist efforts that have shaped both church and society in the United States since the1960s. At times Mexican-​descent Catholics asserted their rights within their own church, as in 1939 when Mexican parishioners in the San Diego diocese contested Bishop Charles F. Buddy’s decision to remove Spanish priests of the Augustinian Recollects order from two parishes dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, one in San Bernardino and the other in San Diego. After parishioner protests to the prelate and then directly to Pope Pius XII, Bishop Buddy asked several priests to encourage a countermovement. In response, Mexican Catholics at San Bernardino wrote another letter of protest. They insisted that

26   Timothy Matovina they were not “dissidents” as their detractors claimed but “conscientious Catholics” who were “struggling to defend their religious rights.” Though ultimately their efforts did not achieve the desired results, they nonetheless displayed the resolve of ethnic Mexicans to voice their concerns and seek to shape the decisions that shaped the life of their parish. On a more national level, in 1973 two Mexican American sisters, Carmelita Espinoza and María de Jesús Ybarra, publicly denounced the use of Mexican nuns as low-​paid domestic workers in US Catholic institutions, asking rhetorically, “Is it necessary to profess vows to be a waitress or a house maid?” Espinoza and Ybarra spoke as the national coordinators of Las Hermanas (the Sisters). The organization had been founded two years previously through the initiative of Sister Gregoria Ortega, a Victoryknoll Sister and community activist from El Paso, Texas, and Sister Gloria Graciela Gallardo, a Holy Ghost sister from San Antonio who worked as a catechist and community organizer. These two leaders convened fifty sisters at Houston, Texas, in April 1971 and established Las Hermanas. The charter membership declared that the organization’s purpose was “to meet the needs of the Spanish-​speaking people of God, using our unique resources as Spanish-​speaking religious women.” Subsequently a more focused commitment to Latina women emerged, as the organization concentrated its national conferences and projects on issues that Latinas face, such as sexuality, domestic violence, leadership skills, and the empowerment of women. Initially the organization was comprised primarily of Chicanas. Other religious Latina, particularly those of Caribbean heritage, soon joined their Chicana sisters in forming Las Hermanas. By 1975 lay Latinas were also accepted into organizational membership. Las Hermanas thus became the only national Catholic organization of Chicana/​Latina women. Many Catholic organizations strove to promote equality within the church. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mexican Americans founded three of the earliest organizations: Las Hermanas, PADRES (Padres Asociados por los Derechos Religiosos, Educativos, y Sociales, or Priests Associated for Religious, Educational, and Social Rights), and the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC, now the Mexican American Catholic College), which Virgilio Elizondo and other leaders established as a language and pastoral training institute, as well as an advocate for Hispanic ministry in the church. Over the past half century, national Hispanic Catholic organizations have multiplied, all of which encompass the significant involvement and leadership of Mexican-​descent Catholics. Today there are national organizations for Latino deacons, priests, women, diocesan directors of Hispanic ministry, youth, theologians, liturgists, and catechists, among others. Mexican American Catholics were also key leaders in four national Encuentros of Hispanic Catholic leaders from across the United States, which gathered in 1972, 1977, 1985, and 2018 to develop pastoral strategies and advocate for Hispanic ministry. They also played a prominent role in convoking an Encuentro in 2000 that brought together leaders from the various racial and ethnic groups in US Catholicism to engage in a broader process of pastoral planning and collaboration. Mexican American bishop Patricio Flores became the first Hispanic bishop in 1970. More than fifty Hispanics have become Catholics bishops in the United States since then.

Mexican-Descent Catholics   27 Mexican American theologians have reflected critically on the historical and contemporary experience of their people, especially Virgilio Elizondo, who besides serving as the founding president of MACC is also widely regarded as the founding figure of US Latino/​a theologies. Elizondo’s pastoral theological vision is based on his insight that historically Mexican Americans have been externally conquered and oppressed, yet never crushed or dominated. In his preaching, teaching, and writing he outlined two conquests his people have endured: the Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the territories that became New Spain (and later Mexico) and the US conquest of what is now the Southwest. The effects of the second conquest continue in the pressure put on Mexican Americans to assimilate, to abandon the Mexican way for the US “American” way. Despite this pressure, Elizondo perceives in his people a mestizo identity that is neither Mexican nor North American, neither Spanish nor indigenous, but a dynamic mixture of all these root cultures. He enjoins his fellow mestizos not to identify themselves in a negative way as “not Mexican” or “not American” but to claim the positive identity of mestizos who have the advantage of knowing two (or more) cultures. Celebrating their culturally conditioned Mexican Catholic expressions of faith is a powerful means to ritually embrace their mestizo heritage and identity. Elizondo recognizes that living between cultures is often a painful experience that can easily become a source of confusion, rejection, and shame. At the same time, he insists that this mestizo identity entails a calling and mission: it is precisely those who know multiple cultures and have borne the pain of conquest and rejection who can lead the way to build a society in which the divisive barriers between peoples are broken. Elizondo’s theology and pastoral praxis are rooted in his creative reexamination of two foundational faith sources: the image and narrative of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the stories of the Galilean Jesus in the Gospels. In both of these sources Elizondo finds rich treasures for theological reflection on the life and mission of a mestizo people. He encourages his fellow mestizos to embrace their identity and mission by his proclamation of Jesus’s mestizo origins as a Galilean, a borderland reject caught between the Roman occupation force in Palestine and the Jewish temple elite who claimed Galileans were “impure.” Yet it is the mestizo Galilean caught between two cultures who rejects rejection and opens the road to a new Pentecost in which the destructive barriers that separate peoples are removed. Similarly, he states that Guadalupe “is neither an Indian goddess nor a European Madonna; she is something new. She is neither Spanish nor Indian and yet she is both and more. . . . She is the first truly American person and as such the mother of the new generations to come.” Thus Guadalupe provides hope and inspiration for a mestizo people called to create a new future and a new humanity. This Mexican American mission to struggle for justice is exemplified in the faith-​ based activism of Cesar Chavez, arguably the most renowned figure in Chicano history. Born near Yuma, Arizona, he moved with his family to California in 1939. There he followed in his parents’ footsteps, laboring as a farm worker in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1952, Chavez began organizing with the Community Service Organization (CSO) at San Jose, California, where his family lived when they were not working the fields. He was deeply influenced by his training in community organizing and Catholic social

28   Timothy Matovina teaching, as well as the faith he nurtured and expressed in frequent Mass attendance, his experience of Cursillo, spiritual fasts, the discipline of nonviolent protest, and devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. During the 1960s, he collaborated with Dolores Huerta to establish the National Farm Workers Association (later known as the United Farm Workers), the first union to secure contracts and official recognition from California growers. The union’s significance extended far beyond the fields, as the efforts to gain farm workers’ rights helped ignite the Chicano struggle in many other areas of church and society. In various towns and cities across the country, significant numbers of ethnic Mexican Catholics have participated in local faith-​based community organizations. National networks like the Pacific Institute for Community Organization (PICO, now called Faith in Action) and the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) staff many of these organizations. The most renowned of the local faith-​based community organizations is Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), an IAF-​affiliated organization in San Antonio. Mexican-​descent Catholics leaders like founding president Andrés Sarabia, professional organizer Ernie Cortés, and priests such as Edmundo Rodríguez and Albert Benavides collaborated in the 1974 effort to establish COPS among six ethnic Mexican Catholic parishes on San Antonio’s west side. Their first major issue was the horrendous drainage and frequent flooding in their neighborhoods, which had caused school closings, accidents, damaged homes, impassable roads, bridge collapses, a dearth of business establishments, even deaths. When COPS members discovered that many drainage projects had actually been authorized in bond issues passed as far back as 1945, they filled city hall during a council meeting to voice their outrage. Stunned by the crowd and the overwhelming evidence presented, Mayor Charles Becker ordered the city manager to devise a drainage project implementation plan. COPS then took the lead in passing a $46.8 million bond issue for fifteen west side drainage projects. Led primarily by Mexican American women leaders like Beatrice Gallego, Carmen Badillo, Beatice Cortés, Sonia Hernández, Patricia Ozuna, and Virginia Rámirez, since its founding the organization has achieved a series of major infrastructure improvements in primarily low-​income and working-​class neighborhoods, as well as significant advances in community issues like educational reform, job training, economic development, and living wages. Ethnic Mexican Catholics have been involved in activism for immigrants and their families, particularly with the growth and dispersion of the immigrant population across the country since 1990. Beginning in 2002, the Asociación Tepeyac de New York organized for over a decade the annual Carrera Internacional de la Antorcha Guadalupana (International Guadalupan Torch Run), an event that linked Guadalupe to the struggles and rights of immigrants. Over a two-​to three-​month period, runners relayed a torch and the image of Guadalupe nearly 3,000 miles from the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City; up Mexico’s eastern seaboard; across the US border into Texas; through communities in the southern United States; past the White House; and then to New York City, where it arrived at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the Guadalupe feast day celebration. Thousands of runners participated each year and were received

Mexican-Descent Catholics   29 in churches and community centers for local celebrations along the way. Runners wore shirts with messages like those declaring themselves “mensajeros de un pueblo dividido por la frontera” (messengers of a people divided by the border). Leaders like María Zúñiga, the first female capitana (captain) for the torch run, attested that “we go out to take her message like the Indian Juan Diego [the native to whom Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared in 1531] . . .[we] struggle in search of a more just and dignified life, where we can walk together as a great human community.” Archbishop José Gomez, a Mexican immigrant who is currently the archbishop of Los Angeles, was elected vice president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops just weeks after the election of President Donald Trump. On the eve of the presidential inauguration in January 2017, Gomez gave a keynote address in which he proclaimed that “people do not cease to be human—​they do not cease to be our brothers and sisters—​just because they have an irregular immigration status.” He went on to add that “tonight—​in this city and in immigrant neighborhoods all across this country—​ there is a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of anger because our new president campaigned with harsh rhetoric about foreigners and sweeping promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.” Gomez observed that more immigrants had been deported under President Barack Obama than any previous administration, and stated that “we know that both political parties are exploiting the immigration issue for their own purposes.” He avowed that building walls “won’t solve anything” and asserted the principle of Catholic social teaching that family unification is a necessary principle for any humane immigration policy. Today Mexican immigration and the ongoing struggles of Mexican-​descent Catholics show no sign of diminishment. An expanding Mexican and Latino population is part of larger demographic shifts within US Catholicism. The US Catholic Church is no longer an overwhelmingly immigrant church, as it was a century ago at the end of the great period of European immigration (1820–​1920), nor is it solely an “Americanized” church. Rather, it is a church largely run by middle-​class, European-​descent Catholics with growing numbers of Latino, Asian, and some African immigrants, along with sizeable contingents of native-​born Latino and African American Catholics and some Native Americans. Mexican-​descent Catholics do not just add another chapter to the general history of US Catholicism, but a lens through which to examine significant components of that history such as its origins, westward expansion, ongoing immigration, and the struggles of non-​European groups for dignity and justice.

Bibliography Badillo, David A. Latinos and the New Immigrant Church. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Dahm, Charles W. Parish Ministry in a Hispanic Community. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2004. Díaz-​Stevens, Ana María. “The Saving Grace: The Matriarchal Core of Latino Catholicism.” Latino Studies Journal 4 (September 1993): 60–​78.

30   Timothy Matovina Dolan, Jay P., and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds. Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900–​1965. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. Elizondo, Virgilio. Galilean Journey: The Mexican-​ American Promise. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983. Elizondo, Virgilio. Guadalupe: Mother of the New Creation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997. Gálvez, Alyshia. Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Immigrants. New York: New York University Press, 2010. García, Mario T. Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. León, Luis D. The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Martínez, Richard Edward. PADRES: The National Chicano Priest Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Matovina, Timothy. Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio from Colonial Origins to the Present. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Matovina, Timothy, and Gerald E. Poyo, eds. ¡Presente! U.S. Latino Catholics from Colonial Origins to the Present. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000. Medina, Lara. Las Hermanas: Chicana/​Latina Religious-​Political Activism in the U.S. Catholic Church. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. Nabhan-​Warren, Kristy. The Cursillo Movement in America: Catholics, Protestants, and Fourth-​ Day Spirituality. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Treviño, Roberto R. The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-​Catholicism in Houston. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Wood, Richard. Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Chapter 2

Cuban-​D escent C at h ol i c s Michelle Gonzales Maldonado

Cuban Americans are the second largest Latino/​a immigrant group in the United States. In the first forty years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, around a million Cubans immigrated to the United States. The Cuban American population is distinctive from other Latino/​a groups and internally diverse. They are distinctive in light of the historical events that led to their mass exodus to the United States and the manner in which they were received by the US government. They are diverse, given the historical moment of their arrival and the manner in which this shapes their political, religious, and social worldviews. The first wave of Cubans that left after Castro’s Revolution self-​identify and are identified as exiles. This group cites political reasons as their primary reason for leaving the island, and the Revolution had severe economic implications for many. A significant portion of them were educated, racially white, and professional. The second significant wave is associated with the 1980 Mariel boatlift, where a working class, more racially diverse, and younger population entered the United States. A third wave of Cubans, much less concentrated, consists of those who have left the island after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. These Cubans were raised in post-​Revolutionary Cuba, and their lives are marked by the partnership and then fall of the Soviet Union. While this group was not necessarily free of political motivations for leaving the island, their motivations are more often economic. This first wave of immigrants received an unprecedented status by the US government. “With the revolution occurring in the throes of the US-​Soviet contest for global domination, Washington initially turned the first émigrés into poster people for the virtues of capitalism and democracy over Communism. Cubans became the most privileged immigrant group.”1 The US government highlighted these immigrants as symbolic of the evils of communism, robbed of everything and forced to flee their homeland. While these are not the first Cubans to arrive in the United States, they will become misleadingly definitive for US constructions of Cuban American identity. The popular image of Cuban Americans as rich, white political refugees living in exile from their homeland is one that has suited their political, economic, and social advancement in the United States. This narrative begins in 1959. However, this history and identity

32   Michelle Gonzales Maldonado represents only one part of the Cuban American story and a segment of the population. Even narrowing the history of Cubans to Florida, one finds a significant Cuban population in the Tampa area during the late nineteenth century, a population that was overwhelmingly black. The first wave of twentieth-​century Cuban exiles would come to have a definitive impact on Catholicism in the United States. While Cuba as a whole has been notoriously known as one of the most unchurched countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, this changed due to the active role taken by the Diocese of Miami in Cuban support and resettlement. This will not be without its controversies, for the manner in which the Church approached outreach to the Cuban exile community was not without controversy. Nonetheless, Cubans Catholics here in the United States are much more ecclesially oriented than their counterparts on the island. Yet Cuban and Cuban American Catholicism cannot be understood in a vacuum and must be contextualized in light of the history and interplay of religions (particularly Afro-​Cuban religions) in Cuba and in Miami.

The Catholic Church in Cuba The history of the Catholic Church in Cuba is ambiguous. Historically the Church had close ties to the Spanish Crown and was complicit in the slave system. Yet certain sectors of the colonial Church offered a prophetic voice against the exploitation of indigenous and African peoples on the island. While a minority within the Church, a handful of leaders advocated for a more just religion. The Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, the great liberator of indigenous peoples, was converted to his cause at the banks of the river Arimao in Cuba. At the same time, the Church in Cuba opposed independence from Spain and the clergy were patrons of the Spanish Crown. The Crown monitored the actions of the clergy and controlled clergy expeditions to the Americas, the activities of congregations and religious orders, and the internal governance of dioceses. The Church’s role in the Americas and Caribbean as a whole must be framed in light of the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim governance. The narrative of the spread of global Catholicism involved not only the Americas but also the reclaiming of European lands. This must be linked to the complicity of the Catholic Church in the trans-​Atlantic slave trade and the many ways in which the Church benefited from slavery throughout the Caribbean. Of all the Spanish colonies, Cuba became the largest importer of slaves.2 By the mid-​ nineteenth century the number of slaves imported to Cuba reached close to 500,000. According to the 1841 census, the entire population of Cuba was 1,007,624 people: 418,291 whites, 152,838 freed blacks, and 436,495 slaves.3 These figures reveal that for a period of time the black population outnumbered the white one on the island. Despite Spain’s abolishment of slave trafficking in 1835, approximately 190,000–​240,000 slaves were illegally transported to Cuba between 1840 and 1867.4 Slaves from more than twenty

Cuban-Descent Catholics   33 different nations and four African regions were significantly represented on the island.5 In 1880, the law abolishing slavery in Cuba was passed, although the total abolition of slavery did not occur until 1886. The mid-​eighteenth century marks a turning point in the island’s slave trade. From the latter half of the eighteenth century to the abolition of slavery, one finds a sharp increase in the importation of slaves on the island. This marks the beginning of what historians and ethnographers Jorge and Isabel Castellanos label as the plantation era in Cuba, when the sugar and tobacco industries began to thrive.6 As historian Franklin W. Knight explains, “Over the years from 1763–​1838, Cuba changed from an underpopulated, underdeveloped settlement of small towns, cattle ranches, and tobacco farms to a community of large sugar and coffee plantations.”7 As Cuba became the world’s leading producer of sugar, its economy became entirely dependent on slave labor. The extensive slave population contributed the enormous influence of Africans on the development of Cuban identity and culture as Cuba moves from being a colonial outpost to a nation independent from Spain. The strength of the plantation economy had a direct impact on the role and influence of Catholicism within colonial Cuba. The Catholic Church did little to diminish African religious faith, for the clergy did not have the time and interest in evangelizing the slave population. Moreover, members of the clergy failed to act on behalf of the African population and were complicit in the many abuses inflicted on the enslaved plantation workers. They were overwhelming lax and superficial in their commitment to evangelize the slave population. In addition, there were not enough priests on the island, particularly in areas that had large concentrations of slave populations. In 1846, Matanzas, for example, had one priest for every 2,707 slaves. Clergy neglected the rural slaves, for parishes catered to the white urban population. “In 1860, of the 779 clergymen ministering to a population of 1,396,530 (a ratio of 1:2,000) more than 50 percent (401) lived in Havana.”8 Clergy were primarily in urban centers while the majority of slaves were on plantations, where owners discouraged any disruption to the workday, including religious services. Due to the clergy shortage by the nineteenth century, the influence of the institutional Church had deteriorated significantly. And the more insidious problem ran deeper than the shortage of clergy. It was the detachment of the vast majority of clergy from the everyday sufferings of African slaves, and their broadband failure to apply a Catholic ethic and theology to African women and men. Yet some leaders in the Church made their mark on the intellectual and political construction of Cuban national identity. Nineteenth-​century priest and intellectual leader Felix Varela is credited for introducing Cubans to their own sense of consciousness distinct from the colonial mindset. According to Miguel de la Torre, “He taught Cubans that in order to assume the responsibility of their existence, Cubans must learn to think with their own mind, apart from how Spaniards taught Cubans to think.”9 Writing from exile, Varela is a fundamental figure in the development of Cuban identity and consciousness which is of the Americas and not governed by the Spanish colonial mindset. Varela’s vision, however, was of a white Cuba, and he did not address the role of slaves from Cuban national identity.

34   Michelle Gonzales Maldonado In its weakened state, the clergy targeted African religious practices, all the while complicit in the slave system. Historian Johannes Merier highlights that “In fact, the church benefited from slavery. The slaves were employed as domestics in the residences of clergy, they worked in the construction of cathedrals and covenants and cultivated the land of the property of the convents.”10 Ultimately the Catholic Church did not find any contradictions between slavery and the gospel. The clergy was more interested in the question of administering the sacraments to slaves than the institution of slavery itself. While the Church attempted to institutionally regulate the mixture of African and Spanish Christian worldviews, it ultimately failed due to its own neglect of the spiritual and material welfare of slaves coupled with their sheer numbers on the island. For these reasons the Catholic Church in Cuba is often stereotyped as one of the weakest in the Spanish Americas. Citing nineteenth-​century Bishop of Havana Ramòn Fernández Piérola, Lisandro Pérez concludes, “The Church never had as profound an impact on Cuba as it had on the rest of the Spanish colonies in the New World.”11 The historical weakness of the Church is coupled by the growth of Protestantism on the island in the twentieth century and the continued presence of Afro-​Cuban religions despite their continued marginalization. Independence from Spain created an openness to other churches on the island that was impossible when Cuba was a Spanish colony. However, with the exodus of Cubans to Miami after Castro’s revolution, the institutional Church takes on a much more public and central role for the Diaspora community.

The 1959 Revolution and Its Aftermath: Cuban American Catholicism While the Cuban Catholic Church initially supported Castro’s revolution, resonating with its promise of reform on the island, this quickly changed as ecclesial leaders became critical of government actions and the growing alliance between the Cuban government and the Soviet Union. The Soviet-​Castro union led to the persecution of the Church which intensified after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, for the Church was seen as counterrevolutionary and complicit in insurrectionist movements. A major move by the new Cuban government was to nationalize the schools, thus effectively dismantling what had up to then been a government-​sanctioned K–​12 Catholic education on the island. Before the nationalization of schools in 1961, Catholic theology and rituals were taught in schools, not parishes, as schools were the core of Catholic education. In the United States, the Catholic parish, not the school, was the center of Catholic identity for diasporic Cubans. In a similar fashion after the revolution, foreign Protestant foreign missionaries and religious schools also departed from the island.12 This will be one of many things that make the Cuban Roman Catholic experience of exile distinctive: “Cuban clergy accompanied Cuban laity into exile. In just one month, September 1961,

Cuban-Descent Catholics   35 more than one hundred priests and some eighty religious sisters from Cuba arrived to give the Church of Miami the critical clerical leadership needed to build the future.”13 Castro’s 1961 declaration that Cuba was an atheist state cemented the precarious future of Christianity, and religion as a whole, on the island. The flood of Cubans arriving in Miami in the early 1960s posed a distinctive challenge to the local diocese which had been established in 1958. “From the very start the church played a major role in the welcoming, integrating, and resettling of Cuban refugees. In fact, of the seven hundred thousand Cubans who entered the United States between 1961–​1973, the Catholic Church resettled 70 percent of them.”14 The Cuban exile was instrumental in the creation of the Catholic Church in Miami. Prior to the arrival of Cuban exiles, Protestantism was the dominant Christian expression in Miami.15 The Diocese of Miami, created in 1958, was recategorized as an archdiocese by 1968. Thus, while the local Miami Church played an instrumental role in the resettlement of Cuban exiles, it was the exiles themselves who were instrumental in the establishment and growth of the Catholic Church in Miami. A crucial figure who was instrumental in the Diocese’s response to the arrival of Cubans was Bishop (and eventual Archbishop) Coleman F. Carroll. Carroll is remembered as playing a fundamental role in welcoming and also creating a structure of social services for Cubans. The Diocese provided significant financial support assisting Cubans. In 1959, Carroll established The Centro Hispano Católico, founded just as Cubans began to arrive in Miami and helping hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees through social outreach. Carroll lobbied in Tallahassee and Washington for the creation of the Cuban Refugee Program in 1961, which offered financial support and resettlement services. Yet underlying this social support was an assimilationist approach, making the Archbishop the subject of criticism. He placed Spanish-​speaking priests in parishes throughout the diocese, hoping to encourage them to learn the English language. He also encouraged the Cuban population to integrate into the broader Miami church. He did soften on this assimilationist approach, however, establishing the Church of San Juan Bosco in 1963, which became a national parish for Cubans, and the building of La Ermita de la Caridad, a shrine dedicated to La Caridad del Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba. Under Carroll’s guidance the Diocese donated the land for its construction. St. John Bosco Church provided classes in Spanish on Cuban Catholicism and culture. Through these social programs the Church sought to educate and institutionalize the Cuban American population and downplay the role of popular religion among them. “In Miami, Carroll lost popularity during the 1970s among many Cuban Catholics as he presided over, but seemed to resent, the ‘Cubanization’ of his archdiocese.”16 The Cuban American community was appreciative of Carroll’s support while simultaneously rejecting his assimilationist policy.17 This tension of maintaining one’s national origin while being the model US citizens that the government claimed them to be will be one that Cuban Americans will negotiate throughout the decades. In addition to facilitating Cuban resettlement, the Miami Church occupied a central role in the Unaccompanied Children’s Program, Operation Pedro Pan. Monsignor Brian Walsh, director of the Catholic Welfare Bureau, began bringing children by plane

36   Michelle Gonzales Maldonado to Miami, where they were cared for by the Church until they could be reunited with their families. The Program was inspired in part by fears and rumors that Cuban children were going to be taken to the Soviet Union. Operation Pedro Pan was supported by the US government but administered by the Church. Over fourteen thousand children were brought from Cuba, many of whom were reunited with family here in the United States. When the numbers of children increased, the diocese established five youth camps and some children ended up across the country. Many of the children who did not have family in the United States were placed in group homes and foster care across the country. In addition to leading Pedro Pan, Walsh also notably rejected Carroll’s assimilationist policies. “He pushed for more Hispanic parish administrators, promoted Hispanic vocations and the establishment of a bilingual major seminary, opened the diocese to more Hispanic religious communities, and generally initiated a move away from the bishop’s assimilationist policy.”18 Walsh was not the only ecclesial leader that pushed an anti-​assimilationist agenda. Father John L. Patrick was also a key clergy leader who supported the Cuban American community, defending them against Anglo-​ American bias against them. As Gerald E. Poyo asserts, “Fitzpatrick emphasized that though overall Cuban refugees are not well ‘churched,’ they possessed strong religious values and a sense of community.”19 Patrick’s statements highlight the fact that these new arrivals were not always well received by the local Church. Education and lay movements will also become instrumental aspects of the institutional Church’s role in the development of Cuban American Catholicism. In 1961, Belen Jesuit School opened its transplanted doors in Miami. The school, along with the aforementioned San Juan Bosco Church, became an epicenter for the exile community. Lay Christian organizations played a significant role for Cuban exile Catholics, at times surpassing the importance of their local parishes. These include la Agrupación Católica Universitaria, the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano, and the Cursillos de Cristianidad. The cursillos were retreats that proved to be especially popular among US Latinos/​as more broadly as they focused on enhancing the individual lay Catholic’s spiritual life.20 These lay movements become instrumental in keeping Cuban families connected to the institutional Church. The South Eastern Pastoral Institute (SEPI) was founded in 1979 to assist in Latino/​a Pastoral Ministry through theological, pastoral, and leadership training for lay and youth leaders.

Cuban American Catholic Identity The Cuban American community is marked by certain political and cultural factors that distinguish it from other racial-​ethnic minorities in the United States. The conditions that brought their exodus in the second half of the twentieth century set them apart from other Latino/​as. Unlike Mexican Americans, many of whom had the US border cross them and not vice versa (referring to the US acquisition of Mexican lands in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo), or Puerto Ricans, who today share the

Cuban-Descent Catholics   37 dubious honor of residing on an island that is a US colony, many Cubans arrived in the United States as political refugees. Cuba and the United States have always shared an ambiguous and rocky history. While in US history classes one reads of the late nineteenth-​ century Spanish-​American war, in Cuba one learns of the Cuban and Puerto Rican wars of independence from Spanish colonialism in which the United States intervened. As a result of this intervention, the United States received Puerto Rico in the Treaty of Paris. At the turn of the century, the United States passed the Platt Amendment, a document that allowed the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs at its discretion. The heavy US influence on Cuba’s economy and politics, coupled with the corruption of Fulgencio Batista’s government, contributed directly to Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution. The first half of the twentieth century is an era that is fundamental for understanding Cuban American constructions of race, religion, and national identity. This time period marked the birth of this nation, a time where Cubans struggled to distance themselves from Spanish colonialism and forge an independent understanding of themselves as a people. The legacy of slavery left many unresolved tensions among Cubans. Given the substantial participation of blacks in the independence movement, Cubans mistakenly assumed that with the departure of Spanish colonial authority came the end of racism within the nation. This was sadly not the case. Race became an unresolved category for the Cuban people and its connection with nationhood contentious. The future of Cuba was equated with whites, whereas blacks were seen as hindering the nation’s progress. The 1959 revolution and its aftermath made some progress in terms of combating racism, but it is far from a nonissue in Cuba. Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans, however, faced a very different plight. With the mass departure of Cubans, primarily white, to the United States, a construction of Cuban American identity was forged that named themselves as a white community in the United States. This focus on whiteness is far different from other Latin American groups, who are seen as brown or people of color. This construction of Cuban whiteness not only sought to gain racial privilege within the dominant culture but also erased the diversity of the Cuban community. The Cuban exile community in the United States was different demographically from the larger Cuban population upon their arrival. There was, for example, a significantly larger amount of white-​collar employees and professionals. Their racial make-​up was also whiter than the population of the island. This is in sharp contrast to the later wave of refugees who arrived in the 1980 Mariel boatlift. In Mariel, Castro intentionally allowed a different demographic of Cubans to leave the island. These immigrants were poorer and included a higher percentage of blacks and mulatos. They were rejected by the white-​identifying immigrants. These Cubans “threatened the community’s image as ‘the cream of the crop’ of Cuban society.”21 It is also significant to highlight that the Cuban exile community has a history of tensions with the African American community in Miami. Many blacks in Miami felt these newly arrived refugees were given unfair access to employment and public spending. The animosity between these two communities led to violent riots in the 1960s and 1980s. By the mid-​1990s almost a million and a half

38   Michelle Gonzales Maldonado Cubans had arrived in the United States, and over half of Miami’s population was of Latin American descent, with the majority being Cuban. Often when one refers to the Cuban American community in the United States, particularly in Miami, the term “the Cuban exile community” is used. This is an accurate designator for a certain portion of the Cuban American population, those who left Cuba as political refugees after Castro’s revolution. This community understands themselves as living in exile from their homeland. A growing number of the Cuban American community, however, is not in exile, but was instead born and raised in the United States. These are the children of exiles, that generation that feels ties to Cuba (some stronger than others) yet does not self-​define as an exile from his or her homeland. For many of these Cuban Americans, however, given the close-​knit nature of the Cuban community in the United States, they remain intimately influenced by Cuban culture, even though some have never visited the island. Their ties to Cuba are for some even stronger than those to the United States. As Gisele M. Requena thoughtfully writes: “This schizophrenic state may not seem strange, but this is what it means to me to be an American-​born Cuban. To deny that Cuba is my homeland is to deny a part of myself, just as rejecting anything American would be crazy. And instead of becoming more Americanized, the part of me that is Cuban gets stronger every day. It’s as though you can take me out of Miami, but you can’t take Miami out of me.”22 Requena’s quote highlights several significant aspects of this generation: the ability to claim two lands as one’s homeland; the power and presence of the Cuban American community in Miami; and the ability to coexist with two cultures within the United States. Linked to both generations’ self-​understanding is a fluid construction of nationhood that is not limited by one’s presence on the island. Thomas Tweed notes that for Cubans, nation does not refer to a geographic territory, for exile Cubans consider themselves part of the Cuban nation. As tweed asserts, “Nation, in this context, becomes an imaginative construct, even more than is usually the case. The exile group’s identity is created, not given; dynamic, not fixed. Relying on memories of the past and hopes for the future exiles define themselves.”23 Nation ceases to be a territory. Instead, nation is understood as a community, a cultural and moral community that encompasses Cuban Americans and certain sectors of the Cuban population. The Cuban nation thus includes Cuban exiles, their children and grandchildren, and those members of the Cuban community that are seen as oppressed and marginalized by Castro’s government. Most often, it is the exile generation, those with more political ties and a stronger voice, that construct the public identity of the Cuban community. Too often, the political concerns of the exile community dominate the Cuban American landscape, and their views are held to encompass the entire community. When we turn to religion, the most prominent symbol of exile and Cuban American religion is La Caridad del Cobre. La Caridad began as a local devotion among a community of slaves in the seventeenth century and has grown over the years to become the national patroness of the island. She is revered both on the island and among Cubans in the diaspora. Shrines to her exist in Cuba and in Miami. Throughout Cuban history the image and story of La Caridad has been vastly transformed within Cuban mythology,

Cuban-Descent Catholics   39 so much so that the narrative and iconography surrounding her today differ sharply from historical accounts of her actual appearance. La Caridad that exists in the minds of present-​day Cubans and Cuban Americans is not quite La Caridad of the seventeenth century. Much of this transformation occurred during Cuba’s wars of independence from Spain, during which she rose in prominence as a national symbol. La Caridad, therefore, is not only a symbol of Cuban identity; she represents the Cuban process of identity making, Cubans’ self-​construction as they articulated a distinctive identity from Spain. If one looks at a prayer card or statue of La Caridad del Cobre in a Cuban American’s home in this day and age, one is usually confronted with a representation of Mary looming large over three men in a rowboat. She is dressed most often in blue, and carrying the baby Jesus she stands enormous over the three helpless men. Her skin is a light brown. The sea is stormy, with waves crashing over the boat. The man in the middle, of African descent, is holding his hands in prayer. The two other men, one Caucasian (Spanish) and the other of ambiguous racial descent, clasp their oars. In Cuban mythology, these men are known as the “three Juanes.” If one were to interpret this image at first glance, it would seem as if Mary appeared over these three men during a great storm and they are pleading for her aid. La Caridad did appear before three men in a rowboat on the Bay of Nipe, yet she was a statue floating in the water, and it was not during a storm. The men were not all named Juan and none of them were Caucasian. The actual date of this discovery is contested, though scholars today agree that it occurred in the first fifteen years of the seventeenth century.24 The earliest account of La Caridad is a 1687 interview of Juan Moreno, an African slave who claimed to be one of the three who discovered the statue.25 Moreno recounts that he and two indigenous brothers, Rodrigo de Hoyos and Juan de Hoyos, were searching for salt in the Bay of Nipe one early morning. In the distance they saw an object that they first mistook for a bird. Instead, they discovered a statue floating in the water with the words “Yo soy la Virgen de la Caridad” (“I am the Virgin of Charity”) attached to it. They gathered the statue with them and quickly turned it in to Spanish authorities. Devotion to La Caridad spread, at first among slaves in the region of El Cobre. At the time of her appearance, Cobre was primarily a copper-​mining community of slaves. The slaves, however, were royal slaves and were the direct property of the Crown, meaning that the King of Spain owned the mines and the slaves. Royal slaves were primarily involved in the construction and operation of the Crown’s projects. La Caridad eventually became the object of national devotion. With La Caridad’s growing prominence as the official patroness of Cuba, however, her narrative is altered to accommodate the broader Cuban population. The origin of the different transformations of the three figures in the narrative remains unknown. What is clear, however, is that the story and the iconography surrounding Cachita, as Cubans affectionately call her, is whitened as her prominence among all Cubans grows. La Caridad was transformed into the symbol of Cuban nationalism during the Cuban struggles against colonial rule. The nationalist fervor associated with La Caridad has not disappeared in the Diaspora but has been transformed to mirror the political

40   Michelle Gonzales Maldonado consciousness of the Cuban American community. La Ermita has become a powerful site of diasporic nationalism. Thus, La Caridad comes to symbolize a preferential option for the exile community, one that has been wrongly forced to leave Cuba. They are thus constructed as the marginalized for whom La Caridad opts preferentially. As the pamphlet detailing the history of the shrine outlines, La Caridad entered into exile with the Cuban people who were escaping Cuba’s totalitarian government. She stands in solidarity with this community. What is not explained, however, is the original image’s continued presence in Cuba and how the two relate to each other. In a manner resonant with the transformation of her historical narrative and presence throughout the history of Cuba is yet another rewriting of her history by Cubans in the United States. With all these twists and turns, however, there remains the core devotion and figure. Devotion to La Caridad also reveals the interplay between Afro-​Cuban religions and Catholicism. African religions have been present in Cuba since the first arrival of slaves. These religions were able to thrive, albeit secretly, throughout the island. One manner in which African religions survived is by hiding their practices under the guise of Catholic devotions. We see this in La Regla de Ocha popularly known as Santería. At the center of Santería are practitioners’ relationships with the orishas, superhuman beings that mediate our relationship with the sacred. This Afro-​Cuban practice of associating or masking an African deity behind a Catholic image, dates to the colonial era. La Caridad del Cobre is associated with the orisha Oshún. There was an entire pantheon of orishas associated with Catholic saints. Thus, slaves would appear to be venerating St. Lazarus, when in actuality they were worshipping the African orisha Bablú Ayé. La Ermita de La Caridad was inaugurated in December 1973 and is the sixth largest Catholic pilgrimage site in the United States. The story of this shrine is one of the local Catholic diocese addressing the needs of a minority population and a clergy’s attempts to institutionalize popular devotions. The arrival of the statue in Miami is a dramatic story of mythic proportions. On September 8, 1961, her feast day, a statue of La Caridad, which was a duplicate of the original, arrived in Miami from Havana. As the story goes, the statue was smuggled out of Cuba in a suitcase with the help of the Panamanian embassy in Cuba. As noted by Thomas A. Tweed, the scholar in the United States who has done the most substantial research on La Caridad and her role in the Cuban American community, this marks the beginning of her life in exile. Also, the conspiracy to smuggle her out of Cuba, coupled with the passionate reception she received by the 25,000 Cubans awaiting her arrival for a rosary and mass in her honor, demonstrates that devotion to her did not begin in 1961. Five years later, Archbishop Carroll requested a shrine be built in her honor and donated diocesan lands. Tweed’s scholarship centers on La Ermita and the notion that religious identity is a dynamic and hybrid process. For him this shrine is a site of struggle, where the Cuban American community negotiates a Catholic identity shaped by the intersection of Spanish and African religiosity. The clergy are at the forefront, striving to define authentic Catholicism against the influences of Afro-​Cuban religions. The purpose of the shrine was evangelization. However, Tweed notes, many lay visitors have resisted

Cuban-Descent Catholics   41 this effort by the clergy to evangelize nominal Catholics. This “nominal Catholicism” is characterized, in the clergy’s eyes, by ignorance about the true nature of Catholicism. In Tweed’s interview with Bishop Agustín A. Román, the former pastor of the shrine, the Bishop stated that the largest problem within the Cuban American community was evangelization. Román divides the community into three categories, from smallest to largest: the liturgical community, nominal Catholics, and those who were not “officially” Catholic. This is what leads to the confusion of the saints with the orishas. The shrine is an instrument to rectify nominal Catholic’s “false” association of Caridad with Oshun. Bishop Román also views the shrine as a tool to correct centuries of inadequate evangelization on the island. Cubans on the island, in Román’s mind, were insufficiently liturgical, never closely linked to the institutional church. “So the clergy hoped to use the Virgin to reach the unchurched masses, especially but not exclusively those influenced by Santería. Once they got their attention, they could begin to ‘catechize,’ as another Cuban American exiled priest told me.”26 Strong devotions to Our Lady of Charity, as well as other popular religious practices, are a result of Cubans’ lack of historic institutional ties. La Caridad is a shared symbol around which unchurched and churched Cubans gather and construct a Cuban national identity in exile. Cuban American religion is a product of its Cuban heritage, but the US context has shaped it to have its own particular religious expressions. Cubans here in the States are a much more ecclesially oriented community than their island counterparts. This is in large part to the aggressive outreach of the Archdiocese of Miami upon their arrival in the States. La Caridad del Cobre has been transformed to Our Lady of Exile, a diasporic religious symbol that accompanies Cubans in their exile. She remains a central element of Cuban lived religion. All Cuban Americans are not “churched,” however, and the Catholic Church in Miami is particularly adamant about combating any use of Catholicism in Afro-​Cuban religions, and it has contributed to the vilification of religions such as Santería in the United States. The role of Catholicism within Santería is also a contested subject among santeros themselves. Cuban American religious transformations, however, while distinctive, are ultimately rooted in their Cuban roots and one cannot stray too far from the island in order to study the Diasporic religions found here in the United States.

Cuban American Catholics Today When the United States announced a normalization of its relationship with Cuba in 2014, waves of shock and disbelief echoed across the globe. Once both Presidents Obama and Castro made their respective announcements, an equally shocking feature of their negotiations was revealed: the prominent role of the Vatican and Pope Francis. While attentive observers of religion on the island have noted Catholicism’s increasing public presence since Raul Castro’s presidency, the foundations for the Church’s role in this negotiation were laid in the early 1990s. While many see these inroads as revolutionary,

42   Michelle Gonzales Maldonado the history of the Castro family with the Catholic Church and the Church as a political actor in Cuba is a much longer and complex story. Fidel Castro himself was educated in Jesuit schools. It is perhaps at Belén High School where he received his first taste of class consciousness, scorned by his elite classmates for his provincial background. The Jesuits who educated Castro were not the liberation theologians often chronicled in 1960s and 1970s accounts of the Catholic Church in Latin America, but instead Spanish-​born priests with a strong anti-​fascist and anti-​communist message. The isolation of the Catholic Church under Fidel Castro’s rule led to its isolation in the Americas, remaining sheltered from the groundbreaking reforms of Vatican II and the revolutionary insights of liberation theology. While this can be interpreted as a rejection of his Catholic education, the 1985 collection of interviews by Frei Betto, Fidel and Religion, reveals a much more complex understanding of Catholicism and religion in general. Inroads are seen in 1991 when atheism was removed as a requirement for membership in the Communist Party. The constitution is then amended to redefine Cuba as a secular versus an atheist state. Fidel also begins to speak more publicly about religion. In a 1998 speech he aligns the teachings of Jesus with those of his own, claiming, “If instead of being born and elaborating his ideas when he did, Christ had been born in these times, you can be sure—​or at least I am—​that his preaching would not have differed much from the ideas or the preaching that we revolutionaries of today try to bring the world.”27 While this new openness to religion has been praised as symbolic of growing tolerance, one cannot help but be suspicious of the political gain found in these actions, notably the economic aid from the United States that has been able to enter into the island under the umbrella of religion. The turning point for the Roman Catholic Church’s engagement with the island was John Paul II’s 1998 visit. His celebration of the first mass on the Plaza de la Revolución represented the public reconciliation of the Church and the Cuban government. As a result of this trip, Castro made Christmas a national holiday. Benedict XVI’s 2012 visit was overwhelmingly interpreted as supportive of the Archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega’s positioning of the Church as a political player and advocate for human rights on the island. His visit revealed a Catholic Church where parishes offer education and community outreach for Cubans, where Caritas is engaged in relief work, and where there is an increase in church attendance. Raul Castro’s presidency has marked a new era in Cuba–​Catholic relations. The 2010 opening of a Roman Catholic Seminary in Havana was the first of its kind since the 1959 revolution. Raul Castro was in attendance, as was Cardinal Jaime Ortega and Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski, forming a symbolic trinity of a new era in Cuban, Cuban American, and Catholic relations. After Pope Benedict XVI’s visit in 2011, Castro granted the Pontiff ’s request to make Good Friday a national holiday. As noted by University of Havana professor of religious history Enrique Lopez Oliva, “Raul Castro has given the church a role of mediator with other sectors of Cuban society.”28 Much has been written about Pope Francis and the Vatican’s role in brokering the easing of tensions in US–​Cuba relations. Negating any claims that the Pope’s role in this negotiation was minor, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin indicated

Cuban-Descent Catholics   43 in an interview on Vatican radio, “I would like to repeat the satisfaction of the Holy See for this important step in the relations between the United States and Cuba. And also to stress that the role of the Holy Father was very significant in this conclusion.”29 The Church has been able to further these efforts, as well as become a player on the political scene, by remaining quiet and reserved in its negotiations with the government. In spite of this, and perhaps in part because of it, tensions between the Churches on the island and the mainland remain. As Lopez Oliva asserts, “In the past, many Catholics in Miami criticized the Church for being passive, keeping quiet about, or recognizing the legitimacy of the Revolution. Similarly, Catholics in Cuba criticized the lack of commitment of those members of the clergy and laity who left the country, weakening the Church and limiting its capacity to work actively for political and social change.”30 These tensions are beginning to relax as the Miami Church becomes more actively engaged on the island and the growing diversity of the Latino/​a population in Miami. The Cuban Catholic Church has many challenges ahead of it. US politicians have critiqued its engagement with the Castro regime and the slow pace of reform, particularly in the area of human rights violations. Afro Cuban religions such as Santería, spiritual practices such as Espiritismo (Spiritism), hybrid (known as cruzado) practices of different faith traditions, and the growth of Protestant Christianity (particularly Pentecostalism) overwhelmingly mark the religious landscape for Cuban Americans. Perhaps no symbol represents the past and future of Catholicism on the island and in the Diaspora more than Our Lady of Charity, their patron saint. Evoked in independence struggles against Spain in the late nineteenth century, prominent in Cuban Catholicism, Santería, and popular home-​based religions, honored by Pope Benedict XVI on the four hundredth anniversary of her appearance, and respected by communists as a symbol of Cuba’s national identity, she reveals the complexity of religion on the island and here in the United States, yet also its deep-​rooted presence in the lives and identity of Cuban people.

Notes 1. Susan Eva Eckstein, The Immigrant Divide: How Cuban Americans Changed the US and Their Homeland (New York: Routledge, 2009), 12. 2. See Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Herbert S. Klein, Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1967); Franklin W. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba during the nineteenth century (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1970); Robert L. Paquette, Sugar Is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988). 3. Manuel P. Maza Miquel, Esclavos, Patriotas, y Poetas a la Sombra de la Cruz: Cinco Ensayos Sobre Catolicismo e Historia Cubana (Santo Domingo: Centro de Estudios Sociales Padre Juan Montalvo, S.J., 1999), 90, citing Kenneth F. Kiple, Blacks in Colonial Cuba: 1774–​1899 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1976), 88. Kiple’s text offers a wealth of resources on the demography of Cuba between 1777 and 1899.

44   Michelle Gonzales Maldonado 4. David R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain, and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (London: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 244. 5. For a detailed study of the different nations brought to Cuba, see Knight, Slave Society in Cuba. Jorge and Isabel Castellanos list the following as the best-​known nations of origin for the different slave populations in Cuba: lucumí, mandinga, arará, mina, gangá, carabalí, and congo. Jorge and Isabel Castellanos, Cultura Afrocubana, vol. 1, El Negro en Cuba, 1492–​1844 (Miami, FL: Ediciones Universal, 1988), 28 6. Castellanos and Castellanos, Cultura Afrocubana, vol. 1, 61. 7. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba, 3. 8. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba, 107. 9. Miguel de la Torre, Quest for the Cuban Christ: A Historical Search (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 23. 10. Johannes Merier, “The Beginnings of the Catholic Church on the Caribbean,” in Christianity in the Caribbean: Essays on Church History, ed. Armando Lampe (Barbados: University of the West Indies Press, 2001), 42. 11. Lisandro Pérez, “The Catholic Church in Cuba: A Weak Institution,” in Puerto Rican and Cuban Catholics in the U.S., 1900–​1965, ed. Jay P. Dolan and Jaime R. Vidal (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 147. 12. Miguel de la Torre, “The Cuban American Religious Experience,” in Introduction to the U.S. Latina and Latino Religious Experience (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004), 73. 13. David Badillo, Latinos and the New Immigrant Church (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 92. 14. Katrin Hansing, “Unidados en la Fe: Transforming Civic Social Engagement between Two Cuban Catholic Parishes,” in Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City: Religion, Immigration, and Civic Engagement in Miami, ed. Alex Stepick, Terry Rey, and Sarah Mahler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 120. 15. Alex Stepick, Terry Rey, and Sarah Mahler, “Religion, Immigration, and Civic Engagement,” in Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City: Religion, Immigration, and Civic Engagement in Miami, ed. Alex Stepick, Terry Rey, and Sarah Mahler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 18, citing Thomas A. Tweed, “An Emerging Protestant Establishment: Religious Affiliation and Public Power on the Urban Frontier in Miami, 1896–​1904,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 64, no. 3 (1995): 412–​437. 16. David A. Badillo, “Catholicism and the Search for Nationhood in Miami’s Cuban Community,” U.S. Catholic Historian 20, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 85. 17. Gerald E. Poyo, “‘Integration without Assimilation’: Cuban Catholics in Miami, 1960–​ 1980,” Catholic Historian 20, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 93. 18. Poyo, “Integration without Assimilation,” 99. 19. Poyo, “Integration without Assimilation,” 85. 20. Kristy Nabhan-​Warren, The Cursillo Movement in America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013). 21. Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-​Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 305. 22. Gisele M. Requena, “On Being an American-​Born Cuban from Miami,” in Remembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora, ed. Andrea O’Reilly Herrera (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 283.

Cuban-Descent Catholics   45 23. Thomas Tweed, “Diasporic Nationalism and Urban Landscape: Cuban Immigrants in a Catholic Shrine in Miami,” in Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape, ed. Robert A. Orsi (Bloomington: Indianapolis University Press, 1999), 132. 24. Olga Portuando Zuñiga dates the apparition at 1613. María Elena Díaz, in her excellent study of the slave community in El Cobre, dates the apparition at 1604. Olga Portuondo Zúñiga, La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre: Simbolo de la Cubanía, rev. ed. (Madrid: Agualarga Editores, 2002), 75; María Elena Díaz, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–​1780 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 25. Moreno’s role in the slave community is not limited to this religious apparition. At the age of seventy-​seven, he was given the position of captain of the local militia, a role that entailed military and religious duties. Moreno represented the slaves of Cobre when the Crown attempted to transfer them to Havana. He was an advocate for the slaves and a mediator between them and Spanish authorities. Moreno played an active political role among the Cobre slaves and was, for some time, seen as their leader and representative to the Spanish. It is interesting to note that the recording of his testimony and his prominent position occur around the same time period. Juan Moreno is not the only Afro-​Cuban to whom La Caridad appeared. Onofre de Fonseca, who was chaplain of the shrine of El Cobre from 1683 to 1710, introduces the narrative of the girl Apolonia to his written account of La Virgen’s presence among the Cobre community. Daughter of one of the miners, Apolonia was on her way to visit her mother when La Caridad appeared before her telling her where she wanted her temple built. This second “apparition” story is not as well-​ known within Cuba, and its later date, coupled with a lack of firsthand testimony, makes its historical validity questionable. 26. Idem, “Diasporic Nationalism and Urban Landscape,” 141. 27. http://​www.cuba.cu/​gobierno/​discursos/​1998/​ing/​f030798i.html 28. http://​w ww.washingtonpost.com/​world/​the_​americas/​catholics-​in-​cuba-​no-​longer-​ shunned-​seek-​new-​role/​2012/​03/​27/​gIQALeCgeS_​story.html 29. http:// ​ e n.radiovaticana.va/ ​ n ews/ ​ 2 01 4/ ​ 1 2/ ​ 1 8/ ​ c ardinal_ ​ p arolin_ ​ o n_ ​ h oly_​ see%E2%80%99s_​role_​in_​us_​cuba_​agreement/​1115269 30. Ana Celia Perera Pintado, “Religion and Cuban Identity in a Transnational Context,” Latin American Perspectives 140, no. 32 (Jan. 2005): 166–​167.

Bibliography Eckstein, Susan Eva. The Immigrant Divide: How Cuban Americans Changed the US and Their Homeland. New York: Routledge, 2009. Maza Miquel, Manuel P. Esclavos, Patriotas, y Poetas a la Sombra de la Cruz: Cinco Ensayos Sobre Catolicismo e Historia Cubana. Santo Domingo: Centro de Estudios Sociales Padre Juan Montalvo, S.J., 1999. Poyo, Gerald. Cuban Catholics in the United States, 1960–​1980: Exile and Integration. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Tweed, Thomas A. Our Lady of Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Shrine in Miami. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Chapter 3

Pu erto Ri c a n Christianiti e s i n t h e United Stat e s Alberto Ortíz Díaz

Puerto Rico has long stood at the crossroads of the Atlantic world and trans-​America. Similarly, the Puerto Rican archipelago is caught between different fields of academic inquiry. Due to Puerto Rico’s lengthy colonial history and combined creole-​diasporic trajectory, scholars often struggle with whether it pertains to American studies, Diaspora studies, or Latin American studies. Complicating matters further is where Puerto Ricans reside geographically, for as anthropologist Jorge Duany has insisted, the Puerto Rican nation is always on the move.1 As of 2016, more than 5 million Puerto Ricans lived on the US mainland across all fifty states, with another three million-​plus inhabiting the archipelago itself. More broadly, Puerto Ricans formed part of a Hispanic-​/​Latino-​American community numbering some 57 million, which accounted for almost 18 percent of the total US population at the time.2 This makes the United States the third largest “Latin American” country in terms of its Hispanic-​/L ​ atino-​descended populations, trailing only Brazil and Mexico and just ahead of Colombia and Argentina. Despite hailing from one of the smallest and least populated parts of Latin America, Puerto Ricans are the second-​largest Latino group in the United States proper. The United States inherited Puerto Rico from Spain following the War of 1898. The radical shift from Spanish to US empire had long-​lasting implications for Puerto Rico and its residents. Sweeping and sudden changes in religious, cultural, and political identities were hallmarks of turn-​of-​the-​century postwar Puerto Rican culture. In a short amount of time, Puerto Rico went from being a Spanish Catholic bastion to a US Protestant outpost. As part of its empire building, the United States imposed citizenship on Puerto Ricans in 1917. Puerto Ricans became US citizens during the tail end of a series of legal precedents known as the Insular Cases, which spanned 1900 to 1922. Through these cases, the US Supreme Court created a legal framework defining the territorial relationship between

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    47 the United States and its acquired spoils of war, including Puerto Rico. The label of “unincorporated territory,” which meant that Puerto Rico was not on a path to statehood and that it was “foreign in a domestic sense,” prevailed thereafter and survived the archipelago’s transition to “self-​governing” commonwealth status in 1952.3 Puerto Rico remains subject to US federal jurisdiction to this day. Since it is a US territory, there continues to be significant culture sharing between Puerto Rico and the US mainland, with diasporic communities connected mainly to the big island by constant circular migration. These basic parameters are necessary to understand Christianity within Puerto Rico and the United States. Indeed, colonial empire and the frequency of movement between big island and mainland over time has profoundly shaped the substance and lived experience of Puerto Rican beliefs. Thorough studies of Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States, however, have yet to be consistently produced. While impressive strides have been made in this regard, much still needs to be done to account for the depth and diversity of Puerto Rican Christianities on the US mainland. Historical and anthropological studies, in particular, have and will continue to help fill the void. A variety of sources, ranging from memoirs and archival records to oral histories, contemporary scholarship, and the press shed light on the trajectories of US Puerto Rican Christianities. This chapter especially draws on existing secondary source literature and attempts to chart pathways for future scholarship.

Between Empires Puerto Rico became one of Spain’s first “New World” colonies in the early modern period. For some four centuries, the Roman Catholic Apostolic tradition and its popular derivatives dominated Puerto Rico’s religious landscape.4 In the nineteenth century, specifically, the Spanish Catholic colonial state censored and curbed the growth of heterodox belief systems, such as Protestantism, Freemasonry, and Spiritism. Despite persecution and incarceration, proponents of these systems publicly challenged the absolutist colonial order (state and church) for recognition of “rights” they deemed central to the construction of a pluralistic, tolerant, and democratic society.5 Following the War of 1898, a new colonial power (the United States) assumed control of Puerto Rico, introducing freedom of worship and other individual rights. Yet those advancing the US imperial project used religion to smother nationalist sentiment and to mask their colonial intentions and agenda.6 The transition to US rule in Puerto Rico sparked the inflow of waves of Protestant missionaries spanning at least nine denominations. Sociologist Samuel Silva Gotay has traced how different Protestant groups carved the main island into spheres of influence at the turn of the twentieth century, similar to how the late nineteenth-​century Berlin Conference regulated European colonization and trade in Africa during the high imperial period. An 1899 agreement between these Protestant groups established

48   Alberto Ortíz Díaz how they would engage Puerto Rico and other mission fields without infringing upon one another’s work. Various Christian denominations delimited where each creed could evangelize and built churches and hospitals. Baptists and Methodists took parts of the big island’s center, Presbyterians the west, Disciples of Christ the mid-​north, Congregationalists the east, and so on (Figure 3.1). Their collective mission was to Americanize the island through infrastructural development, education, and services, to prepare Puerto Ricans for US citizenship, and to acquaint converts with what they considered to be the joys and privileges of Christian discipleship.7 Gotay suggests that Protestant missionaries served as the assimilationist arm of US colonialism in Puerto Rico.8 They linked the gospel to salvific US values, such as the reification of the law, individualism and individual rights, the separation of church and state, monoglot (English-​language) education, and free market and consumer capitalism. Missionaries embedded these values in the social institutions they introduced to the main island. Protestant churches were also structurally implicated in the colonization of Puerto Rico.9 Working alongside US corporations, missionaries infiltrated at the local level and helped bring the island into the capitalist orbit of the United States. In fact, US rule engendered a rigorous capitalist plantation economy on the island, one far more resourced, mechanized, and monopolizing than had been the case under the Spanish in the nineteenth century. The new colonial economy spanned the sugar, tobacco, coffee, and railway industries, as well as public services, all of which necessitated “cultural and ideological unity” to accommodate and consolidate the emerging US order.10 The reciprocal relationship between Protestantism and US values was made manifest through missionary activities, which in turn contributed to sculpting the religious and spiritual landscapes of Puerto Ricans for decades to come.

Figure 3.1 Protestant partitioning of Puerto Rico, c. 1899. (Adapted from Silva Gotay, Protestantismo y Política en Puerto Rico, 1898–​ 1930: hacia una historia del protestantismo evangélico en Puerto Rico. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1998, 113)

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    49 US empire and Protestant missions reinforced one another in Puerto Rico in the early twentieth century. However, to reduce turn-​of-​the-​century archipelago and subsequent diasporic Christianities to asymmetrical power relations conceals how colonial faith systems were tinkered with by Puerto Ricans and bestowed them with an agency that inspired their appropriation of cosmopolitan Christianities. At the micro and communal levels, Christianities become and mean much more to people. Defying reductive assertions about their nature or utility, at certain historical junctures Christian beliefs propelled Puerto Ricans to not only conform to an order imposed on them but to socially and even politically mobilize and nudge authorities of all kinds to respond in their favor. For Puerto Rican Christians, faith often shaped the sinews of their moral identity, positioned them to come to terms with truths beyond themselves, and served as a tool in their tangible struggles. If faith is complex, personal, and much deeper than imposition or resistance, yet powerfully shaped by history and therefore contingent process, as theologian George Tinker has observed, then scholars must illustrate what exactly is deep about it. Portraying Christianity as little more than a colonial-​imperial surrogate obscures the variegated ways in which Puerto Ricans and others have adopted and adapted the belief system across time and space.11 There is no doubt that Protestant missionaries played key roles in facilitating US rule in Puerto Rico by colonizing the consciousness of locals and underwriting the materialization of self-​serving government policy.12 But this does not mean that twentieth-​century US hegemony was ironclad and impossible to negotiate, invert, or transform.13 US rule sometimes proved to be a flaccid enterprise in this vein. As several scholars have claimed, the US presence enabled the gestation of dynamic movements within and beyond official Catholicism, such as the “inspired” Hermanos Cheos, whose development into a movement initially came with little support by the Catholic Church. With the Cheos, itinerant preachers assumed duties that had long been reserved for priests and sanctioned, well-​trained laity, whether traversing the countryside, building churches, or performing occasional cures. Public-​facing and charismatic movements like the Cheos emerged and thrived in response to but also despite the political, economic, and sociocultural disruption attributed to colonialism.14 The scholar of Puerto Rican Christianities, then, must trace religious/​spiritual thought and praxis within certain confines and subgroups, across space given the frequency of movement within the archipelago and between homeland and hostland, and over time to account for continuity and change. They must be equally attentive to meta-​level forces and micro-​level intimacies and logics. Such an approach will help bring into focus a more complete picture of Christian faiths in the lives of ordinary Puerto Ricans in the Caribbean and on the US mainland, one that centers their stories, experiences, and communities without ignoring colonial and imperial legacies.

50   Alberto Ortíz Díaz

Migration, Diaspora, and Intersections Puerto Rican migrants began arriving in the United States in moderate numbers at the turn of the twentieth century. Prior to this, there were sporadic cases of Puerto Ricans in places like New York City. A cigar worker-​intellectual from Cayey, Puerto Rico, named Bernardo Vega, for example, recalled that his uncle Antonio landed in New York in 1857, when Irish migrants started pouring into the city in large numbers. The Puerto Rican community continued to grow during the US Civil War. With the War’s conclusion and the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, New York replaced New Orleans as the center of Caribbean exile activity in the United States. By the turn of the century, about 150 Puerto Ricans had settled in what later (in the late 1920s and beyond) became Spanish Harlem. Some migrants moved to Chicago and Tampa during this period as well. In 1916, the Puerto Rican enclave in New York totaled approximately 6,000 people, mostly tobacco workers and their families (more than 60 percent, according to Vega). The broader Spanish-​speaking population numbered about 16,000. Puerto Ricans proceeded to establish thickly populated neighborhoods in the Bronx, Washington Heights, and on parts of Long Island by the 1930s and 1940s.15 In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Puerto Rican migration to the United States grew exponentially. While in the early 1940s hundreds to several thousand Puerto Ricans arrived, after 1945 they settled on the mainland in the tens of thousands. In New York City alone, the US Census Bureau and other observers reported that at least 187,000 Puerto Ricans lived in the five boroughs as of 1950. Between continued migration and physical reproduction, an additional 60,000 per year made New York their home by 1960, when they totaled more than 600,000. These numbers continued to rise in the United States at large through the year 2000. However, New York went from being the primary destination for the majority of Puerto Ricans in 1950 (about 83 percent of total) to one of several by 2000 (about 23 percent of total).16 Alternative destinations subsequently included Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, and Florida. Among these scores of Puerto Ricans was Vega. Although Vega was not an observant Christian, Christianity pervaded his worldview, especially once he moved to New York. The open-​air market on Park Avenue in Manhattan seemed like a “Tower of Babel” to him, given how the Jews there spoke several languages in addition to their own common tongue. Vega recognized New York City as a “modern Babylon, the meeting point for peoples from all over the world.” He also projected turn-​of-​the-​century national heroes as political messiahs. Echoing Colombian writer José María Vargas Vila, for instance, he insisted that dedicated workers would seek out “the somber voice of the [civic] Apostle” José Martí. When Martí gave talks in the United States, the Cuban independence activist

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    51 “spoke of bright new days to come, which his eyes, so hungry for light, would never see.” All around the United States, but especially in New York, audiences rose to their feet, standing “as though transfigured by that breath of inspiration, which was like the Hebrew prophet-​priest Ezekiel’s as he summoned the unblessed corpses from the grave” in his vision of the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1–​14).17 Vega was not alone in echoing or making such projections with religion or biblical scripture in mind. Another migrant worker-​intellectual from Cayey, Jesús Colón, similarly moved to New York and used Christian imagery to narrate the Puerto Rican experience on the US mainland. Colón acknowledged that he had been baptized according to Catholic rite in Puerto Rico, and he compared the wisdom of main island cigar factory readers (e.g., of newspapers) to the sermons of Catholic priests. However, exposure to socialism during his formative years and his labor organizing activities in the United States ensured he would not become an observant Christian. At one point in his memoir, in a chapter about the culture of shared bathrooms in the city and the kinds of songs people sang, he questioned the idea of Jesus Christ’s second coming. Colón wrote that an inspired neighbor who participated in a church choir could get lively and fast in his singing: “he lets go with all the air in his lungs and all the faith in his heart as if any minute he will see Gabriel’s trumpet piercing the bathroom ceiling announcing the coming of the Lord.” When this happened, it was best to “cede your place in line in front of the bathroom . . . for he will stay, trilling his hymns almost to the very minute when he thinks that Christ will be coming to visit the earth for the second time—​and that, if you ask me, means a lot of waiting.”18 Colón also provided intimate glimpses into Puerto Rican Christianities. One of the most insightful chapters of his memoir concerns the fervent-​turned-​defaced religiosity of his mother-​in-​law, Carmencita, whom he considered “the living austere portrait of a medieval Catholic woman” whose “[f]‌aith was her only guide.” Carmencita was knowledgeable about the causes and circumstances of different saints and an expert on rosary conducting. Shortly after her arrival in New York at some point in the 1930s, Colón chronicled, his wife communicated to him that Carmencita thought he was “a pagan,” “a materialist,” and “an atheist” because of his secular books and the absence of saint iconography in their apartment. Carmencita believed that “a man with books like that should be named ‘diablo’ [devil] instead of Jesus.” Despite the rocky start to their stateside relationship, Colón placed an image of Jesus Christ on a wall in Carmencita’s room and took her to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He subsequently exposed her to race and class issues in the United States, stirring and helping transform her consciousness in the process.19 As Carmencita became more politically astute, she began noticing how solemn Catholic rituals like rosary conducting were commercially perverted in the United States. Colón noted that this made her doubt “the sanctity and disinterestedness of the organized church.” When Carmencita started attending a well-​known church and learned that she had to pay for entry, “like in a movie house,” and that the collection plate circulated multiple times during a single service, she grew frustrated. That bingo games were held in the church basement, and that in some chapels priests simply “covered

52   Alberto Ortíz Díaz the saints and held dances at which ‘refreshments’ were sold,” also flabbergasted her. Dancing and drinking in the church were unthinkable to Carmencita until she witnessed these activities firsthand. She then distanced herself from church and developed the theory that “God is everywhere.” Carmencita remained “religiously dedicated to do good and to help the downtrodden,” but “rarely went to church in her later years.” Colón recounted that this made her more amenable to supporting his translation of the Dean of Canterbury’s book, The Soviet Power, which all but made her an elastic and lukewarm Christian. By the early 1940s, Carmencita was performing “The Prayer of the Eleven Thousand Virgins” so that “nothing will ever happen to [Joseph] Stalin.”20 These brief forays into Colón’s world make clear that cohesive associational structures that stressed kinship, language, heritage, religion, and activism were vehicles for mutual aid and personal transformation within the Puerto Rican community in New York. According to scholar Linda Delgado, Nuyoricans were largely Catholic, except for the cigar makers, who generally did not get involved with organized religion.21 Yet scholars have not rigorously pursued the Christian leads buried in twentieth-​century memoirs and similar texts. In part, the problem is methodological. Beyond accounts that have since been published, Vega and especially Colón left behind extensive paper trails to digest and contemplate. Comparatively speaking, Christian Puerto Ricans’ narratives do not yet form part of the mainstream body of work celebrated today as foundational for understanding mid-​twentieth-​century Puerto Rican migration to the US mainland. Regardless, it is through the memories of the likes of Colón, Vega, and others, in particular self-​identifying Christians, that one can inch closer to what up to this point have proven to be elusive Christian circles. In addition to activist-​socialist memoirs, midcentury academic studies also provide scholars with windows into Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States. Physician Beatrice Bishop Berle, for instance, published her findings in 1958. She found that at the time some 80 percent of Puerto Ricans were Catholics. About 20 percent belonged to Protestant denominations, and an unrecorded number identified as Spiritualists.22 Berle’s observations concerning belief stand out not just because of what they reveal about religion, but also because they shed light on the intersection of Christian pluralism, health, reproduction, education, sexuality, and race. Intersectional approaches to Puerto Rican Christianities persist today; in fact, one might posit that Berle’s scholarship was precedent-​setting for contemporary scholars’ predilection for mapping experiential crossings as they relate to Puerto Ricans.23 In the mid-​twentieth century, the boundaries between Christianities proved porous for some migrant Puerto Ricans, especially when health crises emerged. Berle’s recounting of the case of a light-​skinned thirty-​year-​old Puerto Rican man who relativized God beyond denomination is a case in point. He took his three-​year-​old tubercular daughter to a hospital, where she was registered as Protestant. The man registered his daughter in this way because he felt indebted to the Protestant agency that had helped him secure medical attention for his child. Subsequently, he took the girl to another hospital, where she was registered as Catholic. The man and his extended family had convoluted religious backgrounds as well: “He himself had been brought up as a

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    53 Baptist in Puerto Rico, but he kept a candle burning in front of the statue of the Virgin every night during the child’s illness.” This migrant and his wife were married according to Catholic rite at the insistence of his mother-​in-​law, who in turn later became a council member of a local Protestant church.24 As this case illustrates, and as scholar Robert Orsi has argued elsewhere, when one sets aside doctrines and structures and fixes their gaze on lived religion and what he calls “the theology of the streets,” it becomes all the more fathomable that people make adjustments to their faiths so that these better align with their everyday circumstances in life and in order to address what matters to them individually and communally.25 In another intersectional case documented by Berle, a dark olive-​skinned Pentecostal couple had to make a difficult decision regarding tubal ligation (i.e., fallopian tube-​tying or female sterilization). The thirty-​nine-​year-​old wife was starting her fourteenth pregnancy. She was willing to undergo the procedure if her forty-​five-​year-​old husband agreed to it. In a conversation with the recommending physician, her husband brought out the Bible and “read eloquently” the Lord’s command that man should be fruitful and multiply. He also referred to Genesis 38:9, which mentions the sin of Onan, who while having relations with his brother’s wife spilled his seed on the ground, thereby wasting it. Even when the migrant woman suffered vaginal bleeding about six months into the pregnancy, her husband refused to authorize tubal ligation. He eventually consented to a Cesarean section, if required, and promised to practice abstinence in the future.26 Ultimately, the couple worked around the problem of scriptural disobedience by making what they thought were more acceptable, righteous decisions. Christian beliefs were at the center of conversations about education and sexuality as well. Berle described several such instances. For example, in one case the New York City Children’s Court recommended that a white forty-​year-​old mother dealing with a truant nine-​year-​old daughter go to a Catholic agency for guidance since the girl had been baptized in that tradition. Though the mother herself attended a Pentecostal church and her daughter enjoyed Baptist Sunday School, she wanted the girl to enroll in a “strict” Catholic boarding school.27 In another case, a woman with a mixed-​race family faced a similar problem with her eldest child. The thirty-​year-​old woman sought a Catholic parochial school for her ten-​year-​old son because she deemed public school instruction woefully inadequate. On the other hand, she hoped to find a morally firm Protestant church for her thirty-​five-​year-​old “philandering” husband.28 These accounts confirm the precision of Orsi’s notion of pliable lived religion, but they also demonstrate that his concept is applicable across ethnic groups and urban subcultures. What is more, Berle’s stories showcase how belief offered permeable mediating frameworks through which families attempted to problem-​solve conflicts specific to their kin units. As these few vignettes attest, scholars have barely scratched the surface of Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States. Greater attention to ordinary people’s complex lives and their everyday application of religion/​spirituality must inform future studies. I have highlighted some of the ways in which Christian beliefs are represented in select memory texts chronicling migration and diaspora, but one can imagine what else lies in them, let alone in other memoirs, creative literature, artwork, and studies not considered

54   Alberto Ortíz Díaz here.29 The biographies of Christians who produced academic scholarship are also ripe with potential.30 Additionally, untapped archival materials, some of which are available online in the form of digital documents and detailed finding aids, provide scholars with electronic leads that will yield insight into Puerto Rican Christianities once assessed. For example, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies located at Hunter College in New York City, a research institute dedicated to the interdisciplinary study and interpretation of the continental US Puerto Rican experience, boasts collection description web pages organized by topic. A cursory survey of these web pages indicates that there are several religion/​Christian-​specific collections waiting to be explored.31 Examining these different sources can ascertain what was deep and disenchanting about Puerto Rican Christianities on the US mainland in the twentieth century.

Temples, Services, and Activism Many migrant and diaspora Puerto Ricans engaged religious communities and organizations beyond their own throughout the twentieth century. This had less to do with doctrine than with a desire to best meet their needs. As the preceding section outlined, there was a porous line between Christian denominations. But there were also Puerto Ricans fervently tied to their faith. Pentecostalists, for instance, concerned themselves with “the literal interpretation of the Bible,” which could help them lead sanctified lives and preserve their salvation.32 The importance of doctrine and obedience to the gospel to US-​based Pentecostal Puerto Ricans indicates that many congregants viewed temples as serious, spiritually fulfilling spaces, and the messages circulating therein as pathways toward redemption. Yet there are few studies about specific denominational congregations, their leaders, and their cultures. Scholar Samuel Cruz, for example, has examined the appeal of Pentecostalism to Puerto Ricans. In his book Masked Africanisms, the result of extensive ethnographic work undertaken at several Puerto Rican Pentecostal churches, Cruz contends that African and African American influences on the origins and development of Pentecostalism facilitated its success both on the big island and the US mainland. The history of Puerto Rican Pentecostalism is unique in terms of how it came about in the first place. Its transnational roots are significant considering how long a shadow the US colonial empire cast in the early twentieth century. Cruz notes that Juan Lugo, a Puerto Rican converted in Hawaii, brought Pentecostalism to Puerto Rico in 1916. This revivalist and apocalyptic brand of Christianity embraced the concept of a free religious market and ignored the spheres of influence agreement reached by multiple Protestant churches shortly after the War of 1898. By 1928, Lugo sent a pastor to New York, who in turn founded the first Puerto Rican Pentecostal church in the city. Many others soon followed.33 As the twentieth century unfolded, vibrant temples and wider Christian communities could be found in all corners of the budding Puerto Rican diaspora. Historian Carmen Teresa Whalen has chronicled fragments of this history in her scholarship on Puerto

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    55 Ricans in Philadelphia. For example, two churches primarily catered to Puerto Ricans in the City of Brotherly Love in the early to mid-​twentieth century. Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal (the Spanish Chapel, or La Milagrosa) opened in 1909. At the time, Spanish-​language services were offered in the schoolhouse of Old St. Mary’s Church. By 1912, La Milagrosa occupied its own building on Spring Garden Street and became a center for the city’s growing Latino population. It continues to provide services to Puerto Ricans and other Latinos.34 The First Spanish Baptist Church of Philadelphia began in 1929 as a Bible study group. It was reorganized as a mission in 1934 and became affiliated with the Philadelphia Baptist Association in 1946. This church was led by Reverend Enrique Rodríguez, a Puerto Rican graduate of the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, from 1944 to 1971. Services were held at 18th and Spring Garden Streets. The church also operated a Bible school out of a home and took the gospel directly to migrant laborers stationed near the Campbell Soup Company and on farms in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey during and after World War II. In 1956, the Church acquired its own building on Wallace Street. By 1974, it was located on the north side of the city on Hancock and York Streets. Both La Milagrosa and the First Spanish Baptist Church served as cornerstones of the early Puerto Rican community in Philadelphia.35 For many migrant families, churches were among the first places they visited in the United States and among the few that they frequented for several years. José Lacend arrived in the Spring Garden area of Philadelphia in 1947. He and his wife lived on 16th and Mount Vernon Streets, and attended a church at 18th and Green Streets. In describing the neighborhood, José stressed race and street life: there “used to be almost all white people, yeah, you could hardly see the colored guys in the street then.” As for Puerto Ricans, he asserted, no one claimed corners or walked in the street. Everyone was either at work, in their house, or in the church: “That’s the only three places you could be. And it was like that for, Jesus Christ, for about six or five years.”36 However, many churchgoing Puerto Ricans still had run-​ins with the police despite only moving between work, home, and their places of worship.37 Puerto Rican women who settled in Philadelphia also used the church as a reference point to articulate the difficulty of transitioning between archipelago and mainland, sometimes as early as their first day in the United States. Ana Luisa Navarro, for example, who arrived in Philadelphia from San Lorenzo in 1956, expressed that she and her children arrived in the Spring Garden area of the city on a Sunday and attended church. When her husband went to work the next day, the rest of the family was “uncomfortable” because aside from having gone to Mass they “didn’t know anything.” A few years later, Catholic iconography was a staple of the walls inside their row house apartment, including an image of a Greco-​Roman Jesus Christ (Figure 3.2). They put it up during a “Consecration of the Family to the Sacred Heart” ceremony. An inscription on the photograph reads in part: “We consecrate to Thee, O Jesus of Love, the trials and joys and all the happiness of our family life, and we beseech Thee to pour out Thy best blessings on all its members.”38

56   Alberto Ortíz Díaz

Figure 3.2  The Navarros and extended family. (Adapted from Whalen, El Viaje, 42)

Not only were temples important for migrants and their families in terms of micro-​ level coping and meaning-​making; they also served as springboards for social services. A woman named Carmen Aponte, for instance, got involved with such services several years into her new life in Philadelphia. Eventually, she carried out these efforts at the 5th Street Methodist Church’s community center. The pastor there hired her as a social worker while she was on vacation from the shoe factory at which she worked. For thirteen years, Aponte organized after-​school activities for children, Christmas parties, and helped people acquire food, clothes, and other supplies. She went on to

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    57 work for the city and to study at Temple University, rare achievements for a Puerto Rican woman at the time.39 Aponte’s story of church-​facilitated socioeconomic mobility might have been unique then but became more commonplace later in the twentieth century. Anthropologist Johnny Ramírez Johnson, for example, has underscored the overlap between class mobility and education and the motivations and quests for these in a late twentieth-​century Seventh Day Adventist Puerto Rican church in Massachusetts.40 Mid-​twentieth-​century mainland Puerto Ricans often turned to churches for social activities and assistance, as well as for community building. A Chicago woman named Daniela, for instance, recalled in an oral history interview that the Puerto Rican community there organized around churches at the time. Santa Clara church, off 63rd Avenue, offered them networks of friendship and support. Catholic groups like Las Hijas de María afforded girls and women, daughters and mothers, a social outlet and opportunities to “escape” their homes. They also taught females to appreciate the value of service, reflecting Christ’s maxim that it is better to give than receive. Haydee, who as a girl participated in Las Hijas de María, noted that the group made a habit of visiting local hospitals to pray for the infirm.41 As these and many other cases illustrate, faith communities and temples were not only central to Puerto Rican identity formation, they also served as vital nodes in expansive problem-​solving-​oriented kin networks. Informal organizations linked to specific temples sometimes became permanent fixtures of urban Christian life. In the mid-​1950s, for example, the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia founded Casa del Carmen, a social service agency that provided parishioners with health programs, job referrals, recreation, and educational opportunities. By the late 1950s, new churches emerged, joining the Spanish Chapel, the Spanish Baptist Church, St. Peters, and the Cathedral. Protestant churches and services also expanded, including the Methodist Memorial Temple, the 5th Street community center at which Aponte worked, the Methodist Social Service Center, and at least eight Pentecostal churches. Navarro treasured the proximity of, and the services offered by, the Cathedral: The Cathedral had a priest that helped us, a lot, a lot, a lot. He helped us, not so much monetarily, but with his advice. He gave us support. He told us, which I always remember, he said the children should study. . . . He said, “President Kennedy wasn’t an American native, he was Irish and look, he got to be President of the United States, why can’t a Puerto Rican get to be president?”. . . he was one of the first people [to help us] during the first winter that we spent in Philadelphia which was the winter of 1956 . . . this priest came to the house with groceries and winter clothes.42

Similarly, in Boston, the Catholic Church started the Cardinal Cushing Center in 1957, where migrant Puerto Ricans went to meet their spiritual and material needs. Later in the century, the Catholic Church sponsored the Cursillo movement, a

58   Alberto Ortíz Díaz born-​again brand of Catholicism based on retreats and social networking. However, Catholics lagged behind in ordaining Puerto Rican and other Latino priests. This opened the door for Pentecostalism, which proved more effective in connecting with working-​class Puerto Ricans in the Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill sections of Boston.43 Civil rights activism and politics also left an indelible mark on Puerto Rican Christianities in different US cities. The Philadelphia chapter of the Young Lords, for example, fused their sense of injustice to a sense of collective responsibility, both of which were rooted in their familial experiences and their shared Catholicism. Growing up, many Young Lords witnessed their parents volunteering at Casa del Carmen. For Young Lord Wilfredo Rojas, who at one point in life wanted to be a priest, “being involved in the Young Lords was an extension of us wanting to do things” for the community, whether running clothing drives, interpreting at health clinics, joining street campaigns against drugs, or promoting breakfast programs. Some clergy, such as Casa del Carmen director Thomas P. Craven, supported the Young Lords’ efforts by providing them with office space but in general dismissed their political ideology. Still, Rojas proclaimed, “we were very Catholic.” This made the Young Lords of Philadelphia different from the chapters in Chicago and New York. The Chicago branch “came out of being a gang.” The New York branch consisted of “college students who brought in some street people.” In Philadelphia “you had a bunch of Catholics—​Catholics who got together, brought in some junkies along the way, and dragged in a few students.”44 Puerto Rican Christians were protagonists in coalition building as well. For example, from the late 1960s onward, church, union, and political groups in Connecticut came together to improve the living and work conditions of tobacco farm laborers. The Industrial Mission of the Episcopal Church and the Ecumenical Ministry of Agricultural Workers helped organize and lead these efforts. Scholar Ruth Glasser maintains that churches spiritually supported Puerto Rican migrants, took their grievances to farm managers, and tried to increase public awareness about the difficult conditions on farms. Church activists also echoed farmworkers’ demands for health care, better wages, sick and overtime pay, and outsider access to the camps on which they toiled.45 In the preceding decades elsewhere in the United States, such as Michigan, church activism in relation to migrant laborers was caught between being aspirational and socially useful yet politically toothless.46 After the civil rights movement and with the rise of liberation theology internationally, however, the role of the organized church began to change, in large part because of the needs, demands, and actions of rank-​and-​ file and ordinary believers. Sometimes, as scholar Darryl Wanzer-​Serrano has posited, activist groups like the New York Young Lords articulated a secular spirituality at odds with systematized religion.47 But there is also evidence of mutually productive interactions and exchanges between different kinds of beliefs and their adherents. Entwined histories of religion and activism in the Puerto Rican diaspora will clarify the extent of these patterns.

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    59

Recent Approaches and Times The 1960s witnessed a slowdown in Puerto Rican migration to the United States followed by the first major waves of return migration to the archipelago in the 1970s. Still, many Puerto Ricans left Puerto Rico in the 1970s and beyond for the first time ever, as was the case with the maternal side of my own family. As Puerto Ricans entered and exited the US mainland during this period, Christian temples and communities continued to play the roles they had in preceding decades: helping fresh migrants acclimate themselves to stateside life, facilitating social bonding and services, and feeding congregants spiritual bread. Despite the scarcity of studies on Christianities and their impacts on Puerto Ricans in the US diaspora, based on the primary and secondary sources that are available, it is clear that these Christianities were dynamic and indispensable. Going forward, testimony and ethnographic fieldwork will continue to shed light on the fundamentals and complexities of Puerto Rican Christianities. Anthropologist Samiri Hernández Hiraldo’s recent work on Afro-​Puerto Rican religious identity and experience on the big island and US mainland presages the scholarship on religion that is, for all intents and purposes, still sparse in Puerto Rican studies. Based on a year of fieldwork, Hernández Hiraldo’s study focuses on the personal religious histories of people from Loíza, a black town located in northeast Puerto Rico affected by racial discrimination, poverty, and that is representative of the archipelago’s Afro-​diasporic traditions. She even follows some of her informants to the United States, relaying how they reimagine regional, political, and spiritual boundaries across geography. According to Hernández Hiraldo, believers experience religion in multiple ways. Loiceños strategically manage their identities (e.g., individual, familial, generational, racial, national, etc.) through a spiritual prism that positions them to refashion their realities.48 Hernández Hiraldo’s emphasis on the nuances of agency reveals the nonstatic multidimensionality of Puerto Ricans’ lived religiosity. Gauging Loiceño religiosity’s transnational dynamism requires that Hernández Hiraldo cast a wide analytical net, which in turn gives her a window into how Catholicism has responded to the competition and challenges it faces from other Christian denominations, namely Pentecostalism. Most importantly, she shows how religion is a pervasive and powerful experiential framework used by believers to understand, narrate, and blend seemingly incommensurable components of their being: cultural tradition, theology, socioeconomic mobility, race and gender consciousness, and secular politics.49 The people-​and community-​first account of religious politics and routines presented by Hernández Hidalgo is but one of several recent cutting-​edge studies about lived religion. Scholar Elizabeth Pérez’s Religion in the Kitchen, for example, demonstrates how the preparation of sacred foods is linked to multifaceted rituals among Afro-​Cuban Chicago-​based Lucumí (santero) practitioners. Learning how to prepare food for Central and West African spirits while exchanging initiation stories constructs their religious identities and readies them to serve their gods. Cooking and talking in the kitchen

60   Alberto Ortíz Díaz socializes adherents of the Lucumí religion, Pérez suggests, but all religions assume form and perpetuate themselves through a context-​and substance-​specific recipe of micro-​practices.50 Indeed, food, communion, conversation, and sensory knowledge/​ experience are key elements of Puerto Rican Christianities as well. Pérez’s work thus gives scholars a point of reference from which to pursue comparative ethnographies of lived religion within and across nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures. Such studies will go a long way in generating a more complete picture of Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States, and why believers have a taste for them in the first place. Recent events and natural disasters compel scholars to consider other trajectories and interpretive routes to understand Puerto Rican Christianities. Fleeing the power outages, financial hardship, depression, and violence triggered by hurricane María, tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans have once again started moving stateside, especially to Florida, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Texas. As a result, church attendance on the main island has declined. Meanwhile, journalist Kate Shellnutt insists, Spanish-​ speaking congregations in the United States have welcomed the Puerto Ricans who have fled, namely in Orlando, where the bulk of migrants have settled.51 For example, bilingual members of the Calvario City Church greeted Puerto Ricans at the Orlando International Airport. Dozens of families joined the new arrivals in worship. The National Latino Evangelical Coalition and the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference also have been involved in transitioning Puerto Ricans to mainland life. The efforts of these churches and organizations, and the historical record they produce, will be illuminating for scholars of Puerto Rican Christianities in the future. Gadiel Ríos, a pastor based in Arecibo who has lost congregants because of María, expressed long-​term visions about the process. The “large number of families relocated in the States will need solid, Bible-​teaching, Christ-​exalting churches to attend, so we need more church planters in the mainland.”52 While the final impact of the latest “Great Migration” from Puerto Rico to the continental United States remains to be seen, in the tragic aftermath of María lie the seeds of potentially path-​breaking studies about Puerto Rican Christianities. Alternatively, correspondent Heather Sells and others stress another point of view. Sells has documented how some Puerto Ricans believe that Hurricane María has ushered in a period of spiritual revival in the archipelago.53 The (in)tangible needs of Puerto Rico are prompting Puerto Rican pastors based on the US mainland to return home. This is the case for Félix Cabrera, pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, for instance. As of summer 2018, he and multiple apprentices and their families planned to relocate to the main island to advance a “new church planting movement.”54 Further, a different kind of relationship between empire and colony, metropole and territory/​commonwealth, is coming into focus. Evangelist and missionary Franklin Graham’s humanitarian organization, Samaritan’s Purse, for example, recently launched a multiyear plan to rebuild hundreds of homes and dozens of churches in central and southern Puerto Rico. The group is also trying to help local pastors deal with stress, the loss of congregants to the US mainland, and intends to launch a solar energy project in the southeastern town of Yabucoa, which was devastated by María.55 Individual

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    61

Figure 3.3  Members of Reidland Church of Christ pray with Puerto Rican brethren at the Arecibo Church of Christ. (Adapted from The Christian Chronicle)

US churches are meaningfully contributing to reconstruction as well. A mission team from the Reidland Church of Christ in Paducah, Kentucky, for instance, travelled to the big island in summer 2018 to support their brethren there. Construction projects, cookouts, bilingual worship, and other activities characterized their time in Puerto Rico (Figure 3.3).56

Conclusion As this chapter has made clear, studies about Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States have and will continue to depict diasporic religious and spiritual communities as self-​contained. However, they must be understood in relation to Puerto Rico, for the archipelago is part of the US proper. In addition, natural phenomena beyond human control, such as hurricanes and their consequences, demand an approach that entangles homeland and hostland. Exceptional future studies will thus engage the respective Christian worlds of archipelago and diaspora on their own terms, as well as the internal differentiation of each, but also attempt to trace the dialogues and experiential intersections between them when warranted.

62   Alberto Ortíz Díaz Circulatory movement between Puerto Rico and the US mainland and internal migration within the United States have and will continue to characterize Puerto Rican Christianities. This makes them a collective, evolving object of study. On another level, Puerto Rican participation in Pan-​Latino congregations where they are not in the demographic majority also merits scholarly contemplation.57 Puerto Ricans have contributed to building Hispanic/​Latino churches in the United States since at least the middle decades of the twentieth century.58 They are still doing so in the early twenty-​ first century, as their involvement in IPUL (Igelsia Pentecostal Unida Latinoamericana) congregations in the US Upper Midwest and elsewhere corroborates. Puerto Ricans are mainly Catholic, but their interpretations of dogma and ritual practices transcend mainstream and vernacular forms of Catholicism. Many Puerto Ricans do not generally differentiate between Catholicism and other ways of knowing, performing, and feeling belief. They tend to underemphasize African and Latin American influences on their Christianities, although there are limits to this generalization, of course. Saint worship is common in Puerto Rico and its US diaspora, just as it is common across the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Hispanic/​Latino American population. Portions of the Puerto Rican populace still gravitate toward ancestor worship, faith/​miraculous healing, and sorcery. Catholic iconography adorns the homes of countless Puerto Ricans, often intermingled with photographs of family members amid ceramic and porcelain figures situated on elaborate altars. These elements are indicative of fused Catholic and Afro-​diasporic beliefs which must be accounted for, but not sensationalized, nor perceived of as an invitation to aggrandize one at the expense of the other. The number of evangelical churches, especially Pentecostal, has ballooned on both sides of the air bridge that links Puerto Rico and US mainland. For better or worse, Christian Puerto Ricans are active in the international music industry. All of this to say that, despite increasing interest in the analysis of Puerto Rican Christianities, this field of study patiently awaits the scholars who will take it seriously, move it forward within Puerto Rican studies, and venture into comparative terrain.

Notes 1. Jorge Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 2. Given recent patterns of demographic change on the US mainland, these numbers are, of course, fluid and ever-​evolving. Consult the United States Census Bureau, American Fact Finder, “Hispanic or Latino Origin by Specific Origin, Universe: Total population, 2016 American Community Survey One-​Year Estimates,” https://​fac​tfin​der.cen​sus.gov/​faces/​ tables ​e rvi​c es/​j sf/​p ages/​prod​u ctv​i ew.xhtml?pid=​ACS_​1 6​_​1 YR​_​B 03 ​0 01&prodT​y pe=​ table. 3. Efrén Rivera Ramos, The Legal Construction of Identity: The Judicial and Social Legacy of American Colonialism in Puerto Rico (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2007); and Christina Duffy Burnett and Burke Marshall, eds., Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    63 4. Cristina Campo Lacasa, Historia de la iglesia en Puerto Rico, 1511–​1802 (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1977); and Ángel G. Quintero Rivera, ed., Vírgenes, magos y escapularios: imaginería, etnicidad y religiosidad popular en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad de Puerto Rico-​Río Piedras, 2003). 5. José Manuel García Leduc, Intolerancia y heterodoxias en Puerto Rico (siglo XIX): Protestantes, masones y espiritistas-​kardecianos reclaman su espacio social (San Juan: Editorial Isla Negra, 2009). 6. Ramón Grosfoguel, Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in Global Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 55. 7. Samuel Silva Gotay, Protestantismo y política en Puerto Rico, 1898–​1930: hacia una historia del protestantismo evangélico en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1998), 113; and Samuel Cruz, Masked Africanisms: Puerto Rican Pentecostalism (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/​Hunt, 2005), 23. 8. Gotay, Protestantismo y política en Puerto Rico. 9. Jorge Juan Rodríguez V, “The Colonial Gospel in Puerto Rico: Protestant Missionaries as Agents of Empire,” January 3, 2017, https://​www.chris​tian​cent​ury.org/​blog-​post/​pra​ctic​ ing-​lib​erat​ion/​colon​ial-​gos​pel-​pue​rto-​rico. 10. Emilio Pantojas García, La iglesia protestante y la americanización de Puerto Rico, 1898–​ 1917 (Bayamón, PR: PRISA, after 1973); Daniel R. Rodríguez, La primera evangelización norteamericana en Puerto Rico, 1898–​1930 (México D.F.: Ediciones Borinquen, 1986); Gotay, Protestantismo y política en Puerto Rico. 11. Rodríguez V, “The Colonial Gospel in Puerto Rico”; George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). 12. For a comparative perspective, consult Jean and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 13. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, [1971] 2008]); and Ellen Walsh, “‘Advancing the Kingdom’: Missionaries and Americanization in Puerto Rico, 1898–​1930s,” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2008. 14. 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 Nélida Agosto Cintrón, Religión y cambio social en Puerto Rico, 1898–​1940 (Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1996). 15. César Andréu Iglesias, ed., Memoirs of Bernardo Vega: A Contribution to the History of the Puerto Rican Community in New York, translated by Juan Flores (New York: Monthly Review Press, [1977] 1984), 9, 12, 35, 45–​47, 97, 155, and 181. 16. Beatrice Bishop Berle, 80 Puerto Rican Families in New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 9 and 62; Iglesias, Memoirs of Bernardo Vega, 227. For more comprehensive numbers between 1910 and 2000, see Carmen Teresa Whalen and Víctor Vázquez Hernández, eds., The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005), 2–​12. 17. Iglesias, Memoirs of Bernardo Vega, 10 and 67. 18. Jesús Colón, A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches (New York: International Publishers, [1961] 1982), 12 and 142. 19. Colón, A Puerto Rican in New York, 102–​105.

64   Alberto Ortíz Díaz 20. Colón, A Puerto Rican in New York, 107–​110. 21. Linda C. Delgado, “Jesús Colón and the Making of a New York City Community, 1917 to 1974,” in Whalen and Vázquez Hernández, The Puerto Rican Diaspora, 71. 22. Berle, 80 Puerto Rican Families, 53; C. Wright Mills, Clarence Senior, and Rose Cohn, The Puerto Rican Journey: New York’s Newest Migrants (New York: Harper, 1950). 23. Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Annette B. Ramírez de Arellano and Conrad Seipp, Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception: A History of Birth Control in Puerto Rico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Antonio Sotomayor, “The Triangle of Empire: Sport, Religion, and Imperialism in Puerto Rico’s YMCA, 1898–​ 1926,” The Americas 74, no. 4 (October 2017): 481–​512. 24. Berle, 80 Puerto Rican Families, 54. 25. Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–​ 1950, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, [1985] 2010), lx–​lxii, lxiv, and ch. 8. 26. Berle, 80 Puerto Rican Families, 56. 27. Berle, 80 Puerto Rican Families, 54–​55. 28. Berle, 80 Puerto Rican Families, 55. 29. Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2006); Marta Moreno Vega, When the Spirits Dance Mambo: Growing Up Nuyorican in El Barrio (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004); Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets (New York: Vintage, [1967] 1997); Nicolas Kanellos, ed., Outlaw: The Collected Works of Miguel Piñero (Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 2010); Guillermo Cotto Thorner, Trópico in Manhattan (San Juan: Editorial Cordillera, [1951] 1975). This last work, in particular, is based on the life of a college-​educated Puerto Rican who arrived in New York in the 1930s. Cotto Thorner studied at Columbia University and the University of Texas. He became an ordained Baptist minister in 1942 and was denominationally active in Milwaukee and New York in the middle decades of the twentieth century. 30. For example, see Flor Piñeiro de Rivera, Arturo Schomburg: Un puertorriqueño descubre el legado histórico del negro (San Juan: Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, 1989). Piñeiro de Rivera was the accomplished wife of Reverend Juan Marcos Rivera, a pastor affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. She and her family performed mission work in Paraguay and Venezuela in the 1970s and 1980s. 31. For instance, the Ramón Delgado Ramos collection spans 1921–​1952. He was a judge, writer, and musician from San Juan. The collection includes original sheet music and lyrics, photos, and six small books, including “an epistolary memoir” and “essays on religion, spiritualism and metaphysics.” See Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro), “Collection Descriptions D–​ F,” https://​centr​opr.hun​ter.cuny.edu/​coll​ecti​ons/​col​lect​ ion-​descr​ipti​ons-​D-​F. There is a “Hispanic Ministry” collection spanning 1951–​1991. It consists of writings from and on various Spanish-​speaking church organizations and congregations (i.e., Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist and Pentecostal), as well as contact information for churches and their members. Centro, “Collection Descriptions G–​H,” https://​centr​opr.hun​ter.cuny.edu/​coll​ecti​ons/​col​lect​ion-​descr​ipti​ons-​G-​H. Another collection consists of “40 pocket-​sized prayer books” in the Catholic tradition of Puerto Rico dating from the 1940s and 1950s: “The prayers are made to saints, such as San Gabriel, Santa Isabel and San José.” Centro, “Collection Descriptions O–​P,” https://​centr​opr.hun​ ter.cuny.edu/​coll​ecti​ons/​col​lect​ion-​descr​ipti​ons-​O-​P. Yet another collection concerns Reverend Manuel Tomás Sánchez, which covers 1933–​1991. Sánchez was the pastor of the

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    65 Antioquía Church from 1934 to 1989, which had more than two hundred congregants. He became a preacher of the Pentecostal Church in 1939. Sánchez helped establish and served as president of the Spanish Eastern District of the Assemblies of God for thirteen years. He was ordained a minister by Reverend Demetrio Bazán, superintendent of the Latin American District of the Assemblies of God, in 1943. The collection consists of photos and interview transcripts that document his life and career. Centro, “Collection Descriptions S,” https://​centr​opr.hun​ter.cuny.edu/​coll​ecti​ons/​col​lect​ion-​descr​ipti​ons-​S. 32. Berle, 80 Puerto Rican Families, 55 and 58. 33. Cruz, Masked Africanisms, ch. 2; JoAnna Poblete, Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai’i (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014); Daniel M. López, California and Hawaii’s First Puerto Ricans, 1850–​1925: The 1st and 2nd Generation Immigrants/​Migrants (National City, CA: ValMar Graphics and Printing/​copyright by the author, 2016). 34. Carmen Teresa Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia: Puerto Rican Workers and Postwar Economies (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 209; El Viaje: Puerto Ricans of Philadelphia (Chicago: Arcadia, 2006), 35, 40, and 50. 35. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia, 209; and El Viaje, 35, 40, and 50. On the first Puerto Rican churches established in Lorain, Ohio, Dover, New Jersey, and throughout Connecticut between the 1950s and 1960s, see Whalen and Vázquez Hernández, The Puerto Rican Diaspora, 115–​116, 172, and 187–​189. Labor migration, the exclusionary policies of existing churches, education, social work, religious rites and observances, recreation, and community building were central themes in the emergence of the Lorain, Dover, and Connecticut churches. 36. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia, 191. 37. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia, 193. 38. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia, 165 and 176. 39. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia, 151 and 214. 40. Johnny Ramírez Johnson, An Ethnography of Social Mobility: Immigrant Membership in a Seventh-​Day Adventist Puerto Rican Ethnic Church (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008). 41. Maura I. Toro Morn, “Boricuas en Chicago: Gender and Class in the Migration and Settlement of Puerto Ricans,” in Whalen and Vázquez Hernández, The Puerto Rican Diaspora, 139–​140; Mérida M. Rúa, A Grounded Identidad: Making New Lives in Chicago’s Puerto Rican Neighborhoods (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 114–​120. 42. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia, 215. 43. Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, “Saving the Parcela: A Short History of Boston’s Puerto Rican Community,” in Whalen and Vázquez Hernández, The Puerto Rican Diaspora, 221; Elba R. Caraballo, “The Role of the Pentecostal Church as a Service Provider in the Puerto Rican Community in Boston, Massachusetts: A Case Study,” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1991; Kristy Nabhan-​Warren, The Cursillo Movement in America: Catholics, Protestants, and Fourth-​Day Spirituality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013). 44. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia, 233. 45. Glasser also suggests that church participation in Connecticut developed political leadership among Puerto Ricans. She references one of Hartford’s first female Pentecostal ministers, Julie Ramírez, who founded Templo Fe and served as the pastor there for more than fifty years. Ramírez passed away in October 2016. See Ruth Glasser, “From ‘Rich Port’ to Bridgeport: Puerto Ricans in Connecticut,” in Whalen and Vázquez Hernández, The

66   Alberto Ortíz Díaz Puerto Rican Diaspora, 181–​182 and 188–​190; “Pastor Julie Ramirez: Obituary,” Hartford Courant, October 23, 2016; Gastón Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 301–​302. 46. On the highs and lows of church activism in mid-​twentieth-​century Michigan, where Tejanos and Puerto Ricans worked on sugar beet fields as an extension of the US bracero program, see Eileen J. Findlay, We Are Left Without A Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 15, 30, 51, 84, 98, 130, 148, 151–​152, 160, 163, 173, 177, 241n11, and 247n44. More broadly, also see Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda, eds., Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 47. Darrel Wanzer-​Serrano, The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015), ch. 5. 48. Samiri Hernández Hiraldo, Black Puerto Rican Identity and Religious Experience (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, [2006] 2013). 49. Hernández Hiraldo, Black Puerto Rican Identity and Religious Experience. 50. Elizabeth Pérez, Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions (New York: New York University Press, 2016). 51. Kate Shellnutt, “Puerto Rico: 3,000 Churches Damaged, Fewer Christians Left Behind to Rebuild,” February 2, 2018, Christianity Today, https://​www.christ​iani​tyto​day.com/​news/​ 2018/​febru​ary/​pue​rto-​rico-​hurric​ane-​maria-​churc​hes-​migrat​ion-​nhclc-​nalec.html. 52. Shellnutt, “Puerto Rico: 3,000 Churches Damaged.” 53. Heather Sells, “‘He Placed Us in Here at the Right Moment’: Spirit of Revival Washes Puerto Rico after Hurricane María,” April 11, 2018, CBN News: The Christian Perspective, http://​www1.cbn.com/​cbnn​ews/​cwn/​2018/​april/​he-​pla​ced-​us-​in-​here-​at-​the-​right-​mom​ ent-​spi​rit-​of-​revi​val-​was​hes-​pue​rto-​rico-​after-​hurric​ane-​maria. 54. Brandon Elrod, “New Planters, Resources Energize Puerto Rico Ministry,” August 6, 2018, Baptist Press, http://​www.bpn​ews.net/​51381. 55. Samuel Smith, “Samaritan’s Purse to Rebuild 55 Churches and 390 Homes in Hurricane-​ Damaged Puerto Rico,” June 25, 2018, The Christian Post, https://​www.christ​ianp​ost.com/​ news/​sam​arit​ans-​purse-​rebu​ild-​55-​churc​hes-​390-​homes-​hurric​ane-​dama​ged-​pue​rto-​ rico.html. 56. Bobby Ross Jr., “A New Day for Puerto Rico,” July 27, 2018, The Christian Chronicle: An International Newspaper for Churches of Christ, https://​chr​isti​anch​roni​cle.org/​a-​new-​day-​ for-​pue​rto-​rico/​. 57. Susan E. Eichenberger, “‘Where Two or More Are Gathered’: The Inclusion of Puerto Ricans in Multiethnic Latino Parishes in the Southeastern United States,” PhD diss., University of Florida, 2004. 58. Antonio M. Stevens Arroyo, The Puerto Ricans’ Role in the History of the Hispanic Church of the United States of America: From the Great Migration, 1946, until the Bicentennial Year, 1976 (S.I.: publisher not identified, 1976).

Bibliography Caraballo, Elba R. “The Role of the Pentecostal Church as a Service Provider in the Puerto Rican Community in Boston, Massachusetts: A Case Study.” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1991.

Puerto Rican Christianities in the United States    67 Cintrón, Nélida Agosto. Religión y cambio social en Puerto Rico, 1898–​1940. Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1996. Cruz, Samuel. Masked Africanisms: Puerto Rican Pentecostalism. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/​ Hunt, 2005. Gotay, Samuel Silva. Protestantismo y política en Puerto Rico, 1898–​1930: hacia una historia del protestantismo evangélico en Puerto Rico. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1998. Hernández Hiraldo, Samiri. Black Puerto Rican Identity and Religious Experience (2006). Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. Johnson, Johnny Ramírez. An Ethnography of Social Mobility: Immigrant Membership in a Seventh-​Day Adventist Puerto Rican Ethnic Church. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008. Leduc, José Manuel García. Intolerancia y heterodoxias en Puerto Rico (siglo XIX): Protestantes, masones y espiritistas-​ kardecianos reclaman su espacio social. San Juan: Editorial Isla Negra, 2009. Rivera, Ángel G. Quintero, ed. Vírgenes, magos y escapularios: imaginería, etnicidad y religiosidad popular en Puerto Rico. San Juan: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad de Puerto Rico-​Río Piedras, 2003. Román, Reinaldo L. Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898–​1956. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Thorner, Guillermo Cotto. Trópico in Manhattan (1951). San Juan: Editorial Cordillera, 1975. Walsh, Ellen. “‘Advancing the Kingdom’: Missionaries and Americanization in Puerto Rico, 1898–​1930s.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2008. Whalen, Carmen Teresa. From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia: Puerto Rican Workers and Postwar Economies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. Whalen, Carmen Teresa, and Víctor Vázquez Hernández, eds. The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005.

Chapter 4

Af ro -​C uban C at h ol i c i sms Elizabeth Pérez

As several of the authors in this handbook demonstrate, Roman Catholicism is not one tradition but encompasses many. It is catholic in the sense of heterogeneous, as well as racialized, gendered, and class specific, depending on the historical conditions of its practice. People of African descent in Cuba have developed politically sophisticated and multivalent responses to Catholicism as ecclesia docens—​the Church hierarchy in its authoritative teaching function—​and to the Church as an institutional structure. Likewise, practitioners of transnational Afro-​Cuban West and Central African–​inspired religions have been embedded in complex relationships with Catholic theology writ large and its social inscription within the power structures of local parishes while grappling with Catholicism as a hegemonic source of cultural value. The term “Afro-​Cuban” requires a brief gloss. Not all people of African descent in Cuba have historically identified as afrodescendiente or Afro-​Cuban, a term not coined yet actively disseminated by the legendary historian, ethnographer, and pensador Fernando Ortiz in the early twentieth century. Slavery not only behaved as a brutal system of forced labor but also reinforced existing forms of social stratification.1 Prior to emancipation, skin color and phenotypical features such as hair texture came to act as rulers by which to measure how far a given person had come from the perceived indignity of enslavement.2 After abolition in 1886, discussion of color dominated the racial discourse, yet it acquired salient importance as an indicator of class. Light skin implied ownership of property, whereas dark skin indicated that one’s ancestors had suffered as the property of others. Assuming the label of “Afro-​Cuban” has, then, expressed a desire to enter into solidarity with others of African descent. Typically light-​skinned Cubans who have been able to conceal their ancestors’ sub-​Saharan roots have done so, since their disavowal in favor of European origins has been incentivized as a condition of social “elevation.” Racial passing as a mechanism of advancement has received countless treatments in Cuban popular culture, as in the “great Cuban novel” Cecilia Valdés o la Loma del Ángel (1882). Analogously, practitioners of Afro-​Cuban religions—​notwithstanding race or class—​have sometimes chosen to “pass” as Catholic within their natal families.

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   69 Outside of religious contexts, not all white or Asian practitioners have been eager to associate with Afro-​Cubans, much less be suspected of having African blood.3 To speak of Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, then, is to contemplate the plurality of ways that those with African descent—​biologically or religiously—​have approached Catholicism, whether or not they have sought to embrace Blackness as a foundational component of their social and political identities.

History 1517 to 1959 While historians mark 1513 as the date when the first enslaved Africans arrived in Cuba, evangelization was not an immediate priority for the Spanish Crown. The expropriation of indigenous labor was of paramount importance, and the Taíno/​Arawak and Ciboneys spent their days toiling in copper and gold mines as well as in small-​scale plantation labor on encomiendas. As María Elena Díaz writes, the missionary project did not begin in earnest until a critical mass of enslaved Africans arrived almost a century later, in the early seventeenth century, primarily for the forced cultivation of tobacco and sugarcane. Due to the then-​recent “Reconquest” of the Iberian Peninsula (wholly or in part “Al-​ Andalus” from 711 to 1492) and the fear of resurgent Muslim influence, the Crown mandated that enslaved people from Islamicized regions of Africa not be imported to the Spanish Americas. In Cuba as elsewhere, the Crown exhorted its subjects to christen enslaved people with European names upon purchase, baptize them, expose them to Church services at least twice a year, and allow them to rest on the Sabbath and Catholic days of obligation.4 The Crown’s interest in evangelization on the island intensified in the eighteenth century, as the African population was set to multiply exponentially. When the Haitian Revolution began in 1791, Cuba was poised to take the lead in Caribbean sugar production. At the beginning of a massive compilation of Spanish colonial legislation published for Don Carlos II, Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, the Crown obligates Catholic officials, Spaniards, and creoles who claimed people as property to instruct the enslaved in the faith.5 The Recopilación opens with the announcement of a mission to bring Catholicism, and therefore universal redemption, to the American part of Spain. The command to convert, indoctrinate, and otherwise save Indian “pagans” goes hand in hand with the order to stamp out idolatry, forbid the consumption of human flesh, and banish false priests. In the Recopilación’s seventeenth law, Africans as well as Indians are prohibited from laboring on Sundays and feast days. Needless to say, their putative protections went unobserved, as did the regulations governing the treatment of the enslaved listed in the notorious Code Noir, decreed by Louis XIV in 1685 for French overseas possessions.6

70   Elizabeth Pérez In the Recopilación’s thirteenth law, those who hold people in slavery are directed to send the enslaved (not designated as persons themselves) to Masses and catechisms at the hour appointed by the local prelate. The mention of a local prelate is significant, as the large percentage of monastics among overseas clergy had begun to alarm the monarchy; monks’ commercial endeavors and primary ecclesiastical allegiance to the papacy made them suspect of divided political loyalties. As Karen Y. Morrison writes, “One clear effect of Bourbon policies toward Catholic institutions was to direct educational responsibilities for [B]‌lack indoctrination and socialization away from the regular, monastic orders (especially Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans) toward parish-​level diocesan priests. The first catechism guide for Africans in Cuba only appeared in the latter part of the eighteenth century and was intended for use by such parish priests.”7 In the 1760s and again in the 1840s, the Crown expelled slaveholding monastic orders that encouraged family formation for the enslaved through marriage and tutored them in the rudiments of Catholic doctrine. The challenges of the latter subsequently fell to local priests. The results were uneven to say the least. Among ordinary Cubans, the stereotype of the Spanish colonial priest has been one of public pretention and private vice; for example, it is still said today that clergymen were sent to Cuba as punishment for egregious moral infractions committed in other Spanish possessions or on the Iberian Peninsula. Although the Inquisition—​so active in New Spain and Peru—​was comparatively ineffectual in Cuba due to internal conflicts among ecclesiastical bodies, a few cases were prosecuted vigorously against Protestants.8 In Historia de una pelea cubana contra los demonios (1959), Fernando Ortiz satirized the Inquisition’s inability to eradicate African-​inspired practices in seventeenth-​century Cuba and its projection of Devil worship onto religious systems without a concept of the diabolical. “In 1510, the Bishop of Cuba complained that every boat from Spain was bringing Jews, New Christians and heretics,” yet their internalization of Catholic doctrine was much less of a worry than the threat of Afro-​Cuban rebellion against the colonial regime.9 In 1682, the Synod of the Diocese of Santiago de Cuba, Jamaica, Habana, and Florida forbade those designated as Black and mulatto from entering any religious orders; the history of Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms is therefore overwhelmingly that of the laity. In 1842, the Crown issued a degree echoing the Recopilación that called on those who claimed people as property to recommit to the religious training of the enslaved. The emergent discourse of fetishism—​the rubric under which any African religious activity had come to be subsumed since the early eighteenth century—​would cast enslaved people as in thrall to material possessions based on an instinctual misattribution of agency to things. The evidence suggests that priests emphasized the power of crucifixes, icons, and other objects over doctrine in deference to the purportedly fetishistic natures of their catechumens. Africans were baptized with holy water, but so were sugar estates. Sugar mills were also assigned godparents and named after saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary.10 The analogy between the colonial factory and the body of the Catholic subject is too resonant and multilayered to be explored here; suffice it to say that the Crown considered enslaved people little more than machines for the reproduction of Spanish

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   71 cultural hegemony and economic domination. Any protections afforded to their bodies merely constituted a type of insurance policy for the colonial regime. One of the “secular” social arenas most heavily impacted by Church involvement was that of legal matrimony. While the Church generally supported the right of Afro-​Cuban adults to receive the sacrament of marriage, the Crown put up significant obstacles to the unions of people with incompatible class positions and/​or differences in legal color. Legal color was a combination of phenotypical or “real” color—​everyday social identification based on appearance—​and one’s classification, along with one’s parents, on official documents such as baptismal records and court proceedings. Color ideally performed a synecdochal function, so that at a glance one could determine the social status of any Cuban, but at any moment phenotypical color could either complement or contradict legal color. Then as today, Afro-​Cubans have identified as negro, pardo, prieto, moreno, mulato, jabao, and bien trigueño, among any number of labels; an encyclopedic taxonomy of race has registered minute gradations of difference in hair texture and facial features as well as skin color throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. During the colonial period, such subjective assessments formed the basis for declarations of legal color that decided whom Afro-​Cubans could marry. It was not uncommon for the parents of the betrothed to object to the nuptials based on a judgment of unequal station—​that is, a discrepancy between the social positions of one would-​be marital partner and another, based on phenotypical color, class, and the gendered notion of honor (itself dependent on the perception of premarital virginity and chastity among the female members of a given family). Sometimes Catholic priests testified on behalf of Afro-​Cubans of unequal station, or in cases of intermarriage between Afro-​Cubans and people of European or Chinese descent (especially after 1848, after which over 150,000 Cantonese indentured servants arrived in Cuba). However, priests only intervened on behalf of those Afro-​Cubans whom they deemed worthy of the legal safeguards that marriage would impart. The colonial regime had an incentive to hinder enslaved couples from marrying, since the legitimacy of their offspring would confer a degree of prestige on the entire family that could facilitate its members’ freedom or manumission (coartado). By contrast, the Crown implicitly endorsed the institution of interracial concubinage, in which Afro-​ Cuban women and white women from the lower classes acted as the mistresses of white and Asian men, often setting up separate households with them. These so-​called free or consensual unions—​which, like legal marriages, not infrequently involved coercion and violence—​produced children without a legal right to either paternal recognition or inheritance. While this situation punished both parents and children for transgressing against patriarchal norms, the moral discourse surrounding unregulated, unauthorized cohabitation and female sexuality masked the fact that the Crown profited from keeping land, capital, and other kinds of wealth in the hands of elites. Public officials and the press reserved particular venom for Black women’s presumed depravity; such sayings as “There is no sweet tamarind fruit, nor virgin mulatta,” sought to place the blame on Afro-​Cuban women for their own violent exploitation.11

72   Elizabeth Pérez Afro-​Cubans relied with greater confidence on the practice of godparentage, a species of religious kinship that bound together the families of newborns with a man and a woman chosen to act as their spiritual guardians in the sacrament of baptism. Since the medieval period the Church had underscored the lifelong spiritual responsibilities associated with godparentage, such as providing children with a Christian education and counseling them in the cultivation of virtue. It was not uncommon for Afro-​Cubans to seek baptismal godparents for their children among more affluent white Cubans, solely to diminish the extent to which they would be subjected to the whims of the colonial and, later, Republican juridical system. The historical importance of the institution is evinced by the prevalence of this terminology within the Afro-​Cuban religion Lucumí (popularly called Santería or regla ocha), in which one’s religious sponsors and mentors are known as godmothers (madrinas) and/​or godfathers (padrinos). The Spanish Crown bequeathed Afro-​Cubans two other Catholic institutions that would leave a much greater religious legacy than other efforts at evangelization: cofrádias de negros (Black fraternities dedicated to the veneration of particular saints) and cabildos de nación (societies organized according to African ethnic group). Beginning the late fifteenth century, local parishes and noble families in Seville and Lisbon funded cofrádias and cabildos de nación so as to regulate the association of free Africans and manumitted slaves. Clerical and secular authorities in Havana soon followed suit; “cabildos of this type were reported in Cuba as early as 1535 in Santiago and 1568 for Havana.”12 Clergymen and aristocratic elites reasoned that by supplying resources to people of African descent for the staging of processions and other devotional activities, they might succeed in habituating them into Catholic orthodoxy. The Church sought to replace Africans’ “primitive” superstitions and propensity for witchcraft, or brujería, with the honor (dulia) owed to the saints, veneration (hyperdulia) of the Virgin Mary, and worship (latria) of God. For its part, the Crown hoped that cofrádias and cabildos de nación would assist in their divide-​and-​conquer strategy, acting to separate “fresh” “saltwater” Africans from “seasoned” ones, the African-​born from creoles, the enslaved from free Black people, and distinct African ethnicities from one another. These institutions did the opposite. Cabildos hosted the performance of African-​inspired rituals and evolved into mutual-​aid societies with dues-​paying members. They offered loans; arranged for medical care and financial assistance in case of illness; pooled funds to pay for compatriots’ funerals; and manumitted enslaved peers, further bonding members together on the basis of religious affinity rather than ethnicity. Afro-​ Cubans undoubtedly absorbed some components of Catholic doctrine, yet cofrádias and cabildos de nación—​in Cuba as in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil—​became key sites of Black sovereignty, self-​making, and fugitivity.13 Women not only participated in cabildos but also had a voice in electing their leaders. They wielded power in the position of queen, queen mother, and capataz, among others. “The important duty of guarding the safe that contained the cabildo’s money usually fell upon the queen,” writes Matt D. Childs.14 These organizations also fostered the innovative recombination of African religions. Indeed, scholarly consensus now holds that cabildos stimulated the emergence of

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   73 Lucumí, the Ewe/​Fon religious formation Arará, and Palo Monte (among other Kongo-​ inspired reglas de congo), as well as the initiatory brotherhood of Abakuá, a creative reinstantiation of the Calabar Ékpè secret society. For example, Lucumí cabildos were defined by Yorùbá ethnic affiliation, yet they offered membership to Afro-​Cubans from other “nations”; cabildo leaders followed the pattern set by cults of the Yorùbá deities, or orishas, by converting these groups into “ ‘cross-​cutting’ institutions . . . based on initiation rather than descent.”15 Cabildos integrated Afro-​Cubans into communities headed by elders with a near-​monopoly on the ritual information, or “secrets,” regarded as traditions and devised durable protocols for the transmission of Yorùbá, Ewe/​Fon, Kongo, and Calabar religious knowledge.16 Saints and virgins came to represent West African orishas and foduces as well as the Central African spirits called mpungus or inquices (nkisis); the correspondences between them crystallized due to perceived similarities between the hagiographies of the former and mythologies of the latter (reinforced by the iconographic details seen in statues, chromolithographs, and other images). Lucumí cabildos appropriated the European aesthetics and creole Cuban aristocratic styles of the colonial period, procuring fine porcelains, gilded adornments, and opulent fabrics to fashion sumptuous altars for their patron orishas.17 Cabildos bestowed royal titles such as queen, prince, and courtier on both elected and hereditary officeholders. They also paraded through the streets on saints’ feast days and for the Epiphany (January 6). According to David H. Brown, “Cabildo processions presented subversive public models of royal wealth, order, power, and alternative authority.”18 As Miguel “Willie” Ramos writes, “By the late 1700s, they were beginning to worry the master class. Various articles of the 1792 Bando de Buen Gobierno y Policia were addressed at controlling the cabildos and their members. Article 39 claimed to attend to the complaints about cabildos located on streets inhabited by ‘honest neighbors who justly complain about the discomfort occasioned by the coarse and unpleasant sounds of their [African] instruments . . . I order that within one year counting from today, all the cabildos move to the edges of the city.’ ”19 In the 1880s, cabildos throughout Cuba started to die out as a result of repressive legislation, and after 1887, cabildos increasingly began to be located in private homes. New legislation enjoined cabildos to obtain prior official recognition and licenses, and in 1888, the government prohibited cabildos from being organized independently as they were in colonial times, ruling that they had to be overseen following the laws promulgated for white societies. Most cabildos disbanded or went underground, giving rise to the institution of the Afro-​Cuban “house temple.” Even today, most Lucumí, Arará, and Palo Monte initiatory communities operate out of their leaders’ homes, where the consecrated objects that embody their patron deities live alongside their children, spouses, and extended families. Ironically, the Crown had a policy of freeing enslaved people who fled to Cuba from Protestant countries, but slavery was not completely abolished on the island until 1886.20 During the struggle for independence from Spain in the latter half of the nineteenth century, writes Louis A. Perez, “The Catholic Church symbolized some of the most

74   Elizabeth Pérez odious features of Spanish colonialism: illiberal traditions, authoritarian structures, and the preponderance of peninsulares within the church hierarchy.”21 Not surprisingly then, many critics of the Spanish regime turned to Protestant denominations, viewed as representative of more modern, rational, and egalitarian forms of Christianity, with their “democratic” emphasis on the priesthood of believers. Others—​particularly women and Afro-​Cubans of all genders—​partook in emergent modalities of Spiritism based partly on the writings of French polymath Allan Kardec and partly on a labile assemblage of ritual techniques to contact the spirits of the dead that had originated among Afro-​ Cubans in southeastern Cuba. Espiritismo poached liturgically from biblical sources, Roman Catholic iconography, and devotional music incorporated vernacular beliefs surrounding the ability of the deceased to guide the living. It gained followers in the midst of the inconceivable social upheaval caused by the Ten Years’ War against Spain (1868–​1878), as well as Spanish General Valeriano Weyler’s policy of “reconcentrating” civilians in Oriente from 1896 to 1898—​the last three years of the Second War for Independence from Spain—​to areas directly administered by the Spanish army. Doing so was intended to deprive guerillas of new recruits and grassroots material support. In this respect, it succeeded; according to one conservative estimate, however, 30 percent of Cubans interned in these “concentration camps” perished due to malnutrition and disease. Some traumatized survivors lost contact with relatives and other beloved reconcentrados and then spent the remainder of their days attempting to find them. The nationalist sentiments provoked by “Butcher” Weyler’s excesses turned the island more forcefully against Spanish rule and the Catholic hierarchy, widely regarded as complicit with the atrocities inflicted on the creole population. Three types of Espiritismo came to predominate in Cuba: de mesa, de cordón, and cruzao [cruzado]. In Espiritismo de mesa, affluent and upwardly mobile participants follow Kardecist principles of “Scientific” Spiritism and hold séances around a white table; in the liturgies of cordón, practitioners “of a lower class status” stand in a circle holding hands, singing and inviting trance possession.22 Cruzao combines elements of both and is “crossed” with practices derived from Lucumí and Palo Monte. All three types of Espiritismo have held out the hope of reconnecting the bereaved with departed loved ones. They have also recognized the array of ethnic groups on the island by identifying personal guardians as “spirit guides” drawn from the ranks of Indios; Kongos and other Africans; formerly enslaved Black Cubans; Romani women (immortalized as Gitanas); Asian and Arabic muertos; and Roman Catholic priests and nuns, racialized as Spaniards. The acknowledgment of these groups as contributing positively to Cubans’ spiritual welfare has gone hand in hand with an appreciation for women as spirit mediums, celebrated for their aptitude in channeling the spirit guides in rituals called misas blancas or misas espirituales. Mediums understood to be especially gifted have ascended to the status of “god men” and their ardent followings have contested the supremacy of the Catholic Church as ultimate arbiter of religious norms.23 Unfortunately, the “ideology of racelessness” propagated by the journalist, poet, and revolutionary José Martí—​so persuasive to white and light-​skinned Cubans—​denied

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   75 not only the ubiquity of racial labels but also the ability of Afro-​Cubans to mobilize on the basis of such distinctions. Despite fighting in demographically disproportionate numbers during the wars of independence, Black Cubans did not get an equal share of the socioeconomic pie carved out after the Spanish authorities departed; in fact, few Afro-​Cuban veterans received even remotely adequate compensation for their efforts. In Miguel Barnet’s interview cum historical novel The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, the formerly enslaved Esteban Montejo recalled his day-​to-​day life as a freedom fighter in the Liberation Army: “War destroys men’s trust, your brothers die beside you, and there is nothing you can do about it. Then along come the smart guys and grab all the good jobs.”24 After the United States occupied the island in 1898 following the Spanish-​American War and segregated its major cities, racial tensions intensified. Afro-​ Cubans found themselves unable to articulate their grievances without confronting the accusation of racism themselves, leveled by white politicians interested in promoting a “colorblind” Cuban identity insensible to the reality of widespread discrimination. From 1898 to 1902, during the neocolonial administration of Republican Cuba by the United States, Protestant missionaries established a number of congregations and won converts, even as the attraction to Afro-​Cuban religions endured. However, the early Republican period (1902–​1933) witnessed several “witch crazes” in which Afro-​Cuban religious practitioners were implicated in the kidnapping and murder of white children and jailed. Several Black Cubans were garroted for these crimes, although the evidence proved flimsy at best. With the tacit approval of the Catholic Church, the state security apparatus routinely harassed members of Afro-​Cuban religious formations and lynched many associated with Lucumí and the reglas de congo.25 In the opinion of white Cuban elites, the island was in the midst of a demographic crisis, and they hoped that massive European immigration would address not one but two dangers: that of the Afro-​Cuban population becoming a majority, and the danger of agricultural labor shortages in post-​ emancipation years.26 Cuban statesmen and legislators turned to South American models for inspiration. As Aline Helg writes, “The economic success of Argentina, which was credited to ‘the colonization of its countryside by European families,’ was on the mind of the ruling class.”27 Public intellectuals fought with politicians over the practicality of implementing a similar policy, yet few denied the benefits of whitening Cuba with blood from outside the “degenerate” tropics. As a result of government policies and heavy financial incentives, “approximately 900,000 Spaniards and Canary Islanders emigrated to Cuba between 1900 and 1929, enabling this community to strengthen its position in trade and industry,” thereby weakening the economic foothold painstakingly gained by both Chinese and Black Cubans in the early twentieth century.28 The Catholic Church underwrote these efforts by integrating newcomers seamlessly into existing parishes, accommodating their religious customs, and minimizing any critique of racial discrimination. In 1908, Evaristo Estenoz founded the first (and last) Black political party in Cuba to agitate for the rights of Afro-​Cubans. When government sought to crush the Partido Independiente de Color, the Church did not dissent. Neither did it protest when the state—​with the help of American Marines—​massacred upwards of three thousand

76   Elizabeth Pérez Afro-​Cubans during the so-​called race war in 1912 in response to the Partido’s isolated acts of sabotage and arson, ironically committed to goad the United States into intervening on its own behalf. As the price of continued relevance for Afro-​Cuban Catholics, the Church grudgingly accepted the veneration of Marian figures identified with orishas in annual processions that incorporated such features as the playing of consecrated bàtá drums outside parish doors and chants in the Lucumí liturgical language during the feast days of la Virgen de Regla and Cuba’s patroness, la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. For their part, upwardly mobile Cubans of mixed race strove to counter the dominant nationalist discourse by pursuing assimilation and urging a stricter adherence to Roman Catholicism.29 Afro-​ Cuban newspapers scorned African drum music and dance as “barbarisms of bygone days” and an “African atavism” that Cubans of color would do well to eschew.30 Editorials lamented the degenerate practice of witchcraft and traditional medicine, asserting that the crude healing arts of the ancestors had no place in the modern world. Although they condemned the repression of brujos applauded in (and partially orchestrated by) the white newspapers, they offered scant defense for those practicing African-​inspired traditions. Aline Helg says of Afro-​Cuban elites, “Too small in number and in power, they were not in a position to change the parameters of a debate that presented Cuban’s options in terms of ‘white civilization’ versus ‘barbarian Africanization.’ ”31 Until 1959, the influence of the Catholic Church was felt most strongly in the realm of education. Parochial schools instituted in 1876 placed most elementary and secondary schooling in the hands of the Christian Brothers of De La Salle and other teaching orders. The tuition required by these schools made attendance prohibitive for members of the lower classes, including a majority of the Afro-​Cuban population, and further entrenched existing social hierarchies. Indeed, apart from schools run by the Oblate Sisters of Providence, only a handful admitted Black students until 1959.32 While parochial schools attempted to bring Afro-​Cubans into the doctrinal fold by emphasizing receipt of the sacraments, they operated to reproduce the rigid structure of the ruling class. Political leaders were drawn from cohorts of graduates and upheld their social mores (although the Jesuit-​educated Fidel Castro would be among the exceptions). The administration of these schools on Church-​owned tracts of land and the low taxes it paid to the government made the Church an object of condemnation for lower-​class Cubans. Despite this, returning the Church’s property to the state was not one of the main priorities articulated by Cuban revolutionaries.33

1959 to the Present Day After the “triumph” of the Cuban Revolution, the Catholic Church became a target of policies aimed at extirpating religion from Cuban society. Almost immediately, the government shuttered Catholic publications and expelled priests. Mob violence beset local parishes, desecrating shrines and disrupting Eucharistic Masses and other Church services. Persecution became increasingly systematic in 1961, with the expulsion of

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   77 clergy, arrests of priests and bishops, and confiscation of parochial schools and church businesses. Clergy who chose to remain on the island risked imprisonment. In 1962, Fidel Castro announced that Cuba was officially an atheist state and starting in 1965, both Catholic and Protestant ministers were sent to the newly created UMAP (Military Units to Aid Production) labor camps, along with members of the laity, homosexuals, and members of other groups seen as in need of revolutionary re-​education. In 1969, the celebration of Christmas was banned. Although comparatively few of the clergy were Afro-​Cuban, the repression had a chilling effect on devotional practices such as processions and fiestas patronales. Much of the traditional music played for Catholic festivals and holidays, such as the Altares de Cruz, was never recorded.34 Such events carried with them the memories of centuries-​old local Afro-​Cuban, European, and indigenous traditions that regrettably eluded documentation by scholars. Conversely, Afro-​Cuban religions increased in cachet in the first decades after the Revolution. While rhetorically demoted to the status of “folklore,” Afro-​Cuban religions achieved recognition as cultural patrimony and institutions dedicated to their study sprung up in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, and elsewhere. During the “carnival stage” of the Revolution prior to the late 1960s, Afro-​Cuban culture workers came into demand as performers of sacred music and dances, partly as a demonstration of the Revolution’s solidarity with the Black lower classes.35 Later, Lucumí practitioners would be prohibited from wearing their sacred necklaces (elekes) in public, wearing white for a year after ordination as per traditional protocols, and holding initiation rituals and/​or drumming ceremonies without permits. The Castro regime banned practitioners from joining socialist youth organizations, thus sabotaging their professional advancement. However, the international outcry over religious freedom in Cuba would mainly focus on the persecution of Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The publication of the 1985 bestseller Fidel & Religion: Conversations with Frei Betto on Marxism & Liberation Theology signaled a concession from the revolutionary leadership that Christianity could coexist with communism in Cuba. In 1985 and again in 1990, Fidel Castro met with Evangelical leaders; 1990 was also the year that the state began to allow Christmas and Easter festivities to be televised (although private celebrations of these holidays would not be permitted until 1987). With Cuba’s official declaration of religious tolerance in 1992 and removal of scientific atheism from the Constitution as official state policy, the possibility of a rapprochement with the Church opened up. This ideological move was motivated by the economic realities imposed by the fall of the Soviet Union and the identification of religious commerce and tourism as a vital source of income for the state. In 1998, Pope John Paul II became the first reigning pontiff to visit Cuba and raised hopes of political reforms that, for the most part, failed to bear fruit. Choirs such as those from the city of Guantánamo fêted the Pope with performances showcasing the fidelity of parishioners who had waited over a generation to publicly and joyously affirm their commitment to the faith. Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba in 2012, and Pope Francis followed in 2015. During each of their three visits, the Popes refused to meet with representatives of Afro-​Cuban religions, despite seeking out Christian and Jewish Cuban leaders for

78   Elizabeth Pérez ecumenical consultations. Notwithstanding the state’s ambivalence toward the practice of Catholicism—​a much less lucrative enterprise than the de facto sponsorship of Lucumí through “diplo-​Santería” tours that began in the 1990s—​the Archbishops of Havana continue to have an adversarial relationship to the regime, due to their advocacy on behalf of dissidents. Today, the Church competes for Afro-​Cubans adherents with Evangelical missions (heavily subsidized by conservative groups located in the United States), a resurgence of interest in Sunni Islam, and a flourishing array of Afro-​ Cuban religions. The Cuban population was estimated to stand at 11.2 million in 2017, and an estimated 60.5 percent currently identify as Catholics—​down from 93 percent in 1953—​5 percent as Protestant, and 0.1 percent (approximately 10,000) as Muslim, most of whom are adult converts.36 According to estimates, 70–​80 percent of the population practices an Afro-​Cuban religion, yet no reliable statistical data currently exist.37 The first Cubans to seek asylum in the United States and Spain after the Cuban Revolution were predominantly of European descent and from the middle and upper classes. When the Cuban government began allowing airlifts to the United States (1965–​ 1973)—​coinciding with perhaps the most intense period of political repression on the island—​Afro-​Cuban exiles entered the United States in significantly larger numbers. Practitioners of Lucumí, Espiritismo, and the reglas de congo joined what had become a burgeoning transnational religious scene in New York City, Union City, New Jersey, and Miami, Florida, as Black Americans collaborated with Latinx to worship African deities and enlarge their priesthoods. During this period, various church institutions sprang up to meet the needs of Cuban refugees, such as Miami’s Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, completed in 1973. These efforts have tended to exclude or marginalize Afro-​ Cuban voices and the “face” of Cuban Catholicism in the mainstream media—​as of the exile community more generally—​has been white. Demographic change came once again with the 1980 “Mariel boatlift,” an exodus in which upwards of 125,000 Cubans arrived in the United States in a matter of months. The Cuban government’s pretext for the release of these so-​called Marielitos was to rid the nation of counterrevolutionary parasites, criminals, and “scum” such as homosexuals. Despite its imposition by the Castro regime, this stigma would complicate Marielitos’ integration into white-​dominated Cuban communities in Miami and elsewhere. The disproportionate percentage of Afro-​Cubans who emigrated during the Mariel flotilla and those who have done so since then—​largely by leaving the island on rickety boats or makeshift rafts called balsas—​have not enjoyed the social capital and economic mobility enjoyed by previous generations of exiles. Yet as a result of the Mariel boatlift and the frequency of religious travel to Cuba, “Afro-​Cuban” traditions are no longer tied only to Latinx or African Americans. A racially and ethnically diverse cross-​section of practitioners connect via social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram; these also facilitate dialogue with Afro-​Cuban Catholics, as devotees trade clips of choral music, religious services, and memes (for example, colorful montages featuring St. Jude, whose “cultus” has always been tied to an ethos of public promotion and storytelling among his devotees).38

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   79

Culture: Católico “a Mi Manera” in a Multireligious Society Some Afro-​Cubans practice Catholicism exclusively, yet a mi manera (“in my own way”)—​citing a “familiar prerevolutionary idiomatic expression”—​as do coreligionists of European and Asian descent.39 Some may be classified as “Easter Sunday Catholics,” apt to attend Mass only on Easter, Christmas, and a handful of other holidays, despite possessing the full complement of sacraments. Others with consistent church attendance and unimpeachable catechisms are so-​called cafeteria Catholics, since their beliefs on a range of social issues conflict with Church dogma; they feel compelled to “pick and choose” the doctrinal points that articulate best with their sociopolitical identities. These Afro-​Cubans negotiate their belonging in the Church alongside others brought together by common interpretive frame of references, reciprocal obligations, and relationships based on sentiments of affinity. Well aware that only papal pronouncements delivered ex cathedra are judged infallible and therefore spiritually binding, many such Catholics are far savvier than their critics. A-​mi-​manera Catholics may conduct domestic rites with roots in both European vernacular Catholicism and Afro-​Diasporic religions, such as cleansings with Florida water and herbs (despojos) and offerings of food, tobacco, and liquor to statues of saints (especially San Lázaro, Santa Bárbara, and la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, enshrined within and in front of the home). Regional variation also shapes religious subjectivity; for example, in the southeastern part of the island, Afro-​Cuban Catholicism may be inflected by the practice of Haitian-​derived Vodú. “Good Catholics” there and elsewhere may know how to diagnose problems, prescribe solutions, and divine the future by “throwing” Spanish playing cards (tirar las barajas españolas), a ritual technology that may be attributable to the presence of Romani people and Canary Islanders in Cuba during the colonial period.40 Like other Cubans, Catholics may adorn their children with onyx cabochons set in gold earrings, necklaces, pins, and bracelets to absorb the evil eye (mal de ojo). They may depend on folk remedies—​especially herbal teas (cocimientos)—​when ill and ascribe to an ethos of therapeutic pluralism. In short, Afro-​ Cubans resemble Catholics throughout the world in supplementing faith in God, the Virgin Mary, and the community of saints with trust in other ceremonially accessible forces. It is important to note the prevalence of multiple allegiances in Afro-​Cuban religions. Participation in these and indeed most Black Atlantic traditions are far from mutually exclusive, thus diverging sharply from standard post-​Enlightenment models of “religion” as a category. In fact, Lucumí, the reglas de palo, Arará, and Espiritismo are historically and practically interdependent. The performance of misas espirituales for spirit guides and initiation into Palo Monte and other Kongo-​inspired traditions must still sometimes precede Lucumí ordination, depending on the divinations executed for a would-​be novice. It is possible to be initiated in these traditions as well as Arará

80   Elizabeth Pérez and Abakuá without calling into question one’s commitment to any of them, as long as practitioners exhibit lineage-​based competence in ritual contexts and obedience to their elders. In some Lucumí communities, individuals may not be ordained unless they have undergone baptism, and visiting a Catholic church and cemetery remains part of initiation as a rite of passage in several lineages. Yet this practice reflects the emphasis on initiation as recapitulating and telescoping the experience of enslavement, rather than any attempt to indoctrinate novices into Catholic belief and continued practice. It is nevertheless not unusual to be initiated in one or more of the preceding traditions and call oneself Catholic, since this may merely be employed as a religious label that differentiates one from Protestants, without implying Catholic practice to the absolute exclusion of Afro-​Cuban religions. An uninitiated practitioner may also identify as Catholic if they only attend Afro-​Cuban religious ceremonies sporadically or occasionally arrange for divinations as clients. In the mid-​twentieth century, it had not been uncommon for white Cubans to declare, if questioned about their presence in an Afro-​ Cuban ritual, “Yo no creo pero lo repito,” no doubt a variation on the famous reply of the colonial Spanish Viceroy to his monarch: “Obedezco pero no cumplo.”41 Although the stigma of involvement in Black Atlantic traditions more generally has diminished, the correlation between belief, ritual participation, and obedience to religious authorities remains far from straightforward. The question of the material and ideological relationship between Catholicism and Afro-​Cuban religions thus remains a complex one not satisfactorily answered with reference to the notion of syncretism. The conflation of Yorùbá-​inspired religious practice with the worship of saints had its origin in the appropriation of Roman Catholic iconography and material culture by practitioners. Calling regla ocha Santería was initially an improvement over the terminology of brujería, but it gave the erroneous impression that Lucumí was a product of syncretism, as an unconscious merging of two distinct, superficially discordant, traditions into one harmonious blend (the premise of countless internet articles about the tradition). Santería has persisted as a misnomer despite strenuous objections from practitioners themselves, many of whom have chosen to dispense with Roman Catholic imagery altogether, whether or not they hew to the tenets of African American style “Yorùbá Reversionism” or heed protocols set by Nigerian Yorùbá lineages of orisha worship. On the other hand, santero/​a persists as a neutral term for “practitioner” among many Latinx. Perhaps we should consider the “poaching” of saints by Afro-​Cuban religious communities to represent deities and other spirits not as a tactic of dissimulation but as an intricate comparative project, only faintly registered (and anachronistically rationalized) in the tables of correspondences included in so many studies of Lucumí and the reglas de congo. The scholarship of John Thornton, among others, has shown that due to the Christianization of enslaved peoples from the Kingdom of Kongo by the Portuguese in the late sixteenth century, Catholicism can no longer be cast as a foreign or superficial element of Haitian Vodou, but part of its distinctively African contribution. Likewise, the common characterization of the saints as “masking” Afro-​Cuban gods is scantly documented; nineteenth-​century clergy and European guests of cabildo leaders

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   81 are on record on having seen through any ruse there may have been.42 Few observers were fooled. Moreover, any dissimulation would not have needed to continue beyond the 1940s, when Afro-​Cuban religions began to be recognized as legitimate components of Cuban culture and government persecution diminished. Present-​day practitioners would not maintain such deep affective ties to their personal sculptures of the saints, chromolithographs, and other images, in addition to Catholic feast days. The notion of orishas as intermediaries between human beings and Olorun/​ Olodumare/​Olofi, the personified source of vital energy and primordial spiritual substance called aché, lends itself to comparison with the intercessory power of archangels, apparitions of the Virgin Mary, and canonized and biblical saints.43 As Miguel “Willie” Ramos has argued, Lucumí does not have a Deus otiosus, but a “high god” conceptualized as analogous to the Catholic God the Father.44 Although the emphasis on the presence of Catholic iconography and material culture in Lucumí, the reglas de congo, Arará, and Abakuá should not be overstated, they are pronounced enough to suggest more of an interpenetration of Catholic and African-​derived ontologies than exists in reality. The inclusion of crucifixes and monstrances in Palo Monte, Espiritismo, and Abakuá, images of reliquaries in Lucumí altar cloths, and other such hybrid objects must be interpreted according to both West and Central African precedents and the Afro-​Cuban historical experience. They also commemorate a history of resistance to Catholicism in which Afro-​Cubans had to “make do” with the material and discursive artifacts available to them. Syncretism should thus be dispensed with as a descriptor, despite its tenacity within the popular and scholarly literature.

Historical and Contemporary Ritual Practice During the colonial period, the Day of Kings (Día de Los Reyes) on January 6 became a carnivalesque space for both enslaved Africans and free Black Cubans to express pride in their ethnic and religious affiliations through costumed musical performances and dance routines organized by the cabildos. On the Epiphany, Afro-​Cubans proclaimed their equality with white Cubans by parading in their creole finery, flaunting their sartorial mastery, and granting their peers the dignity of which they were customarily deprived. As Fernando Ortiz persuasively argued, Afro-​Cubans also protested the colonial order by taking back the streets in a collective cleansing ritual to “drive out the devils”—​ those who held people as property and complicit whites—​from the major cities in which the holiday was observed.45 Day of Kings celebrations ended in the mid-​nineteenth century, but they present a particularly well-​documented example of the multilayered commemoration of Catholic feast days for Afro-​Cubans. Owing to the aforementioned correspondences of saints and mpungus with orishas, the Catholic ritual calendar remains replete with opportunities for practitioners of

82   Elizabeth Pérez Afro-​Cuban religions to participate in collective renewals of solidarity and shared identity. Caridad (Our Lady of Charity) occupies a central place in the religious lives of all Catholic Cubans, yet she holds particular relevance for Afro-​Cubans, practitioners of Lucumí, and the reglas de congo. The statue that indexes her apparition was legendarily discovered in 1621 in a community of enslaved people in Oriente, and she rose to the stature of a national symbol. Affectionately called Cachita (“little brown one”), she presides over processions, carnivals, and political events such as protests and rallies, as well as domestic shrines. However light-​skinned her icon, Cubans view her as the mixed-​race epitome of mulatez, Cuba’s version of the Latin American ideology of mestizaje. As such, she also embodies Ochún, the orisha of sensual love, sweet water, prosperity, and intelligence, along with the similarly described mpungu Mama Chola. By contrast, the dark-​skinned and unambiguously Black Virgin of Regla is regarded as Marian patroness of the city of Regla alone, rather than a symbol of Cuban national identity (Cubanidad).46 Nevertheless, Caridad and Regla—​the Catholic counterpart of the mpungu Madre Agua and Yemayá, the orisha of motherhood, maternal labor, and saltwater seas—​are petitioned for the blessing of children, particularly on their feast days (September 7 and 8). The feast day of Santa Bárbara, virgin martyr, patroness of lightening and firemen, is remembered throughout the island on December 4 with vigils, Masses, pilgrimages, and bouquets of spear-​shaped gladiolus flowers. Those aware of her correspondence with the mpungu Siete Rayos and Shangó (orisha of just rule, drum music, dance, and male virility) may wear red and white in Santa Bárbara’s honor and offer bananas and apples along with traditional Lucumí dishes like amalá ilá (cornmeal pudding with a spicy okra and tomato sauce). Annual processions take place throughout the island with devotees carrying aloft statues that represent these saints and others (such as San Manuel on the first of January and San Juan Bautista on June 24). Then there is the amply documented pilgrimage to El Rincón, just outside of Havana, to the church of San Lázaro. While many Cubans undoubtedly relate to San Lázaro solely as a Catholic saint (though one now deemed apocryphal by the Church), he is associated with the mpungu Kobayende and the orisha Babalú Ayé; they both govern the spread of illness, especially dermatological and venereal diseases that cause eruptions on the skin.47 The location of San Lázaro’s church was originally the site of a leprosarium, the Hospital San Lázaro, which later became a specialty clinic for dermatological conditions and currently houses a sanatorium for HIV-​positive Cubans. Thousands of Cubans flood the streets on December 16 for the vigil of Saint Lazarus, and some can be seen cumpliendo promesas in thanks for his aid; they may have promised to crawl or drag themselves along the route, or otherwise mortify their flesh publicly as a testament to the miracles they have experienced through his intercession. Lucumí practitioners approach December 17 as an occasion for collective cleansing rituals in honor of Babalú Ayé called agban. Devotees also greet the 17th by ritually refreshing life-​sized statues of San Lázaro and the similarly depicted San Roque (associated with the orisha Elegba).

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   83 The role of women in sustaining the aforementioned devotions deserves a special mention. Afro-​Cuban women have had the most to lose from the Church’s emphasis on premarital virginity, chastity, and social respectability, as well as its denunciation of homosexuality. Dark-​skinned women have suffered from appalling levels of social erasure, on the one hand, and hypervisibility, on the other, via the circulation of corrosive stereotypes deriving from colonial genres of minstrelsy such as teatro bufo; the same discourses have depicted mixed-​race women as predatory and promiscuous. Afro-​Cuban women remain underrepresented as decision-​makers in Catholic parishes and among the clergy, a situation reversed—​as something of a historical corrective—​in African-​inspired traditions that privilege women’s experience and leadership. Nevertheless, they formed the backbone of colonial cabildos and sustained vernacular Catholic traditions into the twenty-​first century, elevating “provincial” customs to the status of transnational phenomena. They have been instrumental in dislodging hegemonic interpretations of religious media such as chromolithographs; turning rituals into sites for the transmission of countermemories and subjugated knowledges; and otherwise ameliorating the excesses of patriarchal oppression.48 Without Afro-​Cuban women, Afro-​Cuban Catholicism would not be an essay in this volume, but a footnote.

Notes 1. Verena Martinez-​Alier, Marriage, Class, and Colour in Nineteenth-​Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 11. 2. Martinez-​Alier, Marriage, Class, and Colour in Nineteenth-​Century Cuba, 73. 3. This is not to imply that Asians have not played a role in the development of Afro-​Cuban religions; on the contrary, Chinese Cubans in particular have left an impressive legacy. 4. María Elena Díaz, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–​1780 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 5. Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias I, 5, Libro I, Título I, Ley I–​XVII (Madrid: Andres Ortega, 1774). 6. For a sense of the contemporary interpretive debates surrounding this text, see Chris Bongie, “Haiti, History, and the Law: Colin Dayan’s Fables of Conversion,” Small Axe 18, no. 3 (2014): 162–​177. 7. Karen Y. Morrison, Cuba’s Racial Crucible: The Sexual Economy of Social Identities, 1750–​ 2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 8. 8. See Brendan Fletcher, “Conflict and Conformity: The Holy Office of the Inquisition in Colonial Cuba, 1511–​1821.” PhD diss., (Missouri State University, 2006). 9. Seymour B. Liebman, The Jews in New Spain: Faith, Flame and the Inquisition (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1970), 47. 10. Rev. Abiel Abbott, cited in George Brandon, Santeria from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 49. 11. Martinez-​Alier, Marriage, Class, and Colour in Nineteenth-​Century Cuba, 115. 12. Morrison, Cuba’s Racial Crucible, 8.

84   Elizabeth Pérez 13. Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness,” Criticism 50, no. 2 (2008): 177–​218. 14. Matt D. Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 114. 15. Robin Horton, quoted in Stephan Palmié, “Ethnogenetic Processes and Cultural Transfer in Afro-​American Slave Populations,” in Slavery in the Americas, ed. Wolfgang Binder (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1993), 346. 16. Palmié, “Ethnogenetic Processes and Cultural Transfer in Afro-​ American Slave Populations,” 342. 17. David H. Brown, “Thrones of the Orichas: Afro-​Cuban Altars in New Jersey, New York, and Havana,” African Arts 26, no. 4 (1993): 44–​59. 18. Brown, “Thrones of the Orichas,” 56. 19. Miguel “Willie” Ramos, “The Empire Beats On: Oyo, Bata Drums and Hegemony in Nineteenth-​Century Cuba” (MA thesis, Florida International University, 2000), 82. 20. Childs, The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery, 44. 21. Louis A. Perez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 56. 22. Mozella G. Mitchell, Crucial Issues in Caribbean Religions (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 137. 23. See Reinaldo Román, Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898–​1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). 24. Miguel Barnet, The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, translated by Jocasta Innes (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 187. 25. Alejandra Bronfman, “‘En Plena Libertad y Democracia’: Negros Brujos and the Social Question, 1904–​1919,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 3 (2002): 549–​587. 26. Alejandro de la Fuente, “Two Dangers, One Solution: Immigration, Race, and Labor in Cuba, 1900–​1930,” International Labor and Working-​Class History 51 (1997): 35. 27. Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-​Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886–​1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 104. 28. Aline Helg, “Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880–​1930: Theory, Policies, and Popular Reaction,” in The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–​1940, ed. Richard Graham (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 52. 29. Karen Y. Morrison, “Civilization and Citizenship through the Eyes of Afro-​Cuban Intellectuals during the First Constitutional Era, 1902–​1940,” Cuban Studies 30 (2000): 80. 30. Helg, “Afro-​Cuban Protest,” 110. 31. Helg, Our Rightful Share, 51. 32. Jalane Schmidt, Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 203. 33. Margaret E. Crahan, “Catholicism in Cuba,” Cuban Studies 19 (1989): 3–​24. 34. Robin D. Moore, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 203. It may be that some Catholic folk songs survived within Espiritismo as plegarias for different groups’ spirit guides, especially those identified as priests and nuns. 35. María Teresa Vélez, Drumming for the Gods: The Life and Times of Felipe García Villamil, Santero, Palero, and Abakuá (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 72. 36. Pew Research Center, “Table: Muslim Population by Country,” January 27, 2011. http://​ www.pewfo​rum.org/​ 2011/​01/​27/​table-​muslim-​population-​by-​country/​ The Jewish

Afro-Cuban Catholicisms   85 population declined from its pre-​Revolutionary high of 15,000 and now stands between 500 and 1,500. 37. State Department, “International Religious Freedom Report 2005–​Cuba,” November 9, 2005, https://​www.state.gov/​j/​drl/​rls/​irf/​2005/​51634.htm Complicating the collection of data is the fact that queries about affiliation may be taken to ask about complete initiation, thereby further suppressing the official number of practitioners. The difficulty in defining religious affiliation lies not only in habits of ritual attendance but also in the way that most Afro-​Cuban houses of worship conceptualize belonging, as discussed later. 38. Robert A. Orsi, “‘He Keeps Me Going’: Women’s Devotion to Saint Jude Thaddeus and the Dialectics of Gender in American Catholicism, 1929–​1965,” in Religion in American History: A Reader, ed. Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 441–​467. 39. Thomas A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 31; Carrie Viarnes, “Muñecas and Memoryscapes: Negotiating Identity and History in Cuban Espiritismo,” in Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World, ed. Andrew Apter and Lauren Derby (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 319–​369. 40. Ana Viña Brito, “El juego de naipes en el primer siglo de la colonización canaria. ¿Vicio o entretenimiento?,” Cartas Diferentes: Revista Canaria de Patrimonio Documental 12 (2016): 221–​244. 41. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: la lucha por la libertad 1762–​1970, vol. 3: La república socialista, 1959–​ 1970 (Barcelona: Ediciones Grijalbo, 1973), 1445. 42. See Joseph M. Murphy, “Yéyé Cachita: Ochún in a Cuban Mirror,” in Òsun across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas, ed. Joseph Murphy and Mei-​Mei Sanford (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 87–​101. 43. See the discussion of “pantheonization” in David H. Brown, Santeria Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-​Cuban Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 114–​124. 44. Miguel “Willie” Ramos, “Afro-​ Cuban Orisha Worship,” in Santería Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Art, ed. Arturo Lindsay (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 56–​74. 45. Fernando Ortiz, “The Afro-​Cuban Festival ‘Day of the Kings,’” in Cuban Festivals: A Century of Afro-​Cuban Culture, ed. Judith Bettelheim (Kingston: Ian Randle & Markus Wiener, 2001), 1–​40, 54–​55. 46. See Elizabeth Pérez, “Nobody’s Mammy: Yemayá as Fierce Foremother in Afro-​Cuban Religions,” in Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the Latina/​o and Afro-​Atlantic Diasporas, ed. Solimar Otero and Toyin Falola (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013), 1–​20. 47. See Katherine J. Hagedorn, “Long Day’s Journey to Rincón: From Suffering to Resistance in the Procession of San Lázaro/​Babalú Ayé,” Ethnomusicology Forum 11, no. 1 (2002): 43–​69. 48. Elizabeth Pérez, “The Virgin in the Mirror: Reading Images of a Black Madonna Through the Lens of Afro-​Cuban Women’s Experiences,” Journal of African-​American History 95, no. 2 (2010): 202–​228.

86   Elizabeth Pérez

Bibliography Brown, David H. Santeria Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-​Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Crahan, Margaret E. “Catholicism in Cuba.” Cuban Studies 19 (1989): 3–​24. Fletcher, Brendan. Conflict and Conformity: The Holy Office of the Inquisition in Colonial Cuba, 1511–​1821. Missouri State University, 2006. Liebman, Seymour B. The Jews in New Spain: Faith, Flame and the Inquisition. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1970. Martinez-​Alier, Verena. Marriage, Class, and Colour in Nineteenth-​Century Cuba: a Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Moore, Robin D. Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Morrison, Karen Y. Cuba’s Racial Crucible: The Sexual Economy of Social Identities, 1750–​2000. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Murphy, Joseph M. “Yéyé Cachita: Ochún in a Cuban Mirror.” In Òsun across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas, edited by Joseph Murphy and Mei-​Mei Sanford, 87–​101. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Orsi, Robert A. “‘He Keeps Me Going’: Women’s Devotion to Saint Jude Thaddeus and the Dialectics of Gender in American Catholicism, 1929–​1965.” In Religion in American History: A Reader, edited by Jon Butler and Harry S. Stout, 441–​467. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pérez, Elizabeth. Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions. New York: New York University Press, 2016. Pérez, Elizabeth. “The Virgin in the Mirror: Reading Images of a Black Madonna Through the Lens of Afro-​Cuban Women’s Experiences.” Journal of African-​American History 95, no. 2 (2010). Pérez, Louis A. On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Ramos, Miguel “Willie.” “Afro-​Cuban Orisha Worship.” In Santería Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Art, edited by Arturo Lindsay, 56–​74. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. Schmidt, Jalane. Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Tweed, Thomas A. Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Vélez, María Teresa. Drumming for the Gods: The Life and Times of Felipe García Villamil, Santero, Palero, and Abakuá. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Viarnes, Carrie. “Muñecas and Memoryscapes: Negotiating Identity and History in Cuban Espiritismo.” In Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World, edited by Andrew Apter and Lauren Derby, 319–​369. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010.

Chapter 5

The Catholi c C hu rc h and Central A me ri c a n Imm igrants i n t h e United Stat e s Cecilia Menjívar

In Protestant, Catholic, Jew, W. Herberg observed that religion is a fundamental category of identity and association through which immigrants can find a place in American life.1 Indeed, T. L. Smith argued that immigration itself is often a “theologizing experience” as religion provides resources that nourish the immigrants’ outlook with which they can react to the confusion and alienation resulting from their migration.2 Although these assertions continue to be relevant today, there are perhaps few immigrant groups for whom these statements are particularly pertinent. Given the history of the Catholic Church and its pivotal role in social change in Central America and its involvement in people’s lives, and the continued relevance as Central Americans migrate, the nexus between migration and the Catholic Church (or Catholicism) is particularly important to examine among Central American migrants in the United States. However, the importance of the Church for these immigrants needs to be contextualized historically; it is intimately linked to broader structural conditions within which immigrants interpret the world around them and create meaning in their lives. For instance, the Catholic Church (as well as some mainline Protestant congregations) has offered Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran immigrants the assistance and protection that the US government has refused to extend them. These churches have created sanctuaries throughout the country to protect these migrants from deportation to life-​threatening conditions in their homelands, have provided settlement assistance, championed the legal struggle that eventually granted Temporary Protected Status to Salvadorans as well as other legal battles that have extended protection to these immigrants, and issued pastoral calls to remind Catholics to welcome immigrants into their communities. Churches have worked to change immigration policy and, in doing

88   Cecilia Menjívar so, to change the broader context of reception for Central Americans and for other immigrants as well. To pursue these goals, the Catholic Church has worked on its own as well as a leader in ecumenical efforts to support immigrants. Religious institutions play a key role, particularly when immigration policies are hostile to a group, as has been the case of Central Americans—​past and present. As such, churches have provided these critical forms of assistance to Central American immigrants at various pivotal moments in their history. They did so back in the 1980s, when civil wars raged in Central America and people fled the terror and political violence during armed conflicts, as well as today, when people escape the multiple forms of violence that have resulted from the militarization of society, unaddressed injustices, and unchanged inequalities in that region. Thus, the Catholic Church continues to play a pivotal role in all spheres of life in Central America as well as among Central American migrants in the United States, even as Evangelical religiosity spreads and some argue that the Catholic Church in Central America must compete in a marketplace of religious pluralism.3 As other religious institutions have done,4 the Catholic Church offers important psychological comfort to immigrants, and not only to Central Americans. But as Alberto López Pulido observes, different groups, even when they are socioculturally as close as Mexicans and Mexican Americans, will have different interpretations of religiosity, the sacred, and religious symbols.5 Thus, Central American immigrants, many of whom have survived state terror and everyday violence from crime in their communities and during their journeys north, have had transformative experiences that have oriented them to religious spaces for spiritual and physical comfort. And when organized religion leaders become active in ameliorating people’s plight in the home countries and protecting them as they travel, as the Catholic Church has done, turning to the church seems a natural strategy for these migrants as they confront the extreme circumstances they face. Thus, for many Central Americans (whether Catholic or not, whether active in the church or not), past and present, the Catholic Church occupies a central place in their lives. For these immigrants, the Church plays an important institutional role—​ providing an anchor in the process of resettlement in a foreign land.6 But at the same time, it contributes to mobilizing resources to provide these immigrants with legal security and advocating for their rights more generally. Thus, it fulfills multiple needs, at various levels. In the words of Isabel, a Catholic woman I interviewed in Washington, DC,7 “[our] faith is very important because without it it’s very difficult to survive here. . . . One finds many barriers in this country, enormous barriers . . . the language, customs, legal barriers. So our faith keeps us going. The church helps us get through all this.” Significantly, religious institutions have provided Central American immigrants with resources that the immigrants themselves deem necessary for the goals they seek to achieve—​from legal counsel to financial assistance for a month’s rent, from organizational strategies to deal with problems in their neighborhoods, to a kind word in a desperate moment.8 We know from the work of Dolan and his associates that Latino immigrant Catholics are not all alike. They have arrived at different historical periods and under different circumstances, from different societies, and for different reasons, and

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    89 they have brought with them different resources and skills.9 In the case of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, research has found that these immigrants have some of the highest levels of religious commitment; daily prayer and weekly attendance to religious services are an integral part of their lives and to their sense of well-​being.10 This level of religious commitment and the centrality of religious spaces for these immigrants remain constant across contexts. For instance, in work I conducted in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Phoenix, Central American immigrants themselves would point to the material and spiritual resources that religious institutions provided in them.11 Indeed, in comparative research among Mexicans, Cubans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans in Phoenix,12 I found that religious institutions played a more central role for the Central Americans than for the other Latin American immigrant groups. This chapter focuses on two aspects of the relationship between Central American immigrants and the Catholic Church. First, it looks at what the Church has done to provide tailored assistance to these immigrants. And second, it examines how Central Americans view the Church in their lives, “what immigrants do together religiously in the United States” what they do for and within their congregations, and how the Church contributes to these goals by facilitating the creation of community.13 I draw extensively from work I have conducted in San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Phoenix.14 Although I conducted this fieldwork in the 1990s and 2000s, given that harsh conditions for Central American immigrants have remained remarkably steady for the past three decades (e.g., the US government refuses to recognize their plight as de jure refugees or asylum seekers and continues to classify them as undocumented immigrants or pushes them into legal limbo), this research, I argue, is not outdated. Except for historical details that I will note when applicable, these findings continue to be relevant.

The Church in Prearrival Immigrants’ Experiences To discuss Central American immigrants’ experiences in the US context, we must take a step back and look at the role of the Catholic Church in the entire migration process, from the early stages of the decision to migrate,15 through the journey by land, as these experiences significantly mold how these immigrants perceive and approach the Church, as well as how the Church responds to them. The Catholic Church played a key role in the political and social life of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; and before, during, and after the civil wars and political turmoil of recent decades, it did not remain politically neutral. In the 1980s, branches of the Catholic Church condemned the repression of the Maya in Guatemala and fought for the rights of the poor in El Salvador,16 but other branches supported the governments in power. Given their involvement in advocating for the preferential option of the poor, key Catholic leaders were assassinated by the Salvadoran military, including Saint

90   Cecilia Menjívar Óscar Romero and four Jesuit priests and their workers, as well as at least two dozen other clergy. The impact of the Catholic Church and organizations on the political life of Guatemala has been significant.17 At the same time, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans live in societies seeped in Catholic religious traditions (even if they belong to other congregations), where lines of demarcation between cultural and religious practices blur. Thus, research has identified the central role of a religious commitment in various stages of the migration process for Central American migrants, from decision-​ making, through the preparation for the trip, and the actual journey.18 Most of the Central Americans who have arrived in the United States in the past three decades have to travel by land due to the difficulty in securing a US visa. Here, too, Catholic workers advocating for migrant rights have established a strong network of shelters to house the Central American migrants traveling through Mexico.19 For instance, the Scalabrini order has not only set up shelters but has also offered training courses, computer and language classes, and faith formation for migrants during the journey north.20 But there are many other parishes and organizations throughout the migration corridor that have been critical to saving the lives of Central Americans traversing Mexico. Parishes and lay workers have provided food, shelter, and spiritual comfort to the recent “caravans” composed of Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalan migrants.21 Indeed, even the most visited and best-​known shrine in Mexico, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, opened its doors to the traveling Central American migrants.22 For the Central American migrants, all these actions leave an imprint that they carry with them as they enter the new context.

The Catholic Church and Central Americans in the United States At different historical periods and across diverse immigrant groups, research has demonstrated that religion and the church occupy a significant place in immigrant settlement.23 The experiences of Central American immigrants and the role of the Catholic Church are no exception. Catholic organizations have responded to Central American immigrants’ needs in almost all major US points of destination, including the South.24 In her comparative research of various religious denominations among Guatemalan immigrants, Jacqueline Hagan finds that the Catholic Church embraces a communitarian social theology that sustains social justice immigration-​ related activities.25 However, not all churches are vehicles of integration in the same way, as their internal organization matters a great deal. For instance, in comparative research on Guatemalan, Mexican, and Colombian immigrants in the South, Laura López-​Saunders finds that Catholic churches that encourage grass-​roots organizing promote integration while Catholic churches that follow a more hierarchical organization tend to hinder integration.26 Along these lines, Philip J. Williams and Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola find that

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    91 whereas churches such as the Catholic Church facilitate “bonding” social capital among recent immigrants, including Guatemalans, in Florida, these spaces do not generate as much “bridging” social capital as secular organizations do, which can thwart integration among recent arrivals.27 This section is divided into four subsections that complement one another and capture the role of the Catholic Church in the lives of Central American immigrants in the United States: creating community at the local level, institutional responses, the point of view of the immigrants, and potential transnational links.

Creating Community Religious organizations, especially the Catholic Church, have been central in providing assistance and in creating community, both in the United States and transnationally.28 Indeed, the practice of religious traditions in ethnic parishes has served to hold immigrant groups together.29 Catholic parishes have made concerted and carefully balanced efforts to allow space for parishioners to articulate their own spiritual practices and cultural expressions of their faith, while at the same time keeping the unity of the flock under the umbrella of “Hispanics” or “Latinos.” One example of the duality of such efforts is the celebration of patron saints’ days. Father Francisco, a Salvadoran priest I interviewed during my research in Washington, DC,30 explained that he worked hard to encourage the devotion of patron saints from the various countries where the immigrants in his parish come from; in such celebrations, he sees an opportunity to unite the coreligionists. He mentioned that he had deliberately chosen images that add meaning for everyone from a given country, “without reminding them of a national origin, because these images do not have national origins themselves; they are not political symbols.” During a visit, Father Francisco gave me a tour of his church to point out “the importance of having these symbols around so that everyone can identify with an image and, also, everyone can learn about each other’s devotions,” as he put it. He showed me a semicircle of images around the main altar, each a patron saint from a country represented in his congregation. Look, the Virgen de Suyapa [from Honduras] is here, then we have la Caridad del Cobre [Cuba] over here, of course, la Altagracia [Dominican Republic], Santa Rosa de Lima and San Martin de Porres, you know, they’re both patron saints for the Peruvians, la Concepción de María [Nicaragua] and, of course, we have el Señor de Esquipulas [Guatemala]. This one is very important because since he’s black, it serves to integrate our black Latinos. It’s good that they feel that their color is represented, you know, and that we are all proud of it. And of course we have our Salvador del Mundo [El Salvador] over here. All these saints represent something for each person who comes from these countries. But they are also opportunities for each to remember that we are part of a larger community. These images are here not as symbols of a particular country, representing nationalities, but for people to know that we recognize their origins. They’re not here to separate but to unite.31

92   Cecilia Menjívar Catholic clergy also create community among these immigrants by calling on them to address the social problems they face, inviting them to reflect from a spiritual perspective about the political and economic forces that affect their lives. During a Sunday Mass devoted to the day of El Salvador del Mundo (The Savior of the World, the patron saint of El Salvador), Father Francisco, standing between the Salvadoran flag and an image of Christ the Savior, delivered a homily charged with sociopolitical content. A few days later, President Clinton was to sign the welfare reform bill into law, so he took this opportunity to speak to the congregation as religious leaders have long advocated in Latin America: a combination of spiritual formation with social action and reflection.32 Active efforts to create community do not come only from local congregations or from the parish; as with most Catholic Church activities directed at immigrants, these efforts come from the hierarchy as well. For instance, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been actively involved in promoting organizations that attend to “pastoral care.” Alan Lebaron found that some Guatemalan refugees who arrived in Los Angeles in the 1980s and who had been catechists in their country organized such “pastoral care” communities under the auspices of the Catholic hierarchy.33 These communities have grown and now claim thirty or forty branches throughout the United States, with names such as the Comunidad Maya in Greenville, South Carolina, and Comunidades Mayas Indigenas in Portland, Oregon.34 Importantly, these communities provide a space for indigenous immigrants; Alan Lebaron observes that nearly all the members of this pastoral community originate in the Guatemalan highlands, and the languages spoken are Q’anjob’al, Chuj, K’ich’e and Mam. These communities operate mostly independent of one another, but they do form part of a large national network. For instance, with funding from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Pastoral Maya has held several national conferences.35 The important, though complex place of the Church in creating community and in facilitating immigrant integration continues,36 as the experiences of Central American immigrants in various locations vividly attest.

The Institutional Response and Actions In assisting Central American immigrants and advocating for their rights, Catholic leaders often have challenged US immigration policies, a stance firmly rooted in religious teachings. Although Protestant and other religious groups37 have actively criticized and opposed US border and interior enforcement, the long-​term engagement of the Catholic Church hierarchy in defending the right to migrate and in advocating for and assisting immigrants in their resettlement positions, this church has emerged as a leader in immigration-​related advocacy. Church officials have openly criticized policies that negatively affect the lives of immigrants, such as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which set in motion the amplified immigration enforcement we see today. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops regularly issues pastoral calls to respect immigrants’ rights as human rights and to remind Catholics (and others) to welcome the immigrants in their communities. At

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    93 the same time, the Catholic Church has created centers across the country that channel a wide range of assistance to immigrants—​Catholic or not—​offering immigration workshops to assist people with filling out immigration forms, with the complex process of applying and reapplying for Temporary Protected Status, and with the submission of political asylum applications. Thus, in stating their opposition to these policies, the Catholic leadership addresses issues that are particularly pressing for Central Americans, as these immigrants have been living in legal limbo for decades38 and thus in the eye of the enforcement storm for most of their lives as immigrants. At a local level, the Catholic workers I have come across in my research regularly draw on theological beliefs infused with social justice teachings to interpret their work, which they uniformly view as responding to a higher calling, above government-​sponsored strategies. “My only judge and the only one I need to respond to is God and God is on our side,” a Catholic nun in Tucson said when asked if she was concerned about how immigration officials interpret her work with undocumented immigrants.39 Catholic clergy and lay workers invoke Scripture and biblical passages to provide context for their interpretations and the reason why they see it as their obligation to help immigrants in need and to advocate for more humane border policies. For Sister Elizabeth, in Tucson,40 the grounding for her work is the Bible. In her words: Well, for one thing, I’m Christian, I’m Catholic, I’m a religious, and I’m a Franciscan, and Franciscans tend to work with the poorest of people and tend to help those who others are somewhat afraid to help or go into situations that are somewhat risk-​ taking. Another point is the fact that the Bible is one of my favorite books and [I]‌ have studied it, and there are many passages in the Bible that tend toward this way of life. So I’ve chosen it as my way of life; I mean I follow that as a Christian, as a follower of Christ. I have vows for life to do that. Give a cup of water in my name, as Jesus said, and that’s what we have decided to use as our motto [Humane Borders] because the majority of the deaths in the desert are by dehydration, and what other remedy for dehydration than water? So we give a cup of cold water or a cup of water in the name of Christ.

In the same study, a Catholic worker in Phoenix explained: The illegal or the undocumented in our society . . . they’re without legal rights so our church tell[s]‌us you must help protect their rights. The New Testament is all about Jesus trying to take anybody who was marginalized in society, anybody who was on the outside and protect them and to bring them back into community. So as Jesus reached out to all those who were marginalized in his community, he would ask His followers to reach out to all who are marginalized in our community . . . As followers, we are called to do the things that Jesus would do.

Along these lines, several Catholic workers mentioned that as children of God, or as personifying Jesus himself, immigrants had a fundamental right to migrate in search for a better life. Responding to a question about how other Christians, and even

94   Cecilia Menjívar other Catholics, do not agree with the work they do, a Catholic priest in the Phoenix area said: I can’t imagine how anybody, anybody can ever read the Gospel and not see Jesus’s profound love for the underdog and the poor and the one who’s struggling. It’s all over the place unless you just ignore those passages, it just completely misses the point how people can think and reduce it to some code of . . . statement of Jesus as a personal Lord and Savior, the exclusion of the community. I don’t get it.

Thus, in my research in general, I have noticed that Catholic leaders bring religious teachings closer to the membership in various ways. In homilies, prayer groups, or informal conversations, priests in all the locations of my fieldwork draw parallels between the lives of the immigrants and that of Christ—​who, like immigrants, faced poverty and exclusion. In Bible-​reading groups in all three sites, the participants read and reflect on the relevance of Scripture for their own immediate problems. In efforts to remain relevant to the immigrants and to fill in their needs, I have observed that the Church also keeps immigrants informed (sometimes in announcements during Sunday Mass) of the latest developments in the often-​confusing immigration laws that govern their lives.41 Thus, these religious leaders perform multifaceted, key forms of service and support to these migrants. And the Catholic workers’ responses directly shape the lives of Central American immigrants, as these immigrants (along with Mexicans) have increasingly become the target of the “3Ds” of enforcement practices—​detection, detention, and deportation. In recent years, Central Americans and Mexicans have become disproportionately detained and deported, leading to what some have called a racialized project of the state.42 Central Americans in fact have been apprehended at the border at higher rates in recent years (and deported from Mexico), as Mexican migration has decreased to a net zero,43 but Central American migration continues. And this migration has been met with enduring hostility as it has been more closely associated with crime (and gangs) than Mexican migration. Thus, in response to an uptick in Central American asylum seekers at the southern US border in 2014, the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) opened a 672-​bed detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico, to accommodate these immigrants and contracted with Jesuit Refugee Service/​ USA, a Catholic-​based nonprofit organization (as well as with Church World Service) to provide chaplains at Artesia.44 Under a temporary agreement with the Jesuit Refugee Service in 2015, ICE approved Sister Kathleen Erickson of the Sisters of Mercy to serve as the facility’s interim chaplain;45 Sister Erickson has conducted weekly Mass and spiritual counseling, but the need is great and in some cases she even has provided legal advice.46 Given the mistreatment of children in detention, immigrant rights organizations filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of the children in 1985. The resulting settlement required that the government meet certain obligations regarding the treatment, detention, and release of immigrant children. One of the terms in the 1997 Flores agreement (Flores v. Meese 1997) required that the children have access to religious services. The

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    95 provision of these services has been patchy. For instance, Gregory Cuéllar47 documents in his research that the government failed to provide Fredy Lindolofo Piñeda Brisuela, an asylum seeker from Honduras, “with access to the religious services of his choice”.48 Furthermore, “although Fredy and his mother used to talk to the priest after services, they are no longer allowed. Furthermore, Fredy and Ordelina may not confess privately with a priest because a guard must always be present”. 49 Thus, the prison-​like conditions in the detention facilities today violate the practice of the Catholic sacrament of confession, 50 which is rooted in confessor–​priest confidentiality. The settlement from this lawsuit required ICE to improve living conditions for detainees.51 Perhaps one of the most visible expressions of the Catholic Church’s work on behalf of Central American immigrants has been the support that parishes and churches across the country have provided to these immigrants as they are released from detention. Shelters such as Sacred Heart in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, for instance, have been taking approximately 500 migrant family members a day after these (overwhelmingly Central American) immigrants are released from detention.52 And Annunciation House coordinates churches, volunteers, and donors to provide an array of support to released immigrants whose numbers have increased significantly in recent years.53 As apprehensions at the border have increased as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to deny the right to apply for protection to asylum seekers Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, Catholic organizations have responded by expanding their services.

Immigrants’ Views of the Church The multilevel work that the Catholic Church does for immigrants, at the parish as well as at the hierarchy levels, is critical and well documented. At the same time, it is important to examine how immigrants perceive this work and what it means in their lives. When asked why she thought the church should be involved in helping immigrants, Claudia, a former teacher from El Salvador who lives in Phoenix,54 responded: “There’s a simple reason for that. Our faith tells us that we have to help our prójimo (fellow human beings), our brothers and sisters, without trying to find out how or where they come from, and we are all brothers and sisters, and since the church is our leader in our faith, it should take the lead, the responsibility to set the example for the rest of us.” And Elvira, a former nurse in El Salvador who now works at a convalescent home in Phoenix, explained: “The church should help everyone because we are all God’s children, so the church should be responsible for helping God’s children in need.” Some Guatemalans and Salvadorans (particularly those who did political work or were active in progressive brands of Catholicism in their home countries) emphasized the church’s social engagement, believing that the Church should be involved in denouncing social injustices, and that this was one of the main missions of the church.55 As I have stated in my work, I do not imply that Guatemalans and Salvadorans as well as Hondurans hold a uniformly positive image of the Catholic Church. A few study participants in Phoenix were a bit cynical in their views and did not think the church

96   Cecilia Menjívar should be involved in helping immigrants.56 For instance, Salvadoran immigrants Josefina and her son, Manuel, mentioned that they did not trust priests, and, thus, they did not see why these religious workers should be involved in assisting people in need. In Josefina’s words: “No, I don’t seek out the church for help, and I don’t think they should help because they may have their own programs [agendas], and that’s not good. I don’t know who would respond to their invitations to seek them.” Generally, however, many Central Americans in need sought help from the Church as it represents one of the few institutions that offers a helping hand or a kind word, and these immigrants generally viewed such assistance as the church’s responsibility, with explanations cast within religious teachings. In the words of Carolina, a Guatemalan who owned a small business in Guatemala and now works as a janitor in Phoenix:57 “Yes, the church should help those in need. It should give them support, like give them clothes if that’s what they need, or food if they’re hungry. The church can’t close its doors on people because we’re all humans, and if the church ignores them, they would stop being humans. This is the nature of the church, to help anyone in need, regardless of who they are. The church should help those who are weak in their faith; it should organize groups to help them, to converse with them. We know that our faith can move mountains, so everything is possible when one acts from within our faith.” In general, in all the sites where I have conducted fieldwork (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington, DC) Central American immigrants were keenly aware of the Catholic Church leadership’s response to the problems they faced and of the church’s help to deal with these issues efficiently. When asked if they thought the church responded in concrete ways to the needs of the community, many answered affirmatively. In Phoenix,58 Alberto—​who explained that he had “no religion” but believed in God, went to Mass on holidays, and had received help from the church with preparing immigration-​related paperwork—​said that he saw the work of the church in his everyday life: “I had never seen this, I had never imagined that the church could help so much. Here [in Phoenix] I have seen with my own eyes what the church can do.” Immigrants described multiple instances where the Catholic Church not only had assisted them with immigration-​related issues, but in some cases (mostly in the research in Washington, DC), it also had implemented initiatives to deal with the problems of gangs and drugs in their neighborhoods (among their most serious concerns). Study participants who have been active in different groups, such as those who attended Bible-​reading groups, readily recognized the impact of these activities in their daily lives. Blanca, in Washington, DC,59 shared that she reflected on biblical readings when she felt she felt overwhelmed. She pointed out that her faith had helped her to work on changing the conditions in the environment around her, such as improving her deteriorating neighborhood. Through church initiatives to work with youth groups and to write to President Clinton to alert him to the deleterious effects of new immigration laws and welfare reforms, she believed she could act to change the conditions in which she, as well as other immigrants she cared about, lived. In her words: “We must do something about this, but at the same time, pray. These two things go together. If we

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    97 only do one of them, [shaking her head] we better don’t do anything at all. As the saying goes, A Dios rogando y con el mazo dando [literally, praying to God and at the same time working; figuratively, it is not enough to pray; prayer should go hand in hand with action or work].”60 Perhaps due to the centrality of the Catholic Church in these immigrants’ lives—​in their own countries, during the journey, and in the United States—​study participants in the various locations where I have conducted fieldwork wanted to see the church being active; they expected the church to help them, as they believed this was the church’s mission. In Phoenix,61 Claudia, from El Salvador, thought that the church should be involved in social projects, such as creating alternatives for youth and keep them from crime, food collections, and legal assistance. She believed that the church has credibility and legitimacy so if it undertakes a project, many people will be involved, both as providers and receivers. Mario, a Salvadoran in San Francisco, explained: “Because the church is a mother, right? The Holy Mother Church, as we call it when we pray, you know? I think one expects good things to come from it. We want the church to protect us and to guide us here, in a place where we face many difficulties. Wouldn’t you also go to your mom for something like that? Well, same thing with the church.” Some study participants also emphasized that it was the church’s responsibility to take the ministry—​the work of the church—​to the community, instead of waiting for people to show up at the church’s door. Some immigrants emphasized the church’s social engagement. When asked if the church should be involved in denouncing social injustice, they generally responded affirmatively. Ramón, from El Salvador, in Washington, DC, explained: “It is only natural that the church should denounce injustices. Christ taught us to do so. If we don’t, then we’re not following Jesus’ teachings, and if that happens, we’re no longer a church.”62 For Julio, also in Washington, DC, active involvement in helping the marginalized should be the church’s priority. “As Saint Paul says, ‘it is necessary to feed the hungry before you teach them the Scriptures.’ It is necessary to start with the basics. You can’t expect the hungry to respond to your message if they haven’t eaten, right?” Study participants in all fieldwork sites were ready to couch their views within frameworks based on Catholic social teachings or in general in Scripture. Perhaps the social justice of the Catholic Church in these immigrants’ countries of origin permeates to inform how these immigrants see the work of the Church in the United States. As the words of Ramón and Julio suggest, for these Central American immigrants their church’s involvement with social issues is closely linked to religious teachings. Carlos, in Washington, DC, explained how a Catholic should live as follows: “The true work of a [Catholic] person is to live a life with and for others, not only in the [rituals of the] church. Remember? When the apostles went up the mountain and told Jesus, ‘Oh look how pretty it is up here, we can build a couple of huts and stay here.’ And Jesus told them no, ‘You need to come down, you need to be down here, in the world, doing your work.’ To me that means that we need to imitate Jesus in everything, and we need to do it in our daily lives, not only in the [rituals of the] church.” And when asked why the church should be involved in helping immigrants, Claudia, in Phoenix,

98   Cecilia Menjívar responded: “There’s a simple reason for that. Our faith tells us that we have to help our prójimo (fellow human beings), our brothers and sisters, and we are all brothers and sisters, and since the church is our leader in our faith, it should take the lead, the responsibility to set the example for the rest of us.”

Transnational Ties The Catholic Church, as other religious congregations, also plays a role in creating spaces for immigrants to remain actively connected to their homelands. The transnational organizational structure and hierarchy of the Catholic Church should provide a strong standpoint to provide immigrants with continuity in familiar rituals and organization as well as spaces for integration.63 However, the Catholic Church (like churches with a similar institutional organization) in the fieldwork sites in my studies faces contradictory forces when it comes to ministering to immigrants, particularly to those who cannot easily visit their homelands, such as many Central Americans in the United States. On the one hand, the Church is a leader in creating a multipronged array of resources to facilitate immigrants’ integration. On the other hand, the focus of these activities is in the place where they live now, creating community, protecting their rights, and aiding integration. And due to insecure legal statuses, many Central American immigrants find themselves “stuck” in place, unable to go back to their countries for visits for fear of life-​ threatening journeys back and an increasingly militarized border. As exemplified above, US Catholic parishes try to incorporate the religious culture of each new immigrant group to provide familiar spaces, as Father Francisco does in Washington, DC. When possible, Catholic clergy also minister to immigrants in their native language, as has been the case in some of the sites of my fieldwork, such as a Mass in Spanish in Washington, DC, and a Mass in Q’uiché in Los Angeles, among others. Locally, however, the presence of multiple groups—​each with their unique interpretation of its relationship with and place within the church—​creates a challenging situation in which the easiest solution is to assume a unity that often does not exist or to go with a majority culture.64 This is a common answer I observed in my fieldwork. At the same time, storefront ministries that are ethnically homogenous, for instance, can center many of their activities on their hometowns without the tensions that may exist between a church hierarchy and the laity in local parishes. 65 As José Casanova has observed for the Catholic Church, tensions between the national and the global character of this church and between the universality and particularity of its religious principles are both closely related to processes of globalization.66 From the point of view of Central American immigrants, given their legal circumstances, some would like to see closer ties between their congregation in the United States and that in their home country. Thus, some members of Catholic churches in my research were engaged in maintaining ties with their churches in Guatemala. Sometimes the Church has become involved in religious activities in a particular hometown, while at other times members of a specific church group with ties to a community

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    99 in Guatemala, for instance, have organized an activity to sponsor a project in that church back home. In fact, as Popkin notes,67 there have been instances where priests in the communities of origin have appealed to the immigrant community to create a hometown association. But this is a delicate balance for the Church. And in recognizing the importance of connection to home, Salvadoran priests were invited (sometimes “on loan”) from El Salvador to minister in Washington, DC. However, the priests and the leadership were careful not to appear to favor El Salvador or Salvadoran congregants; instead; the priests focused on the larger project of creating community from their position as nationals from the country that has sent the most immigrants to that area. There is an important generational and ethnicity effect among Central American immigrants with respect to their interest in connections to their home countries through religious spaces. Whereas the young had specific arenas of participation in the Catholic Church, they did not seem to be interested in transnational activities or in establishing those links.68 However, Catholic Guatemalan Maya parents seemed to be slightly more successful in their attempts to orient their children to their communities of origin, mostly because in their case, church activities are usually accompanied by traditions rooted in indigenous culture. This was most noticeable in the area of Catholic sacraments. These parents would insist that the children remain at least somewhat connected to their home communities, which was accomplished by making sure that the children could pray in their language, that they had the necessary wardrobe for the Sacraments, and that the children maintained a memory of their home and grandparents (e.g., photos or clothing that grandparents would send for a particular sacrament). For these parents, a connection to their land seemed to be more meaningful than among the non-​Maya Central Americans.69 Parental efforts, however, seemed to have more to do with teaching the children key aspects and cultural expressions of their heritage—​related to ancestral lands in Guatemala—​than with maintaining long-​term links per se with origin communities. The youth, however, seemed to be overwhelmingly more interested in focusing their energies, activities, and future projects in the United States.

Discussion and Conclusion The Catholic Church has played a critical role for Central American immigrants in their home countries, during their journeys north, and as they settle in the United States. During the conflicts in the 1980s, some Catholic clergy became involved in defending the preferential option for the poor and principles of liberation theology; thus, they were suspected and prominent Catholic leaders were murdered. Other clergy supported the government and the military. Noteworthy, during the conflicts that shook the region in the 1980s, the Catholic Church did not remain detached or apolitical. The Church’s activities have made a long-​lasting imprint on Central Americans, which informs these immigrants’ relationship to the Church and how they perceive its actions once they arrive in the United States.

100   Cecilia Menjívar The conflicts of the 1980s propelled many Central Americans to migrate to the United States, and today these migratory flows have continued as structural conditions remained unchanged and new layers of violence have emerged. Most Central Americans who have fled and continue to flee these conditions must travel by land because obtaining a US visa is beyond their reach. The Catholic Church has created extensive networks throughout the migration corridor in Mexico to protect Central American migrants from the increasing violence during the journey and to advocate for their rights as migrants. Upon arrival in the United States, the Catholic Church has continued to play an active role in these immigrants’ resettlement in multipronged fashion, on its own but also as part of ecumenical mobilizations for immigrants’ rights. At the local level, the Church has assisted immigrants with material and spiritual support and with tools that facilitate immigrants’ incorporation, while the hierarchy forcefully advocates for their humane treatment and legal recognition. And even though there are Central American immigrants who may not fully agree with the activities of the Church, for the most part, these immigrants, Catholic or not, recognize and appreciate the multipronged efforts of the Church to advocate for their rights.

Notes 1. W. Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, 2nd ed. (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1960). 2. T. L. Smith, “Religion and Ethnicity in America,” American Historical Review 83 (1978): 1155–​1185. 3. Patricia B. Christian, Michael Gent, and Timothy H. Wadkins, “Protestant Growth and Change in El Salvador: Two Decades of Survey Evidence,” Latin American Research Review 50, no. 1 (2015): 140–​159. 4. Smith, “Religion and Ethnicity in America.” 5. Alberto López Pulido, “Relazioni etniche nella chiesa cattolica Americana,” Religioni e Società 21 (1995): 48–​63. 6. P. Gleason, “Immigration, Religion, and Intergroup Relations: Historical Perspectives on the American Experience,” in Immigrants in Two Democracies: French and American Experience, edited by D. L. Horowitz and G. Noiriel, 167–​187 (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 168. 7. Cecilia Menjívar, “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective: Salvadorans in Catholic and Evangelical Communities in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Washington D.C.,” Sociology of Religion 64, no. 1 (2003): 21–​45. 8. Menjívar, “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective.” 9. Jay P. Dolan and Allan Figueroa Deck, S.J., eds., Hispanic Catholic Culture in the U.S.: Issues and Concerns. The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994); Jay P. Dolan and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds., Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church: 1900–​1965. The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994); Jay P. Dolan and Jaime R. Vidal, eds., Puerto Rican and Cuban Catholics in the U.S.:

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    101 1900–​1965. The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). 10. Gregory Lee Cuéllar, “Deportation as a Sacrament of the State: The Religious Instruction of Contracted Chaplains in U.S. Detention Facilities,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45, no. 2 (2017): 253–​272. 11. Menjívar, “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective”; Cecilia Menjívar, “Latino Immigrants and Their Perceptions of Religious Institutions: Cubans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans in Phoenix, AZ,” Migraciones Internacionales 1, no. 1 (2001): 65–​88. Cecilia Menjívar,. Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).; Cecilia Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism: A Case Study of Catholic and Evangelical Salvadoran Immigrants,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 12, no. 4 (1999): 589–​612. 12. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 13. Warner, R. Stephen, “Immigration and Religious Communities in the United States.” In Warner and Judith G. Wittner. Gatherings in the Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Migration. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 9. 14. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism”; Menjívar, “Latino Immigrants and Their Perceptions of Religious Institutions”; Menjívar, “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective.” 15. Jacqueline Hagan, Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope, and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 16. Cesar Jerez, “Processes sociaux, democratization et eglise catholique en Amerique centrale: perspective d’une decennie,” Archives des sciences sociales des religions 42 (1997): 47–​62. 17. Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga, eds., Resurgent Voices in Latin America: Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004). 18. Hagan, Migration Miracle; Jacqueline Hagan and Helen Rose Ebaugh, “Calling Upon the Sacred: Migrants’ Use of Religion in the Migration Process,” International Migration Review 37, no. 4 (2003): 1145–​1162. 19. Wendy A. Vogt, Lives in Transit: Violence and Intimacy on the Migrant Journey (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018). 20. Fr. Pat. Murphy, c.s., “Violence, Caravans, Troops at the Border, and Hope: Reflections from the Border,” Center for Migration Studies, November 20, 2018, http://​cmsny.org/​ casa-​caravan-​hope/​ 21. David Agren, “Mexican Parishes Pitch in to Help Central American Caravan Heading North,” Catholic News Service, November 4, 2018, https://​tre​nton​moni​tor.com/​Mobile​ Cont​ent/​News/​LAT​EST-​NEWS/​Arti​cle/​Mexi​can-​paris​hes-​pitch-​in-​to-​help-​C ent​ral-​ Ameri​can-​cara​van-​head​ing-​north-​/​4/​38/​19433. 22. David Agren, “Guadalupe Basilica Opens for Migrants,” The Arlington Catholic Herald, 2018, https://​www.catholicherald.com/​News/​National_​_​_​International/​Guadalupe_​basilica_​opens_​for_​migrants 23. Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985); R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner, eds., Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998).

102   Cecilia Menjívar 24. Irene Browne and Mary Odem, “‘Juan Crow’ in the Nuevo South?” Du Bois Review 9, no. 2 (2012): 321–​337; Laura López-​Saunders, “Bible Belt Immigrants: Latino Religious Incorporation in New Immigrant Destinations,” Latino Studies 10, no. 1–​2 (2012): 128–​154. 25. Jacqueline Hagan, “Making Theological Sense of Migration Journey from Latin America: Catholic, Protestant, and Interfaith Perspectives,” American Behavioral Scientist 49, no. 11 (2006): 1554–​1573. 26. López-​Saunders, “Bible Belt Immigrants.” 27. Philip J. Williams and Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola, “Religion and Social Capital among Mexican Immigrants in Southwest Florida,” Latino Studies 5, no. 2 (2007): 233–​253. 28. Hagan and Ebaugh, “Calling Upon the Sacred”; Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 29. Silvano M. Tomasi, “The Ethnic Church and the Integration of Italian Americans in the United States,” in The Italian Experience in the United States, ed. Silvano M. Tomasi and Madeleine H. Engel (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1970), 163–​193. 30. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 31. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 32. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 33. Alan Lebaron, “When Latinos Are Not Latinos: The Case of Guatemalan Maya in the United States, the Southeast and Georgia,” Latino Studies 10, no. 1–​2 (2012): 179–​195. 34. Lebaron, “When Latinos Are Not Latinos.” 35. Lebaron, “When Latinos Are Not Latinos.” 36. Philip J. Williams, Timothy J. Steigenga, and Manuel A. Vásquez, eds., A Place to Be: Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican Immigrants in Florida’s New Destinations (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009). 37. See Pierrette Hondagneu-​Sotelo, God’s Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 38. Cecilia Menjívar, “Temporary Protected Status in the United States: The Experiences of Hondurans and Salvadorans,” https://​d3n​8a8p​ro7v​hmx.clo​udfr​ont.net/​care​cen/​pages/​ 1710/​atta​chme​nts/​origi​nal/​1 49​8157​297/​TPS_​R ​epor​t_​FI​NAL_​v3_​​​​​​​​%281%29.pdf ?149​ 8157​297; Cecilia Menjívar, “Serving Christ in the Borderlands: Faith Workers Respond to Border Violence,” in Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants, edited by Pierrette Hondagneu-​Sotelo (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 104–​121. 39. Menjívar, “Serving Christ in the Borderlands.” 40. Menjívar, “Serving Christ in the Borderlands.” 41. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 42. Tanya Golash-​Boza and Pierrette Hondagneu-​Sotelo. 2013. “Latino Immigrant Men and the Deportation Crisis: A Gendered Racial Removal Program.” Latino Studies 11, no. 3 (2013): 271–​292. 43. Cecilia Menjívar, Leisy Abrego, and Leah Schmalzbauer, Immigrant Families (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2016). 44. Jesuit Refugee Service/​USA cited in Gregory Lee Cuéllar, “Deportation as a Sacrament of the State: The Religious Instruction of Contracted Chaplains in U.S. Detention Facilities,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45, no. 2 (2019): 253–​272 45. Cuéllar, “Deportation as a Sacrament of the State.” 46. Esther Yu Hsi Lee, “‘God’s Love Has No Borders’: Meet The Faith Leaders Who Offer A Lifeline To Immigrant Detainees,” Think Progress, https://​thinkprogress.org/​

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    103 gods-​love-​has-​no-​borders-​meet-​the-​faith-​leaders-​who-​offer-​a-​lifeline-​to-​immigrant-​ detainees-​5d6341daaa8a/​#.lsec1nt9s 47. Cuéllar, “Deportation as a Sacrament of the State.” 48. Cuéllar, “Deportation as a Sacrament of the State.” 49. Cuéllar, “Deportation as a Sacrament of the State.” 50. See Gomez Cervantes, Andrea, Cecilia Menjívar, and William S. Staples, “‘Humane’ Immigration Enforcement and Latina Immigrants in the Detention Complex,” Feminist Criminology 12, no. 3 (2017): 269–​292. 51. Williams and Massaro 2017: 95 in Cuéllar, “Deportation as a Sacrament of the State.” 52. Robert Moore, “Texas Communities Scramble to Help Central American Migrants,” The Washington Post, https://​www.was​hing​tonp​ost.com/​world/​natio​nal-​secur​ity/​texas-​ comm​unit​ies-​scram​ble-​to-​help-​cent​ral-​ameri​can-​migra​nts/​2018/​11/​03/​a2ec8​788-​deec-​ 11e8-​b3f0-​626​0728​9efe​e_​st​ory.html?utm_​t​erm=​.651f7​3199​5b5. 53. Moore, “Texas Communities Scramble to Help Central American Migrants.” 54. Menjívar, “Latino Immigrants and Their Perceptions of Religious Institutions.” 55. Menjívar, “Latino Immigrants and Their Perceptions of Religious Institutions.” 56. Menjívar, “Latino Immigrants and Their Perceptions of Religious Institutions.” 57. Menjívar, “Latino Immigrants and Their Perceptions of Religious Institutions.” 58. Menjívar, “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective.” 59. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 60. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 61. Menjívar, “Latino Immigrants and Their Perceptions of Religious Institutions.” 62. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism.” 63. Anna Peterson, Manuel Vásquez, and Philip Williams, eds., Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001). 64. Nancy J. Wellmeier, “Santa Eulalia’s People in Exile: Maya Religion, Culture, and Identity in Los Angeles,” in Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration, ed. R. Stephen Warner and Judith Wittner (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998), 97–​122. 65. Menjívar, “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism”; Wellmeier, “Santa Eulalia’s People in Exile,” 115. 66. José Casanova, “Globalizing Catholicism and the Return to a “Universal” Church,” in Transnational Religion and Fading States, ed. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and James Piscatori (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 121–​143. 67. Eric Popkin, “Guatemalan Hometown Associations in Los Angeles,” Occasional Papers, Monograph Paper No. 1 (University of Southern California: The Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies, 1995), 37. 68. Cecilia Menjívar, “Living in Two Worlds?: Guatemalan-​Origin Children in the United States and Emerging Transnationalism,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28, no. 3 (2002): 531–​552. 69. Menjívar, “Living in Two Worlds?”

Bibliography Agren, David. “Guadalupe Basilica Opens for Migrants.” The Arlington Catholic Herald, 2018. https://​www.catholicherald.com/​News/​National_​_​_​International/​Guadalupe_​basilica_​ opens_​for_​migrants/​

104   Cecilia Menjívar Agren, David. “Mexican Parishes Pitch in to Help Central American Caravan Heading North.” Catholic News Service, 2018. http://​www.catholicnews.com/​services/​englishnews/​2018/​ mexican-​parishes-​pitch-​in-​to-​help-​central-​american-​caravan-​heading-​north.cfm Browne, Irene, and Mary Odem. “‘Juan Crow’ in the Nuevo South?” Du Bois Review 9, no. 2 (2012): 321–​337. Casanova, José. “Globalizing Catholicism and the Return to a “Universal” Church.” In Transnational Religion and Fading States, edited by Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and James Piscatori, 121–​143. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. Christian, Patricia B., Michael Gent, and Timothy H. Wadkins. “Protestant Growth and Change in El Salvador: Two Decades of Survey Evidence.” Latin American Research Review 50, no. 1 (2015): 140–​159. Cleary, Edward L., and Timothy J. Steigenga, eds. Resurgent Voices in Latin America: Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Cuéllar, Gregory Lee. “Deportation as a Sacrament of the State: The Religious Instruction of Contracted Chaplains in U.S. Detention Facilities.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45, no. 2 (2019): 253–​272. Dolan, Jay P. The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985. Dolan, Jay P., and Allan Figueroa Deck, eds. Hispanic Catholic Culture in the U.S.: Issues and Concerns. The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. Dolan, Jay P., and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds. Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church: 1900–​1965. The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. Dolan, Jay P., and Jaime R. Vidal, eds. Puerto Rican and Cuban Catholics in the U.S.: 1900–​1965. The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. Gleason, P. “Immigration, Religion, and Intergroup Relations: Historical Perspectives on the American Experience.” In Immigrants in Two Democracies: French and American Experience, edited by D. L. Horowitz and G. Noiriel, 167–​187. New York: New York University Press, 1992. Golash-​Boza, Tanya, and Pierrette Hondagneu-​Sotelo. “Latino Immigrant Men and the Deportation Crisis: A Gendered Racial Removal Program.” Latino Studies 11, no. 3 (2013): 271–​292. Gomez Cervantes, Andrea, Cecilia Menjívar, and William S. Staples. “‘Humane’ Immigration Enforcement and Latina Immigrants in the Detention Complex.” Feminist Criminology 12, no. 3 (2017): 269–​292. Hagan, Jacqueline. “Making Theological Sense of Migration Journey from Latin America: Catholic, Protestant, and Interfaith Perspectives.” American Behavioral Scientist 49, no. 11 (2006): 1554–​1573. Hagan, Jacqueline. Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope, and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Hagan, Jacqueline, and Helen Rose Ebaugh. “Calling upon the Sacred: Migrants’ Use of Religion in the Migration Process.” International Migration Review 37, no. 4 (2003): 1145–​1162. Herberg, W. Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. 2nd ed. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1960.

CATHOLIC CHURCH CENTRAL AMERICAN    105 Hondagneu-​Sotelo, Pierrette. God’s Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Jerez, Cesar. “Processes sociaux, democratization et eglise catholique en Amerique centrale: perspective d’une decennie.” Archives des sciences sociales des religions 42 (1997): 47–​62. Lebaron, Alan. “When Latinos Are Not Latinos: The Case of Guatemalan Maya in the United States, the Southeast and Georgia.” Latino Studies 10, no. 1–​2 (2012): 179–​195. Lee, Esther Yu Hsi. “‘God’s Love Has No Borders’: Meet The Faith Leaders Who Offer a Lifeline to Immigrant Detainees.” Think Progress. https://​thinkprogress.org/​gods-​love-​ has-​no-​b orders-​meet-​the-​faith-​leaders-​who-​offer-​a-​lifeline-​to-​immigrant-​detainees-​ 5d6341daaa8a/​#.lsec1nt9s López-​Saunders, Laura. “Bible Belt Immigrants: Latino Religious Incorporation in New Immigrant Destinations.” Latino Studies 10, no. 1–​2 (2012): 128–​154. Menjívar, Cecilia. Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Menjívar, Cecilia. “Latino Immigrants and Their Perceptions of Religious Institutions: Cubans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans in Phoenix, AZ.” Migraciones Internacionales 1, no. 1 (2001): 65–​88. Menjívar, Cecilia. “Living in Two Worlds?: Guatemalan-​Origin Children in the United States and Emerging Transnationalism.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28, no. 3 (2002): 531–​552. Menjívar, Cecilia. “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective: Salvadorans in Catholic and Evangelical Communities in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Washington D.C.” Sociology of Religion, 64, no. 1 (2003): 21–​45. Menjívar, Cecilia. “Religious Institutions and Transnationalism: A Case Study of Catholic and Evangelical Salvadoran Immigrants.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 12 , no. 4 (1999): 589–​612. Menjívar, Cecilia. “Serving Christ in the Borderlands: Faith Workers Respond to Border Violence.” In Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants, edited by Pierrette Hondagneu-​ Sotelo, 104–​121. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Menjívar, Cecilia. “Temporary Protected Status in the United States: The Experiences of Hondurans and Salvadorans.” https://​d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/​carecen/​pages/​1710/​ attachments/​original/​1498157297/​TPS_​Report_​FINAL_​v3_​%281%29.pdf?1498157297 Menjívar, Cecilia, Leisy Abrego, and Leah Schmalzbauer. Immigrant Families. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2016. Moore, Robert. “Texas Communities Scramble to help Central American Migrants.” The Washington Post, 2018. https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​world/​national-​security/​texas-​ communities-​scramble-​to-​help-​central-​american-​migrants/​2018/​11/​03/​a2ec8788-​deec-​ 11e8-​b3f0-​62607289efee_​story.html?utm_​term=​.651f731995b5 Murphy, Fr. Pat., c.s. “Violence, Caravans, Troops at the Border, and Hope: Reflections from the Border.” Center for Migration Studies, 2018. http://​cmsny.org/​casa-​caravan-​hope/​ Peterson, Anna, Manuel Vásquez, and Philip Williams, eds. Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Popkin, Eric. “Guatemalan Hometown Associations in Los Angeles.” Occasional Papers, Monograph Paper No.1. University of Southern California: The Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies, 1995. Pulido, Alberto López. “Relazioni etniche nella chiesa cattolica Americana.” Religioni e Società 21 (1995): 48–​63.

106   Cecilia Menjívar Smith, T. L. “Religion and Ethnicity in America.” American Historical Review 83 (1978): 1155–​1185. Tomasi, Silvano M. “The Ethnic Church and the Integration of Italian Americans in the United States.” In The Italian Experience in the United States, edited by Silvano M. Tomasi and Madeleine H. Engel, 163–​193. New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1970. US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Migration and Refugee Service. Improving Access: Immigration Relief for Children in Federal Foster Care Before and After the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. Washington, DC: USCCB, 2012. Vogt, Wendy A. Lives in Transit: Violence and Intimacy on the Migrant Journey. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Warner, R. Stephen. “Immigration and Religious Communities in the United States.” In Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration, edited by R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner, 3–​34. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998. Warner, R. Stephen, and Judith G. Wittner, eds. Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998. Wellmeier, Nancy J. “Santa Eulalia’s People in Exile: Maya Religion, Culture, and Identity in Los Angeles.” In Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration, edited by R. Stephen Warner and Judith Wittner, 97–​122. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998. Williams, Philip J., and Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola. “Religion and Social Capital among Mexican Immigrants in Southwest Florida.” Latino Studies 5, no. 2 (2007): 233–​253. Williams, Philip J., Timothy J. Steigenga, and Manuel A. Vásquez, eds. A Place to Be: Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican Immigrants in Florida’s New Destinations. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Non-​Catholic Christianities

Chapter 6

L atino/​a Prot e sta nt i sms Historical and Sociological Overviews Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder

The number of Latino Protestants in America is growing, and scholars are taking notice. More and more Latinos have some type of Protestant affiliation, more Latino Protestant churches are being founded across widely diverse geographies, and Latino Protestant parachurch organizations are gaining more social and political power through their representation and outreach. We synthesize the latest research on Latino Protestants in the United States in relation to history, sociodemographics, conversion, and race/​ethnic identity formation from a sociological perspective. In our research, we stress that Latino Protestants are far from monolithic. Instead, we urge scholars to engage more productively the diversity of worship, liturgy, theology, identities, resources, and religious orientations, taking into account varied origins and migrations across Latino ancestral groups. We argue against ethnoracial essentialization, that is, neglecting the nuances of Latino Protestant identity in favor of idealized notions often in the form of racial/​ethnic stereotypes—​even among scholars. For example, by reading and conducting research widely and expansively, we find that systematic, empirical research does not support often-​cited assessments of Latino Protestants and their churches as “fiestas” with “spicy” worship. We urge scholars to avoid such front-​ loaded, racialized assumptions and exercise their social scientific expertise. Broader reading and more closely contextualized observation will ensure a more textured understanding of these newer and rapidly expanding Latino Protestants and their churches. In the current context of immigration debates and discussions about building a “wall” to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing the southern border of the United States, there appears to be strong white nationalist resistance to any further increase in the Latino population of America. The political consequences of the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to detain and deport undocumented persons under a

110    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder “zero-​tolerance” policy would seem to dampen the prospects of any flourishing among Latino groups in this country. However, the nativist threats contributing to stigma and discrimination of Latinos across the nation do little to alter the vast religious changes occurring among Latinos. More specifically, Latinos are shifting their demographic profile as the numbers of Latino Protestants in America (LPAs) increase at an astounding pace. More and more Latinos report some type of Protestant affiliation, more Latino Protestant churches are being founded across widely diverse geographies, and Latino Protestant parachurch organizations (faith-​based agencies that operate alongside rather than under church supervisions) are gaining more social and political influence through their representation and outreach. While a great deal of attention in the scholarship of American religion has focused on the rise of secularization and the decline of religious affiliation, our recent research highlights a unique area of growth in the United States. Estimates indicate that by 2030 half of all Latinos in America will identify as Protestant. Further estimates indicate that Latinos will comprise almost one-​third of the US population by 2050.1 A significant source of this growth derives from losses among Latino Roman Catholics. Latino Catholic adherence in the United States has dropped dramatically from 68 percent in 2007 to 48 percent in 2014,2 most switching to Protestantism. In addition to shifts away from Catholicism, continued migration of Latinos from countries with high Protestant affiliation, especially Guatemala and El Salvador, also greatly contribute to this growth.3 Instead of converting as they cross the border, more and more Latinos are coming to the United States already Protestant. Switching and migration are affirming the expansive growth and greater visibility of LPAs indicated in a 2013 front-​page story in Time magazine: America is experiencing a new Latino Protestant Reformation.4 The growth and visibility do not remain limited to Southwest border states or to long-​standing gateway cities like New York and Chicago. Instead, when we assess the dispersion of LPAs and their churches, we see that Latino Protestants are becoming not only more numerous but also far more conspicuous, a reality that will likely affect the American religious and political landscape because this LPA surge has implications beyond a mere shift in demographic percentages. The practice of religious commitment has a deep salience in the daily life of LPAs. Surveys indicate that the importance of LPA religion is much higher than that of both white evangelicals and Latino Catholics.5 Also, given the long history of Catholicism in Latin America, the shift toward Protestantism prompts questions regarding the nature of a Latino religious identity not centered on Catholicism. This chapter provides a few indications and hopes to stimulate further research to affirm, challenge, and extend our insights. More careful development of better sensibilities regarding the characteristics and orientation of LPAs is becoming imperative. Since we began our work in 2013, we see that scholars, church leaders, and policymakers eagerly isolate patterns that define broad characteristics for this religious block. A key question emerges: Can we discern a single, monolithic Latino Protestant identity? After reviewing published

Latino/a Protestantisms   111 accounts that analyze and report empirical data on LPAs and conducting our own qualitative research, we firmly conclude “no,” that the push for broad summative statements misrepresents what is actually happening among these communities. Adequately confronting the complexity of Latino Protestantism demands a more determined avoidance of generalizations, sweeping statements, and front-​loaded, most often racialized, assumptions. For example, one widely stated and commonly held assumption is that Latino worship is always a “fiesta.” However, a national, ecumenical, and multicongregational evaluation of liturgical patterns easily reveals that LPAs participate in a diverse range of worship styles, some rigidly ordered, others exuberant, and still others a distinctive fusion not represented by either set of descriptors. In examining LPAs on a broad level, observation reveals that racial, ethnic, and national identities as well as varied religious orientations and distinctive ancestral histories stimulate widely differing ritual practices among distinct faith communities. Our empirical work decisively moved us away from homogenizing Latino Protestants, and we are confident the same will occur as dedicated observers continue to enter the field. In this brief chapter, we highlight some of the more significant distinctions and their significance.6

Brief History of American Latino Protestants The American historical imagination frequently romanticizes immigration as a European-​source phenomenon that filtered through Ellis Island on the East Coast while it ignores the radical surge in a new population that occurred when expansion of US territory moved the southern border farther south and west. Acknowledging the long-​standing religious communities that have occupied the borderlands of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, we find that Latino Protestants have a long history in America.7 The United States annexed a large number of Mexican citizens in the Mexican-​American War in 1845, an event elided in most American history classes. At the conclusion of the Mexican-​American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) forced Mexico to cede large areas, such that the United States formally annexed the Texas territory, including the current states of New Mexico, California, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, and Colorado, with over 100,000 Mexican citizens becoming aliens overnight.8 White Texas rebels fought with help of Tejanos (i.e., Mexican Texans) but did so believing in their racial and religious superiority over Mexican Catholics.9 So Tejanos soon became the object of white Protestant evangelism, with minimal success. Soon Latino-​led Protestant missionaries also reached out to convert Catholics, with more success than their white brethren, although they had neither the funding nor the recognition of white-​led Protestant denominations.

112    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder White evangelization efforts had targeted Mexicans about sixteen years before the Mexican-​American War, and earnest missionary workers continued afterward in the Southwest.10 These white missionaries lacked Spanish fluency, displayed a shallow comprehension of Mexican American culture and firmly believed in the superiority of their own culture.11 As was typical of many missionary efforts, they intended to civilize Mexican Americans who, as “foreigners,” needed to be assimilated into superior American ways.12 Even when converted, missionaries described Mexicans as “childlike, pitiful, ‘unmotivated,’ unsanitary and a ‘slumbering people,’ ”13 and lacking the foresight to plan for their future.14 Owing to deep-​seated ethnocentrism, the missionaries found Mexican American towns appalling and even made comparisons to Sodom and Gomorrah.15 Evangelization oriented around a paternalistic assimilation into white America.16 It was not that Mexicans were not religious, but their religion was a corrupting influence. Catholicism was viewed as the root of evil that kept Mexican Americans captive.17 In their work, white missionaries offended and alienated Mexican Americans, subverting their own goals.18 Consequently, conversions remained limited.19 While their spiritual and socializing efforts failed, they did succeed in establishing public schools, medical facilities, and other social services that provided practical helps to many local populations. It was not until after 1900 that significant Latino conversions took root, due to the efforts of dedicated Latinos funded and commissioned by Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Methodist, and Presbyterian denominations.20 Texas and New Mexico developed the largest number of Spanish-​speaking (mostly Mexican) churches, with 150 congregations comprising 5,632 adults. Texas Protestant denominations reported 2,378 Mexican American adults in 1900, most belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church (60 percent).21 California numbers remained comparatively fewer with only three congregations of 115 adults since, at the time, the population was much smaller and church memberships grew slowly.22 Moving into the twentieth century, a large influx of immigrants surged the number of LPAs in California. Both conversions and the influence of the Azusa Street Revival in 1906 bolstered these numbers.23 Much later, the National Immigration of Act of 1965 (Hart-​Cellar Act) altered US immigration policy, both increasing the number of immigrants who could migrate from the Western Hemisphere and prioritizing family reunification. Around the same time, the Mexican border became much less easily crossed by seasonal workers after the Bracero Program, forcing Mexican migrants to intentionally choose to become residents and citizens who lived in the US side of the border. Some sociologists recognize the complexity of the ever-​changing dynamics of migration at the Mexican border and argue that Act actually restricted Latin American immigration (especially Mexican) and that the boom of Latin American immigration post-​1965 occurred in spite of and not because of it.24 Cuban refugees, flows from Central America, and further developments with Puerto Rican laborers on the continent also impacted the location and presence of Latinos. Whatever the circumstances, migration and higher birth rates among Latinos resulted in the number of LPAs steadily increasing from the 1980s onward.25

Latino/a Protestantisms   113 Understanding LPAs, of course, involves scrutinizing more than only Mexican history and migration patterns. Mexicans represent the largest percentage of the US Latino population, yet they remain overwhelmingly Catholic. Because of this, Mexico has “the smallest percentage of Protestant believers of any of the major Latin American sending countries.”26 Alternatively, Puerto Ricans and Central Americans are “overrepresented” as a percentage of both the Latino Protestant population and among Latino Protestant leaders.27 Conversion among Cuban Americans appear to be a factor as well, especially on the West Coast, where Charismatic and nondenominational evangelical churches have had significant successes. Puerto Ricans and Central Americans came to the US mainland seeking better economic opportunities. While Puerto Ricans pursued work, Central Americans sought political asylum. Contractors and farms made efforts to bring Puerto Rican laborers to the Northeast United States such that between 1940 and 1960 the Puerto Rican population on the mainland rose from 70,000 to almost 900,000.28 As US citizens by birth, Puerto Ricans are technically not “immigrants,” yet popular perception viewed them as such—​making for complicated identities. Compared to the rest of Latin America, Puerto Rico was more Protestant than most, a religious identity that grew upon arrival on the mainland as Protestant churches targeted Puerto Ricans.29 Among Central Americans, civil wars and political unrest motivated large flows to the United States in hopes of finding political asylum. Many mainline Protestant churches initiated the Sanctuary movement for Central American refugees in an effort to bypass restrictive US government immigration policies. These churches avoided using refugee support as a way manipulate people into membership. Instead, they found that many Central Americans already identified as Protestant—​the fruit of historic missionary efforts in their home countries—​and established their own independent congregations in the United States.30 While Latino presence and conversion to Protestantism during the nineteenth century is significant, the figures appear small when placed next to more recent numbers. In the twentieth century through today, LPAs established congregational autonomy, exerted much more control over the understanding and presentation of their own identities, and took greater initiative over their own evangelization efforts in Spanish. Most importantly, LPA ministries were not based on an assumption of their inherent inferiority. As a result, Protestantism became more potent and more appealing. Communities took on greater coherence and cogency. While more Latinos were welcomed into the established structures of their denominations, LPA leaders struggle with what they perceive to be an inequitable allocation of funding, influence, and decision-​making in white-​dominant denominational structures. More Latinos are attending seminaries, but even more pursue ministry education through local Bible Institutes and through informal mentoring as interns and lay leaders in their local churches. Partnerships between seminaries, Bible Institutes, and parachurch organizations like the Asociación para la Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH) are forging connections between local mentoring and high-​profile national structures to provide certification, MDiv degrees, and procedures to complete rigorous ordination

114    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder requirements. Promoting the sophistication and strong leadership among LPAs is a priority since effective ministries appear to be characterized by Latino-​centric structures of authority and accountability.31

Demographic Highlights of US Latino Protestants Research among social scientists has revealed the significance of race-​ethnicity among Latinos in terms of sociodemographic status, but here we also emphasize that their religious orientations provide a fuller understanding of the dynamics of education, income, and wealth. Specifically, Latino religious affiliation significantly affects income and educational levels. For example, LPA converts tend to have higher education, income, and occupational prestige compared to Latino Catholics.32 Looking within Protestantism, conservative Protestant denominations (e.g., Baptists and Pentecostals) are associated with the lowest levels of socioeconomic status (SES), while mainline Protestant groups (e.g., Presbyterians and Episcopalians) maintain higher status.33 Pentecostal theology and organization structure, which grew out of the movements within lower-​SES Latino communities in Los Angeles,34 provides easier access to spiritual power (i.e., fruits of the spirit) and leadership positions without a formal seminary degree (particularly for individuals unable to attain a traditional theological education). Other scholarship argues that the Pentecostal doctrine of healing was a major driver into the movement as well.35 Others argue that conservative Protestants, like Pentecostals and Baptists, recreate inequality through the interventional transmission of social class.36 Overall, the median household income for Latinos in the United States in 2015 was $45,148.37 Poverty rates declined from 24 percent in 2014 to 21 percent in 2015. Yet despite these encouraging changes, only 15 percent of US Latinos have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 41 percent of whites and 22 percent of African Americans.38 When we disaggregate religious orientations within Protestantism, mainline Latino Protestants and some evangelical Protestants have higher SES than Latino Catholics.39 Among LPAs, a 2008 Trinity College study found that mainline Latino Protestants reported the highest level of education, with 63 percent having an income over $50,000. Latino Baptists and nondenominational Christians also have higher levels of college completion compared to Latino Catholics.40 Nativity status (i.e., generational status) significantly explains this Protestant income advantage: a higher proportion of Latino Catholics are immigrants compared to Latino Protestants. Although one study found a few educational advantages involving high school education and greater social mobility among Latino Catholics (the majority of existing research shows that Latino Protestants—​especially mainline Protestants—​demonstrate a significant socioeconomic advantage over their Catholic counterparts.41 These findings stimulate provocative questions on the role of

Latino/a Protestantisms   115 Protestant conversion or being raised as Latino Protestant for leveraging opportunities for social mobility.42 Language use may be an important factor within Latino Protestantism. The primacy of Spanish varies among Latinos in America—​and varies within religious traditions. Despite widely held assumptions, research on fluency and language of preference indicates significant diversity. English is frequently the primary language (with some Spanish or “Spanglish”), particularly among Latinos who are children of immigrants, although preference for English varies by religious orientation. Fifty-​five percent of Catholic Latinos indicate Spanish as their dominant language while 63 percent of evangelicals and 73 percent of mainline Latino Protestants indicate either that English is their primary language or that they are bilingual. Also, Latino Protestants are more likely to report they are English dominant compared to their Latino Catholics counterparts.43 Nativity helps explain language preferences since Latino Catholics are disproportionally more likely to be foreign born compared to Protestants.44 The loss of preference for Spanish among second-​and third-​generation Mexican Americans may be an indication of cultural assimilation into the white American mainstream.45 The growth of LPAs and the majority preference for English is often interpreted as evidence of their assimilation into white America culture.46 Latino ancestral heritage also has implications for the likelihood of bearing a particular religious affiliation. Mexicans are more likely to report being Catholic, while Latinos who identify as Puerto Rican, Central American, Dominican, or European are more likely to be Protestant converts. All ethnic groups are more likely to be lifelong Protestants compared to Mexicans, especially Puerto Ricans and Central Americans. This is because Latin American countries with a long history of lay-​led Protestant movements (such as Central American) and heavy contact with Protestant missionary activity (such as Puerto Rico due to the Spanish-​American War) appear more likely to be converts to Protestantism or be lifelong Protestants themselves. Mexico maintains a strong connection to Catholicism that has not waned.47 Recent scholarship argues that LPAs embrace a reorientation of personal identity that privileges religious affinity over ethnic affinity when compared to Catholics.48 In addition, a study of Mexican Americans found a racial ideology continuum such that some identify as white, adopting a “colorblind” view on issues of racial inequality, while others identify more as Latino, seeing racism as a significant social problem.49 In becoming aware of these complexities, we see how more research is required to disentangle the relationships between Latino ethnic identity and the connection of their Latinidad to their religious orientations.

Conversion among Latino Protestants The proportion of ex-​Catholic Latinos is increasing, and, while some are becoming nonreligious, most are switching to become Protestant.50 Some suggest LPAs convert as

116    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder part of a process of upward socioeconomic mobility.51 Others argue that Protestantism spiritualizes socioeconomic problems while keeping LPAs from challenging the social and political structures that produce those problems.52 Yet others see Protestantism as providing LPAs with conceptual tools for working through contemporary social problems, motivating individual agency to confront overwhelming conditions.53 And yet others view all of these dynamics as a bundle of processes that summarize the way in which the promises and empowerment stemming from the message of the prosperity gospel is especially attractive to Latino Catholics.54 When we listen to the voices of LPAs themselves, we find that when presented with a list of reasons for becoming Protestantism, they overwhelmingly say they converted to get closer to God.55 Latinos report they became more open to Protestantism the more they felt alienated from the liturgy and community of the Catholic Church. LPA converts often report a limited understanding of the significance of Catholic rituals, spending years merely “going through the motions” or not attending Mass at all. When they question the practices of Catholic devotion or the meaning behind the liturgy, they report being met with hostility by their priests or Sunday school teachers (when questioning the mystical aspects of Catholicism, such as the vernation of Mary, for example) and are discouraged from further questions.56 LPA converts say they value the Bible as a spiritual book that is also practical beyond its ritual use during church services. It helps them understand spiritual things applied to how to live in the world as a Christian. LPA converts also indicate that they find Catholic services “very reserved” and lacking “freedom,” in contrast to the Protestant services that they experience as far more interactive and personally engaging.57 Overall, LPA converts are finding community with other believers and meaningful resources for their own religious identity. Devotional practices centered on reading scripture give them some guidance for learning how to integrate their faith into their daily lives. In our own research, we heard one church member tell us that in becoming a Protestant Christian she finally felt she had “a relationship with God.” Conversions to Protestantism, however, are not unproblematic. Protestant converts find it difficult to navigate tensions with their deeply Catholic families, especially among Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans. Some LPAs face this difficulty by retaining a Catholic identity at the same time they attend a Protestant church, a seemingly paradoxical circumstance but not uncommon. Some LPAs continue to call themselves “Catholic” long after they have left the Catholic Church. We also know from our own research that some Lutheran and Episcopalian churches with large Latino immigrant populations have incorporated some obviously Latin American Catholic iconography into their services and church buildings, like that of the Virgen de Guadalupe, to provide Catholic visitors and members from Catholic background a familiar point of reference. LPA church leaders see this as part of incorporating a more welcoming attitude into their churches.58 In switching from Catholicism, LPAs move into several possible Protestant religious affiliations, although most LPA converts participate in evangelically orientated congregations, including those in the Pentecostal tradition. Scholarship on Latino

Latino/a Protestantisms   117 Pentecostals (both converts and nonconverts) has dominated most of the academic and journalistic attention, perhaps because of the phenomenal rise of Pentecostalism in the past one hundred years and perhaps because of assumptions regarding their exuberant and “lively” services, which conform to stereotypes of Latinos as religiously emotional, enthusiastic, and expressive. The primitivism found in these churches offers the most dramatic contrast to both Latino Catholicism and high church liturgies found among mainline Protestant white Christians. New attention to Latino Pentecostals has made their history more visible, bringing to light their integral participation in significant religious movements like Azusa Street revivals, where Latinos seized a primary role in spreading this popular religious orientation that swept the mainland and Puerto Rico.59 Latino Pentecostal congregations and their musical practices, even when congregations are very small in size, allow for ethnic havens to develop amid widespread xenophobia.60 The influence of Latino Pentecostalism mirrors the influence of Maranatha/​ Integrity/​Hillsong praise music among white-​dominant mainline Protestant churches in that it has been absorbed into the religious practices and theology of non-​Pentecostal Protestants and Catholics as well.61 In addition, and more than mere liturgical practices, the development of a distinctive and cohesive religious identity among Pentecostals is significant, promoting an important source of connection and cohesion, such that one’s Latino ethnic identity is subsumed under their religious identity.62 While Latino Pentecostalism is important and the scholarship is becoming ever more extensive, we caution scholars to not limit their focus to Pentecostals in the study of LPA religion and to not neglect other segments of Latino Protestant practice. The most recent empirical assessment finds that one-​third of Latino Protestants are Pentecostal, one-​third are non-​Pentecostal (“Baptistic evangelicals”), and one-​third are mainline Protestant.63 Simply stated, scholarly and journalistic attention to Pentecostalism alone leaves our understanding of Latino Protestantism incomplete.

Religiosity and Latino Protestant Identity The labels “Latino” and “Hispanic” (among others) are often used interchangeably in the United States, and the meanings of these and other terms vary over time and context, a variability that once again reminds us that notions of race and ethnicity are contextually bound social constructs.64 In addition, the way in which Latinos are racialized and categorized into the existing racial/​ethnic hierarchy in the United States also varies, such that even cursory attention reveals highly divergent and differing experiences—​Latinos can identify as black, white, Native American, and multiracial. Latinos encompass over twenty Latin American nationalities, and each of those countries has a unique historical relationship to European colonization and the transatlantic trade slave, producing a spectrum of racial/​ethnic identities in the Latino community. Historically in the United

118    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder States, Latinos of all different ethnic groups encounter various forms of institutional and structural racism and encountered formal and informal policies that excluded them from educational systems of all levels, political participation, occupations, immigration, and neighborhoods.65 Some Latino groups even sought to be recognized as white in order to avoid the discrimination they saw of nonwhites in US society, like that of African Americans.66 Given this history, disentangling the racial/​ethnic identity of LPAs becomes more significant. For example, Catholicism has been deeply intertwined with notions of Latino identity in the United States and in Latin America, and many cultural practices and life cycle events are connected to Catholic practice. The question then becomes: what is a Latino without Catholicism? At the same time, we are coming to understand better the long, cross-​generational history of LPAs in the United States.67 Some streams of LPAs have preserved a cultural distinctiveness by creating a Latino identity outside of Catholicism, particularly those (such as Central Americans and other Puerto Ricans) with a deep history of Protestantism in their country of origin. We find these LPA identities in the sizeable and regularly attended Latino-​centered conferences that feature Latino-​authored theological streams such as those seen with Justo González, the Hispanic Theological Initiative, and the AETH. Among these communities, LPAs readily acknowledge their American history as colonized people, discuss racial/​ethnic tensions within the United States, and encourage the expression and further development of their own distinctive identities.68 However, it is a mistake to assume that all Latino Protestants and their churches interact with racial/​ethnic identity in the same manner: the research is clear that they do not.69 Some Latino churches embrace their Latinadad and place it at the forefront for the church’s mission and goals. These LPA leaders do not shy away from dialogues on racism, white supremacy, and undocumented immigration. On the other hand, some LPA churches view Latino identity as a barrier to growth and strategically downplay their cultural distinctiveness to be “more welcoming to non-​Latinos.”70 These leaders see any explicit focus on race/​ethnicity or their social status in the United States as contentious, sowing division, and distracting from the most important identity marker in their minds—​being a Christian. One church in Texas decided to remove the word “Hispanic” from its name out of fear that the label would turn people away, even though the church was both bilingual and majority Latino.71 Other churches prefer to mark themselves as “multicultural” rather than Latino, acknowledging that Latino identity as important but not central to their mission or goals. In the end, LPAs understand their Latino ethnoracial identity in diverse ways and further caution against imposing a uniform definition or set of assumptions about how Latinos interact with what it means to be Latino, a Latino Protestant, or a “Latino church.”72 For example, members of a Southern Baptist congregation in Texas strategically downplay their Latino identity in an attempt to be “colorblind” and therefore, presumably, more welcoming to non-​Latinos. That strategy buttresses statements from leaders that one’s identity as a Christian should be prioritized over race or ethnicity. Recall that one church removed the word “Hispanic” from its name out of fear that the label

Latino/a Protestantisms   119 inhibits new attenders, while another church in the same area chose to label themselves as a “multicultural” church rather than a Latino church. This church features regular interaction with white Christians and other non-​Latino groups, even though membership is overwhelmingly Latino. In contrast to both of these churches, there are yet other churches on the border and in central Texas, some founded by missionaries from Mexico, who readily embrace a Latino identity and foster Bible study-​oriented dialogues on racism, white supremacy, and immigration. These LPA leaders understand their central mission as serving Latinos specifically and do not feel the need to shy away from it.73 In these few ethnographic examples, we find that the viable ethnic identity options available to Latinos are greater than generally recognized.74 Amid their diversity, LPAs still preserve a cultural distinctiveness from their white Protestant counterparts. They often reference and remain connected to ancestral homelands. They variously redefine what it means to be Latino outside of Catholicism with new cultural practices and, sometimes, modified Catholic rituals, like hosting quinceañeras in their churches. They regularly organize and participate in Latino-​centered theology conferences and feature prominent LPA theologians and LPA worship leaders. Even when bringing various religious orientations together, LPAs are forging their own distinctive identities, expressed through their congregations and often supplemented by theological schools and other nonprofit organizations.

Congregational Life among Latino Protestants While the vast majority of LPAs report attending a church with a Spanish language service (81 percent) and the great majority of Latino churches tend to be led by Latino clergy (79 percent), only 58 percent of Latino evangelicals attend church with mostly Latinos, and even fewer mainline Latino Protestants (48 percent) do. Churches cultivate different cultures and expectations for their members’ behavior and involvement. For example, Latino evangelicals tend to affiliate with white evangelicals in the United States while Latino Pentecostals function more independently or affiliate with Latin American or US Latino denominations.75 These different networks are consequential to social and political attitudes as Latino evangelicals are more conservative politically, aligning themselves closely to white evangelical positions, while Latino Pentecostals are more progressive, supporting the Democratic Party.76 Using data from Chicago, evangelical Latino leaders identified as Republican (33 percent) more frequently than Democrat (24 percent), but Pentecostal Latino leaders demonstrated the opposite, with 32 percent identifying as Democrat and 22 percent identifying as Republican.77 In terms of liturgical style, many scholars, church leaders, and journalists assume that LPA worship is always exuberant—​ usually characterizing services as a “fiesta.”78 We often hear and read words like “passionate,” “spicy,” or even “salsafication”

120    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder to describe Latino Protestant faith. But ethnographic researchers participating in LPA congregations in places ranging from the Pacific Northwest, California, Texas, the Midwest, and North Carolina demonstrate that “fiesta” fails to capture the diversity of LPA congregational life.79 Although Pentecostal Latino churches are most often assumed to be animated, spontaneous, and energetic in worship,80 they include among themselves congregations that avoid emotionalism and whose services are staid, orderly, and rigid. In one Pentecostal church, a lay leader is placed at the rear of the sanctuary whose role is to signal the worship leader when to transition the service, raising his hands and pointing to his watch, stressing the need to move forward the agenda of the worship service. The only body movement allowed among worshippers is a raised arm, moving back and forth at the elbow only, with no shoulder movement. In one instance, a man starting to sway was told “keep that between you and the Lord, brother.” Music was slowed down or stopped if congregants began to get “too emotional.” Assuming LPA worship is always energetic or high spirited is problematic for two reasons. First, while these descriptions appear innocuous and even complimentary, such descriptions reduce LPA identity “in favor of idealized conclusions often in the form of racial/​ethnic stereotypes,” a process known as ethnoracial essentialization,81 which goes hand in hand with controlling imagery, that is, social constructed images that restricts ideas about people of color.82 Analytically, such images limit our ability to perceive diversity of expression of Latino identity, reject the capacity to enact a wide range of experiences, and contribute to narrow-​minded and romanticized objectification. These images also contribute to racist narratives that view Latinos as perpetual foreigners in the United States (despite Mexicans being in Americans long before the United States was formed) and less rational or intellectual compared to whites. In the United States, Latinos continue to battle against cultural racism, images or ideas that presume the superiority of whites and the inferiority of people of color, such as the fiery Latina, the partying Mexican, or the unintelligent migrant worker. Interestingly, as the number of Latino evangelicals has grown, their cultural distinctiveness is seen as advantageous as the growth of Latino evangelicals is seen as an important asset for keeping the evangelical movement in the United States alive—​a “Latino Reformation.”83 Some Latino ministry leaders in turn embrace racialized terms like the “salsafication” of the church in order to garner support for a group that has been both excluded and ignored by white evangelical denominations. While this could be perceived as a form of internalized racism to an outsider, some Latino theologians see constructions of “fiesta” as a way to positively confirm their identities and highlight the “value” that Latinos offer in white churches. Despite this, this is undeniably a racial/​ethnic essentialization that undermines the depth and breadth of Latino Protestant expression and experience. The second, and most important reason for why using terms like “fiesta” to describing Latino churches is problematic is that these descriptions have no analytical value. They are not only inaccurate but lack explanatory power. Recent ethnographic research among LPA congregations in Oregon, California, Texas, the Midwest, and North Carolina demonstrate that scholars should develop a more textured understanding of Latino Protestants and their churches.84 A Word of Faith congregation in west Texas

Latino/a Protestantisms   121 gathers over 2,000 people a week in a 22-​million-​dollar facility. Although membership is 80 percent Latino, this megachurch is led by a white pastor, English remains the primarily language, and congregational music features song lists with plenty of Hillsong played by a rock band with an atmosphere of a professional concert backdropped by three large LCD jumbo screens. Moving from west Texas to urban North Carolina, sixty Latino Protestants gather in a Presbyterian church (PCUSA). There is no dancing, clapping, or raising of hands during worship. All are expected to be quiet during the sermon. Women occupy the primary leadership roles, and, on occasion, the language of “mother” is used to address God. Moving further on to northern Indiana, a Latino Pentecostal (Church of God) congregation of 170 attenders is adamant that they are “not Roman Catholic.” The church enforces a symbolic boundary to distinguish itself from Catholicism; indeed, the perceived rivalry with Catholicism fuels the zeal found in this ministry and generates the energy that allows it to thrive. While other churches throughout the country embrace some Catholic practices in an effort to ease the transition of converts, including calling Sunday services misa (Mass), using holy water, celebrating Las Posadas, and displaying the Virgen de Guadalupe, this church rejects such hybridization, promoting a religious enthusiasm of direct, unmediated devotion. Overall, scholars, journalists, and ministry leaders are urged to challenge their own expectations, avoid front-​loaded, racialized assumptions, exercise greater discernment when characterizing LPAs and their congregations, and embrace the diversity they will surely find there. Whether in small congregations or in massive state-​of-​the-​art buildings, worship practices range from rigidly formal (e.g., no swaying allowed) to exuberantly informal (e.g., jumping, dancing). Housed within these churches are varied theologies, which alternatively emphasize or resource a range of Christian orientations like the Social Gospel, the Prosperity Gospel, Calvinism, or Methodism, and sometimes even mimic Catholicism (to name but a few). Grasping the diversity of LPA congregational life serves to remind researches to be cautious in idealizing LPAs, avoiding the essentialization that blinds scholars to discover and articulate the diverse manifestations that occur.85

Many Latino Protestantisms in the United States In sum, Latinos are a rapidly growing population in the United States, and with little anticipation, they are becoming increasingly Protestant.86 In stressing this growth, we are emphatic that there is no single form of Latino Protestantism.87 Place, location, and context for LPA churches have substantial implications for congregational practice and the characteristics of each church’s membership. There is not enough room in these pages to consider all the variations of history, migration, and generational succession for all Latino groups; we acknowledge that distinctions of context, origins, and age

122    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder matter. Here, we stress that the primary theoretical challenge in urging an agenda for further research to avoid the temptation of ethnoracial essentialization, that is, boiling down nuances in favor of idealized conclusions.88 It is important to remember that Latinos’ ethnoracial identities can be multiracial/​ethnic and their congregations engage with their Latinidad in various, complex ways. Thus, an idealized, monolithic definition of any LPA church in relation to its racial and ethnic expression is inadequate.89 More weight should be given to the place, location, and context to discover and further reveal how LPA churches are situated in the characteristics of their membership and the structures of their congregational practices.90 An analytically more productive engagement requires greater grasp of the experiences of US Latino groups (Puerto Ricans, Salvadorians, Dominicans, and others) in their history, migration, and generational status and unique contributions to US Protestantism. Nor is there room to discuss the pan-​Latino churches that have various mixtures of ancestries, nationalities, and immigration histories in a single church. It is important to acknowledge that all these distinctions matter as well.91 We urge scholars to avoid front-​loaded, racialized assumptions and exercise their social scientific expertise in using better theory and more careful observation, achieving a more textured and more satisfying understanding of LPAs and their churches.92

Notes 1. Pew Research Center, “A Milestone En Route to a Majority Minority Nation,” http://​www. pews​ocia​ltre​nds.org/​2012/​11/​07/​a-​milest​one-​en-​route-​to-​a-​major​ity-​minor​ity-​nat​ion/​. 2. Pew Research Center, “Religious Composition of Latinos,” http://​www.pewfo​rum.org/​ religi​ous-​landsc​ape-​study/​rac​ial-​and-​eth​nic-​comp​osit​ion/​lat​ino/​. 3. Compared to most Latin American countries (with the exceptions of Honduras and Uruguay), El Salvador and Guatemala have some of the highest levels of Protestant adherence in Latin America at 36 percent and 41 percent, respectively. Pew Research Center, “Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region”; A. I. Ramos, R. Woodberry, and C. Ellison, “The Contexts of Conversions among U.S. Latinos,” Sociology of Religion 78, no. 2 (2017): 119–​145. 4. E. Dias, “Evangélicos!,” Time, April 15, 2013. 5. R. Putnam and D. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010). 6. For more on the diversity found within Latino Protestantism, see M. Mulder, A. I. Ramos, and G. Martí, Latino Protestants in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). 7. J. F. Martínez, The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2018). 8. Manuel G. Gonzales, Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); E. Telles and V. Ortiz, Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race ( New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008). 9. León, 1983; Telles and Ortiz, Generations of Exclusion.

Latino/a Protestantisms   123 10. P. Barton, Hispanic Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists in Texas (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006); J. F. Martínez, Sea la luz: The Making of Mexican Protestantism in the American Southwest, 1829–​1900 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2006). 11. M. Butts, “ ‘I Could Realize What Sodom and Gomorrah Might Have Been’: Image vs. Reality for Presbyterian Missionaries in New Mexico, 1872,” The Journal of Presbyterian History 774 (1997): 223–​234. 12. Butts, “ ‘I Could Realize What Sodom and Gomorrah Might Have Been.’ ” 13. Butts, “ ‘I Could Realize What Sodom and Gomorrah Might Have Been’ ”; Martínez, Sea la luz; R. J. Walker, Protestantism in the Sangre de Cristos, 1850–​1920 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991). 14. Walker, Protestantism in the Sangre de Cristos, 1850–​1920. 15. Butts, 1992. 16. Butts, “ ‘I Could Realize What Sodom and Gomorrah Might Have Been’ ”; Martínez, Sea la luz. 17. Butts, “ ‘I Could Realize What Sodom and Gomorrah Might Have Been’ ”; Walker, Protestantism in the Sangre de Cristos, 1850–​1920. 18. D. Machado, Of Borders and Margins: Hispanic Disciples in Texas, 1888–​1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 19. Butts, “ ‘I Could Realize What Sodom and Gomorrah Might Have Been’ ”; Martínez, Sea la luz; Walker, Protestantism in the Sangre de Cristos, 1850–​1920. 20. Martínez, Sea la luz. 21. Martínez, Sea la luz. 22. L. F. Maffly-​Kipp, Religion and Society in Frontier California (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); Martínez, Sea la luz. 23. G. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Daniel Ramírez, Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Books, 2015). 24. D. S. Massey and K. A. Pren, “Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Policy: Explaining the Post-​1965 Surge from Latin America,” Population and Development Review 38, no. 1 (2012): 1–​29. 25. L. Hunt, “The Spirit of Hispanic Protestantism in the United States: National Survey Comparisons of Catholics and non-​Catholics,” Social Science Quarterly 79, no. 4 (1999): 828–​845. 26. Martínez, The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States. 27. Martínez, The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States. 28. Martínez, The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States. 29. Martínez, The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States; Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America; Ramos, Woodberry, and Ellison, “The Contexts of Conversions among U.S. Latinos.” 30. Martínez, The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States,128; see also D. L. Berhó, G. Martí, and M. T. Mulder, “Global Pentecostalism and Ethnic Identity Maintenance among Latino Immigrants,” Pneuma 39, no. 1–​2 (2017): 5–​33. 31. C. S. Morán and J. D. Montañez, eds., A Plentiful Harvest: Practices for Effective Ministry among Latinos (Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press, 2018). 32. Hunt, “The Spirit of Hispanic Protestantism in the United States.”

124    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder 33. C. Smith and R. Faris, “Socioeconomic Inequality in the American Religious System: An Update and Assessment, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 1 (2005): 95–​ 104; L. A. Keister, Faith and Money: How Religion Contributes to Wealth and Poverty (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); L. A. Keister and D. E. Sherkat, eds., Religion and Inequality in America: Research and Theory on Religion’s Role in Stratification (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 34. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America. 35. Sánchez-​Walsh, 2018. 36. Fitzgerald and Glass, 2014. 37. Pew Research Center, “Latinos Made Economic Strides in 2015 after Years of No Gains,” http://​www.pewresearch.org/​fact-​tank/​2016/​11/​21/​latinos-​made-​economic-​strides-​in-​ 2015-​after-​years-​of-​no-​gains/​ 38. Pew Research Center, “5 Facts about Latinos and Education,” http://​www.pewr​esea​rch. org/​fact-​tank/​2016/​07/​28/​5-​facts-​about-​lati​nos-​and-​educat​ion/​. 39. Income levels vary slightly from study to study, see Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 40. J. Navarro-​Rivera, B. A. Kosmin, and A. Keysar, “U.S. Latino Religious Identification 1990–​2008: Growth, Diversity, and Transformation,” Hartford, CT: Trinity College, 2008, http://​comm​ons.trinc​oll.edu/​aris/​files/​2011/​08/​lati​nos2​008.pdf. 41. L. A. Keister and E. P. Borelli, “Religion and Wealth Mobility: The Case of American Latinos,” in Religion and Inequality in America: Research and Theory on Religion’s Role in Stratification, edited by A. Keister and D. E. Sherkat, 119–​145 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 42. Navarro-​Rivera, Kosmin, and Keysar, “U.S. Latino Religious Identification 1990–​2008.” 43. J. E. Calvillo and S. R. Bailey, “Latino Religious Affiliation and Ethnic Identity,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 54, no. 1 (2015): 57–​78; Ramos, Woodberry, and Ellison, “The Contexts of Conversions among U.S. Latinos.” 44. Navarro-​Rivera, Kosmin, and Keysar, “U.S. Latino Religious Identification 1990–​2008.” 45. Telles and Ortiz, Generations of Exclusion. 46. Navarro-​Rivera, Kosmin, and Keysar, “U.S. Latino Religious Identification 1990–​2008.” 47. In contrast to other Latin American countries, see Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America; Ramos, Woodberry, and Ellison, “The Contexts of Conversions among U.S. Latinos.” 48. Calvillo and Bailey, “Latino Religious Affiliation and Ethnic Identity.” 49. J. A. Dowling, Mexican Americans and the Question of Race (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014). 50. Ramos, Woodberry, and Ellison, “The Contexts of Conversions among U.S. Latinos.” 51. Ramos, Woodberry, and Ellison, “The Contexts of Conversions among U.S. Latinos.” 52. E. E. Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011); Martin, 1990; León, 1998. 53. Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo; V. Garrard-​Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998). 54. T. Matovina, Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 55. Pew Research Center, “Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion,” http://​www.pewh​ispa​nic.org/​2007/​04/​25/​chang​ing-​fai​ths-​lati​nos-​and-​the-​tra​ nsfo​rmat​ion-​of-​ameri​can-​relig​ion/​.

Latino/a Protestantisms   125 56. A. I. Ramos, “Wounded to the Heart: Family, Identity Negotiation, and Racialization among Latino/​a Converts,” unpublished manuscript, 2018. 57. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 58. Marquard, 2005; Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 59. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America. 60. Ramírez, Migrating Faith. 61. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America. 62. Sanchez-​Walsh, 2005; also see Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 63. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 64. R. Schaefer, Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008). 65. M. L. Anderson, Race in Society: The Enduring American Dilemma (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017); A. I. Ramos, “A Changing Landscape: A Sociological Perspective,” in A Plentiful Harvest: Practices for Effective Ministry among Latinos, edited by C. S. Morán and J. D. Montañez (Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press, 2018). 66. B. Marquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); Ramos, “A Changing Landscape.” 67. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America; Martínez, The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States; Martínez, Sea la luz. 68. A. I. Ramos, G. Martí, and M. Mulder, “Latino Protestant Worship: Religious Racialization and the Performance of Ethnic Identity,” unpublished manuscript, 2018. 69. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 70. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 71. Ramos, Martí, and Mulder, “Latino Protestant Worship.” 72. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 73. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 74. G. Martí, “The Diversity Affirming Latino: Ethnic Options and the Ethnic Transcendent Expression of American Latino Religious Identity,” in Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation, edited by Carolyn Chen and Russell Jeung (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Ramos, “A Changing Landscape”; Ramos, Martí, and Mulder, “Latino Protestant Worship.” 75. N. E. Ruano, The Holy Ghost beyond the Church Walls: Latino Pentecostalism(s), Congregations, and Civic Engagement (Chicago: Loyola University, 2011). 76. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 77. Martínez et al., 2012. 78. J. F. Martínez, Los Protestantes: An Introduction to Latino Protestantism in the United States (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2011). 79. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 80. G. Martí, “Maranatha (O Lord, Come): The Power/​Surrender Dynamic of Pentecostal Worship,” Liturgy 33, no. 3 (2018): 45–​62. 81. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 82. Anderson, Race in Society; P. H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought (London: Routledge, 1983). 83. Dias, “Evangélicos!”; S. Rodriguez and R. C. Crosby, When Faith Catches Fire: Embracing the Spiritual Passion of the Latino Reformation (New York: Crown, 2017). 84. Ramos, Martí, and Mulder, “Latino Protestant Worship.” 85. And of Latino spirituality in general, see E. D. Aponte, Santo!: Varieties of Latino/​a Spirituality (Ossining: NY: Orbis Books, 2012).

126    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder 86. A. D. Perez and C. Hirschman, “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Population: Emerging American Identities,” Population and Development Review 35, no. 1 (2009): 1–​51; Pew Research Center, “Changing Faiths”; Tienda & Fuentes, 2014; US Census Bureau, “The Hispanic Population: 2010,” http://​www.cen​sus.gov/​prod/​cen2​010/​bri​efs/​ c201​0br-​04.pdf. 87. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 88. For an analysis of contemporary racialized stereotypes in religion, see Gerardo Martí, Worship across the Racial Divide: Religious Music and the Multiracial Congregation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 89. Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America. 90. Ramos, Martí, and Mulder, “Latino Protestant Worship.” 91. Ramos, Martí, and Mulder, “Latino Protestant Worship”; Ramos, Woodberry, and Ellison, “The Contexts of Conversions among U.S. Latinos.” 92. G. Martí, “Latino Protestants and Their Churches: Establishing an Agenda for Sociological Research,” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 76, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 145–​ 154; Mulder, Ramos, and Martí, Latino Protestants in America; Ramos, “A Changing Landscape.”

Bibliography Anderson, M. L. Race in Society: The Enduring American Dilemma. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Aponte, E. D. Santo!: Varieties of Latino/​a Spirituality. Ossining: NY: Orbis Books, 2012. Barton, P. Hispanic Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists in Texas. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006. Berhó, D. L., G. Martí, and M. T. Mulder. “Global Pentecostalism and Ethnic Identity Maintenance among Latino Immigrants.” Pneuma 39, no. 1–​2 (2017): 5–​33. Brusco, E. E. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Butts, M. “‘I Could Realize What Sodom and Gomorrah Might Have Been’: Image vs. Reality for Presbyterian Missionaries in New Mexico, 1872.” The Journal of Presbyterian History 774 (1997): 223–​234. Calvillo, J. E., and S. R. Bailey. “Latino Religious Affiliation and Ethnic Identity.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 54, no. 1 (2015): 57–​78. Collins, P. H. Black Feminist Thought. London: Routledge, 1983. Dias, E. “Evangélicos!” Time, April 15, 2013. Dowling, J. A. Mexican Americans and the Question of Race. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014. Espinosa, G. Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Garrard-​Burnett, V. Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Gonzales, Manuel G. Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

Latino/a Protestantisms   127 Hunt, L. “The Spirit of Hispanic Protestantism in the United States: National Survey Comparisons of Catholics and non-​Catholics.” Social Science Quarterly 79, no. 4 (1999): 828–​845. Keister, L. A. Faith and Money: How Religion Contributes to Wealth and Poverty. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Keister, L. A., and E. P. Borelli. “Religion and Wealth Mobility: The Case of American Latinos.” In Religion and Inequality in America: Research and Theory on Religion’s Role in Stratification, edited by A. Keister and D. E. Sherkat, 119–​145. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Keister, L. A., and D. E. Sherkat, eds. Religion and Inequality in America: Research and Theory on Religion’s Role in Stratification. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Machado, D. Of Borders and Margins: Hispanic Disciples in Texas, 1888–​1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Maffly-​Kipp, L. F. Religion and Society in Frontier California. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994. Martí, G. “The Diversity Affirming Latino: Ethnic Options and the Ethnic Transcendent Expression of American Latino Religious Identity.” In Sustaining Faith Traditions: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation, edited by Carolyn Chen and Russell Jeung. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Martí, G. “Latino Protestants and Their Churches: Establishing an Agenda for Sociological Research.” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 76, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 145–​154. Martí, G. “Maranatha (O Lord, Come): The Power/​ Surrender Dynamic of Pentecostal Worship.” Liturgy 33, no. 3 (2018): 45–​62. Martí, G. Worship across the Racial Divide: Religious Music and the Multiracial Congregation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Martin, D. Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993. Martínez, J. F. Los Protestantes: An Introduction to Latino Protestantism in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2011. Martínez, J. F. Sea la luz: The Making of Mexican Protestantism in the American Southwest, 1829–​1900. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2006. Martínez, J. F. The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2018. Martínez, J. H., E. I. Hernández, R. Burwell, M. Pena, and D. Sikkink. “The Politics of the Latino Church: Understanding the Political Views and Behaviors of Latino Congregations in Chicago.” https://​latino​stud​ies.nd.edu/​ass​ets/​95361/​origi​nal/​thepoli​tics​ofth​elat​inoc​hurc​ h_​fi​nal.pdf. Marquez, B. LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993. Massey, D. S., and K. A. Pren. “Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Policy: Explaining the Post-​1965 Surge from Latin America.” Population and Development Review 38, no. 1 (2012): 1–​29. Matovina, T. Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Morán, C. S., and J. D. Montañez, eds. A Plentiful Harvest: Practices for Effective Ministry among Latinos. Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press, 2018. Mulder, M., A. I. Ramos, and G. Martí. Latino Protestants in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

128    Aida Isela Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder Navarro-​Rivera, J., B. A. Kosmin, and A. Keysar. “U.S. Latino Religious Identification 1990–​ 2008: Growth, Diversity, and Transformation.” Hartford, CT: Trinity College, 2008. http://​ commons.trincoll.edu/​aris/​files/​2011/​08/​latinos2008.pdf Perez, A. D., and C. Hirschman. “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Population: Emerging American Identities.” Population and Development Review 35, no. 1 (2009): 1–​51. Pew Research Center. “Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion.” http://​www.pewh​ispa​nic.org/​2007/​04/​25/​chang​ing-​fai​ths-​lati​nos-​and-​the-​tra​ nsfo​rmat​ion-​of-​ameri​can-​relig​ion/​. Pew Research Center. “5 Facts about Latinos and Education.” http://​www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​ fact-​tank/​2016/​07/​28/​5-​facts-​about-​lati​nos-​and-​educat​ion/​. Pew Research Center. “Income Distribution by Racial and Ethnic Composition among Religious Tradition Evangelical Protestant.” http://​www.pewfo​rum.org/​religi​ous-​landsc​ ape-​study/​comp​are/​inc​ome-​distr​ibut​ion/​by/​rac​ial-​and-​eth​nic-​comp​osit​ion/​among/​religi​ ous-​tradit​ion/​evan​geli​cal-​pro​test​ant/​. Pew Research Center. “Latinos Made Economic Strides in 2015 after Years of No Gains.” http://​w ww.pewresearch.org/​fact-​tank/​2016/​11/​2 1/​latinos-​made-​economic-​strides-​in​2015-​after-​years-​of-​no-​gains/​ Pew Research Center. “A Milestone En Route to a Majority Minority Nation.” http://​www.pews​ ocia​ltre​nds.org/​2012/​11/​07/​a-​milest​one-​en-​route-​to-​a-​major​ity-​minor​ity-​nat​ion/​. Pew Research Center. “Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region.” https://​www.com​pass​ion.com/​mul​time​dia/​relig​ion-​in-​latin-​amer​ica-​ pew-​resea​rch.pdf. Pew Research Center. “Religious Composition of Latinos.” http://​www.pewfo​rum.org/​religi​ ous-​landsc​ape-​study/​rac​ial-​and-​eth​nic-​comp​osit​ion/​lat​ino/​. Putnam, R., and D. Campbell. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Ramírez, Daniel. Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Books, 2015. Ramos, A. I. “A Changing Landscape: A Sociological Perspective.” In A Plentiful Harvest: Practices for Effective Ministry among Latinos, edited by C. S. Morán and J. D. Montañez. Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press, 2018. Ramos, A. I. “Wounded to the Heart: Family, Identity Negotiation, and Racialization among Latino/​a Converts.” Unpublished manuscript, 2018. Ramos, A. I., G. Martí, and M. Mulder. “Latino Protestant Worship: Religious Racialization and the Performance of Ethnic Identity.” Unpublished manuscript, 2018. Ramos, A. I., R. Woodberry, and C. Ellison. “The Contexts of Conversions among U.S. Latinos.” Sociology of Religion 78, no. 2 (2017): 119–​145. Rodríguez-​Díaz, D. R., and D. Cortés-​Fuentes. Hidden Stories: Unveiling the History of the Latino Church. Orlando, FL: Asociación para la Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH), 1994. Rodriguez, S., and R. C. Crosby. When Faith Catches Fire: Embracing the Spiritual Passion of the Latino Reformation. New York: Crown, 2017. Ruano, N. E. The Holy Ghost beyond the Church Walls: Latino Pentecostalism(s), Congregations, and Civic Engagement. Chicago: Loyola University, 2011. Schaefer, R. Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008. Smith, C., and R. Faris. “Socioeconomic Inequality in the American Religious System: An Update and Assessment.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 1 (2005): 95–​104.

Latino/a Protestantisms   129 Telles, E., and V. Ortiz. Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008. Tienda, M., and N. Fuentes. “Hispanics in Metropolitan America: New Realities and Old Debates.” Annual Review of Sociology 40 (2014): 499–​520. US Census Bureau. “The Hispanic Population: 2010.” http://​www.cen​sus.gov/​prod/​cen2​010/​ bri​efs/​c201​0br-​04.pdf. Walker, R. J. Protestantism in the Sangre de Cristos, 1850–​1920. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991. Walsh, A. S. Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Walsh, A. S. Pentecostals in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Chapter 7

L atina/​o Pente c o sta l i sm Lloyd Barba

A Pericope: 1954 Under California’s scorching sun in July 1954, Cesar Chavez, at that time a neophyte civil rights activist, had just finished meeting with a Mexican Pentecostal family in Madera regarding an immigration quandary. With Operation Wetback underway that summer, the possibility of deportation weighed heavily on the family. The meeting in the living room concluded, but before Chavez could politely dismiss himself he noticed that the room doubled as a church, and worship service was quickly underway. Chavez stayed to observe and nearly two decades later remarked to his biographer: “although there were no more than twelve men and women, there was more spirit there than when I went to mass where there were two hundred.”1 Ultimately, Chavez convinced the Mexican Pentecostals in Madera to join the Community Service Organization. They in turn impressed upon him the power of charismatic music as demonstrated in the effervescence of lifted hands, cries out to God, and glossolalia.2 But how was it that Chavez crossed paths with Mexican Pentecostals in this rural town in the first place? In dealing with farmworkers in California for any sustained period of time in these remote quiet towns, one would likely encounter Pentecostal farmworkers. We can better understand the timing and location of Chavez’s encounter with the Pentecostal proletariat by tracking the growth of Pentecostalism among US Latinxs.3 Pentecostals emphasize the infilling and working of the Holy Spirit, fashioning their distinctive doctrines and practices after the events on the Day of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles and New Testament teachings regarding the charismata (gifts of the spirit). Operating in the spirit (e.g., speaking in tongues, divine healing, and prophecy, to name a few) imbues all elements of life from the mundane to the spectacular. Pentecostals suffuse an evangelical reading of the Bible with pneumatic and dynamic interpretation. While not all, but certainly many, Latino evangelicals are Pentecostal, virtually all Latino Pentecostals can be categorized as Evangelical. Moreover, the majority of Latin American–​based Evangélicos (Protestants, for all intents and purposes) are Pentecostal

Latina/o Pentecostalism   131 or are part of religious communities that have been “Pentecostalized.”4 This chapter demonstrates how the “Latino Reformation,” heralded by the April 15, 2013 issue of TIME on newsstands across America, indeed bears deep generationally old Pentecostal roots in the United States. Like the Protestant Reformation, the Latino Reformation came about after many years of struggle against religious orthodoxy. Unlike the Protestant Reformation, however, the Latino Reformation possessed (to borrow Chávez description) “more spirit.” To better understand the historical development of Latino Pentecostalism in the United States, this chapter offers a three-​part periodization: (1) Foundation: 1906–​1929; (2) Building: 1930–​1965; and (3) Expansion: 1966–​2006. The conclusion then takes stock of the movement from 2006 to 2020, examining the sociopolitical climate in which Pentecostalism continues to flourish. Within these periods, this chapter traces broader cultural, organizational, and educational contours of denominations as they developed within the US context of three macro-​forces fundamental in the shaping of Latinidad: shifting racial sensibilities, immigration policies, and labor market demands.

1906–​1929: Foundation The period from 1906 to 1929 captures the founding of Latino Pentecostalism as it spread to California, Texas, and Puerto Rico during the broader US Pentecostal movement’s “Golden Age.”5 The story of Latino Pentecostalism begins in the US-​Mexico borderlands. The first Latino Pentecostals gathered on the eve of the 1906 Azusa Street Revival (ASR) directed by William Seymour, an African American Pentecostal minister. Mexican workers tasked with cleaning up the barn house on Azusa Street for use as a mission were the first to receive the Holy Spirit, and a Mexican man with a club foot was the first to be healed. Word of supernatural manifestations at the mission quickly spread. The revival, pilloried by the Los Angeles Daily Times for its cacophonous “Weird Babble of Tongues,” piqued local and national curiosity.6 In what became a hallmark commentary of the ASR, early chroniclers gushed over how the revival purged out Jim Crow and Victorian social sensibilities. Historians of Latino Pentecostalism maintain that the claims of racial harmony, while powerful in the revival’s heyday, in the long term proved “baseless,”7 “illusory,”8 and at best mounted “a profound populist critique of the religious and social order” rather than a full-​scale social protest against Jim Crow.9 The early (albeit, scant) documentation of Mexicans at the revival seems to include them in order to stress ethnic, racial, and linguistic difference of Mexicans as a way to highlight the ability of the person operating in the spirit to cross cognitive (language), social (racial segregation), and gendered (women praying for men) boundaries. The rhetorical choices of the reports, however, ultimately marginalized and occluded the non-​English-​speaking Mexican other. As a result, historians are challenged to uncover more fully the roots and routes of Mexican

132   Lloyd Barba Pentecostalism so often relegated and segregated as a “mission” apart from American Pentecostalism. There are no confirmed reports of Latinxs regularly attending the revival after 1909.10 Despite this seemingly inauspicious start, Seymour’s mission nevertheless serves as a productive starting point to render a history of Latino Pentecostalism for two main reasons. First, Pentecostal denominations, Latino and non-​Latino alike, often point to the ASR as a historical starting point. This pervasive and dogged insistence to trace their historical (read: spiritual) lineage to the revival constitutes a central myth of revival’s origin.11 (No doubt, such linkage by the mid-​twentieth-​century afforded Pentecostal denominations historical legitimacy, which they severely lacked, especially when compared to their Mainline and Catholic counterparts.) Second, the direct ties that exist between Latinxs and the revival bear importance in recovering the larger story of founders such as the notable first preaching couple from the mission Abundio and Rosa Lopez, Brígido Pérez, Adolph Valdez, and Juan Navarro. Together, their stories show how that even though most Latinx converts to Pentecostalism hailed from Catholic backgrounds, the leaders, as “proto-​evangélicos,” converted from Protestantism.12 Such a phenomenon is especially evident in the founding of the Apostolic Assembly of Faith in Christ Jesus (AAFCJ) and the Latino Assemblies of God (AG), two movements which can be credited for birthing a rich diversity of Pentecostal traditions in the United States and abroad. Among those who lay claim to the ASR’s legacy are Oneness Pentecostals. After a series of doctrinal controversies, a cadre of ministers within the Assemblies of God in 1913 began to teach that converts ought to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, as opposed to the historically dominant baptismal formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Jesus-​centric teaching catalyzed a reformulation of the godhead, namely that God is radically and absolutely one (hence the term Oneness) and that the Trinity is not comprised of three distinct persons. This controversy resulted in the departure of nearly one-​third of the AG’s ministers in 1916. Numbering heavily among the dissenters were black and Latino leaders.13 The first conversions and ministerial callings of the eventual leaders of Latino Oneness Pentecostalism transpired from 1909 to 1919. In 1909, Luis Lopez was baptized and Seymour ordained Juan Navarro into the ministry. The AAFCJ celebrates Lopez’s baptism as the first Jesus-​name baptism of a Mexican and Navarro’s ordination as its clear link to the ASR. The heterodox movement scored its key conversion with Antonio Nava in 1916, its eventual leader and esteemed patriarch. Furthermore, Romana Carbajal de Valenzuela converted in 1912 and two years later founded Oneness Pentecostalism in Mexico. Within the following decade the streams of evangelism in northern Mexico and southern California would converge. From 1919 to 1929, the movement took deep root in the agricultural valleys of southern California, especially in the Imperial Valley and into Mexico’s Mexicali Valley. As agricultural workers, ministers traveled across the border with ease until immigration restrictions were more earnestly enforced in the late 1920s. The migrant Pentecostals became accustomed to working in the fields from early morning until the end of the day and in the evening holding services late into the night.14

Latina/o Pentecostalism   133 In 1925, the borderlands ministers convened for their first convention and adopted the name Iglesia de la Fe Apostólica Pentecostés for the fellowship that at that time claimed twenty-​three churches and approximately seven hundred members (all Spanish speaking). At the 1929 convention, the fledging fellowship agreed on the need for formal incorporation and sought out an amicable separation from the lager interracial Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. Nava assumed leadership of the fellowship in 1929 shortly after arriving from an emergency expedition to Mexico in which he shored up losses from Oneness Pentecostal schisms.15 The most notable defection that transpired prior to Nava’s arrival was that engendered by the charismatic leader Eusebío Joaquín González, who later rechristened himself Aarón. In 1926, the self-​proclaimed prophet defected and founded La Iglesia del Dios Vivo, Columna y Apoyo de la Verdad, La Luz del Mundo, known more colloquially as La Luz del Mundo (LLDM).16 Like Oneness Pentecostals, LLDM adherents maintain a nontrinitarian theology and compete vigorously for converts. While Oneness Pentecostal initially outpaced the Latino AG in Southern California, the latter made greater inroads in Texas, Puerto Rico, and eventually in California.17 The Latino AG is the largest Latino Protestant, Evangelical, or Pentecostal body in the United States today, claiming over one million adherents, and ultimately has had the largest impact on American public life. This growth and influence are owed in part to greater denominational support as evident in the movement’s foundational years. Alice Luce has generally been credited with initiating and overseeing the Latino AG missions in California. Luce, a former Anglican missionary to India, converted to Pentecostalism at the ASR. After missionary work in Mexico, the English-​born Luce set out to convert Mexicans in the United States, pleading her case to the AG on the importance of taking actions early to accomplish this. By converting Mexicans to Pentecostalism, Luce also hoped to stave off the influence of Catholicism in the Southwest. Because of her previous missionary experiences and willingness to establish missions in California (her earliest church being founded in 1917 in Los Angeles), she became the overseer of the Mexican missionary work in California. In 1926, she founded The Berean Bible Institute (which moved to Los Angeles three years later), which had its counterpart institution in Texas. Both provided a hands-​on educational experience which more often than not happened at the local church level. Historians have yet to uncover more fully the deeper and hidden history of Latino leaders in California as in Texas, where Luce and Henry Ball, respectively, took center stage in historical narratives. Whereas the work in California developed mostly under the oversight of Anglo missionaries, the Texas branch started and blossomed under a wider work of Mexican ministers but soon came under the tight control of Henry Ball, the first superintendent of the Latino AG. Nearly all sources on the Mexican missions in Texas begin with Ball despite the earlier history of Latino work. Ball arrived in Texas as part of a larger wave of Midwestern farmers that bought up cheap farm land and started anew. Having lived a short time in Mexico and later relocated among Mexican families in South Texas, Ball joined the AG ranks specifically in hopes of becoming a missionary to Mexicans. After starting his own church in Ricardo, Texas, he swiftly sought out independent

134   Lloyd Barba ministers to join the AG ranks. Clergy rail fares, funding from the Home Missions Department, Bibles, evangelization literature, and a recently published Spanish hymnal all incentivized Ball’s recruitment efforts for the AG. In 1918, he organized the first two Latino conventions. The charismatic faith healer, Francisco Olazábal, arrived in 1919 and gave the movement a boost. But his presence in the area posed a challenge to Ball’s dominance. By 1922, most of the Latino leaders in Texas wished to elect Olazábal as their leader, especially as some began to notice the exclusion of Mexicans’ voice and vote and limited access to resources to launch their own schools and ministries. A sense of pious paternalism endemic to the Anglo leadership of the Latino AG impeded the transference of the Latino AG to indigenous leadership.18 A critical examination of the timeline of Latino Pentecostal development in Texas reveals that the founding of the movement can be divided into three periods, the first of which precedes Ball’s involvement. From 1909 to April 1914 (before the establishment of the AG), Mexican ministers along with some white leaders launched independent missions in agricultural areas. This effort began quickly after Enemecio and Concepción Alaniz’s conversion. From 1914 to 1918, the earliest evangelists formally joined the AG in Texas, complete with churches and a meeting of representatives, all independently of Ball. From 1918 to 1922, Ball worked to consolidate Latino missions under the AG. From 1923 onward, the Latino AG came under Ball’s undisputed leadership and for the remainder of the decade he labored to shore up loses suffered at the hands of the massively popular and charismatic faith healer Francisco Olazábal. This defection proved to be among the earliest and most significant in early Latino Pentecostal history. From 1923 onward, Ball worked to bridge the gap with California and established Bible institutes. Texas served as an entry point for the AG into Mexico, and in 1923, in part due to the efforts of returned ministers who converted in or remained connected to Texas AG missions, leaders south of the border held their own convention. By the end of the decade the missions in Cuba, El Salvador, and Guatemala affiliated with the AG, and the Latino AG effort in the Southwest matured from a conference to district status.19 The fallout with Ball would not be the end of Olazábal’s ministry. In fact, his influence increased after the schism, building on his reputation he earned among the Latino AG faithful in his few short years of involvement. The Sinaloan Olazábal hailed from a Methodist family and moved to the United States to study at Moody Bible Institute. Then in 1917 he joined the AG. After helping Luce launch churches in California, he headed to El Paso to begin a church and a Bible school. Before the 1923 fallout with Ball, Olazábal played an instrumental role in gathering Mexican ministers under the AG banner. Thus, when he set out in 1923 to establish a denomination (renamed in 1932 Concilio Latino Americano de Iglesias Cristianas) (CLADIC), many followed him. In 1929, Olazábal led a revival in Chicago, a prelude into the dynamic ministry he would carry out in the next decade. CLADIC holds the distinction for being the “first completely indigenous and legally incorporated Latino Pentecostal (indeed Protestant) denomination in the United States and one of the first in the Americas.”20 Olazábal unintentionally contributed to the start of the Latino Foursquare Church. Vying for converts in Los Angeles, the celebrity Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple

Latina/o Pentecostalism   135 McPherson invited Olazábal in 1927 to preach at her famed Angelus Temple. Olazábal, who McPhereson dubbed “the Mexican Billy Sunday,” drew in thousands over the course of a few months. Soon enough McPherson proposed incorporating CLADIC into her denomination, but Olazábal rejected the offer. McPherson then later enticed Olazábal’s music director to join her ranks and launch a mission in the city.21 Pentecostalism’s rapid growth benefitted from its migrant laity and clergy. The Pentecostalization of Puerto Rico and New York City under Juan Lugo also demonstrates this. Lugo, part of the Puerto Rican labor diaspora that headed to the far West, was converted in Hawaii in 1913. Three years later he returned to Puerto Rico, arriving as an AG missionary. Lugo’s movement reaped the benefits of the fallout of Catholic power on the island and picked up converts from Spiritualism and Protestantism. Lugo, as a Puerto Rican himself, offered an alternative to the civilizing mission bought by Mainline Protestants as brokered in a comity agreement in which denominations divided the island for optimal and interference-​free Protestant outreach. In 1920, Lugo’s rapidly growing work was formally incorporated into the AG at Ball’s invitation and in 1922 took on the name Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal, thereby establishing the first indigenous Latino Protestant denomination on the island.22 Pentecostalism appealed to Latinxs in the borderlands and Puerto Rico in large part because of it offered laity empowerment, healing, and direct experience that dispelled doubt. New converts quickly became evangelists for the movement, often outpacing the efforts of Anglo missionaries. Several scholars have argued that healing was perhaps more prominent than Pentecostalism’s hallmark feature of glossolalia. When Olazábal, Nava, Maria Atkinson, and other Mexican leaders moved about the borderlands working their thaumaturgical wonders, it was not an unfamiliar practice since the time-​ honored practice in the borderlands had been customary among folk healers such as Don Pedrito Jaramillo, El Niño Fidencio, and María Teresa Urrea. Given the context of poverty and lack of access to medical care, divine healing came as a welcome promise.23 These denominations demonstrated a remarkable ability to hold in productive tensions the primitive (other-​worldy) and pragmatic (this-​worldly) impulses of the movement.24 Formal organization into denominations and districts (all human efforts) proved as a better means to accomplish their evangelistic ends as the Second Coming of Jesus was believed to be drawing nigh. The next several decades would test the strength of these movements and their ability to sustain growth both with and without the charismatic personalities that brought them up to the 1930s. The classical American Pentecostal denominations established themselves, to varying degrees, by 1929. While the Latino AG enjoyed the limited sponsorship and resources of a larger denominational body, other smaller indigenous and autonomous denominations such as the AAFCJ and CLADIC worked with sparser means. Our retrospective lens on the foundation of Latino Pentecostalism, also, should not beguile us into thinking that these Latino Pentecostal denominations (or district, in the case of the AG) imagined themselves as one movement. They competed with each other, and sometimes just as vigorously as with Catholics and all non-​Pentecostals alike. Such competition and evangelistic fervor gave rise to exponential growth from 1906 to 1929. These

136   Lloyd Barba denominations effectively laid a sure foundation upon which to build up despite the immediate challenges faced in the years to come.

Building: 1930–​1965 The period from 1930 to 1965 brought a host of external social, economic, and political challenges. But Pentecostal’s pliable pragmatism adjusted to the vicissitudes of a migrant laity in a period of social uncertainty. The looming Great Depression exacerbated an already-​strained immigration regime from 1924 to 1965, wherein the United States passed and reinforced its most stringent immigration policies that perennially brought about deportations of brown bodies, most notably in the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s and Operation Wetback of the 1950s. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act marked the terminus of the immigration regime and set a new tone in the nation.25 During this period, Pentecostals evangelized heavily among the Bracero Program (1942–​1964) workers and the countless other Mexicans that preceded and followed them. Furthermore, the influx of Puerto Ricans to the Northeast beginning in the 1930s changed the face of the Latino AG’s leadership. Latino Pentecostal denomination building and expansion became an almost exclusively indigenous endeavor. While the exploited working-​class Latino Pentecostals remained social outsiders in this period, they effectively built up their denominations to compete in the American religious marketplace. In 1930, the AAFCJ formally organized as a religious body in California, but it had an inauspicious start. First, the Great Depression led to a cancelation of its annual convention from 1931 to 1932 and again from 1934 to 1936. In the meantime, AAFCJ leaders, chiefly Antonio Nava, helped organize Mexico’s own AAFCJ in 1933, which in 1946 adopted the name Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús (IAFCJ). The IAFCJ reaped the results of US xenophobia, with “los hermanos repatriados” arriving as evangelists. Mexicans nevertheless remained as the majority of farmworkers in the Southwest. In the 1930s, the AAFCJ expanded its network of churches in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and throughout California’s valley’s with particular success in the north. Leaders that trained in the Imperial Valley in the 1920s evangelized in Northern California as its valleys transition to intensive-​labor crops and contractors recruited Mexican workers. By 1940, the AAFCJ claimed seventy US churches.26 In the 1930s, key developments marked the maturity of the denomination: the establishment of the women’s auxiliary and the publication of a periodical and hymnal. The hymnal allowed for a musical expression of heterodoxies and triggered a transformation of Pentecostal soundscapes in the borderlands. The establishment of a youth auxiliary in the 1940s would later reveal fissures in the movement. But the greater cultural and practical differences arose between the sister denominations in the United States and Mexico. In 1944, they signed a Treaty of Unification which offered rights and privileges to members of the migrating faith as they moved from one side of the border to the other.

Latina/o Pentecostalism   137 While the church in Mexico focused on building up its local churches, its US counterpart dealt with incorporating new waves of Mexican immigrants, which, in effect, partly reinforced the denomination’s status as social outsiders for most of the century. They evangelized especially well among Bracero laborers in the Southwest. In 1958, the sister denominations suffered a falling out due to increasing cultural and linguistic differences between the two and thus lifted the ban on planting churches in the other’s country. In 1949, the AAFCJ sent its first missionary, Leonardo Sepúlveda Treviño, to Nicaragua, and by 1953, he expanded the effort to Uruguay and Argentina. By the early 1960s, the AAFCJ expanded into El Salvador, Panama, and Honduras.27 Leaders from 1949 to 1965 changed the course of ministerial training and regional expansion. In 1949, the AAFCJ leaders sent a cohort of ministers to the Bible Colleges run by the United Pentecostal Church (then a white Oneness counterpart) in hopes of revamping their Sunday School materials and services for the youth auxiliary. Others trained at the IAFCJ’s Instituto Teológico Apostólico Internacional in Mexico City. The denomination also opened its own institute in Hayward, California, in 1949 (what would eventually become El Colegio Biblico Apostólico Nacional), but it struggled to stay open as a residential Bible institute. In 1950, Nava handed an organization of over one hundred congregations to Benjamín Cantú. Unlike Nava, Cantú was bilingual and US-​ born (Texas). From 1950 to 1966, Cantú and Nava led the AAFCJ’s expansion into the Midwest (via faith-​healing campaigns), Pacific Northwest, Florida, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Italy. The sister churches in 1965 once again committed to a rapprochement but agreed to continue evangelizing in the other’s territory.28 While the AAFCJ built up its institutional infrastructure, LLDM established a robust regional presence. In 1934, the prophet and founder Aarón built the first temple and in 1938 initiated LLDM’s iconic yearly pilgrimage festival La Santa Cena (the Holy Feast), held every year in Guadalajara. Aarón changed the city’s religious landscape in 1952 when he purchased over 34 acres to establish its colony La Hermosa Provincia.29 In 1955, LLDM expanded into California and in 1960 into Texas.30 In 1964, two years after Aarón’s death, his eldest son, Samuel Joaquin Flores, assumed the role as apostle of the church. As LLDM built up its presence in Mexico and made inroads into the United States, the Latino AG engaged extensively in institutional, local, and transnational building processes at all levels. For one, consider that by the 1960s, the Latino AG outnumbered its Oneness counterpart in the United States and Puerto Rico, made up for its early lag in California, and spread faster than virtually all Latino Protestant denominations. Key changes over time made such growth possible. The 1930s began with the Latino AG’s first superintendent, Henry Ball, having to relinquish control over Latin American churches as they began to nationalize their own religious institutions and rooted out foreign enterprises. A decade that began with churches gaining independence ended with Ball in 1939 handing over the Latino AG leadership to Demetrio Bazán, a former Methodist. Due to decline during the Great Depression, by 1941, one hundred Latino AG churches and missions shuttered. Bazán spearheaded the professionalization (and a consequent incentivizing) of the clergy by signing up ministers for benefits, including

138   Lloyd Barba social security, life insurance, and making the job of the superintendent of the Latino AG a full-​time paid position much like their Anglo counterparts had been. Under Bazán the Latino AG surpassed their Methodists and Presbyterians counterparts, becoming the largest Latino Protestant movement in the Southwest. In the Southwest alone, the Latino AG grew from 170 churches to 325 from 1939 to 1960, reaping many converts among Bracero workers. It was in this context that the famed Chicano land grant activist, Reies Lopez Tijerina, entered and left his AG Bible school training and ministerial career.31 Bazán also moved the Latin American Bible Institute (LABI) from the San Antonio area to Ysleta (near El Paso) in 1945, where most Mexican immigrants came by rail into the United States, and in 1950 he relocated the California LABI from east Los Angeles to its current home in La Puente. Bible institutes by the 1960s became sites to cultivate and maintain a Latino Pentecostal identity. After Bazán, José Girón led the AG through the 1960s, and early in his tenure he further indigenized the church by setting up the first National Latino AG Sunday School standards and curriculum. Now, from elementary age up through adulthood, the Latino AG faithful learned to carry out ministry on their own.32 Lugo’s back and forth from Puerto Rico to New York symbolized the movement of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Lugo returned to Puerto Rico in 1925 in order to set into place a better organizational structure for the rapidly growing movement, a task accomplished by late 1920. The movement largely reaped the benefits of Olazábal’s preaching and healing campaigns from 1931 to 1936. In 1940, the Lugo-​founded Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal boasted 7,100 members, far outpacing all other denominations, none of which numbered over 5,000. The rapid and widespread growth of Pentecostalism created a Pentecostal/​Charismatic culture even among non-​Pentecostal churches. Lugo had spent 1931 to 1937 following the diaspora to New York City and founding the region’s mother church, a converted synagogue called La Sinagoga. Ecclesial tensions simmered between the movement on the two islands, especially as Puerto Ricans began to arrive in greater numbers in the 1930s. This all came to a boil in 1956 when incoming ministers from the Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal were asked to switch their affiliation to the Latino AG’s Spanish Eastern Convention. A split ensued in 1957, and three hundred churches left to form a completely independent Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Movimiento Internacional, Puerto Rico’s largest Pentecostal denomination. By 1958, the AG then organized a new conference in Puerto Rico, and the Spanish Eastern Convention boomed, gaining full status as the Spanish Eastern District (SED). During this period of rapid growth, Ricardo Tañon’s Christian Church John 3:16 founded in 1943 in South Bronx grew from a mission to a megachurch by the late 1960s, eventually becoming the largest Protestant church in the city. Contrasting markedly from the rural and Mexican-​ dominated Southwest, the SED was urban, storefront, and built up by ministers migrating from the island. By 1953, Latino Pentecostal churches accounted for nearly 70 percent of Protestant churches in the city, a majority status that continued through the 1960s.33 CLADIC witnessed its highest and lowest points in the 1930s. Olazábal’s 1931 rallies in Harlem proved to be a watershed moment for himself and the movement as thousands,

Latina/o Pentecostalism   139 mostly Puerto Ricans, converted. Olazábal shortly thereafter relocated CLADIC’s headquarters from Los Angeles to New York City’s El Templo Betel, a converted synagogue that housed over 1,500. In the 1930s it was the nation’s largest Latino Pentecostal church. Olazábal’s death in 1936, however, also signaled fragmentation for CLADIC. In his thirty-​year career, Olazábal arguably did more than any other individual to shape Latino Pentecostalism, contributing in one way or another to fourteen denominations. He left CLADIC with 150 churches and 50,000 members in the Americas. In the decades following Olazábal’s death, almost all of CLADIC’s energy had been absorbed into other denominations. These denominations include the CLADIC offshoot Asamblea de Iglesia’s Cristianas (1939), Leoncia Rosado Rousseau’s Damascus Christian Church (1939), and Abelardo Berrios’ Concilio Latinoamericano de la Igelsia de Dios Pentecostal, INC. (1954).34 By the mid-​1960s, the Church of God Cleveland, a classical Pentecostal denomination, established functionally autonomous Latino ministries in larger cities throughout New York, Southern California, and the Midwest.35 By the 1960s, Latino Pentecostals became a mainstay of the religious landscape in New York City, Puerto Rico, Texas, and Southern California, providing Latinos an alternative to Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism. From 1966 to the movement’s centenary in 2006, Latino Pentecostalism capitalized on the building up of denominations in a period characterized by expansion: domestically, internationally, and as the recipient of Pentecostalism from Latin America.

Expansion: 1966–​2006 The post-​1965 period brought renewed waves of migration, now not only from Mexico but also newer streams from Central America, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and numerous Latin American nations that for decades had indigenized Pentecostalism. From 1966 until Latino Pentecostalism’s centennial celebration in 2006, the movement rapidly expanded and gradually (albeit in a segmented manner) began to enter the mainstream of American religion. All the while, new Latino Pentecostal denominations joined in. In the 1960s, the AAFCJ first experienced the growing pains of a denomination’s second generation of Mexican Americans. The new generation challenged the church’s norms such as dress codes and Spanish monolingualism. Beyond these challenges, the AAFCJ and some of its leaders who pursued higher education also had to contend with a growing non-​Mexican Latino constituency and their migration to unreached regions of the country. Meanwhile, growth in the migrant labor towns in Northern California remained constant with only one out of fifty churches located in an urban area by the late 1960s.36 Though lagging behind the Latino AG, the AAFCJ made strides at the outset of this period. Efrain Valverde converted from the Baptist church in 1949 and speedily climbed the AAFCJ’s ranks, heading the denomination from its semicentennial celebration in 1966 to 1970. After failing to secure a second term, he led a defection and founded La

140   Lloyd Barba Iglesia de Jesucristo de las Americas, Inc., a small fellowship of churches based out of the Salinas Valley. Lorenzo Salazar, a prolific composer of hymns, followed Valverde as superintendent of the AAFCJ and established the denomination’s first general offices and printing press. The Bible college graduate, after his tenure as superintendent, continued on to earn his MA in theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. Subsequent superintendents Lorenzo Salazar, Manuel Vizcarra, and Baldemar Rodriguez also pursued graduate studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. AAFCJ leaders assumed a better educational trajectory in this period, arguably following the example set by the esteemed historian, theologian, and IAFCJ leader Dr. Manuel Gaxiola.37 By the 1980s the national youth convention began to conduct its annual services in English. Renewed waves of Latin American immigration, especially with many bringing their indigenized Pentecostal sensibilities, placed checks on the second and third generation’s unbridled Anglophone predilections. The AAFCJ, in places such as Los Angeles and Houston, absorbed an influx of Central American refugees fleeing the violence of Central America in the 1980s and southern Mexico’s working class displaced by NAFTA’s economic devastations in the 1990s. Urban areas such as New York City, Washington, DC, and Miami in the 1980s, and the northern and central East Coast in the late 1990s, welcomed the newcomers. These churches provided a safe haven of fellowship from an increasingly hostile context of anti-​immigration laws in the 1990s. By 2004, the AAFCJ claimed 52,000 adult baptized members, 80,000 members (including children), and 700 churches in forty-​four states, statistics rivaled by its growth abroad.38 Samuel Joaquín Flores inherited from his father the dynamic growth and apostleship of LLDM. He immediately set out to expand the church’s presence in the United States. LLDM thrived in large part from the ongoing waves of Mexican immigrants since the 1970s, especially from states where LLDM claimed a large following. In 2003, LLDM dedicated its first temple in Washington, DC. After forty years of labor in Houston, its second temple, an ornate and imposing building, was dedicated in 2005. In that same year, Flores visited the temple in east Los Angeles to commemorate fifty years of LLDM presence in the city. LLDM has purchased large tracts of land for temples and residential units both in the Houston and Los Angeles areas.39 By the 1960s, the larger General Council of the Assemblies of God, which the Latino AG belonged to, entered the mainstream of American Evangelicalism and arrived at the new millennium among the top-​ten largest denominations in the United States. As the century closed, most of the AG’s growth owed to the increase of Latinx converts. Heading into the 1970s, the Latino AG’s second Latino superintendent set a new tone for the movement, negotiating for the creation of five additional Latino AG districts on par with Euro-​American districts. In 1976, Puerto Rico would become its own district but maintain ties with the SED, which grew to be the AG’s most successful district. In the 1970s, the Puerto Rican Pentecostal Church of God also made significant inroads into the Northeast with nearly one hundred US churches.40 Beginning in the late 1960s, classical Pentecostal denomination celebrated their semicentennial milestones, effectively enhancing their status as movements that were

Latina/o Pentecostalism   141 both thoroughly Latinx and American and thrived in the free market of American religion. But classical Pentecostal denominations were not the sole actors in the movement’s expansion after 1965. Several key groups emerged that either were Pentecostal or moved within Pentecostal-​Charismatic orbits. These include, inter alia, the Word of Faith movement, Vineyard Churches, and Victory Outreach. The Word of Faith movement began as mid-​century leaders grew frustrated with what they viewed as traditionalism creeping into Pentecostalism. Chief among these, Kenneth Hagin, pronounced a “Word of Faith” teaching, namely that “humans control their destiny through how much faith they generate to fulfill the promises that God has already given to them.”41 Latinxs began converting to this movement in earnest since the 1970s. Today it is among the greatest sources of growth for the Latino Pentecostals and Charismatics movement as is the prosperity gospel.42 In the 1970s, John Wimber brought with him charismatic teachings of speaking in tongues, healing, and prophecy to the recently founded Calvary Chapel movement. He and fellow charismatic leaders in Southern California formed The Vineyard. His book, Power Evangelism, catalyzed the movement’s signs and wonders phase. The 1997 Spanish translation of the book sold over one million copies. The Vineyard movement launched the Latino-​led La Viña in the late 1980s, and it boomed as immigration continued into the region. Their seeker-​friendly approach sloughs off the rigidity of classical Pentecostalism and often does not impose new religious identities upon congregants so that members, such as Catholics, need not feel as if they are “converting.”43 Such conversions out of Catholicism to Pentecostal churches wherein members clearly disassociate with Catholicism frequently bear heavy consequences in the Latinx communities. In the late 1960s, Victory Outreach (VO) launched a niche ministry to address urban poverty and violence by reforming gangsters and drug users. Its founder, Sonny Arguinzoni, left a life of hard drugs and sought rehabilitation in the Teen Challenge in Harlem, where AG evangelist Nicky Cruz witnessed to him in 1960. He and Cruz attended LABI in the early 1960s and opened a Teen Challenge center in Los Angeles in 1966. Arguizoni soon thereafter founded VO in the largest public housing community in Los Angeles. His testimony of deliverance from drugs set the template for VO converts who spend time in recovery homes and pursue a regimented program of prayer, worship, and work. A Pentecostal theology of deliverance and healing through the power of prayer and a life of discipline undergirds these rehabilitation programs and accounts for Pentecostalism’s particular success in implementing such programs. The “reformed barrio masculinity” practiced by VO allows Chicano gang members to reclaim a sense of honor through a new moral code, and the charismatic gifts stressed by Pentecostals reinforces such a notion of their newfound morality. Even as leadership transitioned to Sonny Arguizoni Jr., VO has continued to thrive with newfound opportunities in urban neighborhoods throughout the United States.44 VO benefitted greatly from the opportunities provided by LABI throughout the 1970s and 1980s, a time, more generally, when the Latino AG began taking steps toward educational professionalization, producing some of the movement’s luminary scholars.

142   Lloyd Barba Together they introduced Latino Pentecostal theology and ethics to the broader academy. Most notably, in the early 1990s, Dr. Eldin Villafañe (a protégé of the SED’s Ricardo Tañon), the founder of the Center for Urban and Ministerial Education for the interdenominational Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, earned his PhD in social ethics at Boston College. Villafañe’s 1992 book The Liberating Spirit: Toward an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic stands out as the first academic monograph on Latino Pentecostal theology. Samuel Solivan, also from the SED, studied at Union Theological Seminary before teaching at Andover Newton Theological Seminary. His books Seek the Peace of the City: Reflections on Urban Ministry (1995) and Spirit, Pathos and Liberation: Toward an Hispanic Pentecostal Theology (1998) offered theological reflections of where and how Pentecostalism has flourished. The still-​growing tradition of the “Latino Pentecostal academic theology” emerged with proto-​liberationist sensibilities and in the context of heavy Latin American immigration. As a result, modern Latino Pentecostal theology has been shaped by social, political, and economic injustices brought about by the lopsided global production and consumption of goods.45 The lifework of Jesse Miranda stands out among Latino Pentecostals not only for his leadership in the Latino AG and breakthrough research projects in higher education but also for his political advocacy in 1992 when he founded Alianza de Ministerio Evangélicos Nacionales (AMEN). This interdenominational lobby of Latino evangelical leaders has met with US presidents and prominent politicians. In 2002, Miranda launched Nueva Esperanza, the National Hispanic Presidential Prayer.46 The preponderance of men in educational and leadership roles reflects a broader machismo endemic to Latino Pentecostalism wherein males are qualified for privileged and authoritative roles based on their gender. Throughout this chapter sporadic examples of Latina founders have been mentioned, but this does not reflect the demographics in the pews wherein women across the movement and in various organizations comprise the vast majority. Latinas in the AG (albeit, limitedly) carved out ministerial/​preaching careers and led activist networks while their Latino Oneness counterparts, almost entirely across the board, still deny women ministerial credentials. Within the churches that they pastor, women pastors (pastoras) indeed have influence as any pastor would, but denominations have largely been loath to promote women to leadership positions even at the regional level. Compared to most other Pentecostal denominations, the Latino AG maintains a somewhat better track record for ordaining women ministers, nearly doubling their number from 80 in 1990 to 158 in 2005. The AG’s less restrictive norms also manifest themselves on the gendered body and its attendant dress codes. Latina Pentecostals have generally been quick to disassociate from the feminist movement though they subsequently benefitted from it with respect to upward educational and occupational trajectories, as well as in the realm of the body and dress codes. While oneness denominations most consistently maintained their dress standards by prohibiting the wearing of pants and use of most cosmetics and jewelry, their trinitarian counterparts largely adapted to the evolving social norms, with CLADIC and more recent transnational denominations standing out as the exceptions.47

Latina/o Pentecostalism   143 Numerous smaller, but rapidly growing, denominations entered the US Latino Pentecostal scene as reverse missions. Movements such as the Salvadoran Misión Cristiana Elim and the Colombian G12 Vision (both established in the United States around the turn of the century) have thrived by implementing the small cell-​group ecclesia based on David Yonggi Cho’s Yoido Full Gospel Church’s growth. Like these groups, the Brazilian Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (which opened Spanish-​ speaking churches as Iglesia Universal del Reino de Dios) has had most of its success on the East and West coasts, establishing its first US church in New York City in 1987. Misión Cristiana Elim and the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus boast two of the largest churches in the world in their respective countries of origins. Following the migration stream to Chicago, the Puerto Rican preacher Nahum Rosario founded the Maranatha Church in 1974 and gained most of its strengths among Puerto Ricans in the Midwest and Dominicans in the Northeast. These movements all established a much larger global reach and represent only a fraction of the many denominations and movements that took root in the United States during this period. As Latino Pentecostalism enters its second century, new actors continue to enter the scene.48

Conclusion: 2006–​2020 Heading into its second century, Latino Pentecostalism disproportionately contributes to the growth of US denominations. Without Latinos and other ethnic districts, the AG, for example, would trend negatively in overall membership growth.49 Other historically white denominations directly benefit from Latino Pentecostalism’s unparalleled growth.50 The sheer size of particular congregations demonstrates this trend in growth. For example, New Life Covenant Assemblies of God in Chicago and Temple Calvario in Santa Ana rank as the third and eighth largest AG churches in the United States, respectively. The following table offers both estimates and approximate figures of major Latino Pentecostal traditions.51 Affiliation

Number of Churches

AG (Latino) Church of God (Hispanic Ministries) AAFCJ Iglesia de Dio Pentecostal (MI) Universal Church of the Kingdom of God Victory Outreach ELIM

2,907 786 783 300+​in 2014 300+​ 185 104 affiliated; 243 with fellowship agreement

144   Lloyd Barba The Latino AG, AAFCJ, and Church of God Hispanic Ministries are all classical Pentecostal denominations and comprise the lion’s share of Latino Pentecostal churches in the United States. The Church of God Hispanic Ministries is a division of the Church of God (Cleveland Tennessee), which, like many majority US denominations, has experienced a boom brought on by Latin Americans. The Latino AG nevertheless comprises the vast majority of churches and accounts for more churches than the other denominations combined. Further, the Latino AG accounts for nearly one in ten Latinx Protestants in the United States.52 The AG’s SED alone records 487 churches more than half the size of the AAFCJ or Church of God Hispanic Ministries and more churches than any other Latino Pentecostal denomination. The fissiparous nature of Pentecostal organizations will likely prevent any one group surpassing the Latino AG numerical dominance anytime soon. Dozens of smaller and regional fellowships (with fewer than twenty-​five or so churches) comprise the many sources of Latino Pentecostal growth. LLDM in particular has experienced rapid growth in the past two decades both globally and in the United States, claiming to have churches in every US state. In February 2018, LLDM hosted its most sacred gathering La Santa Cena for the first time in the United States (San Bernardino, California), where several thousands gathered. The church claims that 12 percent of its US adherents live in California, thus the reason for the US feast. The inability of many LLDM faithful to celebrate La Santa Cena in Mexico and return to the United States due to immigration obstacles is likely the more immediate reason for initiating the feast in the United States. Immigration has shaped Latino Pentecostalism’s public discourses from the pulpit to the press. While a new cohort of Latino theologians have set forth seemingly unshakeable liberative paradigms for Latino Pentecostals to follow, their ministerial counterparts in the public square have advanced agendas of immigration that over the course from 2006 to 2020 have switched course.53 The immigration debates regarding comprehensive immigration reform from 2005 to 2008 triggered a response from Latino Pentecostal public leaders. In 2006, Miranda handed over AMEN to AG ministers Samuel Rodriguez and Wilfredo de Jesus, and they in turn founded the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC).54 In 2008, de Jesus, who later in 2013 would be listed in TIME’s one hundred most influential people in the world, campaigned for Barack Obama while the NHCLC lent Obama some measure of support on his promise of immigration reform. The NHCLC made a name for itself in large part by supporting immigration reform and criticizing politicians and evangelicals for tolerating anti-​immigrant politics and rhetoric. After the Bush and Obama presidencies, immigration reform still hung in the balance but with far less hope from the NHCLC since its leaders Rodriguez and Tony Suarez, who initially opposed Trump, ultimately ceased their critiques and became his staunch supporters, with Rodriguez serving on his spiritual advisory board. Trump advanced his immigration policies virtually unchallenged by the NHCLC. This support continued in 2020 with Evangelicals for Trump officially kicking off at El Rey Jesús Global, a Latino Pentecostal megachurch in Miami.55 On the other hand, the National Evangelical Latino Coalition (NELC), founded by the former Nazarene Gabriel Salguero, has remained steadfast in challenging political and

Latina/o Pentecostalism   145 religious leaders who advance anti-​immigrant agendas and in late 2020 endorsed Biden at an event in Miami. NELC has included many Pentecostals such as the academic and activist Elizabeth Rios. Across the board, Latino Pentecostals have a century’s worth of historical precedent to draw upon as they confront these challenges in the years ahead. While the involvement of Latino Pentecostals in the public square garners much commentary, stories from the pews remind us that Pentecostal spirituality is meted out in everyday life, work, and disciplines, and mostly by women. In due time, scholarship on Pentecostalism will reflect these lived quotidian realities. From the relegated spaces of dining halls, basements, and storefront (where so many Latino Pentecostal congregations can be found) to the renovated historic downtown Protestant churches, megachurches, and the White House, Latino Pentecostals intend to advance a common goal: “more spirit.”

Notes 1. Jacques Levy, Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa (Minneapolis: First University Press of Minnesota, [1975] 2007), 116. 2. Lloyd Barba, “More Spirit in That Little Madera Church: Cesar Chavez and Borderlands Religious Soundscapes, 1954–​1966,” California History 94, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 26–​42; Lloyd Barba, “Farmworker Frames: Apostólico Counter Narratives in California’s Valleys,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86, no. 3 (September 2018): 691–​723. 3. In keeping with the scholarship on the topic, this chapter uses the term Latino as the modifier for Pentecostalism and its actors, but employs the term Latinx as a gender-​neutral term when describing the population more generally. 4. Gastón Espinosa, “The Pentecostalization of Latin American and U.S. Latino Christianity,” Pneuma: The Journal for the Society of Pentecostal Studies 26, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 262–​292. 5. Arlene Sánchez-​Walsh, Pentecostals in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), xxi. 6. Gastón Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 25, 35–​41. 7. Arlene Sánchez-​Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), xvii 8. Daniel Ramírez, Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 35. 9. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 58. 10. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 52. 11. Joe Creech, “Visions of Glory: The Place of the Azusa Street Revival in Pentecostal History,” Church History 65, no. 3 (2009): 405–​424; Sánchez-​Walsh, Pentecostals in America, xx–​xxiv. 12. Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 27–​29, 39–​42. 13. Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 42–​43; Lloyd Barba and Andrea Johnson, “The New Issue: Approaches to Oneness Pentecostalism in the United States,” Religion Compass 10, no. 12 (October 2018); the Oneness articulation of the godhead followed the Jesus-​name baptismal practices. David Reed, In Jesus Name: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals (Blandford Forum, UK: Deo, 2008), 167–​206.

146   Lloyd Barba 14. Erneto S. Cantú, José Ortega, Isaac Cota, and Phillip Rangel, Historia de la Asamblea Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús, 1916–​1966 (Mentone, CA: Sal’s Printing Service: Mentone, 1966), 5–​25; Manuel Gaxiola, La Serpiente y La Paloma: Análisis del Crecimiento de la Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús de México (South Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1970), 161–​165; Barba, “Farmworker Frames.” 15. Cantú et al., Historia, 21–​54. 16. Renée de la Torre, Los Hijos de la Luz: Discurso, Identidad, y Poder en La Luz del Mundo (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2000), 69–​75. 17. This essay uses the shorthand “Latino AG” as used in current literature; see Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 11. 18. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 83–​130. 19. Sánchez-​Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity, 24–​47; Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 60–​133, 171; Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 64. 20. Espínosa, Latino Pentecostals, 109–​133; quote found at p. 126. 21. Gastón Espinosa, “Latino Pentecostal Healing in the North American Borderlands,” in Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, ed. Candy Gunther Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 135–​137. 22. Espínosa, Latino Pentecostals, 192–​223. 23. Espinosa, “Latino Pentecostal Healing”; Sánchez-​Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity, 20–​ 23, 38; Hector Avalos, “María Atkinson and the Rise of Pentecostalism in the U.S.-​Mexico Borderlands,” Journal of Religion and Society 3 (2001): 1–​4; Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 38–​ 39, 53–​56; Luis D. León, La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-​Mexican Borderlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 129–​162. 24. Per Grant Wacker, the genius of Pentecostal movement lay in its ability to hold primitive and pragmatic impulses in productive tension, see Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 10–​13. 25. Natalia Molina, How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 26. Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 83–​110; Cantú et al., Historia, 9–​26; Ismael Martín del Campo, “Apostolic Assembly of Faith in Christ Jesús,” in Los Evangélicos: Portraits of Latino Protestantism in the United States, ed. Juan F. Martínez and Lindy Scott (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 61–​62; Barba, “Farmworker Frames.” 27. Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 116–​132, 142–​143, 167–​196; Cantú et al., Historia, 32, 35; del Campo, “Apostolic Assembly,” 60–​65; Gaxiola-​Gaxiola, La Serpiente y La Paloma, 165–​166. 28. Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 90; del Campo, “Apostolic Assembly,” 63–​66. 29. De la Torre, Hijos de la Luz, 79–​81. 30. J. Gordon Melton, “The Rise of La Luz del Mundo in Texas,” The Journal of CENSUR 4, no. 2 (March–​April 2020), 29; Donald A. Westbrook, “Field Report: The Light of the World in Greater Los Angeles,” The Journal of CENSUR 4, no. 2 (March–​April 2020), 58. 31. Rudy Busto, King Tiger: The Religious Vision of Reies Lopez Tijerina (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 35–​76. 32. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 155–​181. 33. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 218–​274. 34. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 267–​269. 35. Clifton L. Holland, The Religious Dimensions in Hispanic Los Angeles (South Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1974), 342–​344.

Latina/o Pentecostalism   147 36. Gaxiola-​Gaxiola, La Serpiente y La Paloma, 165–​171. 37. Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 121; del Campo, “Apostolic Assembly,” 67–​71; on the prolific careers of Gaxiola and Vizcarra, see the Manuel J. Gaxiola Collection and Papers of Manuel Vizcarra an Apostolic Archives of the Americas Collection at the David Allan Hubbard Library, Fuller Theological Seminary. 38. del Campo, “Apostolic Assembly,” 64–​74; Daniel Ramírez, “Public Lives in American Hispanic Churches: Expanding the Paradigm,” in Latino Religions and Civic Activism, ed. Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 177–​195. 39. Melton, “The Rise of La Luz,” 28–​33; Westbrook, “Field Report,” 57–​69. 40. Espínosa, Latino Pentecostals, 181–​188, 269–​273. 41. Arlene Sánchez-​Walsh, “Santidad, Salvación, Sanidad, Liberación: The Word of Faith Movement among Twenty-​First Century Latina/​o Pentecostals,” in Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, ed. Candy Gunther Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 154. 42. Sánchez-​ Walsh, “Santidad, Salvación, Sanidad, Liberación”; Tony Tian-​ Ren Lin, Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020). 43. Sánchez-​Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity, 154–​191. 44. Sánchez-​Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity, 87–​131; Edward Orozco Flores, God’s Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery (New York: New York University Press, 2013); León, La Llorona’s Children, 203–​240. 45. Daniel Ramírez, “Divino Compañero del Camino: The Stakes for Latino Pentecostalism in Pentecostalism’s Second Century,” in The Many Faces of Global Pentecostalism, ed. Harold Hunter (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2013), 199–​216. 46. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 274–​280. 47. Ordination represents the highest level of ministerial credentialing in the AG and many more women are licensed, certified, or specialized, see Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 282–​ 321; Elizabeth D. Ríos, “The Ladies Are Warriors: Latina Pentecostalism and Faith-​Based Activism in New York City,” in Latino Religions and Civic Activism, ed. Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 197–​214; Otto Maduro, “Becoming Pastora: Latina Pentecostal Women’s Stories from Newark, New Jersey,” in Global Pentecostal Movements: Migration, Mission, and Public Religion, ed. Michael Wilkinson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 195–​210. 48. Jill DeTemple, “Chains of Liberation: Poverty and Social Action in the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God,” in Latino Religions and Civic Activism, ed. Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 177–​195; Robert A. Danielson, “Transnationalism and the Pentecostal Salvadoran Church: A Case Study of Misión Cristiana Elim,” in Pentecostals and Charismatics in Latin American and Latino Communities, ed. Néstor Medina and Sammy Alfaro (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 111–​124; Sánchez-​Walsh, “Santidad, Salvación,” 158–​163. 49. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 191. 50. Everett L. Wilson and Jesse Miranda, “Hispanic Pentecostalism,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 715–​723. 51. This list is not intended to reflect the exact rank of Latino Pentecostal based on the number of congregations, as statistics for the such denominations do not necessarily reflect current

148   Lloyd Barba exact numbers; moreover, reliable statistics for LLDM in the United States were unavailable; on the 2014 statistic for the Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal (MI), see Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 269; on the AG, see https://​coghm.org, https://​coghm.org/​regio​nes-​hispa​ nas-​de-​la-​igle​sia-​de-​dios/​; on the Apostolic Assembly, http://​apps.aposto​lica​ssem​bly.org/​ chu​rch_​loca​tor.aspx; on ELIM churches, and https://​www.eli​mfel​lows​hip.org/​find-​a-​chu​ rch/​; on Victory Outreach, see https://​victoryoutreach.org/​locations/​usa-​churches/​ 52. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 187–​188. 53. Sammy Alfaro, Divino Campañero: Toward a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010); Daniel Orlando Álvarez, Latin@ Identity in Pneumatological Perspective: Mestizaje and Hibridez (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2016); Daniel Castelo, Pentecostalism as a Mystical Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2017); Néstor Medina, Christianity, Empire, and the Spirit: (Re)Configuring Faith and the Cultural (Boston: Brill, 2018); also cf. Néstor Medina and Sammy Alfaro, eds., Pentecostals and Charismatics in Latin American and Latino Communities (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 111–​124; Sánchez-​Walsh, “Santidad, Salvación,” 158–​163. 54. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostalism, 348. 55. Alejandra Molina, “Trump Launches ‘Evangelicals for Trump’ by Visiting Megachurch led by a Latino Pastor,” Religion News Service, January 3, 2020, https://​religionnews.com/​ 2020/​01/​03/​trump-​launches-​evangelicals-​for-​trump-​by-​visiting-​megachurch-​led-​by-​a-​ latino-​pastor/​

Bibliography Alfaro, Sammy. Divino Campañero: Toward a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010. Avalos, Hector. “María Atkinson and the Rise of Pentecostalism in the U.S.-​ Mexico Borderlands.” Journal of Religion and Society 3 (2001): 1–​20. Barba, Lloyd. “Farmworker Frames: Apostólico Counter Narratives in California’s Valleys.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86, no. 3 (September 2018): 691–​723. Barba, Lloyd. “More Spirit in that Little Madera Church: Cesar Chavez and Borderlands Religious Soundscapes 1954–​1966.” California History 94, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 26–​42. Barba, Lloyd, and Andrea Johnson. “The New Issue: Approaches to Oneness Pentecostalism in the United States.” Religion Compass 10, no. 12 (October 2018). Busto, Rudy. King Tiger: The Religious Vision of Reies López Tijerina. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Cantú, Erneto S., José Ortega, Isaac Cota, and Phillip Rangel. Historia de la Asamblea Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús, 1916–​1966. Mentone, CA: Sal’s Printing Service: Mentone, 1966. Castelo, Daniel. Pentecostalism as a Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2017. Creech, Joe. “Visions of Glory: The Place of the Azusa Street Revival in Pentecostal History.” Church History 65, no. 3 (2009): 405–​424. Danielson, Robert A. “Transnationalism and the Pentecostal Salvadoran Church: A Case Study of Misión Cristiana Elim.” In Pentecostals and Charismatics in Latin American and Latino Communities, edited by Néstor Medina and Sammy Alfaro, 111–​124. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Latina/o Pentecostalism   149 de la Torre, Renée. Los Hijos de la Luz: Discurso, Identidad, y Poder en La Luz del Mundo. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2000. del Campo, Ismael Martín. “Apostolic Assembly of Faith in Christ Jesús.” In Los Evangélicos: Portraits of Latino Protestantism in the United States, edited by Juan F. Martínez and Lindy Scott, 51–​75. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009. DeTemple, Jill. “Chains of Liberation: Poverty and Social Action in the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.” In Latino Religions and Civic Activism, edited by Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda, 177–​195. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Espinosa, Gastón. Latino Pentecostals in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Espinosa, Gastón. “Latino Pentecostal Healing in the North American Borderlands.” In Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, edited by Candy Gunther Brown, 129–​149. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Espinosa, Gastón. “The Pentecostalization of Latin American and US Latino Christianity.” Pneuma: The Journal for the Society of Pentecostal Studies 26, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 262–​292. Gaxiola, Manuel. La Serpiente y La Paloma: Análisis del Crecimiento de la Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús de México. South Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1970. Holland, Clifton L. The Religious Dimensions in Hispanic Los Angeles. South Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1974. León, Luis D. La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-​Mexican Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Levy, Jacques. Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa (1975). Minneapolis: First University Press of Minnesota, 2007. Lin, Tony Tian-​Ren. Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Maduro, Otto. “Becoming Pastora: Latina Pentecostal Women’s Stories from Newark, New Jersey.” In Global Pentecostal Movements: Migration, Mission, and Public Religion, edited by Michael Wilkinson, 195–​210. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Medina, Néstor. Christianity, Empire, and the Spirit: (Re)Configuring Faith and the Cultural. Boston: Brill, 2018. Medina, Néstor, and Sammy Alfaro, eds. Pentecostals and Charismatics in Latin American and Latino Communities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Melton, J. Gordon. “The Rise of La Luz del Mundo in Texas.” The Journal of CENSUR 4, no. 2 (March–​April 2020): 21–​35. Molina, Alejandra. “Trump Launches ‘Evangelicals for Trump’ by Visiting Megachurch Led by a Latino Pastor.” Religion News Service, January 3, 2020. Molina, Natalia. How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. Orlando Álvarez, Daniel. Latin@ Identity in Pneumatological Perspective: Mestizaje and Hibridez. Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2016. Orozco Flores, Edward. God’s Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery. New York: New York University Press, 2013.Ramírez, Daniel. “Divino Compañero del Camino: The Stakes for Latino Pentecostalism in Pentecostalism’s Second Century.” In The Many Faces of Global Pentecostalism, edited by Harold Hunter. Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2013. Ramírez, Daniel. Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

150   Lloyd Barba Ramírez, Daniel. “Public Lives in American Hispanic Churches: Expanding the Paradigm.” In Latino Religions and Civic Activism, edited by Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda, 177–​195. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Reed, David. In Jesus Name: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals. Blandford Forum, UK: Deo, 2008. Ríos, Elizabeth D. “The Ladies Are Warriors: Latina Pentecostalism and Faith-​Based Activism in New York City.” In Latino Religions and Civic Activism, edited by Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda, 197–​214. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Sánchez-​Walsh, Arlene. Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Sánchez-​Walsh, Arlene. Pentecostals in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Sánchez-​ Walsh, Arlene. “Santidad, Salvación, Sanidad, Liberación: The Word of Faith Movement among Twenty-​First Century Latina/​o Pentecostals.” In Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, edited by Candy Gunther Brown, 151–​168. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Westbrook, Donald A. “Field Report: The Light of the World in Greater Los Angeles.” The Journal of CENSUR 4, no. 2 (March–​April 2020): 57–​7 1. Wilson, Everett L., and Jesse Miranda. “Hispanic Pentecostalism.” In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement, edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002.

Chapter 8

L atina/​o /​x Mormons Sujey Vega

Spanish is presently the second largest language group in the Church, with about 3.3 million Spanish-​speaking members. Sometime around the year 2020, however, based on present membership growth rates, Spanish is projected to be the largest language group in the Church, with English being second.1 According to the Church management information center, by September 2020, English-​dominant Mormon membership is estimated to drop below 50 percent and Spanish-​speaking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​Day Saints will outnumber them. 2 As the Church nears this landmark moment, one must reflect on how US Latinas/​os add to this dynamic and what they faced in the century-​long missioning projected among Spanish speakers of the United States. To understand the contemporary experience of Latina/​o members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​Day Saints (LDS Church), one must begin with missioning efforts in Mexico that date back to 1875. Though certainly not all Latina/​o Saints are of Mexican descent, the first attempt to engage Spanish-​speaking people of the Americas began with expeditions to Mexico to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ to mestizos in Latin America. This enthusiasm for missioning south of the border was born directly out of the Book of Mormon. This quintessential religious text detailed how Native indigenous populations of the Americas first received the true gospel from Jesus Christ himself right after his resurrection. Though His teachings were lost for generations, the Book of Mormon foretold of a moment when the descendants of these early Americans would gather with other Saints (Mormons) in the Latter Days to await the return of Jesus Christ in Zion, the new Jerusalem. Here the history of mestizaje in the Americas plays a crucial role in the missioning, conversion, acceptance, and positioning of Latina/​o Saints in the LDS family. This theological grounding embedded Latina/​o Saints within the doctrine of the church and justified the missioning to Spanish-​speaking regions. As the fastest-​growing growing sector of the LDS Church, Latina/​o Saints have gained tremendous headway; yet the century-​long history of Spanish-​speaking membership

152   Sujey Vega is not devoid of obstacles. For instance, once wards (Mormon congregations) were established in the United States, issues arose regarding the management of sprouting communities. Tensions grew with respect to English-​ dominant white leadership making unilateral decisions for Latina/​o Saints.3 Facing pushes to attend English-​only wards and confronted with a lack of ethnic representation in the upper echelons of Church leadership, Spanish-​speaking Saints have long advocated for autonomy and a place at the proverbial table in Salt Lake City. At present, some of these goals have been met. More interestingly, the slow but increasing representation in Church leadership roles has been realized among female-​centered global positions. Twice now, Latinas have been called to serve on the Global Relief Society presidency (head committee of women’s auxiliary group). While Latina/​o men exist in the Church’s general authority (the top eighty-​five positions held by men of the church with a pyramid-​type structure of power), the few Latina/​o men that exist in this Church hierarchy remain products of a wealthy highly educated upper class from Latin American and not US Latinas/​os.4 The LDS Church thrives on a regimented hierarchal order that continues to marginalize working-​class US-​based members of color. Some second-​ generation Latinas/​ os raised in the Church have found acceptance in mainstream Church leadership and in English-​speaking wards, but at what cost? Interviews with immigrant Latina/​o Saints revealed concerns for assimilation influences in children who no longer want to speak Spanish or practice their ethnic identity. Conversely, Latina/​o LDS millennials critiqued and left the Church for its political conservatism and homophobic guidelines. This chapter begins with an exploration of Mormon theology to lay the foundation for the doctrinal and social milieu present when Spanish-​speaking members joined the Church. Next, a brief history of LDS missioning in Mexico provides a basis for understanding conversion efforts north of the border. Once wards were established in the United States, English-​dominant Anglo leaders faced Latina/​o Saints who spoke out in favor of separate Spanish wards and better representation in local leadership roles. Finally, a contemporary analysis provides a snapshot at present-​day successes and challenges for Latina/​o Saints.

“Hermano Lamanita” As an anthropologist, I utilize interdisciplinary approaches like ethnography, archival analysis, oral history, and discourse analysis to explore the racialized, gendered, and classed experiences of Latinx communicates across the United States. In practice, this means I am just as comfortable spending days in Church archives as I am sitting in a living room celebrating a birthday with participants/​friends—​those who help me unpack the deeply complex intersections of ethnicity, gender, immigration, class, and religion in Mormon Latina/​o lives. Thus, the line often blurs between research participant, friend, and colleague with folks who build bridges of understanding for me, an outsider to the faith.

Latina/o/x Mormons   153 I have known Carlos and his family for several years, as long as I’ve been collecting Latina/​o LDS narratives. 5 When I visit, our children play as the adults watch on with amusement from the kitchen window. In conversations that span across years, I ask Carlos about my questions on the theology of the Church, about a document I found in the archives, and for advice on parenting. During one of these exchanges, Carlos related a complex exchange between him and another member of the Church: Carlos: Every time I see him at our Ward, he greets me with “Hermano (brother) Lamanita!” I ignore it because I’m like “Yeah, whatever dude.” I don’t say it back because I don’t agree with that label.

Carlos has issues with the term “Lamanite” and what it means to be identified as such in the Church. This reference to Laman and the Lamanite connection to Latina/​o Saints appears a lot in my archival and ethnographic inquiry. My work unearths the narratives of Latina/​o Saints themselves to understand what their Church means to them, their agency, and their sense of spiritual and personal autonomy. Thus, researching Latina/​ o Saints requires an exploration of the doctrine to explore how Spanish-​speaking members appropriate or distance themselves from the Mormon figure Laman. The Book of Mormon includes a common family dynamic of sibling rivalry. A family, believed to be one of the lost tribe of Israel, faces warring factions between jealous siblings. Lehi, the father, received a holy message to flee Jerusalem and seek refuge as far away as he and his family can. They traveled across the sea and land to reach the New World, where younger brother Nephi receives direction from God that he must lead his family and older brothers on their spiritual journey. Lehi’s older sons, Laman and Lemuel, resist the divine authority bequeathed onto Nephi. They continuously question, defy, and even plot to kill their prophetic little brother. They do not succeed, but the family splits up and settles throughout the land, becoming the progenitors of modern-​ day indigenous populations in the Americas. Descendants of those who stayed under the leadership of Nephi become successful farmers and build magnificent structures. Laman’s descendants, the Lamanites, fall away from Christ’s teachings and turn to violence, idol worship, and mayhem. After centuries of warring, the Nephites die off, leaving only the Lamanites to survive. Importantly, this Lamanite narrative rings familiar for Spanish-​speaking members. Mexican Catholics have the Virgin of Guadalupe, who in 1531 marked Mexicans as a chosen people because the Holy Virgin herself picked Juan Diego, an indigenous man, to deliver an important message to otherwise arrogant Spanish clergy. Similarly, the Lamanite narrative enticed Spanish-​speaking mestizos to the LDS Church by identifying indigenous/​mestizos as exalted or “set apart,” to use Mormon nomenclature. Distinctly, the Lamanite approach also relied on a presumption of a fallen people devolving into savagery before they were saved by the restored Gospel. As once lost and then found, Lamanites can be seen as the prodigal sons and daughters welcomed back into God’s glory. The Book of Mormon foretells that if Lamanites accept the teachings of the LDS Church, the descendants of Laman could return to being “pure and a delightsome” and restore the “knowledge of their Fathers” (NEPHI

154   Sujey Vega 30:5). Perceiving indigenous and Spanish-​speaking mestizos as once impure and unpleasant sets up a disturbing racialized hierarchy; still, for some this passage signals the exalted nature of those who, using Plato’s parable of the cave, unchain themselves to see the true living world. Moreover, until 1981, the line in the Book of Mormon read “white and delightsome” instead of “pure and delightsome.” While the Church maintains that this was an issue with translation and multiple editions of the text, this passage remained seeped within a white supremacist psyche that influenced some members of this religion. Additionally, the Church walked a fine line when genetic markers challenged the narrative of Israelite ties to America’s indigenous peoples. In an official statement, the Church affirmed the veracity of the Book of Mormon while simultaneously acknowledging the Asian, not Lamanite, blood lines found in contemporary American Indian populations. Instead, mixed marriages and migration of other peoples to the Americas explained why and how the Lamanite DNA tie to Israel was not supported by scientific research. In this manner, the legitimacy of the Book of Mormon held even if the Latin American ties to Lamanite descendance thinned. Though searching for progenitors of Laman has fallen out of favor in the LDS Church, the ideology remains important to the history of Latina/​o membership. The Lamanite narrative informed how Mormons justified Latin American missioning, and in turn provided the basis for Latinas/​os to consider converting. As far back as 1874, LDS members trekked South of Utah to mission to Native (read Lamanite) communities and seek refuge site for polygamous LDS families experiencing persecution by federal authorities. Searching for spaces to expand the Deseret, LDS settlers were called on by Brigham Young “to grow the gospel to Lehi’s millions of Mexican descendants.”6 In this initial expedition, a group of families were sent to build Mormon colonies throughout Arizona and into Chihuahua, Mexico. As the bridge between Mexico and Salt Lake City, Mesa, Arizona, was designated as a viable site for Arizona’s only Temple in 1919 (Mesa remained the only temple in Arizona until 2002). The Mesa Temple was coined a “Lamanite Temple” and provided ordinances (Temple restricted ceremonies) to the increasing Latina/​o and Indian converts as well as the white LDS members in the Southwest. Indeed, the Mesa Temple was the first ever (1945) to offer endowments in a language other than English (Spanish). Thus, for generations the Mesa Temple was a destination for Latina/​o LDS members who had nowhere else to go for rituals critical to the faith.7 Indeed, excursions of Saints from Mexico and Central America came by the bus load to conduct Temple ordinances. At first, Mormon families in the area hosted the brethren. Eventually, the excursions were so popular that the Church converted a dance hall into a dormitory for Latin American LDS travelers. In addition to the excursions, the Mesa Temple also hosted annual Spanish-​speaking Lamanite conferences primarily attended by Latina/​o Mormons throughout the United States. Even Latinas/​os who lived in Utah, in the quintessential center of Mormondom, traveled to Mesa for these conferences and Temple work in Spanish. Bringing together families and youth from throughout the Southwest, the Lamanite conferences were lovingly remembered by Mesa’s Latina/​o Saints as a time where they could rejoice in the presence of other LDS Latinas/​os. Beyond Temple work, the Lamanite conferences

Latina/o/x Mormons   155 included dances, dinners, and in some cases courting between Latina/​o LDS members. The Lamanite conferences and Temple excursions were a source of pride for leadership in Utah, for it meant descendants of Laman were accepting the restored gospel and would “blossom as a rose” (Isa. 35:1). For their part, missionaries related to Spanish-​speaking converts that they formed part of a lost tribe of Israel, and as such they were predestined or chosen for celestial glory. This automatic empowerment in the faith, the knowledge that you were predestined to partake in the glory because you were descendants of Lehi, exalted Latina/​o LDS by sheer virtue of their indigenous inheritance. As Carlos related earlier, present-​day LDS Latinas/​os have a complex relationship with this Lamanite identity. Interviews with Latina/​o Saints about a Lamanite connection yielded varied responses. From outright laughter accompanied by “Remember when they used to call us Lamanites,” to more positive assertions of “It is us, our story, our people” or “It’s meaningful, it’s our history.” For some Latinas/​os, like the man who greeted Carlos, this Lamanite label is a point of pride and community (¡Hermano Lamanita!). For others, like Carlos at his Ward, a US-​born and US-​raised Latina/​o male, it is a condescending reminder of being set apart, or rather set aside, as not fully Mormon or worthy of higher office in Church leadership. Moreover, Carlos explained that when the Church stopped referring to Lamanites, “They didn’t even ask the Lamanites themselves if they wanted to de-​emphasize the story.” Though Carlos did not see himself as a Lamanite, he found it curious that members who were proud of that label were summarily ignored once Headquarters decided it was time to move on. Perhaps as a result of historical criticism, perhaps related to the Human Genome Project, perhaps because LDS missioning was moving more toward non-​Lamanite sites, perhaps as a way to address the criticism of Mormons as a “white and a delightsome people,” the idea of a Lamanite heritage has diminished officially in the Church. Still, Laman and the plans for his descendants remain grounded in LDS Scriptures and continue to reside in a complicated battle for identity, genetics, and internalized hierarchies between members.

Revolution and Representation in Mexico Arguably, the LDS presence in Mexico began with the westward move and settlement in what was still Mexico’s northern territory in 1847.8 Conveniently for the Mormons, the United States acquired what became known as Utah Territory in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo just six months after Brigham Young and his followers arrived in the Salt Lake City area. After twenty-​seven years of building their new religious center, “In June of 1874 Brigham Young announced that soon it would be time to take the gospel to Lehi’s millions of Mexican descendants.”9 In the years to follow, a newly converted Spaniard and a Mormon veteran of the US-​Mexico War proceeded to translate the Book

156   Sujey Vega of Mormon and prepare for missioning among Lamanites in Mexico. By 1875, Daniel W. Jones (the veteran) began his course southward and scouted out possible sites for future LDS towns in Arizona and northern Mexico. Though the Edmund’s Act (1882) against polygamy was still some years away, the work of those who traveled with Jones was twofold: (1) to locate potential locations where polygamous Mormons could settle without the intervention of US federal authorities and (2) to find covert Mexican Lamanites.10 This initial venture south yielded more for the former than the latter. From 1879 to 1889, missionaries tried to “restore the gospel” in Central Mexico, but attention was also focused on building polygamous colonies for those fleeing persecution in Utah.11 Thus, the history of Mormons in Mexico includes distinct paths in polygamy and missioning that rarely intersected. Some Mexican converts did move to northern Mexico and lived among the polygamous colonies, but they encountered prejudice and mistreatment from their American brethren.12 Mexican Saints were not polygamous themselves, but they hungered to be around like-​minded faith community.13 This was especially the case during the Mexican Revolution (1910–​1920) when Mexican Saints found their ties to the US-​based Church put them at a disadvantage. Raids by Mexican revolutionaries in the north resulted in multiple waves of Mormons fleeing back into the United States.14 In 1912, the first exodus of polygamous families came back to the United States accompanied by Mexican Saints who feared persecution by their fellow countrymen. Some of the Mexican Saints who fled during the Mexican Revolution found themselves populating some of the first Spanish-​speaking LDS neighborhoods in the United States: El Paso in 1918, Mesa in 1918, and Salt Lake City in 1922. Indeed, by 1915 the mission president for Mexico was called “to go to Denver, the Western States Mission headquarters, and work with Mexican Americans living in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. Some proselyting had already occurred among the Mexican in Manassa, Colorado, so Pratt established his headquarters there.”15 Thus, changes at the geopolitical level altered how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​Day Saints ministered to Mexican and Latina/​o Saints. The Mexican Revolution forced the Church to look inward and focus their attention on Spanish-​ speaking communities within the United States. The Revolution moved attention away from Mexico and by 1925 LDS missioning was established in Argentina and eventually included Brazil (1928). Moreover, in 1926 the Mexican government barred all foreign-​born religious ministers. Those Mexican Saints that remained tried their best to maintain and grow the faith without direct support from Church headquarters in Utah. Some members left the Church, while others contemplated what it meant to operate independently from white LDS leadership. Before the Revolution, white missionaries, white mission presidents, and white representatives from Utah coordinated much of the operations in Mexico. With this new governmental decree, Mexican Saints were quite literally left on their own to maintain their community. By 1934, a collection of Mexican Saints wrote leadership in Utah to update them on the status of the Church in Mexico and inquire on how to move forward as a quasi-​independent structure. Possibly because their attention was elsewhere in South

Latina/o/x Mormons   157 America or because the state of Mexico forbade foreign-​born religious leadership, no one in Salt Lake City responded to this letter. Mexicans tried a second time to reach the ear of Mormon officials to no avail. According to Mormon historian Lamond F. Tullis (1997), “the North Americans, by ignoring their southern brothers, appeared to be saying that the Mexicans did not matter.”16 Understandably frustrated, Mexican Saints joined together in what became known as the Third Convention (1936) to draft a final letter that demanded Mexican representation in Mormon leadership and autonomy for Mexican Saints to make their own decision after years of operating on their own. Again Tullis explains, “. . . many of the Mexican Latter-​day Saints felt rudely chastised. Their understanding of the Mormon gospel led them to believe that they had both a right and an obligation to seek God’s will in matters of church leadership, and that is what they had done.”17 Instead of addressing the needs of their Mexican brethren, the only response from Utah officials came in the form of reprimands and denouncements of their attempts. Convencionistas, as they became known, split away from the mainline Church. It was only after they split away that Utah Church officials responded, and even then, it took a decade to suture back the wound left bare by years of disregard. Indeed, this delicate mending required the presence of the LDS president himself, George A. Smith. As president and prophet to the Church, Smith’s visit was significant. Prior to this, LDS presidents visited Europe and Canada but never had they traveled to Latin America. Upon his arrival, President Smith met with members who split away ten years earlier. This gesture moved Mexican Saints and reminded them of the importance of unity in their larger global Church family.18 Many returned to a Utah-​led system, while a small minority spun off into their own secluded polygamous communities.19 This moment in Spanish-​speaking Mormon history is critical to understanding the initial drive to bring about the restoration of the Mormon gospel among mestizo Lamanites but also provides an example of the difficulties that arose from this asymmetrical relationship. The next section addresses a parallel moment for Latina/​o Saints in the United States during the 1970s when Church leadership in Salt Lake City unilaterally decided to end Spanish services and force members to attend English-​only wards.

“Please Don’t Make Me Go to the English Ward” In one of the only books centered on US Latina/​o Mormons experiences, In His Own Language (1997), Jessie Embry collected the voices of Latina/​o Saints who detailed what it was like to be part of the Church in the United States and still feel marginalized by decisions that dismissed their ethnic and linguistic autonomy. Latina/​o Saints revealed feeling unappreciated, ignored, and dismissed when they were forced to attend English wards. Martha Zavela noticed right away a difference between social interactions: “They

158   Sujey Vega are just drier as opposed to Latins who are just warm and very affectionate and expressive.”20 Others related going “inactive” because there simply wasn’t the same sense of community and callings that were in place in Latin American and Spanish wards. One member begged, “Please don’t make me go to the English ward.”21 Importantly, Embry drew on archives and oral histories collected starting in 1984. This marked a period in Mormon history just after Spanish-​serving wards were suspended and members were told to worship in English-​only congregations. Much like the issues of representation plaguing Mexican Saints in the early twentieth century, this decision to dissolve existing Spanish wards was an autocratic directive without input from Latina/​o Saints themselves. Moreover, those who ordered this change did so without consideration for the detrimental impact it would have on Latina/​o Saints. Not only did English wards lack the hugs, kisses, and warmth of more intimate Spanish wards/​branches, but they still favored a kind of pioneering American culture that simply did not translate to Latina/​o Saints. As Francisco Guajardo stated, “I don’t see why all Relief Societies should make quilts and can. They don’t need to do that in a place where it’s hot and vegetables are plentiful all year around.”22 Rather than be usurped into one Utah white American ideal, Latina/​o Saints simply stopped attending and/​or no longer actively participated in ward activities. What were once thriving active Latina/​o Saints, became passive distant families in danger of leaving the Church all together. They craved a space where they could celebrate their identities as much as their faith. As Victor Mieta eloquently stated, “We don’t want to separate ourselves, but we don’t want to be mainstreamed either.”23 The response to Latina/​o resistance to assimilation depended on who was in power and how sociopolitical debates influenced particular decision makers in Utah. At times, regional and official Church responses seemed to be in line with larger political debates about immigration and English-​only dictates. Other times, local leadership made sure to stand up to unreasonable mandates that hindered, not grew, the restoration of the Gospel. The following addresses how Latina/​ o Saints spoke up and enacted a faith more responsive to their ethnic/​linguistic needs. Much like in Latin America, missioning began among Latinas/​os in the United States through white Mormons. I have conducted oral histories with Latinas/​os who missioned throughout the Southwest in the 1950s and 1960s; however, like the Church in general, the majority of missionaries were very rarely people of color. White missionaries provided sometimes the only positive interaction Latinas/​os had with the white population. When smartly dressed Mormon youth knocked on doors, Latinas/​os were pleasantly surprised with white missionaries who struggled but attempted to speak Spanish. Instead of critiquing large Latina/​o families as a strain on society, the Mormons celebrated their commitment and cohesiveness with their children. Moreover, they stated convincingly how the Catholic structure did not allow the Church to flourish in its people. In addition to marveling at the sincerity of white missionaries who tried to speak Spanish, the LDS Church provided Latinas/​os with the support (material and spiritual) to gain their own personal knowledge of the doctrine and opportunities for engaging their faith journey rather than passively receiving it from a priest.

Latina/o/x Mormons   159 While these approaches aided in conversion rates and reception of Mormon teachings in Latina/​o homes, it is important to recognize that the LDS benevolence did not come without problems. In 1978, F. Lamond Tullis wrote Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures in an effort to address the elephant in the Temple and confront the racial and cultural superiority in the Mormon Church (the same year the Church finally opened the priesthood to black men). Certainly, influenced by the civil rights era, Tullis tried to reengage what it meant to be a family united under Christ. Tullis utilized conversations he had with Chicano Mormons concerning the closing of Spanish wards and missions throughout the United Sates (1970–​1977). This moment in Mormon history revealed the disparities between English-​dominant and Spanish-​speaking members. Tullis related how some viewed missionaries: “He is embarrassingly friendly, and most irritating of all, he is perpetually impatient and possessed of an annoying sense of superiority.”24 Though Latinas/​os appreciated the friendliness, Tullis reveals how his own brethren often internalized their role as teachers and authority over the restored gospel. Mormons who overtly and subtly operated within a logic of superiority viewed learning English and the centering of US cultural practices as markers of achievement. As Tullis explained, “It reduced their effectiveness and sometimes turned them into crass ‘cultural imperialists.’ And that was offensive to the Latin Americans.”25 Additionally, the Church never addressed larger socioeconomic conditions, segregation, and discrimination faced by Latina/​o Saints. As Tullis suggested, “It is not surprising, therefore, that for a while in the 1960s the dropout rate in the Church was nearly as great as the baptismal rate.”26 In writing A Faith for All Cultures, Tullis attempted to mend the wound of generational pain felt by Mormons who felt marginalized or excluded in what was sold as an empowering uniting church. He spoke specifically of Mexican and Chicano Mormons who relayed to Tullis: “We love you as brothers. But how can we keep you from destroying what we hold dear—​our heritage, our ancestral customs, the human sentiments of our people that also have a collective memory in history, that also were born in conflict, nurtured in sacrifice, preserved in dignity?”27 By advocating for a kind of Mormonism that did not favor one language (English), one race (white), or one culture (North American), Lamond Tullis pleaded with white North American members to move beyond their “cultural imperialism” and advocated for a more plural loving embracing of difference. He lamented, “the conclusion of many English-​speaking members that middle-​class American culture, politics, economics, and language are the Lord’s ideal way.”28 As stated earlier, Tullis’s intervention was influenced by vocal Chicano Mormons who expressed disappointment with the LDS Church. Two men in particular played a critical role in bringing attention to the disparities faced by Latina/​o Saints: Dr. Orlando Rivera (1930–​2004) of the University of Utah and Dr. Ignacio Garcia who joined the faculty of Brigham Young University as the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professor of Western and Latina/​o History. Both men were community activists and Bishops of their Latina/​ o wards. Rivera was Bishop at the famous Lucero Ward (est. 1920) in Salt Lake City, and Garcia served as Bishop in Tucson before moving to Utah. Though the men never met,29 the two worked toward reconciling their faith with their ethnicity.

160   Sujey Vega In Utah, Rivera participated in various community organizations, doing the work for the community that the Church would not. As historian Jorge Iber noted, “in the opinion of Dr. Orlando Rivera, most Spanish-​speakers were disappointed that the state’s largest religious denomination did not take “more visible action to effect change.”30 In a meeting regarding the unilateral decision to close Spanish wards, Tullis recalled how Rivera explained the concept of cultural imperialism to his Mormon brethren: “Colonialism is a condition wherein the people have no power, where external control riles over their affairs, where their culture and life-​style and values are deprecated, and where they therefore experience what in the present day is called ‘institutionalized racism.’ ”31 Rivera did not hold back; instead, he challenged the institutionalized racism implicit in the Church’s closings of ethnic wards. Rivera pointed to an underlying superiority complex feeding into the way white members viewed Latinas/​ os as linguistically, culturally, and intellectually deficient. Importantly, Rivera’s critique came from a deep love for his faith and a power to demand that positive changes must be made to untangle the only true and living Church from the influences of white supremacy imbedded in the American psyche. Both Tullis and Rivera believed it was possible to bridge these gaps; in fact, it needed to be possible in order “to dwell together in unity” (Ps. 133:1). However, “there are barriers that inhibit such a bridging.”32 This dwelling together should not require an assimilationist approach to absorb ethnic Mormons into a particular Mormon Anglo identity, “mutual respect for one another . . . does not require us all to be alike.”33 In 1977, the Church finally reversed its decision to close Spanish wards. It was clear that forcing members into English-​only services was detrimental to maintaining active Latina/​o membership. Unfortunately, this drive toward assimilation did not dissipate. Nearly two decades later, in 1996 an LDS area president in California announced that “the 205 non-​English speaking wards in the state needed to be disbanded.”34 Leadership in Utah repudiated this move, but the damage was already done. Word spread quickly and concern flooded the pews of LDS Latina/​o wards throughout the United States. New converts and those who endured the closings in the 1970s all grew worried of what would happen to their barrios.35 Not surprisingly, this announcement came just as California faced a political attack against Latinas/​os.36 Even if Church Headquarters eventually halted this move in California, the tension and resentment by certain conservative members was exposed. For many LDS Latinas/​os, their suspicions of being treated as second-​class members were confirmed. In the early 1990s, Ignacio Garcia was completing his doctoral degree at the University of Arizona while serving as bishop for Tucson’s Spanish-​speaking ward. His experience in community organizing during the Chicano civil rights movement and his tour as a medic in Vietnam may have influenced Garcia’s vocal response toward the marginalized position of LDS Latinas/​os.37 Indeed, Garcia famously stated, “Ethnic wards are not minor-​league teams that prepare people to go to major leagues. These wards are for people who have a different culture, different style.”38 Much like Rivera before him, Garcia was proud of his linguistic and ethnic heritage. He disagreed with attempts to enforce an English-​only approach in LDS wards. Influenced by concerns in Mesa, Arizona,

Latina/o/x Mormons   161 where “splits in families” resulted from a practice where “all the Latina/​o youth went to the English-​speaking wards for auxiliaries,” Garcia and members of his ward decided to institute Spanish in all youth activities.39 This change strengthened the bonds between Spanish-​speaking parents and children. Additionally, it created such enthusiasm and activity in the Latina/​o ward that they had “the most successful scouting program in the region and a Young Men/​Young Women program that European American parents wanted their children to attend.”40 Garcia also created opportunities for recently arrived immigrants to showcase their dedication and efficiency in influential roles in his wards. Moreover, he refused to continue an asymmetrical relationship where LDS Latinas/​os served as entertainment for larger stake events.41 Working with stake leaders, Garcia worked on co-​constructed joint programs that shifted the role of Spanish speakers beyond food preparation or entertainment. This last point could relate back to Mesa, just over 100 miles north, where contact between Latina/​o Saints and English-​dominant wards was relegated to performances at “trunk shows” where Latina/​o youth danced for white Saints. Regrettably, the willingness to view Spanish wards on par with English wards ebbed and flowed depending on local leadership or national trends in immigration politics. For instance, after Garcia left Arizona for a career move, it only took a few years to make Latina/​o members attend their English-​dominant geographical wards. What remained of the Spanish ward was only to be used by newly arrived immigrants; anyone else who knew basic English was forced to attend English wards.42 At the surface this issue of disbanding and forcing Latinas/​os to use English may seem simply a battle for linguistic accommodations. The actions in Tucson could read as justified if the only difference is language; then once someone learned English, they could simply “move up to the majors,” as Garcia phrased it. The problem, of course, is that the push to disband Spanish congregations is not simply linguistic but certainly saturated with cultural, ethnic, and racial implications.

Into the Twenty-​First Century By 2010, once again prejudice and dismissals reappeared in the Latina/​o Mormon experience. In Arizona, fellow Mormon Russell Pearce made a name for himself with S.B. 1070. Nationally, Russell Pearce provoked tensions in Arizona and certainly beyond. LDS members who attended sacrament meetings together often stood on opposite sides of the political debate. In Mesa, the political vitriol was heavy in the air. Years after S.B 1070, LDS members still recalled the “anger” and “despair” caused by “ese Pearce y Arpaio.” Elder Ted, an older white LDS member who had worked with Spanish-​speaking members since his mission in Mexico some forty years earlier, lamented, “We lost a lot of leadership then. It was a huge blow to our community. People left, they fled in fear for their families.” A wound was opened within the LDS community that has yet to fully heal. From one day to the next, long-​time members and leaders in the Church packed

162   Sujey Vega their trucks and left Arizona. Wards whose membership once outgrew their worship spaces struggled to survive in 2014. No amount of help or the social network within the church could sustain the needs spurred on by politics. Charismatic Latina/​o leaders whose words and commitment to their faith shined through in their callings with the Church struggled to find work after S.B. 1070. People’s souls were full, but their pockets were empty. Without hope for a future in a divided Arizona, Latina/​o LDS members desperately contacted friends in other states and left their long-​time homes to begin anew in far-​off spaces. Caught between staunch conservative members like Pearce and their efforts to welcome Spanish-​speaking converts, the Church of Latter-​Day Saints finally released an official statement in June 2011, a full year after S.B. 1070 was passed. The statement utilized the Church’s own history of expulsion and persecution to draw parallels with undocumented families: The history of mass expulsion or mistreatment of individuals or families is cause for concern especially where race, culture, or religion are involved. This should give pause to any policy that contemplates targeting any one group, particularly if that group comes mostly from one heritage.

This Church statement, the Utah Compact that preceded it, and the countless efforts of Latinas/​os and non-​Latinas/​os members to promote a more compassionate approach toward immigration all provided an alternate narrative to Pearce. Indeed, due to the collaborative work of Latina/​o and white Mormon constituents, Russell Pearce was recalled and voted out of office on November 8, 2011. Unlike what occurred locally in Arizona, LDS Headquarters in Salt Lake City was more interested in celebrating the cultural contributions of its Latina/​o members. From 2004 until March 2018, the LDS Church has sponsored large-​scale productions called Luz de Las Naciones. According to elder M. Russell Ballard, these events were created to “get together . . . as brothers and sisters and friends and neighbors.” Thus, the model of the Church as a family remained ever present. I attended one celebration where a festive folkloric potpourri of Pan-​L atina/​o music showcased Christmas celebrations across Latin America. Though it did have an undercurrent of Mormonism and a short video that spoke to LDS doctrine, it was more about honoring the cultural and ethnic heritage of Latina/​o Saints. I spoke to performers and asked them why this was important, why they participated and gave up hours of their lives to volunteer for the performance: Performer 1:  Es muy bonito por que brindas tu talento, lo comparte uno con la gente, y especialmente como es algo muy tradicional lo siente uno mas cerca especialmente ahora que esta uno tan lejos de nuestra tierra. (It’s very nice because you offer up your talent, you share it with people, and especially because it is something very traditional, you feel it in closer [in your heart], especially now that one is so far away from our homeland.)

Latina/o/x Mormons   163 Performer 2:  Para mi es muy importante que mis hijos conozcan como todo esto . . . esta es una manera en una escala menor que ellos tienen para poder experimentar lo que nosotros vivimos cuando éramos chicos. (For me it is very important that our children know all of this . . . this is one way, in a much smaller scale, of course, that they will have exposure to what we lived as children.) Performer 3:  I think these events have many purposes. Not only the showcase of our talents, and our culture, and our roots, but also the opportunity to meet many people and create many friendships and relationships that otherwise we wouldn’t have a chance to.

These answers spoke to faith-​based lived experience of cultural citizenship, or what I called in my first book “ethnic belonging.”43 These Latina/​o Saints claimed their own way to belong and drew strength from their Church and ethnicity. As important as these events were to performers and spectators (a majority of whom were also Latina/​o), the Church announced in October 2018 that conversations were “underway to appropriately end, modify, or continue these productions.”44 According to the October 2018 statement, “The goal of every activity in the Church should be to increase faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and to share His gospel message throughout the world.”45 Because the Latina/​o celebrations were aimed at celebrating ethnicity and not so much gospel, one has to wonder if funding for the performances will continue, going forward. Indeed, in an updated statement it remained clear that only three of the seven major Mormon pageants would continue, and two of those would continue under local area leadership. The future of cultural celebrations has not been addressed, and as of publication of this chapter, it remains unclear.

Next Steps: DACA and Other Dreams The story of LDS Latinas/​os is marked by moments of consecration, conversion, and coming to voice. Latina/​o Saints navigate Mormon doctrine and Mormon culture through multiple reference points. Some find their conservative values supported, while others grow frustrated by the lack of adequate response to larger social justice issues like immigration, gender, and race politics. Some welcome the callings they receive to lead their wards as a way to make positive changes in ethnoreligious understanding; others prefer to follow and obey the dictates of those in power. Far from a monolith, Latina/​o Saints are a conglomerate of various national origins, class, political, and educational circumstances. Whether or not they are genetically connected to the Book of Mormon, the presence of Spanish-​speaking Saints from multiple backgrounds continues to grow. If the population projections are accurate, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​Day Saints must come to terms with a shift in minority–​majority relations. If the experiences with Arizona, California, and the Third Convention are any indication, these changes may not come so easily.

164   Sujey Vega In years of gathering narratives among LDS Saints, I have heard from many white LDS members who appreciate the culture and the commitment to family that Latinas/​ os exhibit, yet it is rare to hear about the intellect, leadership, and scriptural knowledge of their Spanish-​speaking brethren. To account for pending demographic changes, Church leadership must recognize the talent and religious acumen among a variety of Spanish-​speaking Saints. At present, outspoken bishops like Rivera and Garcia are few and far between. Instead, preference is given to those who follow directives and do not question a majority white elite Church leadership. As previously mentioned, Spanish-​ surname general authorities always tend to be from Latin American, not the United States, and are always professional, well-​educated men. Where does that leave the working-​class family, the immigrant family, the US Latina/​o family who struggles every day and still remains committed to their faith? Are Latina/​o LDS members without college educations unworthy of higher callings? And what of undocumented LDS? Are they to be structurally denied a place both in their Church and in their nation? Representation matters, but when the only voices represented in the Church’s hierarchy have no direct experience with the inequities Latinas/​os confront in the United States, then one must ask how privilege is protected and maintained among the leadership. This kind of closed system perpetuates one dominant, and potentially damaging, ideology. Structurally, the lack of US Latina/​o and working-​class experiences in the general authorities warrants much more attention. Moreover, this systemic imbalance can trickle down to the ward level. Depending on who is called to lead as stake president, Spanish wards are either given autonomy or closely managed by white brethren. In some cases, active Latina/​o Saints do not number enough to sustain the multiple callings in a given ward. They need white Spanish-​speaking Saints who might have done their mission in Latin America to assist in daily responsibilities. This relationship can be a symbiotic exchange between members of faith, but trouble arises when white members presume a sense of doctrinal knowledge or Mormon cultural superiority over Latina/​o Saints. Rather than learn from each other, this undertone of white authority can undermine potential leadership in LDS Latinas/​os and perpetuate a vision that favors Utah, European heritage, and English-​dominant approaches. Future research must center Latinas/​os and unearth how this faith reaches beyond the authority of Utah and the United States. I beseech Mormon scholars to look beyond handcarts, bonnets, and genealogical pedigrees that tie families back to white pioneers of the Church. Instead, look to present-​day members who are making history. Rather than retracing the footprints from the past, acknowledge the importance of youth and Mormon Latina/​o millennials who are active in their vocal response to inhumane national policies. For example, LDS Dreamers and their supporters are making history; their families are persecuted and dehumanized in much the same way that Joseph Smith was. Latina/​o LDS youth paid attention during their LDS training; they heard the calls against injustice and intolerance in the scriptures and stories of Mormon history. They are acting now, in much the same way that Mormons in the past resisted religious persecution. Unfortunately, instead of learning from Latina/​o millennials, holding them to the stature that their religious activism calls for, too many are pushed out of their

Latina/o/x Mormons   165 wards for being too vocal, too active, too innovative in their Mormon liberation theology. They have dreams of holding rights and not being criminalized by their country or their church. Some are missionaries, and some seek assistance from their bishops in Spanish wards. Still others fear that their immigration status might mark them among the brethren. Calls to “obey, honor, and sustain the laws of the land” get hurled at undocumented Saints as they struggle to stay true to the faith they hold in their hearts (Articles of Faith, 12). Critically, “laws of the land” were once used to harass and kill early Mormons.46 These “laws of the land” kept slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow thriving. These “laws of the land” were not always just or godly in their implementation. LDS Saints continue to have incredible political pull in making the “laws of the land,” but nothing will change if the membership and its leadership do not fully understand the detrimental impacts of these laws. Latina/​o Saints, undocumented Saints, and Dreamer Saints navigate faith and politics daily.47 They provide a lived experience to the doctrine and maneuver spiritual commitment with human-​made dictates in a deeply religious way. The LDS Church, its leadership, and white membership could learn so much from their Latina/​o brethren if they were willing to let go of a system that teaches hierarchies based on whiteness and nationalism.48 Rather than fear the demographic changes, the growth of Latina/​o Saints should be embraced for what they can teach members about faith, community, and family. Latina/​o Saints have and continue to make history in their faith community. Rather than see them as proverbial wayward relatives, it is time to listen to their complicated and enriching journey into Mormonism.

Notes 1. https://​www.lds.org/​ens​ign/​2000/​09/​news-​of-​the-​chu​rch/​histo​ric-​milest​one-​achie​ved-​ more-​non-​engl​ish-​speak​ing-​memb​ers-​now-​than-​engl​ish-​speak​ing?lang=​eng. 2. “Mormon” is no longer a term used by Church, but it is still used by scholars. 3. “White” here denotes the populations of white-​identified Saints of European descent. Because not all derive from English/​Anglo backgrounds, the word “white” will denote this population, going forward. Moreover, this use of “white” is not so much related to skin tone but relates to a history of race-​based socioeconomic positions of power that provided people of European descent with certain levels of privilege in the United States. 4. For a quick primer on this leadership structure: LDS General Authorities comprise a president/​prophet who is assisted by two additional men (First Presidency)—​all white males. That is followed by the Quorum of twelve apostles made up of twelve men—​all white men except one of Chinese/​Hawaiian ancestry and one born in Brazil. The next, and last, level of the general authorities is the Seventies—​seventy majority white men with an increasing representation of men of color. 5. All names are pseudonyms in this study. 6. LaMond F. Tullis. Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture. (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1987), 13. 7. The first LDS Temple built in Mexico was not dedicated until 1983.

166   Sujey Vega 8. F. Gomez, 2004. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​day Saints and the Lamanite Conventions: From Darkness to Light. (Mexico City: El Museo de Historia del Mormonismo en México A.C. 2004). 9. Tullis 1987, 14. 10. Tullis 1987. 11. Mitt Romney’s (presidential candidate) grandfather was one of those who fled to Mexico to maintain his polygamous marriages. 12. Barbara Jones Brown, TITLE Place and Publisher. 2015. 13. There are a few cases of Mexican Saints who formed their own polygamous communities; see E. Pulido “Solving Schism in Nepantla: The Third Convention Returns to the LDS Fold.” In J. Dormady and J.M. Tamez, eds. Just South of Zion: The Mormons in Mexico and Its Borderlands. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2015), 89–​110. 14. Jones Brown, TITLE, 2015. 15. Jesse L. Embry, Mormon Wards as Community. (Binghamton, New York: American Studies in Religion and the Social Order Global Publications, 2001), 16. 16. Embry, Mormon Wards as Community. 117. 17. Embry, 118. 18. Gomez, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​day Saints and the Lamanite Conventions. 19. Pulido, “Solving Schism in Nepantla: The Third Convention Returns to the LDS Fold.” 20. Embry, Mormon Wards as Community, 83. 21. Embry, 86. 22. Embry, Mormon Wards as Community, 82. 23. Embry, 94. 24. Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures, 17. 25. Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures, 94. 26. Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures, 103. 27. Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures, 105. 28. Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures, 104. 29. From personal conversation with Dr. Ignacio Rivera. 30. Jorge Iber. Hispanics in the Mormon Zion. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 108. 31. Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures, 120. 32. Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures, 121. 33. Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures, 125. 34. Peggy Fletcher Stack. “In Their Own Language: Should Ethnic Mormons Have Their Own Wards?” Sunstone. (Salt Lake City, UT: Sunstone Educational Foundation, Inc. March 1998), 70-​72. 35. Barrio is the Spanish word used for wards among LDS Latinas/​os. 36. Just two years earlier, California’s infamous Proposition 187 (1994) barred undocumented immigrants from using emergency services, public schools, and a number of other public benefits. 37. Ignacio M. García. Chicano While Mormon: Activism, War, and Keeping the Faith. (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017). 38. This Garcia quote has appeared in two news media outlets and at least two scholarly books on the subject. 39. Embry, Mormon Wards as Community, 47. 40. Embry, 47.

Latina/o/x Mormons   167 41. A stake in the LDS Church is an intermediate level within the hierarchy of the overall Church structure. The lowest level in the Church hierarchy is the ward or congregation. A stake is comprised of five or more wards or congregations. 42. Embry, 47. 43. Sujey Vega, Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest. (New York: NYU Press, 2015). 44. https:// ​ w ww.lds.org/ ​ c hu ​ r ch/ ​ n ews/ ​ c hu ​ r ch- ​ s tatem ​ e nt- ​ d isc ​ o ura ​ g es- ​ l arge- ​ p agea​ nts?lang=​eng. 45. https:// ​ w ww.lds.org/ ​ c hu ​ r ch/ ​ n ews/ ​ c hu ​ r ch- ​ s tatem ​ e nt- ​ d isc ​ o ura ​ g es- ​ l arge- ​ p agea​ nts?lang=​eng. 46. In 1838, the state of Missouri issued an execution order targeting Mormons. 47. A group of LDS Dreamers and supporters created the hashtag #TogetherWithoutBorders and coordinated events to advocate against family separations due to immigration deportations. 48. Though Church leaders issued a statement in 2018 condemning the separation of children from their parents at the US-​Mexico borders, little is done beyond a statement to persuade political support for a fair and comprehensive immigration reform. Ten years earlier, in 2008, the Church was very active in political fronts, directly opposing and mobilizing its members to vote for California’s Proposition 8 against same-​sex marriage.

Bibliography Embry, Jesse L, Mormon Wards as Community. Binghampton University: American Studies in Religion and the Social Order Global Publications, 2001. Fletcher Stack, Peggy. “In Their Own Language: Should Ethnic Mormons Have Their Own Wards?” Sunstone. (Salt Lake City, UT: Sunstone Educational Foundation, Inc. March 1998), 70–​72. Gomez, F., 2004. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​day Saints and the Lamanite Conventions: From Darkness to Light. Mexico City: El Museo de Historia del Mormonismo en México A.C. 2004. Iber, Jorge. Hispanics in the Mormon Zion. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000). Pulido, E., “Solving Schism in Nepantla: The Third Convention Returns to the LDS Fold.” In J. Dormady and J.M. Tamez, eds. Just South of Zion: The Mormons in Mexico and Its Borderlands. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Tullis, F. LaMond. Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1987. F. Lamond Tullis, Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1978. Vega, Sujey. Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest. (New York: NYU Press, 2015).

Pa rt I I

T É M AS /​T H E M E S

Chapter 9

L atinx C onve rsi ons to Isl a m Harold Morales

Latinx conversion to Islam dates back to the early twentieth century and has increased at the dawn of the twenty-​first century as part of an exodus from the Catholic Church in the United States. By drawing on quantitative research this article examines popular hypotheses attempting to explain why Latinxs leave Christianity to embrace Islam, including those regarding marriage, prison, and mass media. Additionally, this work draws on discursive analysis of reversion stories and ethnographic research to shed light on Latinx conversion to Islam as diverse, complex, and fluid processes.

Introduction The earliest documented references to Latinx conversion to Islam date to the early twentieth century. By the 1920s, Punjabi Muslim men from India arrived in California and often married Mexican women with whom they worked side by side as migrant laborers.1 The Ahmadiyya, Moorish Science Temple in America, Nation of Islam, and Five Percenter Nation also gained a small but growing number of Latinx adherents, many of whom later joined Sunni forms of Islam. In the early 1970s, puertorriqueños and other Latinxs in the New York metropolitan area began converting to Islam through outreach by immigrant Muslims, the Moorish Temple Society, and the preaching of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and others.2 In 1987, Yahya Figueroa, Rahim Ocasio, Ibrahim Gonzalez, and other Nuyoricans (New York-​born puertorriqueños) came together to found la Alianza Islámica.3 Based in East Harlem and then the Bronx, la Alianza sought to promote social programs that met the material and spiritual needs of their Latinx communities. They engaged in drug rehabilitation, anti–​gang violence, support for victims of domestic violence, AIDS awareness campaigns, and peace building programs with Latinx gangs such as the Latin

172   Harold Morales Kings. They also sponsored martial arts trainings for self-​defense, mentoring, education programs, and outreach to local prisons where many Latinxs accepted Islam. In New York, la Alianza founded the first mosque by and for Latinxs in the United States.4 In the 1980s Khadijah Rivera helped initiate support groups for Latinx women who converted to Islam in New York, Illinois, and Florida. It grew and by 1988 the group adopted the organizational title PIEDAD, an acronym for la Propagación Islámica para la Educación de Ala el Divino (Islamic propagation for education on and devotion to Allah the Divine).5 They sought to promote Islamic beliefs and practices through education and social services and to empower Latina converts. PIEDAD leaders taught women about the history of Islam, theology, ritual practices, and ethical living. The group also supported Project Downtown, through which they helped feed hungry folks in food deserts and resource-​deprived areas. Rivera passed away in 2009. Her work is continued by Nylka Vargas, who helped to organize the annual Hispanic Muslim Day in New Jersey. The yearly celebration commemorates the history of Islam in Spain and recognizes, supports, and encourages new Latinx Muslims.6 By the 1990s, a growing number of Latinx Muslim converts were meeting each other through bourgeoning Internet technologies, including chat rooms that generated cyber communities. As a result, Samantha Sánchez, Saraji Umm Zaid, and Juan Alvarado joined to develop the Latino American Dawah Organization (LADO) in 1997. Today it is one of the most important Latinx Muslim networks in the United States. Since its chat room beginnings, LADO has also connected with larger Muslim organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). It has participated in various conferences (e.g., the annual Latino Muslim conference and the annual ISNA convention), and helped write and generate a stream of articles for various print magazines (e.g., ISNA’s Islamic Horizons and The Message International). Despite their analog presence at these conferences and on printed materials, most of LADO’s activities are conducted online through their website LatinoDawah.org, where they collect and disseminate information on Islam in English and Spanish, maintain an archive of the digital newsletter The Latino Muslim Voice, and promote networking between Latinx Muslim and broader Muslim organizations across the United States.7 In Southern California, a group of Latinx converts to Islam began meeting at the Islamic Center of Southern California and in 1999 created the Los Angeles Latino Muslim Association (LALMA). Marta Galedary cofounded the organization, which meets at the Omar ibn Al-​Khattab masjid near USC. They hold weekly Sunday morning meetings where they learn Arabic; study the Qur’an, hadiths, and other scholarly texts; pray; and often go out for lunch or coffee after the formal meeting. They also sponsor lectures on the history of Islam in Spain for their members, for public libraries, and other venues and audiences. LALMA and other Latinx Muslim organizations since la Alianza Islámica have stressed the Islamic roots of Spanish, Latin American, and Latinx language and culture. In connection to their emphasis on the Islamic roots of Spain, many Latinx Muslims also promote the notion of a reversion back to an original Andalusian/​ Spanish/​Latin American/​Latinx Muslim identity. Toward these ends, LALMA has

Latinx Conversions to Islam    173 invited speakers from USC, UCLA, the Claremont Colleges, and UC Riverside to give lectures at their events. They also work in interreligious dialogue with the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese, the Los Angeles Police Department, and Muslim organizations such as the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, the Council on American-​ Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Verde Islam in Spain. They regularly host community-​ building events, including baby showers, weddings, picnics, Ramadan breaking of fast dinners, interreligious meetings, and other social gatherings for youth. In 2013, the group changed its name to the broader moniker: The Association of Latino Muslims from America (LALMA).8 In 2003, Mujahid Fletcher founded the IslamInSpanish group in Houston, Texas. The group’s mission is to produce and disseminate high-​quality audio and visual media for Latinxs to learn about Islam in the Spanish language. IslamInSpanish has reportedly produced over five hundred audiobook titles and two hundred video programs, including their IslamInSpanish television show, all of which showcase their Latinx Muslim heritage and reversion back to Islam. The group also holds large open house events for Latinxs who are not Muslims that include lessons in the history of Islam in Spain. Weekly classes are also held in Houston, Dallas, and New Jersey. In 2016, IslamInSpanish inaugurated a 5,000 square foot Latinx Islamic center, with a media production studio, museum on the history of Islamic Spain, and a Spanish-​speaking mosque with Andalusian aesthetic features. While there is a growing body of academic literature on diverse Latinx religions and on Islamic religiosity in the United States, surprisingly little attention has been given to these Latinx Muslim communities and their religious, social, moral, and political views. Nevertheless, a few works on the subject have been produced, including by Hisham Aidi, Patrick Bowen, Edward SpearIt Maldonado, Hjamil Martínez-​Vázquez, and Harold Morales. Questions regarding conversion are central to most of these works. Focusing primarily on a segment of Latinx Muslims that developed during the 1980s and 1990s in New York, Aidi argues that “Cultural pride, alienation, and the Barrio’s wretched social and economic situation, have at least partly influenced Latinx Muslims’ rejection of Christianity, which many regard as the faith of a guilty and uncaring establishment.”9 In his work on the connections between Latino and African American Muslims, Bowen argues that if conversion “involves new sign/​discourse negotiations—​especially the rejection of a dominant one, such as Christianity . . . and other dominant discourses, then a “religious conversion” ’ affects identities, meaning systems, ethics, and practices (Bowen, 2010a). Working primarily with populations subjected to the criminal justice system, SpearIt Maldonado argues that this criminal justice system has played a significant role in what he terms a “double conversion,” that is, from an initial “marginal, often racialist understanding of ‘Islam’ that transforms into a universal, colorblind [and mainstream Muslim] conception.”10 In his work on Latinx Muslim conversion stories, Martínez-​Vázquez draws on Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian’s theories of conversion in order to organize narrative elements into seven social-​psychological stages of religious change: (1) context, (2) crisis, (3) quest/​seeking, (4) encounter, (5) interaction, (6) commitment, and

174   Harold Morales (7) consequences. Martínez-​Vázquez argues that the seven-​stage model should not be understood as either “unilineal or as universal,” and that “reality is far more complex,” but that the model nevertheless helps us better understand Latinx conversion to Islam as a process rather than as a single event. This process, argues Martínez-​Vázquez, has produced a postcolonial identity in opposition to a hegemonic understanding of Latinxs as Christians. Lastly, Martínez-​Vázquez also references Khalil Al-​Puerto Rikani to posit several theories of why, and not just how, Latinxs convert to Islam. The main reasons Al-​Puerto cites as prompting such conversions are Puerto Rican/​African American Muslim interactions, Internet technologies, Latinxs living among immigrant Muslims, Latinxs in prisons, and marriage between Latinas and Muslims. More recently, research by Gastón Espinosa, Juan Galvan, and Harold Morales has produced important new findings on Latinx conversion to Islam. These findings regarding Latinx conversion to Islam and the mediation of these experiences comprise the content of what follows.

Demographic Findings “Religion in the United States,” we are told in a seminal PEW report on America’s religious landscape, “is often described as a vibrant marketplace where individuals pick and choose religions that meet their needs, and religious groups are compelled to compete for members.”11 Though migration to America has been a vital source of the nation’s diversity and the formation of a “vibrant religious marketplace,” conversion or religious switching has also played a significant role. Latinx Muslim discourse centered on conversion has thus emerged in a diverse religious landscape, one in which Christianity is increasingly losing adherents. Roughly 37 percent of all Americans abandon the religion they were raised in.12 Individuals are increasingly identifying with no religion and as spiritual but not religious.13 The Catholic Church in America has experienced the biggest loss of membership due to disassociation but has also gained just as many members, not through conversion but through immigration.14 A significant number of the immigrants that are filling in the gap left by the exodus from the Catholic Church hail from Latin America. This group, immigrants from Latin America, currently make up about one-​third of all Catholics in the United States.15 However, those who claim descent from Latin America are not only adding to the community’s membership; they are also converting out of the Catholic Church. Pew’s 2014 findings estimate that nearly one-​third (32 percent) of Latinxs leave the religion they were raised in and nearly 77 percent of these are former Catholics.16 The report finds Latinxs switch out of the religion they were raised in because they started questioning (8 percent), because they disagreed with the “worship” of saints (6 percent), because of the sex abuse scandal (3 percent), because they wanted to be closer to God (3 percent), because of family/​relatives (5 percent), and because of marriage/​spouse/​partner (2 percent). More broadly, the report also found that “just gradually drifting away” (55 percent), unbelief in the tradition’s teachings (52 percent),

Latinx Conversions to Islam    175 finding another community that helps more (31 percent), and a “deep personal crisis” (23 percent) played “an important role for why they are no longer affiliates with their former religion.”17 A previous report not only asked about why Latinxs leave the religion in which they were raised but also asked how they first came into contact with the new religion they embraced. Forty-​eight percent of Latinx converts reported having come into contact with their new religion through relatives, 20 percent through friends, 14 percent from members of the religion they converted to, and 2 percent through mass media such as radio or television.18 The US Muslim population is also significantly impacted by immigration and conversion patterns. At roughly 1.8 billion adherents across the globe in 2015, Islam is the second largest religion in the world.19 Although Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States, less than 1 percent of the total US population (roughly 3.3 million out of 322 million) identify as Muslims.20 According to a Pew report, nearly one-​quarter of Muslims in the United States are converts, and most identified as Christians prior to their embrace of Islam. More than half of the American-​born Muslim population identify racially as black, some of whom additionally describe themselves as ethnically Latinx. Latinxs represent 4 percent of all Muslims in America and 8 percent of African American Muslims. Although immigration has played an important role in the Muslim American landscape, there has also been a prominent domestic American Muslim presence in the United States and a growing convert population. Fifty-​eight percent of converts to Islam cite religious reasons such as “the truth or appeal of Islam’s teachings, the belief that Islam is superior to Christianity, or that the religion just ‘made sense’ to them” as prompting their decision to embrace Islam while another 18 percent cited relational factors such as marriage.21 Within this context, the Latinx Muslim population in the United States has been steadily growing over the past few decades. Given immigration trends, there is no reason to believe this growth will dissipate. A 2015 Pew study estimates there are 198,000 Latinx Muslims in the United States.22 However, given the low number of Spanish-​language mosques and certified Latinx Muslim religious scholars and leaders (ulema), it is more likely that the number of Latinx Muslims in the United States is much lower and closer to a HCAPL national survey and study that estimates there are 52,000 when updated to reflect census data from 2015. Demographic findings published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion article, “Latino Muslims in the United States: Reversion, Politics, and Islamidad” by Gastón Espinosa, Harold Morales, and Juan Galvan in 2017, provide much more details regarding Latinx Muslims than were previously available through quantitative studies that focused on either the general Muslim or Latinx population in the United States and which made only incidental findings specifically on Latinx Muslims. Most Latinx Muslims attend English-​speaking rather than Spanish-​speaking mosques and are fairly well-​integrated into the larger US Muslim community.23 Reflecting almost the same profile of the general US Latinx population, approximately 62 percent of Latinx Muslims were born in the United States and 38 percent were born in Latin America or

176   Harold Morales elsewhere.24 Further, 84 percent are US citizens, 4 percent are permanent residents, and 12 percent identify as undocumented or something else. The states with the highest concentrations of Latinx Muslim are in California (19 percent), Texas (15 percent), New York (12 percent), New Jersey (11 percent), Florida (7 percent), Illinois (5 percent), Georgia (4 percent), and Pennsylvania (3 percent). A smaller percentage of Latix Muslims also reside in Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and Virginia. The majority of Latinx Muslim trace their Latinx ancestry to either Mexico (31 percent) or Puerto Rico (22 percent). Another 12 percent trace their ancestry to more than one country (34 percent of whom identified one of these as Mexico and 27 percent as Puerto Rico), 12 percent to South American countries, and 9 percent to Central American countries. Latinx Muslims also trace their Latinx ancestry to the Dominican Republic (5 percent) and to Cuba (3 percent). With regard to race, 28 percent of Latinx Muslims identify themselves as white, 23 percent as brown, 6 percent as black, and 3 percent as American Indian or Alaska Native. Twelve percent identify themselves as biracial and 21 percent as “other” (49 percent of whom specified their racial identity as Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, Mestizo, or from a Latin American country). Regarding their racial identity, several Latinx Muslims also argue that “there is no such thing as race.” One individual echoed this sentiment, while also recognizing the following: “I don’t identify as white but recognize I benefit from white privilege.” An overwhelming number of Latinx Muslim are women (73 percent) and only 27 percent are men.25 More than half (51 percent) of Latinx Muslim are married, 29 percent are single, 15 percent are divorced, and 1 percent are widowed. Latinx Muslims tend to have fewer children than the larger US Latinx population, with 66 percent having two children or less. Only one in five (19 percent) had four or more children, though this could in part be shaped by the fact that the group is on the whole slightly younger than the US Latinx population. Eighty-​nine percent of Latinx Muslims are under 50 years of age (49 percent were 18–​34 years of age and 40 percent were 35–​49 years of age). Another 10 percent are 50–​64 years of age, and only 1 percent is 65 years old or older. Though individual Latinxs have been embracing Islam since the 1920s, the growth of conversion rates among Latinx populations in the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon. Over 74 percent of Latinx Muslims report having embraced Islam in the past fifteen years (1999–​2014). That such a high percentage of Latinx Muslims are recent converts is confirmed by the finding that an astounding 93 percent reported that both their father and their mother were not Muslims, indicating that they were not raised as Muslims. Only 4 percent of Latinx Muslims are not converts and were instead raised as Muslims. Over the past thirty years Andrew Greeley and other scholars have documented the declining share of Catholics in the Latinx religious marketplace. While there has been a tendency to focus on conversion to Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism and alternative Christian traditions like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-​Day Adventists, and Mormons, it is important to include Latinx converts to Islam in our understandings

Latinx Conversions to Islam    177 of the exodus out of the Catholic Church. The single largest share of Latinx Muslim converts comes from the Catholic Church. Although a relatively high percentage of Latinx Muslims converted from Catholicism (56 percent), a significant number also converted from Protestantism (13 percent), Atheism/​Agnosticism/​No Religion/​Secularism (9 percent), Other Christian traditions (6 percent), and Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, and Adventism (5 percent), and other religions (2 percent), among others. The high rates of conversion out of the Catholic Church are notable, but so are conversions out of Protestantism (13 percent) and Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism (9 percent). Prominent hypotheses regarding Latinx conversion to Islam attempt to answer the question of why they do so, as if there is a single and simple way to encapsulate the “why” of their decision. Other approaches focus on the way in which Latinx come into contact with Islam rather than or in addition to why they decide to embrace the religion. One of the most prominent hypotheses claims that Latinas marrying Muslim men is the main reason why Latinx convert to Islam. This hypothesis seems to be corroborated by the finding that an overwhelming majority of Latinx Muslims are women (73 percent). However, the marriage hypothesis is identified as the least influential factor in the decision to embrace Islam and is consistently accused of being reductive and offensive by Latinx Muslims themselves. The marriage hypothesis is stronger if understood not as the reason why Latinxs convert to Islam, but rather as the primary way in which Islam is introduced. Yet, even in this latter formulation, only 13 percent of Latinxs claim to have first learned about Islam through a spouse or future spouse, whereas 40 percent claim that contact was made primarily through a friend. Contrary to the theory that marriage is one of the primary reasons why Latinas are converting to Islam, 84 percent claim it was not very or not at all influential. A second hypothesis postulating that prison plays a significant role in Latinx conversion to Islam is, however, largely without basis. Though anecdotal or individual cases of Latinxs embracing Islam while in prison have indeed been documented, less than one-​fifth of a percent of Latinx Muslims say they learned about Islam while in prison and only 4 percent said that a prison ministry, prisoner re-​entry, or rehabilitation program played somewhat of a role in their decision to embrace Islam. It may be that Latinx Muslims currently in prison have had limited or no access to survey instruments. Nevertheless, if prison were playing a significant role in Latinx conversion to Islam, it is likely that there would be more individuals than the one-​fifth of a percent who are out of prison and have accessed survey instruments. It is instead likely that though prison may play a role for a few Latinx conversions to Islam, it plays little to no role for the vast majority of Latinx Muslims. Latinxs who convert to Islam thus first learn about the religion primarily through a friend, and not primarily from a spouse or future spouse or while in prison. The high conversion rates of Latinxs to Islam are therefore due in large part to a heavy emphasis on proselytism (for example, by friends). Roughly a third (33 percent) of Latinx Muslims report that they try to convert others to Islam on a regular basis. Eleven percent say they do so every day, 10 percent once a week or more, and another 12 percent once a

178   Harold Morales month or more. This focus on personal outreach helps explain Latinx Muslim growth over the past fifteen years. This finding is further supported by the fact that 40 percent of Latinx Muslims first heard about Islam from a friend, 13 percent from a spouse or future spouse, and 8 percent from a family member. Though mass media technologies have also been cited by some as a significant factor driving the growth of Latinx conversion to Islam, only 4 percent first heard about Islam from a radio or television show, and 3 percent from an Internet publication. Though collectively, media seems to play somewhat of a significant role in the conversion process (7 percent), Internet technologies do not seem to play as influential a role in the conversion process as has been previously hypothesized (see Table 9.1). While personal contacts were the primary method for reaching Latinxs, many Latinx Muslims cite several factors as having various levels of influence on their decision to embrace Islam. Ninety-​five percent of Latinx Muslims identify the Islamic belief in monotheism/​Tawhid as being a very or somewhat influential factor in their decision to embrace Islam and 94 percent identified the desire for a more direct personal experience

Table 9.1 Influential Factors in Latino Muslims’ Decision to Embrace Islam Influencing Factor

Very or Somewhat Influential

Not Very or Not at All Influential

The Islamic belief in monotheism/​Tawhid

95 percent

5 percent

The desire for a more direct personal experience of God

94 percent

6 percent

The practice of daily prayers

76 percent

24 percent

The Islamic belief in prophethood

75 percent

25 percent

The racial/​ethnic equality called for in Islam

74 percent

26 percent

The practice of charity/​zakat in Islam

71 percent

30 percent

The gender equality called for in Islam

69 percent

31 percent

Influencing Factor

Very or Somewhat Influential

Not Very or Not at All Influential

A deep personal crisis

53 percent

47 percent

A family member, friend, or acquaintance who shared their faith

53 percent

47 percent

An experienced, witnessed, or heard about miracle

33 percent

67 percent

Inspired by a particular religious leader

29 percent

71 percent

Marriage

16 percent

84 percent

Inspired by a prison ministry, prisoner re-​entry, or rehabilitation program

4 percent

96 percent

Inspired by an inner city ministry or outreach program

4 percent

96 percent

Source: Statistics taken from 2014 Latino Muslim Survey (N =​560).

Latinx Conversions to Islam    179 of God as being very or somewhat influential reasons for why they choose to embrace Islam. Other highly influential factors included the practice of daily prayers (76 percent), the Islamic belief in prophethood (75 percent), the racial/​ethnic equality called for in Islam (74 percent), and the practice of charity/​zakat in Islam (71 percent). It is common to take on a new Muslim name after conversion, and almost half (45 percent) of Latinx Muslims have done so even as 52 percent have not. Despite their heartfelt embrace of Islam and popular stereotypes about religious intolerance and exclusivity, many Latinx Muslims believe that non-​Muslim People of the Book (e.g., Christians and Jews) can also go to heaven without converting to Islam. This belief is part of a long-​standing pluralistic tradition of religious tolerance within some traditions of Islam, though not all Islamic traditions are equally affirming. It is also likely that the vast majority of their immediate family and friends are Catholic and Protestant, thus making the adoption of a more open and tolerant theology of the People of the Book desirable. These factors along with usually living in densely populated regions with high degrees of religious diversity and pluralism and democratic impulses toward religious tolerance in society as a whole and the democratic party in particular (a plurality of Latinx Muslims are Democrats) may indeed help explain why Latinx Muslims were relatively religiously tolerant of Christians and Jews. This helps to correct the perceptions and concerns of some commentators, who have worried that Latinx converts to Islam might be embracing more radical sectarian splinter groups, especially while in prison. These concerns where heightened after José Padilla and Antonio Martínez were arrested on terrorism charges.26 However, these are exceptional cases rather than the norm. The vast majority of Latinx Muslims (91 percent) self-​identify as Sunni Muslims. Only 6 percent of Latino Muslims surveyed self-​identify with the Shia tradition and 8 percent as both Sufi and Sunni. Less than 9 percent of all Latino Muslims self-​identified with Salafi and Wahhabi traditions, which tend to be much more prone to strict literalism and conservatism. However, it would be a mistake to assume that Latinx Muslims are highly progressive since only 6 percent of respondents reported self-​identifying with progressive modernist and reformist traditions. Even more telling than their particular sectarian affiliation, less than 0.5 percent of the respondents believed that radical organizations like al-​Qaeda are making any positive changes for Muslims (this is less than the general US Muslim population of which only 1 percent views al-​Qaeda very favorably). This underscores the fact that Padilla and Martínez were an anomaly among Latinx Muslims and are far from the Latinx Muslim mainstream. While most Muslims interpret the authoritative religious texts as advocating racial equality and despite the fact that many Latinx converts found this an attractive element of Islam, three-​fourths (77 percent) reported that Latinx Muslims face (48 percent) or sometimes face (29 percent) racially or ethnically discriminatory attitudes by Muslims who are not Latinx. Only 15 percent reported that they do not face or sometimes face discriminatory attitudes by non-​ Latinx Muslims. However, an even higher percentage reported that Latinx Muslims face (63 percent) or sometimes face (21 percent)

180   Harold Morales Table 9.2 Discrimination against Latino Muslims Do you believe that Latino Muslims face discrimination, if any, because they are . . . Yes No

Muslims in America

Muslims in Latino Communities

Latinos in Muslim Communities

49

63

48

7

9

15

Sometimes

41

21

29

Don’t know

3

8

8

Source: Statistics taken from 2014 LMS Survey (N =​560) of Latino Muslims.

discriminatory attitudes by Latinos who are not Muslim. About 15 percent of Latinx Muslims reported facing general religious discrimination in the United States because of their Latinx identity and another 18 percent reported that they faced it once a month or more. A relatively high 48 percent reported that they never, almost never, or rarely face religious discrimination because they are Muslim in the United States. Despite this fact, they are about evenly split between whether they believe that media representations of Latinx Muslims are generally more positive (32 percent) or more negative (30 percent) since 9/​11, with the rest saying it was about the same (15 percent) or didn’t know (23 percent). (See Table 9.2.) The discrimination that Latinx Muslims experience from non-​Latinx Muslims, non-​ Muslim Latinxs, and broader US populations have had a significant impact on how conversion is formulated within Latinx Muslim discourse. The most popular way of identifying the process of embracing Islam is as a “reversion” or a return rather than as a “conversion” or a changing to something completely new and foreign. Over 40 percent of Latinx Muslims describe their decision to embrace Islam as a “reversion,” whereas 34 percent as a “conversion” to Islam. The dominance of reversion over conversion in Latinx Muslim discourse is best understood through an examination of the reversion story narrative genre.

Reversion Discourse In addition to engaging the question of why individuals convert to Islam, it is important to critically examine the mediation of this process; that is, we must carefully take into account the strategic act of translating conversion experiences into reversion stories. Approaching reversion stories as discursive techniques for the construction of the self is in this manner especially helpful.27 Rather than just explanations of why Latinx individuals decide to embrace Islam or the conditions that make such a decision

Latinx Conversions to Islam    181 possible, reversions stories are also publicly shared identity narratives that creatively constitute subjects as members of a developing community. The production and dissemination of these reversion stories, short autobiographies about how an individual Latinx came to embrace Islam, has played a pivotal role in the development of Latinx Muslim identity. The stories frame the process as a “reversion” that is in opposition to the term or concept of “conversion.” They are framed as a return to something previous and familiar rather than as a turning to something new and foreign. Latinx Muslim authors understand that their stories can be exceptionally powerful and should be nurtured and shaped rather than abandoned or forgotten. Their stories build communities. They help forge new visions for navigating the challenges encountered in America cityscapes. Their stories are also a form of social capital. They prompt a sense of dignity. They produce a social commodity traded for material goods in the information economy. And they engender public conversations about so-​called minority groups in America. The narrative structure of these stories is partly rooted within an American tradition that places the individual and their free will at the center. The content, however, is filled with historical specificities that reveal a thick description of the growing and rich diversity in the United States which demographic reports only hint at. Reversion stories are infused with broad themes regarding alienation and how alienation should be engaged. They reframe the spiritual nature of Latinxs and pull a forgotten past into a present in order to help shape a new identity, a new way of being Latinx, Muslim, and American. “Reversion” talk is most prominent on Internet technologies and journalistic media. The now defunct Latina Muslimah organizational website, PiedadIslam.org, published a webpage titled “Muslim Reverts/​Our Stories,” which contained several reversion stories, including one by its founder, Khadijah Rivera. The page also contained links to three news articles that referenced several other reversion stories. The Los Angeles Latino Muslim Association’s website, LALMA.org, featured a sidebar on its home page titled “Latino Muslims Revert Stories,” with links to several reversion stories, including one written by Marta Galedary, cofounder and president of LALMA. The website HispanicMuslims.com was designed by Juan Galvan, president of Latino American Dawah Organization (LADO), to collect and publish reversion stories, including his own. In Latinx Muslim discourse, reversion is defined in contrast to conversion. The term “conversion” has multiple and contested meanings and connotations. It is rooted in Christian theology and many religions, including Islam, have no analogues to it. The closest term to conversion in Arabic comes from verb aslama, which literally means to submit and is the root from which the terms “Islam” (submission) and “Muslim” (one who submits) come from.28 Aslama is, however, better understood as a becoming rather than as converting.29 In a 2002 interview, historian of Islamic Spain and friend of la Alianza Islámica and PIEDAD Dr. T. B. Irving described his embrace of Islam through the language of “becoming” while critiquing the term conversion and change:

182   Harold Morales I became a Muslim (never changed, never was anything else, just as the Prophet says) in the 1930s at Toronto. Please don’t call me a convert because that implies change and what did I change from? I became a Muslim only in the sense that at a point in time I realized that was what I was.30

Dr. Irving rejected the term “conversion” on the grounds that it is foreign to Islamic language and Islamic formulations of human nature. One of the most widely circulated conversion narratives, Saul’s in the Christian New Testament book of Acts 9:1‒19, is often described as a drastic 180-​degree turn, a change toward the opposite direction that his life had previously followed. The dramatic transformation is from Saul, persecutor of Christians, to Paul, disciple of Christ; and perhaps more important, from sinner to saint. Conversion is here a kind of death (of an old sinful nature) and rebirth (to a new nature).31 Rather than formulate human nature as sinful and in need of radical transformation, human nature is instead understood as forgetful in Islam (Qur’an 20:115). Dr. Irving rejected the term “conversion” because he rejected the suggestion that humans have a sinful nature that can be transformed for a godlier one. Such a concept would be foreign to Islam. His nature, Dr. Irving believed, had not changed. He was born a Muslim, was raised as a Christian, then realized or remembered that his essence or ontology had always, from the start, been Muslim. It was a remembrance and return to the straight path rather than a conversion to a new one. In Latinx Muslim reversion stories, Islam is both an original ontology and a familiar historical past whose traces reverberate throughout present-​day Latinidad. “You are probably wondering what reversion means,” writes Galvan as an introduction to the “Reversion Stories” webpage on HispanicMuslims.com: Well, we Muslims believe people are born Muslims. Our parents and society are what make us choose other religions. We believe people are born in a state of fitrah. Fitrah is our natural tendency to believe in one God. Consequently, by embracing Islam, you return to your natural disposition.32

The ontological framework of the reversion stories is thus drawn from the Islamic theological concept of fitrah: the innate disposition to believe in the Oneness of God.33 A Hadith, a recorded saying of the Prophet Muhamad, states that “There is not a newborn child who is not born in the state of fitrah. His parents then make him a Jew, a Christian or a Magian, just as an animal is born intact. Do you observe any among them that are maimed (at birth).”34 Using a literal translation of the term “Muslim” as one who submits to God, many Latinx Muslims further conclude that all humans are born Muslim and only stray away from their fitrah nature through various cultural processes. A Latinx-​ therefore-​Christian paradigm, for example, is accused of causing Latinxs to stray away from their “original Muslim nature” and toward devotion to Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and other Catholic saints. For Marta Galedary, Juan Galvan, and other Latinxs who embrace Islam, reversion narratives frame the process as a remembering and re-​embracing of

Latinx Conversions to Islam    183 who they believe they have always been rather than as an abandoning of their Latinx identity. The discursive relevance of reversion logics rests in its ability to address accusations that Latinx and Muslim identities are incompatible or foreign to one another, accusations that Latinx Muslim report having to endure on a regular basis. Reversion stories have emerged at a time when Latinx and Muslim identities dominate public discourse and continue to be represented through essentialized and problematic formulations. Latinxs who consume racialized mediations of Muslims as Arab often accuse Latinx Muslims of rejecting their Latinx ethnicity. Muslims who consume essentialized mediations of Latinxs as beer drinking, pork eating, and licentious have conversely accused Latinxs of being incapable of being good Muslims. Perhaps the convert/​revert can never shed the suspicion of not being a real Muslim and a real Latinx at the same time. And perhaps this suspicion is tied up with questions regarding Latinx and Muslim natures, a perceived incompatibility between the two and a perceived inability to change nature. If it is granted that race-​religion is a type of nature that cannot be changed and that Latinxs who embrace Islam are attempting to change their Latino-​therefore-​Christian nature, then Latinx Muslims are susceptible to accusations of being inauthentic.35 Although such accusations are rooted in problematic and morally dubious logics that echo those that were imposed on conversos during the Spanish Inquisition and to nonwhite Americans when biological formulations of race dominated our identity politics, they are accusations that Latinx Muslims nevertheless experience and narrate. In response to this accusation, one Latinx Muslim reported: “They ask why I want to change my culture. I tell them I’m changing religion, not culture. I still eat tortillas.”36 Although this response relies on a categorical separation between religion and culture rather than on the logics of reversion, it nevertheless narrates the Latinx Muslim experience of being critiqued as an inauthentic Latinx, an inauthentic Muslim, or both. The logics of reversion maintain that Latinx Muslims can be both authentic Latinxs and authentic Muslims at the same time based on a universal human ontology or nature. Compatibility between the two identities is rendered possible because Latinxs who embrace Islam are formulated as remembering and re-​embracing or celebrating their original ontology, rather than as converting or changing to a different race-​religion. Despite its unique and responsive characteristics, there are several concerning aspects to the logics of reversion. Many Latinx Muslims use the term “reversion” only when addressing public audiences, while using the term “conversion” in their everyday language. Others are unware of the term, choose not to use it, or find it problematic. The latter of these worry that suggesting that all humans are born Muslim may inspire greater hostility toward Muslims. They also point out that tradition characterizes a Muslim through specific elaborations of how one is required to express their submission to God (e.g., publicly proclaiming that there is no god but God and Muhamad is the final messenger of God). Additionally, it is troubling that the logics of reversion fail to directly criticize the general practice of essentializing identities. In its ontological formulation, the logics of reversion actively participate in promoting the existence of an immutable human nature

184   Harold Morales or a core and unchangeable essence, and also condemn deviation from this essence as unnatural and immoral. Its historical and cultural formulation is less problematic in that it relies on contextually contingent events rather than on a priori and contested propositional definitions of humanity. If, however, this form of reversion claims that Islamic Spain is a more appropriate origin narrative for Latinx identity than Catholic Spain, then it is also guilty of essentialization. Why not instead identify Visigoth or Aztec religio-​ culture as more appropriate origin narratives for Latinx identity and for remembering, celebrating, and practicing in contemporary life? If Catholic Spain is rejected on the grounds that it was a foreign culture imposed on their New World ancestors by force, then why not make the same claim regarding the conquest of Iberia by Muslim forces? The problem with identifying the origin of Latinx identity with Catholic Spain, Muslim Spain, Visigoth Spain, precolonial Aztecs, Taínos, or some other group is that that it flattens a much more complex story that can and should be told about Latinx identity. Rather than deny any historical influence, we should instead celebrate the roots and routs of Latinidad as complex, diverse, and fluid, in order to also celebrate contemporary Latinx identity as complex, diverse, and fluid (i.e., nonessentialized). To their credit, Latinx Muslim reversion stories help, on the one hand, to debunk Latino-​therefore-​ Christian and Muslim-​therefore-​Arab essentializations. On the other hand, if reversion as an ontological return promotes Latinx and Muslim identities as compatible with one another only by formulating Latinx identity as essentially Islamic, then similarly problematic reductions are being reinscribed by Latinx Muslims themselves. Latinx Muslim stories could make a much clearer contribution to pluralism, to the celebration of diversity as a democratic strength, by instead promoting Latinx and Muslim identities as compatible through the shared characteristics of being complex, diverse, and fluid.

Conclusion In comparison to the overall Latinx and Muslim population in the United States, the Latinx Muslim population is small in number (there are arguably about 45,000 across the nation). Nevertheless, the group has garnered a significant amount of attention in public discourse and will continue to play an important role in how we understand and engage Latinx religions, Islam, and religion more broadly in the United States. Public discourse on Latinx Muslims has generally focused on the role that conversion has played in the group’s rapid growth. The story of this growth is connected to the story of the ongoing exodus from the Catholic Church but also from other religious traditions in the United States. Latinx conversion to Islam demonstrates that not everyone who abandons the religious tradition they were raised within do so in order to embrace an atheistic, agnostic, or spiritual but not religious worldview. Some do so to embrace an alternative but “traditional” religion such as Islam. Several prominent hypotheses regarding Latinx conversion to Islam, such as the marriage or prison hypotheses, are invoked to help explain why Latinxs abandon Christianity for Islam. These hypotheses

Latinx Conversions to Islam    185 are inaccurate, sometimes offensive, and conceptually flawed. In as much as conversion is approached as something that can be explained by a causal story, such stories will necessarily be incomplete and reductive. These reductive processes bring one aspect of the experience to the foreground while covering up so much more of the complex and diverse experiences involved in conversion processes. One approach to avoiding this reduction is to approach conversion decisions as hinging on multiple influences, including appealing factors and forms of contact (e.g., contact through particular friends or through mass media). Though such an approach is better situated for addressing the diversity of experiences involved in a conversion, it fails to address the complexity of the process. For example, a focus on multiple influences conveyed by individuals does not take into account the complex ways that very act of communicating such influences is shaped by historically specific linguistic and/​or narrative forms. The complexity is better engaged when conversion itself is engaged not as a causal explanation of why, but as a historically specific form of identity building. The contexts that Latinx Muslims build their identity narratives within often include repeated accusations of inauthenticity. Reversion stories, both ontological and historical, can be read as a response to such accusations. The shared experiences of being accused of inauthenticity and of being alienated for their inauthenticity, and shared responses to such accusations and alienation through the deployment of reversion stories appear to be pillars in the formation of a communal Latinx Muslim identity. However, in responding to this shared experience of being accused and of being alienated through the logics of reversion, Latinx Muslim discourse itself reinscribes reductive and problematic practices similar to those that they seek to combat. Celebrations of the Islamic and Arab roots of Latinx identity can help us to better understand the diversity, complexity, and fluidity of our formations of the self. However, such celebrations must be complementary to the ongoing work of de-​erasing other diversities that exist within the identity group rather than engaging in essentialist discourse that posits all Latinxs as Muslim. By examining how marginalized communities such as Latinx Muslims reinscribe reductive practices, and how these practices are shaped in large measure by broader historical contexts, we can begin to lay the groundwork for more nuanced engagements with Latinx conversion processes.

Notes I want to thank Gastón Espinosa, Juan Galvan, the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, and Oxford University Press for their permission to reuse materials from previous works for the present essay, including Gastón Espinosa, Juan Galvan, and Harold Morales, “Latino Muslims in the United States: Reversion, Politics, and Islamidad,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion 8, no. 1 (2017), 1-​48; and Harold Morales, “Reversion Stories: The Form, Content, and Dissemination of a Logic of Return,” in Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 92–​102.

186   Harold Morales 1. Karen Isaksen Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992), 67; Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri, A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 190–​191. 2. Patrick D. Bowen, “Early US Latina/​o African-​American Muslim Connections: Paths to Conversion,” MUWO: The Muslim World 100, no. 4 (2010): 390–​413. 3. Hisham Aidi, “Latino Muslims Are Part of US Religious Landscape,” Al Jazeera, February 3, 2016. 4. Hisham Aidi, “Olé to Allah: New York’s Latino Muslims,” Africana, November 11, 1999. 5. Yasmin Essa, “Interview with LADO /​Piedad,” MBMUslima, March/​April, 2010. 6. Harold Morales, Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 43. 7. Harold Morales, “Latino Muslim by Design: A Study of Race, Religion and the Internet in American Minority Discourse,” PhD diss., University of California Riverside, 2012. 8. Morales, Latino and Muslim in America, 64–​73, 191. 9. Aidi, “Olé to Allah.” 10. Edward SpearIt Maldonado, “Raza Islámica: Prisons, Hip Hop & Converting Converts,” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal 22, no. 1 (2012). 11. Pew Research Center, “US Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation,” 22. 12. By 2015 there was an increase by 6 percentage points from the 2007 findings. Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” 33. 13. According to Pew findings, 16 percent of the nation’s population identified as having no religious affiliation in 2007, which then climbed to 23 percent in 2015. Pew Research Center, 113. 14. According to the 2015 Pew report, “nearly 13% of all Americans are former Catholics. . . . No other religious group analyzed in the survey has experienced anything close to this ratio of losses to gains via religious switching.” Pew Research Center, 35. 15. Twenty-​nine percent of all Catholics in the United States identify as Latino or Hispanic in 2007 and 34 percent did so in the 2015 Pew findings. Pew Research Center, 52. 16. Pew Research Center, “The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States,” 37. 17. Pew Research Center, “The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States,” 41. 18. The remaining 10 percent report “self-​discovery/​other/​don’t know.” Pew Research Center, “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream.” 19. Pew Research Center, “The Changing Global Religious Landscape,” 8. 20. Besheer Mohamed, “A New Estimate of the U.S. Muslim Population,” PEW Research Center, January 6, 2016. 21. Pew Research Center, “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,” 17, 22–​23. 22. The little demographic information available on Latino Muslims is mostly contradictory. A 2007 report by ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America, estimated that there are 40,000 Hispanic Muslims in the United States (Latino Muslims Growing in Number in the US, ISNA.net, http://​www.isna.net/​artic​les/​News /​Latino-​Muslims-​Growing-​in-​ Number-​in-​the-​US.aspx), whereas the American Muslim Council reported an estimated 200,000 in 2006 (Pilar Conci, “Latinos Converting to Islam,” The Dallas Morning News,http://​relig​ionb​log.dal​lasn​ews.com/​archi​ves/​2008/​03/​lati​nos-​con​vert​ing-​to-​islam. html). Perhaps one of the best estimates comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts–​funded Hispanic Churches in American Public Life national survey (n =​2,060), which put the

Latinx Conversions to Islam    187 number of Latino Muslims at approximately 52,000 when the percentages were imputed to raw numbers and updated per the 2014 US Census data released in 2015. (Gastón Espinosa, Changements démographiques et religieux chez les hispaniques des Etats-​Unis, Social Compass: International Review of Sociology of Religion 51, no. 3 (2004): 309–​327). A 2011 study conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that Latino Muslims accounted for an estimated 6 percent out of the Muslims living in the United States. See http://​www. peo​ple-​press.org/​files/​2011/​08/​mus​lim-​ameri​can-​rep​ort.pdf. In 2015, the Pew Research Center estimated that there were about 3.3 million Muslims in the United States. See http://​ www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2016/​01/​06/​a-​new-​estim​ate-​of-​the-​u-​s-​mus​lim-​pop​ulat​ ion/​. That puts the Latino Muslim population at 198,000, which is much too high. Given the low number of Latino Muslim imams, lay leaders and centers, and Spanish-​language mosques, it is likely that there are far fewer Latino Muslims in the United States than the PEW estimates. 23. Morales, “Latino Muslim by Design.” 24. An overwhelming majority of the participants (95 percent) took the survey in English and only 5 percent took it in Spanish. However, given that 62 percent of the participants indicated that they were born in the United States and 38 percent were born in Latin America or somewhere else, only 72–​77 percent of the LMS participants should have been able to use English when compared to national averages. The roughly 20 percentage point difference may reflect a distinct characteristic of the Latino Muslim population from broader Latino populations or a shortcoming of the survey instrument (possibly related to its being fielded exclusively online through listservs and organizational websites). Further research is needed to conclusively determine the percentage of English users among the Latino Muslim population. 25. Unlike other Latino religious groups whose population is made up of roughly 51–​53 percent women, the Latino Muslim movement is disproportionately female. Though this finding is corroborated by anecdotal evidence and the existing literature, several questions are raised by the finding. First, to what extent can the high rate of women among Latino Muslims be attributed to marriage? Our findings indicate that though marriage is a significant factor, it only accounts for about 13 percent of the 73 percent of all participants who are women. Though this would account for over half of the 20–​22 percentage point difference between the female population of Latino Muslims and other Latino religious groups, 7–​9 percent of the difference is left unaccounted for. Further research is therefore required to fully account for the discrepancy between the female Latino Muslim population and that of other Latino religious groups. 26. Abby Goodnough, “Jose Padilla Convicted on All Counts in Terror Trial,” New York Times, August 16, 2007; Dina Temple-​Raston, “Officials Worry about Some Latino Converts to Islam,” National Public Radio, December 9, 2010. 27. I derive the term “technology of the self ” from Foucault, who states: “As a context, we must understand that there are four major types of these ‘technologies,’ each a matrix of practical reason: (1) technologies of production, which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or signification; (3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; (4) technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a

188   Harold Morales certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality . . . I am more and more interested in the interaction between oneself and others and in the technologies of individual domination, the history of how an individual acts upon himself, in the technology of self.” This shift in Foucault’s focus from technologies of power to technologies of self is what Ivan Strenski hopes will also represent a move away from the theorizing of religious selves in terms of domination. Strenski proposes that we think of religious doings in terms of work instead: “Work is about the realization of our plans; contest and competition are secondary aspects of work at best.” See Ivan Strenski, “Religion, Power, and Final Foucault,” The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 66 no.2 (1998), 353. Strenski thus concludes that religion should not be studied simply as discursive structures used for the domination of people, but rather, religion should be studied as a way in which people try to work “things” out, i.e., to “attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (354). Although it is clear that some discursive formations of Latino Muslim identities are accomplished through the use of discursive power and domination (e.g., journalistic mediations of the group examined in ­chapter 4 of this book), I approach reversions stories not strictly as the product of technologies of power but also and mainly as the result of our technologies of the self. See Foucault et al., Technologies of the Self; Strenski, “Religion, Power, and Final Foucault.” 28. Nehemia Levtzion, Conversión to Islam (Teaneck, NJ: Holmes & Meier, 1979), 24–​29. 29. Christopher Lamb and M. Darrol Bryant, eds., Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1999), 151. 30. Sheila Musaji, “Interview with Prof. T. B. Irving,” The American Muslim, 2002, http://​ theame​rica​nmus​lim.org/​tam.php/​featu​res/​artic​les/​profile_​professor_​thom​as_​b​alla​ntin​ e_​tb​_​irv​ing. 31. See John 3:1–​15; Romans 8:9; 2 Corinthians 3:18. 32. Juan Galvan, “Reversion Stories,” http://​hisp​anic​musl​ims.com/​stor​ies/​. 33. Yasien Mohamed, “The Interpretations of Fitrah,” Islamic Studies 34, no. 2 (1995): 129–​151. 34. In “The Interpretations of Fitrah,” Yasien Mohamed references this Hadith and offers an analysis of three interpretations of fitrah: “the dual, the neutral and the positive.” The dual interpretation maintains the human nature has both good and evil innate tendencies; “the neutral view represents both good and evil as external agents of guidance and [that human nature] is predisposed to neither”; the positive interpretation of fitrah maintains that human nature is “essentially good and evil [is] exclusively an external agent of misguidance. Mohamed, “The Interpretations of Fitrah,” 129–​130. Although the dual interpretation of fitrah represents a problem for reversion as a return to an original ontological state of submission to the will of God, this is not the view held by the Latino Muslims who in interviews expressed a positive view of human nature instead while blaming culture for sin an evil. 35. For a critical analysis of “authenticity” in religious discourse, see David Chidester, Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 36. H. G. Reza, “Embracing Islam, Praying for Acceptance,” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2005.

Latinx Conversions to Islam    189

Bibliography Aidi, Hisham. “Latino Muslims Are Part of US Religious Landscape.” Al Jazeera, February 3, 2016. Aidi, Hisham. “Let Us Be Moors: Islam, Race, and ‘Connected Histories.’” In Black Routes to Islam. New York: Springer, 2009. Aidi, Hisham. “Olé to Allah: New York’s Latino Muslims.” Africana, November 11, 1999. Aidi, Hisham. “Verily, There Is Only One Hip‐Hop Umma:” Islam, Cultural Protest and Urban Marginality.” Socialism and Democracy 18, no. 2 (2004): 107–​126. Albanese, Catherine. America: Religions and Religion. Boston: Wadsworth, 2012. Bowen, Patrick D. “Early US Latina/​o African-​American Muslim Connections: Paths to Conversion.” MUWO: The Muslim World 100, no. 4 (2010): 390–​413. Bowen, Patrick D. “The Latino American Da’wah Organization and the ‘Latina/​o Muslim’ Identity in the United States.” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion 1, no. 11 (2010): 1–​23. Bowen, Patrick D. “US Latina/​o Muslims Since 1920: From ‘Moors’ to ‘Latino Muslims.’” Journal of Religious History 37, no. 2 (2013): 165–​184. Chidester, David. Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Curtis, Edward E. Encyclopedia of Muslim-​American History. New York: Infobase, 2010. Davis, Vincent, and Chris Quinn. “Student-​Led Rally against President’s Immigration Order Draws Hundreds.” San Antonio Express-​News, January 29, 2017. Espinosa, Gaston. “Changements demographiques et religieux chez les hispaniques des Etats-​ Unis.” Social Compass 51, no. 3 (2004): 303–​320. Espinosa, Gaston. Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Espinosa, Gaston. “Methodological Reflections on Social Science Research on Latino Religions.” In Rethinking Latino (a) Religion and Identity, edited by M. A. De LaTorre and G. Espinosa, 13–​45. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2006. Espinosa, Gaston. Religion, Race, and Barack Obama’s New Democratic Pluralism. New York: Routledge, 2013. Esposito, John L. “Islam in the World and in America.” In World Religions in America, 243–​ 258. 1994. Essa, Yasmin. “Interview with LADO /​Piedad.” MBMUslima, March/​April, 2010. Estrin, James. “Adding Islam to a Latino Identity.” New York Times Blog, January 8, 2011. Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America, 1776–​2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Foucault, Michel, Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Galvan, Juan. “Reversion Stories.” http://​hisp​anic​musl​ims.com/​stor​ies/​. Ghanea Bassiri, Kambiz. A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Goodnough, Abby. “Jose Padilla Convicted on All Counts in Terror Trial.” New York Times, August 16, 2007. Greeley, Andrew M. “Defection among Hispanics.” America-​New York 177 (1997): 12–​13. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, and Jane I. Smith. Muslim Minorities in the West: Visible and Invisible. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002.

190   Harold Morales Kaleem, Jaweed. “At the Nation’s Only Latino Mosque, Trump’s Immigration Policies Have Changed Everything.” Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2017. Lamb, Christopher, and M. Darrol Bryant, eds. Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 1999. Latimer, Brian. “A Young Latino Arab American Throws His Hat in Congressional Ring.” NBC News, April 20, 2017. Le Miere, Jason. “Muslims for Trump: President-​Elect Got Nearly Three Times Amount of Support at Mitt Romney.” International Business Times, February 9, 2017. Leonard, Karen Isaksen. Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992. Levtzion, Nehemia. Conversión to Islam. Teaneck, NJ: Holmes & Meier, 1979. Maldonado, Edward SpearIt. “God Behind Bars: Race, Religion, & Revenge.” PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006. Maldonado, Edward SpearIt. “Raza Islámica: Prisons, Hip Hop & Converting Converts.” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal 22, no. 1 (2012). Martínez-​Vázquez, Hjamil A. Latina/​o y Musulman: The Construction of Latina/​o Identity Among Latina/​o Muslims in the United States. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010. Mohamed, Besheer. “A New Estimate of the U.S. Muslim Population,” PEW Research Center, January 6, 2016. Mohamed, Yasien. “The Interpretations of Fitrah.” Islamic Studies 34, no. 2 (1995): 129–​151. Morales, Harold. “Latina and Latino Muslim Religious Cultures.” In Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expression, edited by Gary Laderman and Luis D. León, 977–​1001. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-​CLIO, 2014. Morales, Harold. “Latino Muslim by Design: A Study of Race, Religion and the Internet in American Minority Discourse.” PhD diss., University of California Riverside, 2012. Morales, Harold. Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Moreno, Karina. “A Politics of Solidarity.” Jacobin, May 11, 2017. Musaji, Sheila. “Interview with Prof. T. B. Irving.” The American Muslim, 2002. http://​theame​ rica​nmus​lim.org/​tam.php/​featu​res/​artic​les/​profile_​professor_​thom​as_​b​alla​ntin​e_​tb​_​ irv​ing. Narbona, Maria del Mar Logroño, Paulo G Pinto, and John Tofik Karam. Crescent Over Another Horizon: Islam in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino USA. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Natiral, Negar, and Sergio Puig. “Muslim-​Mexican scapegoats in Trump’s America: Voice.” USA Today, February 1, 2017. Pew Research Center. “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream.” Pew Research Center, 2007. Rambo, Lewis R. Understanding Religious Conversion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Rambo, Lewis R., and Charles E. Farhadian. The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Reza, H. G. “Embracing Islam, Praying for Acceptance.” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2005. Smith, Jane I. Islam in America. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Strenski, Ivan. “Religion, Power, and Final Foucault.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66, No. 2 (Summer, 1998): 345–​367.

Latinx Conversions to Islam    191 Taylor, Paul, Ana Gonzalez-​Barrera, Jeffrey S. Passel, and Mark Hugo Lopez. “An Awakened Giant: The Hispanic Electorate Is Likely to Double by 2030.” Pew Research Center, 2012. Temple-​Raston, Dina. “Officials Worry about Some Latino Converts to Islam.” National Public Radio, December 9, 2010. Wakin, Daniel. “Ranks of Latinos Turning to Islam Are Increasing.” New York Times, January 2, 2002.

Chapter 10

P opul ar Reli g i on a mong L atino s /​as Place-​Based Expressions for Understanding Latino/​a Popular Catholicism1 Alberto López Pulido

Chicano Park as a Framework for Latino/​a Popular Catholicism Envision a hurriedly paced procession of students filing out of their Chicano studies course at San Diego City College. Only minutes earlier, fellow student Mario Solis had burst into the classroom of Professor Gil Robledo in order to publicly proclaim that a construction crew along with their equipment were presently underneath the newly erected San Diego–​Coronado Bridge about to lay down blacktop for a parking lot for the newly proposed Highway Patrol station in their historic neighborhood and Chicano barrio known as Logan Heights. Led by student leaders Rico Bueno, Josephine Talamantez, and David Rico, these student activists quickly mobilized around a “red alert” call to action that brought together numerous other students, women, men, families, and young and elderly activists and that by the end of this historic day on April 22, 1970, were two to three hundred people strong who had successfully evicted the construction crew and had occupied the land. The community had created a human chain around the bulldozers and successfully stopped the construction workers from continuing their work. As Chicano muralist Victor Ochoa recalls: “They actually took over those bulldozers to flatten out the ground and they started planting nopales, magueys and flowers along with a Chicano flag being raised on a telephone pole.”2 This impressive gathering under the bridge coalesced into a land takeover and served as the catalyst behind the creation of the Chicano Park Steering Committee who negotiated with city and state officials demanding that this

Popular Religion among Latinos/as    193 piece of land be donated to the community. By the end of the twelfth day, the City of San Diego conceded and agreed to acquire the land from the State of California for the establishment of a park for the people that would become known as Chicano Park. Many years later, Chicano Park is still running strong, about to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in April 2020, and is now a designated national landmark with the largest collection of outdoor murals anywhere.3 The land takeover under the bridge in Logan Heights represents an act of reclamation for generations of Chicanas and Chicanos seeking to hold on to their history in the face of powerful political and economic forces wishing to disrupt and erase their history and community of memory. In the early twentieth century, Logan Heights began to take shape as a distinct Chicano barrio related to nearby job opportunities as laborers, cannery workers, and longshoremen took up residence in this self-​reliant neighborhood. Truth be told, it was the only open community in a city dictated by private racial covenants and redlining practices prohibiting nonwhites to reside in other parts of San Diego. Unfortunately, by the end of the 1960s, the stability of the neighborhood would be placed in jeopardy as this strictly residential community would be rezoned to mixed use, permitting heavy industry to encroach on residential living. By the late twentieth century, direct attacks on neighborhood stability would continue as Logan Heights became the target of community erasure through governmental practices of eminent domain implemented under the guise of progress. First in the early 1960s, the community was divided by the construction of an eight-​lane freeway known as Interstate 5 that tore the community of Logan Heights in half and as a consequence displaced thousands of the community’s lifelong residents. In less than ten years, additional construction would begin on the San Diego–​Coronado Bay Bridge. This massive structural undertaking would be completed and opened up to vehicle traffic in February 1967. Seventy-​five percent of the community population would be eliminated as the population dropped from 20,000 to 5,000 by 1979.4 For the sake of building a welcoming and thriving community, the Chicano community fought hard for many years to hold on to what they still had, and steadily strove to reclaim what was slowly being erased and eliminated. This collective act of resistance culminates with the Chicano Park takeover. As both a scholar and community activist working in Chicano Park for several years, I put forth the idea that Chicano Park epitomizes an active, physical space that holds the stories, histories, memories, and practices that are defined as sacred because they embody the material geographical space that orients people and produces a community of memory. The collective identity and history of a people are organized within the physical space they inhabit.5 A recent document produced by the Chicano Park Steering Committee says it best in acknowledging and honoring all who have walked the park’s sacred land or tierra sagrada in order to transform, create, and affirm the existence and presence of the park and what it means to the community. This explains why since its occupation and creation; Chicano Park is known as “My Land” or “¡La Tierra Mia!” and is best understood as a “land-​based storybook, a codex, a teaching, a history all etched in its earth. It tells a sacred story and history of preservation, perseverance, self-​determination, healing, and liberation.”6

194   Alberto López Pulido This chapter begins with the creation story of Chicano Park because it exemplifies a unique and more genuine framework for comprehending Latina and Latino popular Catholicism. To elaborate, Latina and Latino popular Catholicism represents a place-​ based and material sacred expression played out in the vernacular world and authored and interpreted by the people who inhabit it. From this perspective, place is imbued with sacred meaning, mystery, and energy, and it plays a major role in how human beings orient themselves in space, time, daily life, and their imagination. Sacred places indicate a locus where human beings experience the presence of supernatural, divine, ancestral, demonic, or numinous powers and instruct us on how Latina and Latino popular Catholicism should be understood and analyzed.7 Furthermore, we argue that a place-​based perspective reveals a more complex, personal, and nuanced understanding of Latina and Latino popular Catholic expression where the sacred is understood to operate as a manifestation of resistance in direct response to dominant forces of power by evoking practices and traditions that serve to preserve Latina and Latino culture. In other words, Latina and Latino popular Catholicism represent auto-​manifestations of self-​determination and resistance through the claiming and reclaiming of space in order to challenge dominant systems of oppression that actively work to silence and erase such sacred expressions that emerge from the margins.8 This place-​based and community-​ focused framework challenges prevailing perspectives for understanding Latina and Latino popular Catholicism from a ritual-​based perspective. Ritual-​based expressions focus on religious customs and practices associated with a particular ethnic group like Latinas and Latinos. Such customs and practices are evaluated and arranged by social forces like religious and academic institutions that are situated outside of the community. These institutions and their representatives assume the interpretative power to pass value judgments on such customs and practices and to evaluate their merit in relation to the larger dominant society. Their conclusions become part of the official narrative for understanding the importance of the sacred customs and practices under study.9

The Establishment of Latina and Latino Popular Catholicism The intellectual and academic gaze of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism reveals a ritual-​based methodology that documents and seeks to interpret a range of practices and expressions rooted in ethnic culture. The literature is dominated by superficial empirical accounts of customs and practices that are considered an extension of the Latina and Latino cultural life.10 The earliest study to document this perspective appears in 1944 by Walter R. Goldschmidt, who published a regional study on social class, race, and denominationalism in rural California communities. In the study, Mexican American Catholics are described as having “little altars” in their homes and it concludes that Mexican American Catholics like the “trimmings” better than the “essentials” of their

Popular Religion among Latinos/as    195 Roman Catholic faith. Such macro and external assessments for understanding religious practices and expressions link personal attributes to Mexican American Roman Catholic belief systems. The religious practices identified and classified as Mexican American by such scholars are defined as deficient and inferior and equate such practices to substandard spiritual beliefs and devotions.11 Aside from this early research on Mexican American Catholics, the most influential scholarship to define Latina and Latino popular Catholicism from a ritual-​based perspective is the work of Patrick McNamara within the 1970 landmark study The Mexican American People. It represents the first major research project to incorporate a comprehensive study of Latina and Latino religions. In his analysis of the role of the Catholic Church as a universal institution in the lives of Mexican Americans, McNamara concludes that this ethnic community is uninstructed in the faith and deficient in their adherence to the general norms of church practices. Their lack of instruction and religious deficiency according to McNamara is due to the lack of resources available to the Catholic Church in the southwest United States.12 This perspective adopts what López Pulido has described as an “isolationist thesis” that concentrates on the lack of resources and the weakly structured church that developed for Mexican Americans after the US occupation of the Southwest. Mexican American Catholic traditions are defined through macro and external categories. Such a perspective ignores the creative sovereignty and self-​affirming expressions and practices of Mexican American Catholicism, addressed later in this chapter, and as a result, categorizes Mexican American Catholic beliefs and practices as infantile that have yet to mature due to the lack of institutional infrastructure and support. It establishes a structural and faith-​defined binary between superior versus inferior religious practices where Mexican American Catholicism is assessed in relation to external institutional standards and therefore categorized as inferior. Such a ritual-​based analysis is framed from the perspective of the powerful elite as it characterizes Latina and Latino popular Catholicism as a “shadow” in relation to established religion. In the words of Díaz Stevens, Latina and Latino popular Catholicism is understood as “less pure and sophisticated” because it has developed “outside of direct clerical control.”13 This binary established by McNamara nearly fifty years ago would deeply influence our understanding of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism throughout the end of the twentieth century as reflected in the scholarly literature.14

Latino Popular Catholicism as Place-​Based Religious Expression A place-​based analysis of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism recognizes and affirms the significance of a community-​generated and self-​defined expression of the sacred. The daily sacred expressions, practices, and devotions reflected in the people represent cultural resources and are recognized as significant and valuable based on their own

196   Alberto López Pulido merit.15 In many ways, place represents the collective quest of a community to affirm a space in which to dwell meaningfully that they imagine and create.16 Place-​based spirituality determines the way in which an individual or community defines and interprets its sacred experiences grounded in social and cultural life.17 Therefore, place is the lens through which form, objects, and actions embody religious meaning over time with an emphasis placed on action. Hence, a place-​based analysis appreciates the intimacy of the sacred in the lives of people and how it serves as a powerful source for responding to external forces that would seek to minimize or erase the significance of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism as an expression of resistance. Emphasis is placed on these contested “spatial struggles” over systems of meaning and orientation with an eye toward incorporating new perspectives on gender, race, and ethnicity when seeking to explain the significance of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism.18 Popular religion is simultaneously about manifestations of resistance and affirmation of Latina and Latino sacred traditions and practices.19 A place-​based analysis is best captured in the words of Karen Mary Davalos, who affirms a methodology for understanding Latina and Latino religions as “an interdisciplinary exploration of how people live with and against forms of domination.”20 It is a perspective that rejects exoticism and the “romantic rendering of a colorful and fantastic religious practice” contrived by “detached social scientists.”21 Instead, popular religion is recognized as a faith expression of orientation, strength, and comfort in response to being marginalized in both integral religious and secular places. From this perspective, the situated context of sacred expression becomes critically important and must take into account the socioeconomic and political circumstances of a people for understanding how one does religion and how it is defined within specific community spaces in relation to the larger social world.22 As implied earlier, the best scholarly research to exemplify a place-​based analysis of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism is the work of Karen Mary Davalos, which documents the engagement and procession of the Via Crucis or Way of the Cross in the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen that began in 1977. Her scholarship captures a community-​defined testament of affirmation for Latina and Latino Catholics and how procession (form), body, public altars, sacred imagery (objects), prayer, song, and creative imagination link the political with the sacred (action) and reinscribe factories, discotheques, liquor stores, and taco stands into a sacralized space—​defined and created by the community faithful. It represents a public enactment of faith. Suddenly, the routine disjunctures and daily suffering and struggles experienced by community members are transformed through the Via Crucis and La Calle Dieciocho or Eighteenth Street as the neighborhood effectively connects Christ’s suffering to local social conditions, events, and people. Personal and collective struggles with such things as poverty, underemployment, racial harassment, domestic violence, and anti-​immigrant sentiments are addressed and reflected upon. Such unique sacred expressions are reminiscent of determined farmworkers led by the Virgen de Guadalupe, who transformed highways and dirt roads into sacralized landscapes and sites of penance where peregrino farmworkers sacrificed their bodies through the sacred act of pilgrimage in exchange for equitable wages and decent working conditions that marked pivotal moments in the farmworkers

Popular Religion among Latinos/as    197 struggle for justice in California.23 Or consider the faithful from the west side of San Antonio who have been gathering since 1913 to partake in the sacred performance of Los Pastores in honor of El Niño Dios, where backyards and driveways are sacralized and adorned with aesthetically pleasing altars imagined and created by Mexican American women participants across generations.24 As highlighted in Davalos’s research, the cultural and spiritual identity of Latina and Latino Catholicism is best understood from within the actual space of Latina and Latino daily life: They live within, react against, and transform the physical realities of their existence. They bring to consciousness a critique of their own condition, including patriarchy, racial privilege, and material domination, and thereby demonstrate that public space is not only physically determined but also culturally constructed.25

A place-​based analysis rejects an external ritual-​based perspective that relegates the Via Crucis into a “doom and gloom Latino Catholicism” in which participants are obsessed with a “morbid fascination with Christ’s suffering.” Instead, we must acknowledge such actions as that of a people who have many first-​hand experiences with struggle and resistance that are symbolized in their intimate engagement with sacred practices like the Via Crucis in order to teach poignant life lessons.26 With both Los Pastores and the Via Crucis, we discover the integral role of women in the reinscribing and sacralizing of space through their active participation. From the very beginning, Latinas have played an integral part in the teaching and framing of the religious and cultural lessons of “nuestra cultura” for children and the larger community. Through their involvement with religious altar making, Latinas play an integral role in the sacralization of space at the sites of the eighth and ninth stations of the Via Crucis. It goes without saying that throughout history, the creation of home altars by women interfaces intimate knowledge with the sacred and captures emotions, family relationships, and spirituality over time. As Medina and Conde-​Frazier underscore, altars are important because they represent sites of resistance that reclaim and reinterpret a community space in response to a patriarchal religious space such as the Catholic Church.27 This is why it is not surprising that the women of Pilsen who partook in the Via Crucis preferred claiming a sacred space outside of the local parish church in the form of public altars that spoke to the community’s needs and challenges.28 The integral role of La Mujer spans the history of Latina and Latino religions. From their foundational role as Carmelitas, Veronicas, Auxiliarias, and Paduanas in the early Catholic history of New Mexico as documented in the work of Padilla, to a more contemporary understanding of Mexican American women in Arizona as prophetic vessels for the faithful as revealed in the work of Nabhan-​Warren, the legacy of Latinas as curanderas (healers) and rezadoras (prayer leaders) has allowed for a place-​based expression of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism to flourish.29 All of this speaks to a Mexican Catholic imaginary thoroughly documented in the recent work of María Del Socorro Castañeda-​Liles, who captures everyday life and practical wisdom of Latinas across generations.30

198   Alberto López Pulido

Expressions of Latina and Latino Popular Catholicism as Resistance Additional examples of creative sovereign and self-​affirming expressions that are recognized within the sacred world of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism can be found in the legacy and historical memory of Los Hermanos Penitentes, Los Hermanos Cheos, and Católicos Por La Raza. All three represent organizations and sites of community formation, self-​determination, and resistance against institutional Catholicism that sought to control and define the spiritual location of Latina and Latino spiritual expression. Beginning with the Penitentes, we discover a vital civil and ecclesiastical organization that has guided communities in prayer, worship, and catechism over several centuries. Officially known as La Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesús, the Penitente brotherhood has directly influenced and molded the lived religious expressions and worship that are deeply rooted in New Mexican Hispano and Hispana cultural and community experiences that characterize the essential elements of Latina and Latino sacred expressions in the contemporary world. Unfortunately, this guidance and orientation provided by the brotherhood would be decentered after the US occupation of the Southwest and the arrival of the American Catholic Church on July 19, 1850. The new leadership for the newly established territories by the American Catholic Church targeted all sacred expressions that could not be controlled, redefined, and institutionalized. From flagellant practices to linking the brotherhood to the Society of the Third Order of St. Francis, the sacrality of the Penitente brotherhood was called into question and eventually delegitimized by the powers that be. The centering practices of caridad (charity), oración (prayer), and el buen ejemplo (the good example) that have guided countless of the faithful and a testament to Hispano Christianity would be targeted and erased by institutional authority.31 Los Hermanos Cheos of Puerto Rico emerge when José de Los Santos Morales and José Rodriguez Medina would create what became known as “el pacto de Cheo” in 1903 where they committed themselves to continue their missionary work of preaching to the people. Officially known as La Congregación San Juan Evangelista, Los Hermanos Cheo embodied a community-​focused spirituality that was born in the rural mountainous practices and beliefs of Puerto Rican Roman Catholics. Their vision as a people of faith was all about recruiting “an army of peasants to rise in arms to defend our faith and our devotion to the virgin.”32 These actions were in direct response to the US occupation of Puerto Rico at the end of the nineteenth century. It represents an act of resistance toward La Invasión Norteamericana and the propagating of their Protestant faith. In addition, US Roman Catholic chaplains accompanied the military invasion that systematically decentered and sought to erase Puerto Rican spirituality by imposing a faith tradition defined by an American Church that mirrored the North American military government. Identical to the institutional church’s vision in New Mexico some fifty years earlier, the newly established American Catholic Church in Puerto Rico placed nationalism

Popular Religion among Latinos/as    199 before religion, meaning they were American first before they were Roman Catholic. The multiple spiritual abilities to consagrar (consecrate or make holy), perdonar (forgive), predicar (preach), and partake in the practice of comulgo espiritual (spiritual communion) that typified the Cheo leadership would be condemn and marginalized.33 At the height of the Chicano movement, a grassroots collective by the name of Católicos Por La Raza (Católicos) emerged in response to a Roman Catholic hierarchy that was insensitive to the plight of Mexican American Catholics in the Los Angeles Diocese. On December 24, 1969, this group of Chicana and Chicano activists would be denied access to St. Basil’s Cathedral during a Christmas midnight Mass officiated by Cardinal James Francis McIntyre. On this day, Católicos had organized an alternative religious service to take place by the side of St. Basil’s with Father Blase Bonpane officiating in Spanish and during which bits of flour tortilla were distributed as communion wafers. This organized “People’s Mass” symbolized the demands from the Chicano community to the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Diocese that they recognize Chicano leadership in the Church’s decision-​making process and greater access to Church resources. In addition, they pressured the Church hierarchy to publicly and unequivocally support Chicano causes such as the United Farmworker’s grape boycott as many bishops found themselves siding with wealthy growers who influenced Church policies through their sizable donations. At the end of the alternative midnight Mass, the Chicana and Chicano faithful attempted to enter the Mass at St. Basil’s only to be confronted by violence and incarceration by law enforcement as authorities declared that Católicos represented an “unlawful assembly.” The sacred site and annual ritual of the Christmas midnight Mass would be transformed into a site of violence as five people were arrested and charged with conspiracy to start a riot and where thirty people were injured, with ten requiring hospitalization.34 A reinscribing of Roman Catholicism by Chicana and Chicano Roman Catholic activists is noteworthy. Led by Chicano law students Ricard Cruz and Miguel Garcia, Católicos were deeply aligned with a Chicano Theology for the Poor. Influenced by the revolutionary changes brought forth from Vatican II Council in the Roman Catholic Church, Católicos were demanding that the Catholic Church practice what it preached and align itself economically and spiritually with the Chicano movement. They concluded that in order for the Catholic Church to be Christian it needed to renounce its wealth. It is critically important to note that this Chicano Theology for the Poor would converge with the voices of social justice coming out of Latin America in the form of liberation theology. Latin American and Caribbean clergy such as Camilo Torres and Antulio Parrilla became powerful symbols of resistance for Chicano Catholics during this period. The battle over the control of the American Roman Catholic vision and story includes control over sacred space. The fact that members of Católicos were not permitted to enter the Cathedral during a midnight Mass speaks to the desire by the church to control critical spaces. By challenging those who controlled these spaces, Católicos would partake in resistance tactics and as a result would pay with their bodies. As with all of the other placed-​based expressions of Latina and Latino religions discussed in this chapter, Latinas continued to play a critical and important role in all

200   Alberto López Pulido three.35 Their actions permitted community-​based sacred expressions and practices to endure despite institutional challenges. As a result, such expressions would be redefined as popular religious expressions that epitomize acts of resistance against the powers that be.

New Vistas for Latina and Latino Popular Catholicism and Religion This chapter began with a reclamation and reinscribing of a community park into a sacred space in an attempt to reimagine Latina and Latino popular Catholicism. This perspective is reinforced by the argument that the daily sacred expressions of Latina and Latino practices and devotions represent cultural resources that flourish within a physical place. It is within this spirit that I conclude this chapter by inviting scholars of Latina and Latino religions to recognize new vistas of Latina and Latino popular religion from a place-​based perspective. The practice of lowriding in the Chicana and Chicano community is an excellent place to begin a place-​based investigation of popular religion. For the past eight years, I have worked intimately with the lowrider community of San Diego, California. The roots of lowriding begin at the end of World War II when the act of car customizing was the craze among car enthusiasts to transform stock automobiles that were coming off the assembly line and make them distinctively their own through creative and unique customization. For the dominant Anglo culture, car customization meant customizing and building racing cars with big tires that conveyed a message of “fast and mean.” However, for working-​class Chicano communities, the practice of car customization took on a more elegant and stylized aesthetic with car customization emphasizing clean lines and small tires with vehicles that were low to the ground. These cars came to be known as lowriders and were modified in a way to convey sentiments of “low and slow.” Upon closer examination, the practices and expressions tied to lowriding are all about place. They represent metal canvasses for car customizers who convey cultural, symbolic, and spiritual messages through their artistic creations. Yet in lowriding, the automobile as place represents something unique because as moving mediums, lowriders transcend both space and time. Hence, as a practice, lowriding is all about cruising where people “take to the streets” in their mobile piece of art that encapsulates a spirit of freedom without boundaries or restrictions.36 It symbolizes a practice of affirmation for an ethnic specific group and a direct response to law enforcement and city officials who have marked their practice as deviant due to the “repetitive” nature of lowrider car cruising. Anti-​cruising ordinances exist in all major cities with large Chicano populations. Their objective is to squelch customs and practices that affirm and center ethnic pride.37

Popular Religion among Latinos/as    201 Over the years, cruising has evolved into an affirming practice for community identity that has become sacralized through the ritual of the blessing of lowrider vehicles. As a practice that first began among Mexican migrants who sought la bendición del Padre (the blessing of the priest) for safe travels and orientation, lowriders have borrowed the practice of blessing their ranflas or lowrider vehicles. The sacralization of lowriding was instituted in San Diego, California, in the 1970s when George Rodriguez from Korner Car Club organized an annual blessing of the cars with the support of Father Richard Brown from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in the community of Logan Heights. In many ways, it speaks to a Chicana and Chicano Catholic imaginary mentioned earlier in this chapter as it draws from sacred knowledge that assists communities in the centering and orienting of their everyday lives. Since this moment, the practice of cruising has become a sacred act and a way to orient and affirm Chicana and Chicano cultural expressions. This explains why evidence of the sacralization of lowriding can be found in Chicana and Chicano literature and poetry. Consider the writer Andrea J. Serrano who offers us a prayer or litany to “Nuestra Señora La Reina” as she writes about participating in cruising “La Calle Central,” more commonly known as Central Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She writes, I “cruised the hell out of West Central Avenue . . . because it’s what young Brown kids did on Saturday nights.” La Calle Central represented “the cruising capital of my world—​my heart.”38 She continues: Central was my rite of passage and in a world where nothing is sacred anymore the cruise was as sacred as the moon that hung like a communion host on the tongue of the night sky watching over me worrying about me the way my mom did.39

Car blessings have become a very popular practice in the lowriding community as a sign of respect for the community and fellow car club members.40 In fact, the act of praying before setting out for a cruise is a very common practice among Christian lowriders who express their faith and belief through their cars. In addition to lowriding, the literature reveals the sacralization of Chicana and Chicano life has been explored in areas such as theater, art, and literary writings. These topics are worthy of additional research in order to discover new vistas of Latina and Latino popular religious expressions related to issues of resistance and affirmation.41 The more we take the time to reflect about a sacralized space, the more we discover new things about it. Let us return to where we began: at Chicano Park in the community of Logan Heights. Upon deeper reflection, we uncover that the convergence of the land takeover at Chicano Park with the Chicano movement, as part of a more profound sacred space and movement, actualized a consciousness to introduce and support an

202   Alberto López Pulido indigenous ritual cycle of dance from central Mexico better known as Danza Azteca among the Chicana and Chicano community in San Diego. In the words of Mario E. Aguilar, the arrival of La Danza Azteca in the United States gave Chicanas and Chicanos “a new paradigm of identity, space and spirituality.”42 Or even closer examination of the Logan Heights neighborhood reveals additional sacred expressions and spaces for affirmation and resistance. Once again, we discover beautiful home altars created by women that embodied both their humility and religious authority in their quest for more intimate expressions of prayer and reverence. Located throughout homes in the Logan Heights community, the majority of these altars were dedicated to La Virgen De Guadalupe that mirrored the name of the Roman Catholic parish in the neighborhood with its own powerful history of resistance led by Latina leaders against church authorities.43 And further and more profound reflection of this place reveals the presence and spiritual powers of Sarita Macias best known as Hermana Sarita to her neighbors. Hermana Sarita ran the Templo Espiritualista that evoked pre-​Columbian medicinal traditions, sixteenth-​century Spanish Catholicism, and messianic and shamanistic ritual beliefs and practices. It is here where women served as guias or spiritual guides, healers and counselors who possessed powerful visionary experiences to provide guidance, orientation, and healing to the Logan Heights community.44 All of these discoveries are invitations to new and different ways of knowing in our attempt to sacralize place in the everyday lives of Latinas and Latinos. It speaks to the intellectual affirmation that place-​based interpretations of resistance through the sacred are layered expressions within the everyday lives of people that can only be revealed through a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary vision for understanding the sacred. It will require a methodology of recovery where stories, practices, and material culture promise new vistas and unique ways of knowing for understanding Latina and Latino popular Catholicism.

Notes 1. Much gratitude to my community activist partners who assisted tremendously in the writing of this chapter: Josephine Talamantez, Annie Ross, Tommie Camarillo, Nonie Somano, Mario E. Aguilar, and my friend and colleague Louis Komjathy. 2. Marco Anguiano, “The Battle of Chicano Park: A Brief History of the Takeover,” http://​ chic​ano-​park.com. 3. Anguiano, “The Battle of Chicano Park.”. 4. City of San Diego, Barrio Logan Historical Resources Survey (City of San Diego, 2001), 53. 5. Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). 6. Chicano Park Steering Committee, “Chicano Park Es La Tierra Mia: El Parque Chicano Es la Tierra Mia,” http://​chic​ano-​park.com. 7. David Carrasco, “Cuando Dios y Usted Quiere: Latina/​o Studies Between Religious Powers and Social Thought,” in A Companion to Latina/​o Studies, ed. Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 60–​76; Virgilio Elizondo, “Popular

Popular Religion among Latinos/as    203 Religion as the Core of Cultural Identity Based on the Mexican American Experience,” in An Enduring Flame: Studies on Latino Popular Religiosity, ed. Antonio M. Stevens-​Arroyo and Ana Maria Díaz-​Stevens (New York: Bildner Center, 1994), 113–​132. 8. This chapter draws inspiration from the historical legacy and struggle of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which is recognized as a contested space beginning with the spiritually guided convictions of Denmark Vesey and his struggle against slavery that cost him his life and the burning down of his place of worship. Vesey sought to control and define his sacred place, and, in turn, this was met by violence by the dominant white ruling class. Recently, Mother Emmanuel remained the target of racism with the unspeakable acts of hate by the white supremacist Dylann Roof against this sacred place of worship and the Emanuel nine (see Herb Frazier, Bernard Edward Powers, and Marjory Wentworth, We Are Charleston [Nashville, TN: W Publishing, 2016]). Similarly, it comes as no surprise that the history and recognition of Chicano Park as a sacred place has become the target of hate groups in San Diego led by Roger Ogden and Patriots Fire: https://​patr​iot-​fire.net. 9. The foundation for challenging ritual-​based paradigms for understanding Latina and Latino Popular Catholicism draws its insights from the literal and intellectual movement that would become ethnic studies in higher education. Originating as the unprecedented Third World Strike at San Francisco State University in 1968, emphasis is placed on “relevant education” where the pedagogical vision is to decolonize “master narrative truths” and in its place imagine and affirm community-​based epistemologies and insights that come from the community, better known as “counternarratives,” that are developed in order to challenge assumed truths and ways of knowing (see William H. Orrick, Shut It Down! A College in Crisis [London: Forgotten Books, 2015]). 10. Ana María Díaz-​Stevens, “Popular Religiosity,” in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, vol. 2, ed. Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez Korrol (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 581–​582 11. Walter R. Goldschmidt, “Class Denominationalism in Rural California Churches,” American Journal of Sociology 49 (1944): 348–​355. 12. Patrick McNamara, “Dynamics of the Catholic Church from Pastoral to Social Control,” in The Mexican American People, ed. Leo Grebler (New York: Free Press, 1970), 449–​512. 13. Díaz-​Stevens, “Popular Religiosity.”. 14. Alberto López Pulido, “A Sociological Analysis of Latino Religions: The Formation of the Theoretical Binary and Beyond,” in American Sociology of Religion Histories, ed. Anthony J. Blasi (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 223–​252. 15. Meredith McGuire, “Linking Theory and Methodology for the Study of Latino Religiosity in the United States Context,” in An Enduring Flame: Studies on Latino Popular Religiosity, ed. Antonio M. Stevens Arroyo and Ana Maria Díaz-​Stevens (New York: Bildner Center, 1994), 192–​203. 16. Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 17. Alberto López Pulido, “Sacred Expressions of the Popular: “An Examination of Los Hermanos Penitentes of New Mexico and Los Hermanos Cheos of Puerto Rico,” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies IX, no. 2 (Spring 2000), 58. 18. Hayden, The Power of Place. 19. Mario T. García, Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).

204   Alberto López Pulido 20. Karen Mary Davalos, “’The Real Way of Praying’: The Via Crucis, Mexicano Sacred Space, and the Architecture of Domination,” in Horizons of the Sacred: Mexican Traditions in U.S. Catholicism, ed. Timothy Matovina and Gary Riebe-​Estrella (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 2002), 41–​68. 21. Davalos, “ ‘The Real Way of Praying.’ ” 22. Orlando O. Espin, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1997). 23. Alberto López Pulido, “Farm Labor and the Catholic Church in California: The Tortilla Priest and the People of the Corn,” in Global Crises and the Challenges of the 21 Century Antisystemic Movements and the Transformation of the World-​System, ed. Tom Reifer (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2012), 77-​86. 24. Richard R. Flores, “Para El Niño Dios: Sensibility and Commemorative Sentiment in Popular Religious Practice,” in An Enduring Flame: Studies on Latino Popular Religiosity, ed. (New York: Bildner Center, 1994), 171–​189 25. Davalos, “ ‘The Real Way of Praying,’ ” 65. 26. Karen Mary Davalos, “The Via Crucis in Chicago: A Reflection on/​of Grace,” American Catholic Studies 115, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 97–​100. 27. Lara Medina and Elizabeth Conde-​Frazier, “Religion,” in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, vol. 3, ed. Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez Korrol (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 615–​622. 28. Davalos, “ ‘The Real Way of Praying.’ ”. 29. Ana Maria Padilla, “Rezadoras Y Animadoras: Women, Faith and Community in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado,” U.S. Catholic Historian 21: 73–​81; Kristy Naban-​Warren, The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing and Mexican American Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2005); Lara Medina and Elizabeth Conde-​Frazier, “Religion,” in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, vol. 3, ed. Vicki L. Ruiz, Virginia Sánchez Korrol (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 615–​622. 30. María Del Socorro Castañeda-​Liles, Our Lady of Everyday Life: La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Catholic Imagination of Mexican Women in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 31. Alberto López Pulido, “Sacred Expressions of the Popular: “An Examination of Los Hermanos Penitentes of New Mexico and Los Hermanos Cheos of Puerto Rico,” CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies IX, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 57–​70; Alberto López Pulido, The Sacred World of the Penitentes (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2000). 32. Pulido, “Sacred Expressions of the Popular,” 63. 33. Pulido, “Sacred Expressions of the Popular.”. 34. Alberto López Pulido, “Católicos Por La Raza,” in The Chicana and Chicano Movement: From Aztlán to Zapatistas, ed. Adelaida R. Del Castillo Ph.D. and Norma Iglesias-​Prieto (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2020); Mario T. García, Chicano Liberation Theology: The Writings and Documents of Ricard Cruz and Católicos Por La Raza (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2009). 35. Padilla, “Rezadoras Y Animadoras: Women, Faith and Community in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado”; Pulido, “Sacred Expressions of the Popular”; Dolores C. de Baca, “Tina C. de Baca: Community Rights Advocate,” in Chicana Tributes: Activist Women of the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Rita Sanchez and Sonia Lopez (San Diego: Montezuma Press), 7–​10.

Popular Religion among Latinos/as    205 36. Alberto López Pulido and Rigoberto Reyes, San Diego Lowriders: A History of Cars and Cruising (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2017). 37. Pulido and Reyes, San Diego Lowriders, 103–​105. 38. Andrea J. Serrano, “A Prayer for Nuestra Señora La Reina de la Calle Central,” in Lowriting: Shots, Rides and Stories from the Chicano Soul, ed. Santino J. Rivera and Art Meza (Albuquerque, NM: Broken Sword, 2014), 29–​31. 39. Serrano, “A Prayer for Nuestra Señora La Reina de la Calle Central,” 30. 40. Pulido and Reyes, San Diego Lowriders/​. 41. Gastón Espinosa and Mario T. García, Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 42. Mario E. Aguilar, “The Rituals of Kindness: The Influence of the Danza Azteca Tradition of Central Mexico on Chicano-​Mexcoehuani Identity and Sacred Space,” PhD diss., Claremont Graduate University and San Diego State University, 2009. 43. Inés Talamantez, “Seeing Red: American Indian Women Speaking About Their Religious Political Perspectives,” in Reading Native American Women: Critical/​Creative Representations, ed. (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2005), 219–​250; Alberto López Pulido, “Nuestra Señora De Guadalupe: The Mexican Catholic Experience in San Diego,” Journal of San Diego History 37, no. 4 (Fall 1991): 237–​256. 44. Talamantez, “Seeing Red.”.

Bibliography Avila, Eric. The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Castañeda-​Liles, María Del Socorro. Our Lady of Everyday Life: La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Catholic Imagination of Mexican Women in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Espinosa, Gastón, and Mario T García. Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Flores, Juan, and Renato Rosaldo. A Companion to Latina/​ o Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. Forbes, Jack D. Aztecas Del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlán. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1973. Fraizer, Herb, Bernard Edward Powers Jr., and Marjory Wentworth. We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel. Nashville, TN: W. Publishing Group, 2016. García, Mario T. Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. García, Mario T. Chicano Liberation Theology: The Writings and Documents of Ricard Cruz and Católicos Por La Raza. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2009. Grebler, Leo, Joan W. Moore, and Ralph Guzman. The Mexican American People. New York: The Free Press, 1970. Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscape as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. Hernandez, Avila, Inés. Reading Native American Women: Critical and Creative Representations. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2005. Matovina, Timothy, and Gary Riebe-​Estrella, SVD. Horizons of the Sacred: Mexican Traditions in U.S. Catholicism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.

206   Alberto López Pulido Nabhan-​Warren, Kristy. The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing and Mexican American Activism. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Smith, Christian. Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement Activism. New York: Routledge, 1996. Stevens, Arroyo, Anthony M., and Ana Maria Diaz-​Stevens. An Enduring Flame: Studies of Latino Popular Religiosity. New York: Bildner Center, 1994. Stevens, Arroyo, Anthony M., and Ana Maria Diaz-​Stevens. Enigmatic Powers: Syncretism with African and Indigenous Peoples’ Religion among Latinos. New York: Bildner Center, 1994.

Chapter 11

Et hics, Theol o g y, a nd Mesti z aj e Néstor Medina

Context of Conversation Few terms have been researched, disputed, and redefined as much over time among LatinaXos1 and Latin Americans as mestizaje. I suspect that its attractiveness has to do with the wide range of ideas projected onto it. It was during my course work for the PhD program that I began to study the category of, the ideas behind, and the phenomena of intermixture often named as mestizaje. My first go-​to place was my own experience in Guatemala. I lived and grew up there amid ethnocultural and racialized intersections and negotiations that, even today, shape the lives of Guatemalans. Since then, over the last twenty years, I have been documenting how mestizaje emerges in different contexts in Latin America, the Caribbean, North America (Mexico, Canada, and the United States), and other contexts in the world. I focus on how different communities arrive at similar conclusions as they utilize mestizaje (métissage in French; mestiçagem in Portuguese) to name and speak about their own contexts and experiences of intermixture, miscegenation, and all other attending threads of meaning ascribed to the term. Along the way, I have also learned that part of the rich contribution of mestizaje is the fact that it is a heavily contested category. I do not mean contested in terms of the possible levels of signification—​in fact, mestizaje continues to gain semantic meanings over time. Rather, discussions related to mestizaje are often contested because numerous historical experiences of other communities are absent from or ignored by debates and discussions. People do not or cannot imagine or identify themselves with the ways in which mestizaje has come to represent a specific history or experience of intermixture; they have been left out. In LatinaXo religious, ethical, and theological articulations, which are the discussions on which I want to focus in this chapter, the use and deployment of mestizaje is no less contested.2

208   Néstor Medina The level of contestation concerning mestizaje in the Americas relates to the fact that the term evokes the long-​standing history of five centuries of ethnocultural and racialized relations. It includes violent power moves and countermoves, the profound negotiations that resulted when radically different ethnocultural backgrounds were thrown together by colonization, as well as how people come together now because of migration and physical attraction. In light of these contested discourses, some LatinaXo scholars have concluded that mestizaje is rendered useless because of critiques exacted upon it. They have abandoned mestizaje, not wanting to deal with its messy and risky side. In doing so, however, they have also abandoned the positive historical and theoretical grounding that the term provides. Jumping on the postcolonial bandwagon, some have abandoned mestizaje because they believe it can be “easily” replaced by abstract postcolonial terms such as hybridity, which, ironically, is a term neither historically grounded nor rooted in the experience of the peoples of the Americas. Such discussion needs a fuller treatment than is possible here. Yet it is the semantic, cultural, and critical analytical malleability of mestizaje that makes it at once a promising and risky category. The difficulty in replacing the term is that there is no other category that succeeds in eliciting the wide range of ideas behind the use of mestizaje. I agree that some particular local terms play similar roles in communicating meanings of intermixture and a sense of in-​betweenness, as is the case with terms like ajiaco,3 Sata/​o,4 and nepantla.5 Each of these terms enriches our glossary of available words to speak about specific experiences. However, I would argue that none of these terms encompasses the deep semantic and historical wealth which mestizaje communicates. Despite its richness and precisely because of its contested nature, it is virtually impossible to arrive at a definitive understanding of mestizaje, which is shared and understood by all people, in the same way, at all times. In many ways, to remember Derrida’s caution on the legacy of logocentrism and, for me, the danger of being captivated by the game of categorization, mestizaje may be both our poison and our cure. We see this double function in mestizaje, in the multiple ways it was utilized and broadened by LatinaXo scholars and theologians. By adopting mestizaje, these scholars reinvented theological method, redrew the limits of theological sources, and reconfigured the theological task even while remaining within the strictures of traditional theological frames. But they also reinscribed inherited forms of articulating community which discounted and excluded the multiply diverse ethnocultural presences in their communities. Thus, my intention in this chapter is first to briefly register snippets of the wide variety of ways LatinaXo scholars deployed mestizaje as they rethought the theological task. In a second section, I also briefly mention how this category has been challenged and is being reconfigured by more recent proposals. And in a final and third section, I reflect on mestizaje and its future potentialities and ethical implications, in conversation with contemporary decolonial theoretical frames.

Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje   209

Not All Mestizajes Are Created Equal Mestizaje became a critical theological category for US LatinaXo scholars who sought to name, describe, and explain theoretically and theologically the experiences of LatinaXos. The ensuing voluminous production of theological works contributed to redrawing the semantic limits of mestizaje as these LatinaXo scholars gave the term their own meaning and applicability.6 Mestizaje was broadened even further as subsequent generations of scholars engaged and critiqued the term.7 A comprehensive analysis of the multiple meanings ascribed to mestizaje is outside the scope of this article. Elsewhere I have discussed some of these contributions at greater length,8 My purpose here is only to mention a few examples to illustrate both the energy behind the articulations of mestizaje as well as the contributions those articulations made in establishing LatinaXo theologies as a crucial stream on its own merits. I begin with Virgilio Elizondo, who first deployed mestizaje theologically in the attempt to name and explain the Mexican American experience of double violent intermixture caused by the Spanish colonial invasion at the turn of the sixteenth century, on one hand, and the Anglo US policy of expansionism and then assimilation to stamp out Mexican Americans cultural traditions, religious customs, and the Spanish language, on the other.9 Inspired and influenced by the aesthetic monism of José Vasconcelos,10 Elizondo interpreted these experiences of violence as forms of a double mestizaje, which, for him, pointed to the promise of a future inclusion of all peoples.11 Through the articulation of mestizaje, he reinterpreted the life of Jesus as incarnating the condition of social, cultural, and religious mestizaje experienced by Mexican Americans.12 Crucial in this reorientation of theology was Elizondo’s ground-​breaking insight that people’s cultural and religious experience of intermixture (mestizaje) is the place and platform for theological reflection.13 In relation to mestizaje, no other LatinaXo popular religious symbol has received as much attention as the Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgin of Tepeyac. Elizondo was the first to celebrate her racialized features as mestiza.14 Along with the ostensibly rich inclusion of indigenous and Christian religious overtones in her portrayal, Elizondo noted the unique mixture of indigenous and European Christian religious elements in her apparition, including Juan Diego’s condition as mestizo.15 Elizondo was not the only one who drew on mestizaje as an interpretive lens for exploring the relevance and role of Guadalupe as a divine outworking on behalf of the mestizo people. Of particular note, some Latinas also saw in Guadalupe’s mestizaje a crucial challenge to inherited gender norms; Guadalupe embodied for them their struggle for justice.16 Inspired by Elizondo’s intuition of a double mestizaje and of the central role of the cultural in theology,17 a first generation of scholars made their own particular contribution to LatinaXo theology. In so doing, they expanded the meaning of mestizaje from the 1980s well into the 1990s.18 Roberto Goizueta, for example, adopted mestizaje to rethink traditional proposals to theological method.19 He highlights the experience

210   Néstor Medina of in-​betweenness that characterizes mestizas/​os to emphasize the rejection of facile dichotomies.20 Critiquing modernity for its overdependence on reason, on one hand, and critiquing postmodernity for its profound suspicion of reason—​but still disconnected from reality—​he lifts up US LatinaXo theology for being praxis-​based and for rejecting conceptualist theologies that remain inattentive to their own historicity.21 In other words, for Goizueta, LatinaXo theological reflection was firmly rooted in and stemmed from the historical experience of mestizaje of LatinaXo communities.22 The late Ada María Isasi-​Díaz saw mestizaje as an instrumental ethical vantage point from which women could speak about and enact their subjectivity against marginalization.23 In her mujerista theology and ethics, this coming together of races, cultures, and histories in mestizaje-​mulatez was the place from which women could understand the divine, become theological agents, and act for justice.24 Mestizaje-​mulatez pointed to the fluid and changing nature of cultural traditions, rendering it a paradigm not only for racial diversity but for all forms of diversity among LatinaXos.25 It is precisely because of its significance for inclusion that she was convinced that mestizaje-​mulatez was in essence an ethical stance.26 This ethical focus on and choice to use mestizaje was later developed by Ruben Rosario Rodríguez when he critiqued racism and ethnocentrism in the dominant US social and cultural context.27 Eldín Villafañe proposed his Pentecostal social ethical approach at about the same time as Isasi-​Díaz’s Mujerista proposal. Embracing Elizondo’s notion of a double mestizaje, which he understood as the “equalizer of all of society,”28 he argued for a cultural contextual approach to ethics for LatinaXos.29 His proposal is a rebuff to pervasive notions of ethics which do not account for the social, historical, and political contexts of people. Eldín concluded, however, that developing a contextual ethics for LatinaXos needed to also include an intra-​LatinaXo generational analysis. As he noted, the experience of mestizaje changed and expanded according to the changing historical and social circumstances each generation confronts.30 María Pilar Aquino adopted mestizaje to affirm the ethnocultural identity of Latinas along the lines of Elizondo’s original articulation.31 She claimed that Latina feminist theology was rooted in their condition of mestizaje, which also served as a critical category for reflecting on women’s experiences of oppression and violence.32 A few years after her original proposal, she revisited mestizaje as a critical category for the inclusion of the voices from the periphery; this time, in a much more advanced theological edifice, she included other categories such as lo cotidiano and interculturality.33 As part of this reclaiming of voices from the peripheries, for Aquino mestizaje did not only operate as a theological category but as a discursive space from which to reclaim women’s, specifically Latinas’, theological voices and subjectivity.34 Some LatinaXo theologians and biblical scholars viewed mestizaje as having biblical hermeneutical interpretive possibilities. Elizondo modeled this shift in hermeneutics by reinterpreting the gospel narrative as paralleling the experience of mestizo/​a Mexican Americans and by proposing Jesus as mestizo.35 Francisco García-​Treto later expanded Elizondo by stating that biblical hermeneutics would have to change if the reality and cultural background of the interpretive community were to be taken seriously.36 And Justo González argued that mestizaje-​mulatez gave LatinaXos a unique interpretive

Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje   211 lens to discern how intermixture was manifested in the biblical text. As he noted, the apostle Paul would not have been able to go on his missionary journey and function between cultures had he not been a cultural mestizo.37 Even more recently he interpreted Augustine of Hippo as a cultural mestizo.38 Ecclesiology was yet another field that LatinaXo theologians reinterpreted in light of mestizaje. Orlando Espín argued that mestizaje distinguishes LatinasXos from the Spaniards, Amerindians and African descendants and as such, articulates the unique characteristic of LatinaXo churches in their capacity for inclusion.39 Along the same vein, Goizueta claimed that LatinaXos are a unique breed of those who embody the mestizo culture of the borderlands, where God’s disciples are gathered as the new mestizo/​a ekklesia is born.40 In a subsequent generation, Oscar García-​Johnson intentionally took on mestizaje to think through and develop a LatinaXo ecclesiology.41 Bringing together broader discussions of LatinaXo culture, eschatology, and pneumatology, he proposes mestizaje as a form of church. This mestiza church, he affirms, seeks to follow Jesus by responding to the ethical demand of the cross, of empathic discipleship, and for cultural survival.42 In other words, mestizaje as a form of church constitutes and announces a Christopraxis, which is simultaneously Eucharistic, proclamatory, and pastoral.43 This mestiza church enacts the action-​praxis toward inclusion and accompaniment in celebration and preservation of LatinaXo cultural traditions and orients toward mañana. In so doing, this mestiza church becomes a cultural agent of the Spirit.44 Related to ecclesiology, LatinaXo scholars also gained insights into and reflected upon spirituality and spiritual practices through mestizaje. For example, the publication of Mestizo Worship celebrated LatinaXo popular religious traditions and particular pastoral approaches.45 In it, LatinaXo theologians lifted LatinaXo cultural and popular religious traditions, rituals, customs, and practices as intrinsically mestizas, as engendering a unique form of approaching and responding to the divine in faith.46 Latina scholars also articulated mestizaje to help describe unique spaces for women’s active communal religious and social engagement for justice.47 Jeanette Rodríguez draws on the notion of conciencia mestiza as discussed in the works of Gloria Anzaldúa and Chela Sandoval to propose her mestiza spirituality.48 She finds this notion a useful avenue for bypassing oppositional frames and instead argues for a double lens for interpreting reality.49 For her, as long as Latinas are bicultural, bilingual, and have existential cultural, religious, generational, and even national tensions, then they are mestizas. This reality means they live a mestiza consciousness, a kind of double consciousness—​along the lines of W. B. Dubois—​which serves as a strategy for resistance. In this way Rodríguez broadens mestizaje to include intrapsychic, interpersonal, and epistemological synthesis as these Latina mestizas construct their identity, engage in religious rituals, build community, and struggle for justice; these lived realities, she argues, are the bases of mestiza spirituality.50 Not unrelated, Teresa Delgadillo pursues similar lines of gender analysis by engaging Anzaldúa’s proposal of borderlands and her treatment of mestizaje in order to propose a spiritual mestizaje as a strategy for resistance.51 More recently, the spiritualogian Gilberto Cavazos-​González (spiritualogian is the label Cavazos-​González adopted for himself as a theologian of spirituality) included

212   Néstor Medina mestizaje as one of the foundational features for LatinaXo spirituality.52 As far as he is concerned, mestizaje is of crucial importance not only because of the historical record of violent intermixture, or because of the biological condition of LatinasXos as mestizas/​os, but also because mestizaje sheds light on our understanding of the divine incarnation in Jesus, a divine–​human mestizo.53 As mentioned earlier, Elizondo was the first to interpret Jesus as a historical and cultural mestizo.54 The Christological motif was further developed by other LatinaXo scholars. Goizueta, for example, explored the Christology behind the mestizo people’s accompaniment of the crucified Jesus during the Easter Triduum.55 Subsequently, he also reflected on the Christological implications of Elizondo’s notion of the mestizo Christ, focusing primarily on the reality of the borderlands as a locus of divine self-​disclosure.56 The reality of the borderlands, he claimed, is a mestizo reality; it is not only a geographical topos but the existential condition of a people.57 Stated differently, for Goizueta, as he reflected on Elizondo, the mestizo culture of the borderlands becomes the privileged locus of God’s self-​revelatory act, where God becomes incarnate in a mestizo.58 Building on these insights, Luis Pedraja adapted mestizaje to interpret the event of incarnation. He goes beyond Elizondo and Goizueta in registering the historical-​theological particularity of Jesus, including his racio-​cultural distinctiveness as a Galilean Jew. He also focuses on mestizaje as a critical way to name and understand the coming together of the divine and human in the person of Jesus.59 In other words, the incarnation event is a form of mestizaje in which—​much like LatinaXos embodying of diverse cultural traditions—​Jesus embodied mestizaje as human and divine.

Rethinking the Limits of Mestizaje The optimism concerning the theological import and theoretical usefulness of mestizaje cannot be overstated. It impacted LatinaXos regardless of their Christian denominational background and tradition. It was an energizing ecumenical collective project. Elizondo’s dependence on Vasconcelos’s romantic portrayal of intermixture in a future cosmic race was assumed in much of LatinaXo theological writings. In fact, Jacques Audinet, Elizondo’s PhD dissertation advisor, was so convinced of the possibilities of mestizaje that he concluded that mestizaje was the logical next step to multiculturalism.60 Most LatinaXos thought of mestizaje as potentially resolving the dominant social proclivity for dividing ethnocultural and racialized groups apart and instead bringing them together toward a new mestizaje. Such an affirmation, however, quickly and uncritically turned mestizaje into a form of a metanarrative under which all of reality could be subsumed. Mestizaje was imbued with a quasi-​mystical power which contained the uncritical solution to global human existence of discrimination, racism, and social inequality. The late Alejandro García Rivera referred to this “cosmic mestizaje” as part of the “Grand Narrative,” a “human compositum” which represents “the immense unity of all things by standing at the ‘paradoxical borderline’ between matter and spirit.”61 The

Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje   213 same year, Arturo Bañuelas understood mestizaje as “proleptically celebrating an eschatological fiesta: the weaving together of a new universalism in North, Central, and South America.”62 As an ethical choice and natural condition with the inherent ability to overcome binary, dichotomous, or oppositional frames, mestizaje was generally uncritically accepted as well. The capacity of mestizaje to include different ethnocultural traditions and racialized groups beyond indigenous peoples, “white” Europeans, and African descendants began to resemble more of a melting pot, whereby mestizaje was thought to epitomize a “synthesis” of all groups. We can see this orientation in Luis Pedraja’s statement that in this “mulataje-​mestizaje, we partake of each other while maintaining our diversity.”63 But the reality of LatinaXo experiences on the ground, still divided by class, racialization, and ethnocultural background, seemed to say otherwise. The uncritical, romantic, and all-​inclusive thread in the Latina/​o theological deployment of mestizaje began to be critiqued at the turn of the twenty-​first century from within and from without. In 2000, in his analysis of the state of LatinaXo theology, Orlando Espín began to signal to some of the tensions in articulations of the inclusiveness of mestizaje.64 Years later, Espín expanded his critique, chiding LatinaXo theology for its failure to critique mestizaje, and for not addressing chauvinism, homophobia, and religious Caciquismo, idols he thought to be present in LatinaXo cultural traditions.65 The same year as Espín’s original article, Andrew Irvine published a scathing critique of the LatinaXo theological use of mestizaje.66 Centering almost exclusively on the work of Elizondo, he cautioned that the notion of mestizaje was fraught with nationalist, ethnocentric, and essentialist notions of Latinidad or Latino-​ness. As he saw it, any claim of a mestizaje as representing all of LatinaXos is problematic because it removes the rich and diverse reality of US LatinaXo communities.67 Manuel Vásquez also cautioned LatinaXos against the dangers of nationalism in mestizaje.68 And Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, in his examination of mestizaje, reminded us that the problem with essentializing terms used to define ethnic/​cultural identity is that sometimes they occlude rather than reveal something about reality.69 For him, the multivalent uses of mestizaje occlude more than they reveal about the reality of LatinaXos in the United States . Yet, despite the risks in its use, the fact remains that “mestizaje remains a critical ethical metaphor for speaking about LatinaXo cultural identity and for uncovering the existing social stratification of the United States as built on an ideology of white supremacy.”70 The uncovering of the “whitening” effects of mestizaje was no small shift in LatinaXo theological currents. Indeed, the use of mestizaje-​mulatez in Isasi-​ Díaz, Segovia, González, and Pedraja, among others, was originally intended to celebrate the African ancestral lines of LatinaXos. In the attempt at discursive expediency, however, some scholars quickly moved toward subsuming mulataje under mestizaje.71 It became evident that while LatinasXo scholars celebrated the indigenous and African cultural elements in LatinaXo communities, they were less inclined to celebrate the living indigenous peoples and African descendants among us. Speaking from a Cuban American perspective, and critical of Isasi-​Díaz’s attempts to subsume mulatez in mestizaje, Michelle González

214   Néstor Medina emphasized that using the label of mestizaje (and even mulataje) failed to include particular Afro-​LatinaXo histories, experiences, and presences in the identity of LatinaXo theology in the United States.72 Miguel De La Torre further expanded González’s criticism by emphasizing that mestizaje-​mulatez offers “white-​washed” ideals of racial harmony, while effectively marginalizing black and indigenous peoples from the LatinaXo theological project.73 Expanding these multiple critiques, my own work has further engaged in a careful analysis of mestizaje in LatinaXo theology.74 I have insisted on the importance of reclaiming the actual history of violence from which the term first emerged and was first articulated. Moreover, I have argued that affirmations of mestizaje must be placed in light of the long history of whitening, deindigenization, and de-​Africanization of the population. In other words, mestizaje cannot be simply abstracted out from its historical context.75 These concerns about the ideological baggage behind mestizaje are echoed in Jean-​Pierre Ruíz’s challenge for LatinaXo scholars to “take a closer and more careful look at [their] hidden assumptions and at the unexamined implications of [their] discourse of mestizaje”76 Each of these critiques demonstrates the need for a deep reconfiguration of LatinaXo theological currents and their use of mestizaje in order to respond in relevant ways to the complex, fluid, and changing plurality of ethnic groups that constitute LatinaXos in the United States. Despite the fact that many might think that LatinaXo theology is at an impasse in terms of its ability to rethink mestizaje, new proposals are beginning to emerge which continue to find this particular cipher a fruitful critical, ethical, and theological category. Specifically, I refer to the work on the politics of multiplicity and difference by Robyn Henderson-​Espinosa.77 She takes on mestizaje in the attempt to address LatinaXo theology’s lack of attention to the experience of queer people.78 Her goal is to “queer mestizaje” or “MezQueerTaje,” which includes disconnecting the category from its biological, gendered, and even heteronormative baggage and frames, and to propose what she calls an “ethico-​onto-​epistemological standpoint” of a LatinaXo “queer being, becoming, and acting in the world.”79 As she notes, queering mestizaje means to disrupt (retorcer) and to always be in a continuous process of becoming (volverse).80 Though she runs dangerously close to affirming a totalizing mestizaje, she nevertheless invites LatinaXo theology to interrogate its own “[hetero]normative understanding of mestizaje as a biological racial descriptor, and extend it to the material and discursive realities.” This broadening of mestizaje, she claims, would “create the conditions of possibility” for mestizaje to be a queer signifier.81 Similarly, through his incorporation of racial formation studies, Jorge Aquino takes the Cuban and Cuban American historical intersection as a platform for examining the close connections and implications between the Cuban historical trope of being a “raceless nation” and—​what he calls—​the analogous trope of mestizaje in LatinaXo theology.82 Like Henderson-​Espinosa’s critique of pervasive notions of mestizaje as primarily biological, he highlights the problematic tendencies in Elizondo’s proposal of mestizaje toward a “mono-​racial formation of miscegenation” and argues instead a celebration of the Afro-​Cuban presence.83 More recently, in his analysis of what he calls

Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje   215 the different stages in the development of mestizaje, he rethinks his earlier critique of mestizaje as focusing primarily on race and couples it with economic and immigration concerns as well.84 For him, to confront the deeper challenges to mestizaje, LatinaXo theology will have to “confront the historical role that racism has played in the construction of subaltern classes” which are intrinsic to capitalism.85 As far as he is concerned, the critique of mestizaje in terms of racism must also be a critique of capitalism.86 Though Goizueta, Espín, María Pilar Aquino, and Bañuelas, among others, have been strongly critical of capitalist structures, Jorge Aquino ties his critique of mestizaje to the need to bring the critiques of racism and capitalism closer together and, in so doing, challenge LatinaXo scholars to think about how mestizaje, when viewed in anti-​racist and anticapitalist terms, brings challenges even to the social and economic privileges of LatinaXo academics.87

(Re)Situating Mestizaje in LatinaXo Theology It is difficult to calculate the great extent to which the use of mestizaje has influenced LatinaXo ethical and theological debates. It is also difficult to gauge exactly how much mestizaje has become an important identifiable category outside of LatinaXo theology and ethics. What is clear is that the adoption of mestizaje created critical intellectual spaces from which LatinaXos could reflect ethically and theologically about LatinaXo ethnocultural and social identity, the biological and cultural condition of intermixture, popular religious traditions and expressions, the interrogation of structures of marginalization and discrimination, the promotion of women’s theological and ethical subjectivity, as well as the rethinking traditional ethical and theological categories and method in the United States. The adoption of mestizaje by LatinaXo scholarship reveals a fundamental intellectual and epistemological shift which moved away from inherited intellectual abstractions. Instead, and in the attempt to respond to the social, political, cultural, and faith experiences of LatinaXo communities, these scholars drew on their complicated history of violence and, in so doing, modeled new ways for doing theoethics. Stated differently, the deployment of mestizaje as a main category among others allowed LatinaXo scholars to reject pervasive Eurocentric approaches that engage ethical and theological considerations without any connection to the real-​life experiences of people. It is worth restating and emphasizing that the profound historical and sociocultural specificity of LatinaXo scholarship in taking up mestizaje unmasked the problematic nature of universal ethical and theological claims. By adopting mestizaje, LatinaXos highlighted the centrality of lo cultural—​the cultural, a feature that was absent from their theological counterparts among Latin American liberation theologians and in liberation currents in the United States. As I

216   Néstor Medina have demonstrated briefly, by emphasizing the cultural via mestizaje, LatinaXo scholars provided a fresh new understanding of the Christian faith and helped us appreciate the experiences of faith of the people as well as their popular religious expressions.88 In spite of serious critiques to the category of mestizaje and its use by LatinaXo theological and ethical debates—​including me—​its discursive relevance has become increasingly evident. Mestizaje has not become irrelevant. Instead, the LatinaXo ethical and theological usage of mestizaje continues to emphasize the juncture of different social markers and forms of oppression. LatinaXos have been able to understand ethnoracial, cultural, economic, and, later, gender markers as intricately connected in the complex networks of oppression. This important work was a precursor to understandings of intersectionality. More particularly, although with different emphases, Latinas have borrowed from mestizaje to articulate the multiple crossing of social markers in their experiences as women. These markers led to their social, cultural, and economic oppression and intellectual marginalization in society and even amid their own cultural communities. In this way, Latinas can also be said to be part of the longer history of intersectional feminism along with Gloria Anzaldúa and Chela Sandoval, among others, each of which found in mestizaje a helpful metaphor for thinking about the experiences of Latinas. Inspired by mestizaje, LatinaXos also went beyond basic class analysis by uncovering inherited oppressive social and economic dynamics and structures and their relation with the original violence of conquest and colonization. Admittedly, they did not make the racialized connections to capitalism as explicitly as Jorge Aquino did. But they certainly exposed the various threads of violence and intermixture that resulted from imperial invasions (Spanish and United States) and which are perpetuated by structures of racialized and economic colonization in contemporary US society. In this way, LatinaXo ethical and theological debates and writings represent a precursor to decolonial critical currents’ emphasis on coloniality of power.89 By articulating their experience of in-​betweenness in light of mestizaje and borderlands—​á la Anzaldúa, as the inhabiting of multiple identity, cultural, social, geographical, and religious spaces—​LatinaXos anticipated and addressed concerns that have only recently received attention more broadly by decolonial thinkers.90 By adopting mestizaje, LatinaXo scholars developed a critical ethical and theological edifice that stands on its own merits, and that offers profound insights which closely resonate with contemporary critical cultural, ethnoracial, identity, and religious debates. Given this rich intellectual legacy, it would be a mistake to think that mestizaje refers exclusively to questions of ethnocultural and racial identity. It would be even a greater mistake to presume that mestizaje can be deployed as a sanitized, objective, and neutral category without acknowledging its own racialized ideological and historical baggage. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that this fundamental shift in LatinaXo theology and ethics was only possible because it emerged from the very messy history and experience of pain, exclusion, racialization, and discrimination, which were variously articulated and developed through the cipher, category, and notion of mestizaje. However, in order for mestizaje to continue to be relevant for LatinaXo theology and

Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje   217 ethics, LatinaXo scholars will have to acknowledge that Spaniards, African descendants, and indigenous peoples experienced and continue to experience mestizaje differently in light of the colonial structures which were set in place post 1492; that such structures and racialized sentiments mutated by the end of the seventeenth century; and that colonial racialized ideological structures continue to shape interethnic relations among LatinaXos, and among all the peoples who inhabit what we know today as the Americas. For instance, one illustration of different experiences of mestizaje is evident in the fact that mestizaXos were discriminated against in Spanish colonial societies in Latin America was only partially true. MulataXos (children of Spanish and African) and ZambaXos (children of African and indigenous) fared much worse. Each of these mixtures corresponded with the specific social privilege/​underprivilege they received from their ancestral lines and most mestizaXos benefitted from being children of the two “free” groups in Spanish colonial societies. In the same way, LatinaXo scholars will have to take more seriously how the social, cultural, political, and religious dynamics of mestizaje function differently among the multiple ethnoracial communities that are identified as LatinaXo and Latin American today. To that end, LatinaXo theoethics can be enriched by Nelson Maldonado-​Torres’s notion of coloniality of being.91 In fact, the idea of “coloniality of being,” which focuses on the manner in which the present capitalist structures shape how people live and behave, could be enriched by a LatinaXo exploration of how mestizaje, with in its long history and ideological baggage, has also been an expression of colonizing structures of being. By focusing on popular religious traditions, LatinaXos can show how the “coloniality of being” is turned on its head by how people live and reinvent life, weaving together mestizaje in new and creative ways. As mestizaje becomes adopted and adapted by different communities inside and outside of the United States, it is bound to be expanded in its semantic range. For instance, (re)thinking the applicability and nonapplicability of mestizaje will have to undergo its own process of reconfiguration and critique for LatinaXos in Canada. Fortunately, the US LatinaXo experience provides fruitful resources for such a task in the years ahead. Mestizaje continues to be a useful theological category which elucidates the divine dismantling of structures of racialized, cultural, and religious power. At its best, it also constitutes an ethical praxis and ethos unwilling to succumb to easy recipes of “inclusion,” “unity,” and “hospitality.” Instead, it is used to celebrate and wrestle with complex and fluid multicultural, multilingual, and multinational history and ancestral lines for which it is a cipher. The crucial insight gleaned from mestizaje is its open-​ endedness; it thrives on diversity and heterogeneity while subverting false notions of purity, homogeneity, unity, and whiteness. Even more, the adoption of mestizaje was and is in itself an ethical choice. It is an attempt to actively reject social, cultural, and economic structures of discrimination, racism, and marginalization. It also rejects intellectual frames which undermine the rich cultural, contextual, and experiential component of lived faith experiences as part of human activity and struggles for justice.

218   Néstor Medina

Notes 1. The search for appropriate labels to speak about these diverse communities has become an intellectual minefield. For some time, many scholars have appropriated LatinX in an attempt to include members of the LGBTQAI +​communities. While I agree that the function of any label must be as inclusive as possible, here I agree with Nicole Trujillo-​ Pagán, who demonstrates that the use of LatinX undermines the inherent diversity of Latina communities. More specifically for women, she claims that LatinX neutralizes claims of sexism by giving the appearance of gender neutrality. See Nicole Trujillo-​Pagán, “Crossed Out by LatinX: Gender Neutrality and Genderblind Sexism,” Latino Studies 16, no. 3 (October 2018): 396–​406, Https://​doi.org/​10.1057/​s41276–​018–​0138–​7. It is for this reason that I adopt the variation LatinaXo because it preserves the internal diversity of these communities even while attempting to include and account for members of the LGBTQAI+​who have ancestral connections with Latin America or who are Latina/​ o/​x. I am adopting this variation as Jeremy Cruz, Neomi DeAnda, and I articulated it in “Respondiendo a las demandas históricas: Analyses of the Transformative Legacy of Samuel Ruiz García of Chiapas,” Journal of Hispanic/​Latino Theology: Samuel Ruiz 19, no. 1 (2013): 2–​8, ed. Néstor Medina, Neomi DeAnda, and Jeremy Cruz. For further details of this variation see also Neomi De Anda, “Jesus the Christ,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/​a Theology, ed. Orlando Espín (West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 169. 2. See Néstor Medina, Mestizaje: (Re)Mapping “Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/​ o Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009); A. Jorge Aquino, “Mestizaje: The Latina/​ o Religious Imaginary in the North American Racial Crucible,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/​a Theology, ed. Orlando Espín (West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 283–​311. 3. De La Torre, “Rethinking Mulatez,” in Rethinking Latino(a) Religion and Identity, ed. Miguel De La Torre and Gastón Espinosa (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2006), 158–​175. 4. Loida I. Martell-​Otero, “Of Satos and Saints: Salvation from the Periphery,” Perspectivas: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Paper Series, no. 4 (2001): 7–​38. 5. Rudy Busto, “The Predicament of Nepantla: Chicana/​o Religion into the 21st. Century,” Perspectivas: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Paper Series 1 (Fall 1998): 7–​21; Pat Mora, Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Midde (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993). 6. For introductory works concerning the emergence and initial deployment of mestizaje, see Medina, Mestizaje. 7. Jorge Aquino outlines at least three crucial moments/​generations of mestizajes in terms of its development and reconfiguration. See Aquino, “Mestizaje.” 8. Néstor Medina, “U.S. Latina/​o Theology: Challenges, Possibilities, and Future Prospects,” in Theology and the Crisis of Engagement, ed. Jeff Nowers and Néstor Medina (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013), 141–​160; Medina, Mestizaje. 9. Virgilio Elizondo, Mestizaje: The Dialectic of Cultural Birth and the Gospel (San Antonio, TX: Mexican American Cultural Center, 1978). For a fuller discussion of Elizondo’s treatment of mestizaje, see Medina, Mestizaje, ­chapter 2. 10. José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica: Misión de la raza iberoamericana, Asociación Nacional de Libreros (México D.F.: Litografía Ediciones Olimpia, S.A., 1983). Elizondo was not the only scholar to draw from Vasconcelos. For example, Roberto Goizueta employed Vasconcelos to challenge traditional approaches to theological method. Meanwhile,

Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje   219 Andrés Guerrero took insights from Vasconcelos to bolster his Chicano theological approach. See Andrés G. Guerrero, A Chicano Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987); Roberto S. Goizueta, “La Raza Cósmica? The Vision of José Vasconcelos,” Journal of Hispanic/​Latino Theology 1, no. 2 (1994): 5–​27. 11. Virgilio Elizondo, The Future Is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000); Virgilio Elizondo, “Mestizaje: The Birth of New Life,” in Frontier Violation: Beginning of New Identities, ed. Wilfred F. and Oscar Beozzo (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 47–​53; Virgilio Elizondo, “The New Humanity of the Americas,” in Beyond Borders: The Writings of Virgilio Elizondo and Friends, ed. Timothy Matovina (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 272–​277. 12. Virgilio Elizondo, Galilean Journey: The Mexican-​American Promise (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983). 13. Virgilio Elizondo, “Mestizaje as a Locus of Theological Reflection,” in The Future of Liberation Theology: Essays in Honor of Gustavo Gutiérrez, ed. Marc H. Ellis and Otto Maduro (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 358–​374. 14. Virgilio Elizondo, La Morenita, Evangelizer of the Americas (San Antonio, TX: Mexican American Cultural Center, 1980); Virgilio Elizondo, Guadalupe, Mother of the New Creation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997). 15. For a fuller discussion of the mestizo interpretation of Guadalupe, see Medina, Mestizaje, ­chapter 5. 16. Jeanette Rodríguez, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment Among Mexican-​ American Women (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994); Jeanette Rodríguez, “The Common Womb of the Americas: Virgilio Elizondo’s Theological Reflection on Our Lady of Guadalupe,” in Beyond Borders: Writings of Virgilio Elizondo and Friends, ed. Timothy Matovina (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 109–​117; Anita de Luna, “Elements in the Catechetical Pilgrimage: Virgilio, el Catechista,” in Beyond Borders: Writings of Virgilio Elizondo and Friends, ed. Timothy Matovina (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 24–​35. 17. For a fuller discussion on “the cultural,” see Néstor Medina, Christianity, Empire, and the Spirit: (Re)Configuring Faith and the Cultural (Leiden: Brill, 2018), ­chapter 1. 18. José David Rodríguez, “De ‘apuntes’ a ‘esbozo’: Diez años de reflexión,” Apuntes: Reflexiones Teológicas Desde el Márgen Hispano 10, no. 4 (1990): 75–​83; Allan Figueroa Deck, “Latino Theology: The Year of the ‘Boom’,” Journal of Hispanic/​Latino Theology 1, no. 2 (1994): 51–​63. 19. Roberto S. Goizueta, “U.S. Hispanic Mestizaje and Theological Method,” in Migrants and Refugees, ed. Dietmar Mieth and Lisa Sowle Cahill Concilium (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 22–​30. María Pilar Aquino also drew on mestizaje to reflect on theological method. Following an argument for inclusion, she argued that mestizaje is a key feature of the LatinaXo theological enterprise because of its capacity to incorporate the voices from the periphery and because of its distinct place of intersection where theological discourses meet. See María Pilar Aquino, “Theological Method in US Latino/​a Theology: Toward an Intercultural Theology for the Third Millennium,” in From the Heart of Our People: Latino/​a Explorations in Catholic Systematic Theology, ed. Orlando O. Espín and Miguel H. Díaz (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 6–​48. For a fuller discussion of Goizueta’s and Aquino’s treatment of mestizaje, see Medina, Mestizaje, ­chapter 2. 20. Roberto S. Goizueta, “El mestizaje hispano-​norteamericano y el método teológico,” trans. Jesús Valiente Malla, Revista Latinoamericana 168, no. (1996): 7, http://​www.pan​gea.org/​ ~spie/​age​nda-​lat​ino/​koino​nia/​relat/​168.htm”\\l “goizueta. The use of mestizaje to speak

220   Néstor Medina of the experience of in-​betweenness of LatinaXos appears in different contexts. Another good example of this thread in LatinaXo theology is Fernando Segovia in his “Two Places and No Place on Which to Stand: Mixture and Otherness in Hispanic American Theology,” in Mestizo Christianity: Theology from the Latino Perspective, ed. Arturo Bañuelas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 28–​43. 21. Roberto S. Goizueta, “Rediscovering Praxis: The Significance of U.S. Hispanic Experience for Theological Method,” in Mestizo Christianity: Theology from the Latino Perspective, ed. Arturo J. Bañuelas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 95. 22. Goizueta, “U.S. Hispanic Mestizaje and Theological Method,” 7. 23. For a fuller discussion of Isasi-​Díaz’s treatment of mestizaje, see Medina, Mestizaje, ­chapter 2. 24. Ada María Isasi-​Díaz, “‘Apuntes’ for a Hispanic Women’s Theology of Liberation,” Apuntes: Reflexiones Teológicas Desde el Márgen Hispano 6, no. 3 (1986): 66. 25. Ada María Isasi-​Díaz, “Afterwords: Strangers No Longer,” in Hispanic/​Latino Theology: Challenge and Promise, ed. Ada María Isasi-​Díaz and Fernando F. Segovia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 367–​374. 26. Ada María Isasi-​Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-​First Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996). See also Ada María Isasi-​Díaz, “Mujeristas: A Name of Our Own,” in The Future of Liberation Theology: Essays in Honor of Gustavo Gutiérrez, ed. Marc H. Ellis and Otto Maduro (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 410–​419. 27. Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, Racism and God-​Talk: A Latino/​a Perspective (New York: NYU Press, 2008); Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, “No Longer Jew Nor Greek but Mestizo? The Challenge of Ethnocentrism for Theological Reconstruction,” PhD diss. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Theological Seminary, 2005). 28. Eldin Villafañe, “The Socio-​Cultural Matrix of Intergenerational Dynamics: An Agenda for the 90’s,” Apuntes: Reflexiones Teológicas Desde el Márgen Hispano 12, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 14. 29. Eldin Villafañe, The Liberating Spirit: Toward an Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1993). 30. Villafañe, “The Socio-​Cultural Matrix of Intergenerational Dynamics,” 14. 31. María Pilar Aquino, “Directions and Foundations of Hispanic/​Latino Theology: Toward a Mestiza Theology of Liberation,” in Mestizo Christianity: Theology from the Latino Perspective, ed. Arturo J. Bañuelas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 191–​208. 32. María Pilar Aquino, “Directions and Foundations of Hispanic /​Latino Theology: Towards a Mestiza Theology of Liberation,” Journal of Hispanic/​Latino Theology 1, no. 1 (1993): 5–​21. 33. Aquino, “Theological Method in US Latino/​a Theology.” 34. María Pilar Aquino, “Latina Feminist Theology: Central Features,” in A Reader in Latina Feminist Theology: Religion and Justice, ed. María Pilar Aquino, Daisy L. Machado, and Jeanette Rodríguez (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 133–​160. Aquino was not alone in utilizing mestizaje to affirm Latinas’ theological voice. See, for example, Gloria Inés Loya, “Pathways to a Mestiza Feminist Theology,” in A Reader in Latina Feminist Theology: Religion and Justice, ed. María Pilar Aquino, Daisy L. Machado, and Jeanette Rodríguez (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 217–​241. 35. Elizondo, Galilean Journey. 36. Francisco García-​Treto, “Reading the Hyphens: An Emerging Biblical Hermeneutics for Latino/​Hispanic U.S. Protestants,” in Protestantes/​Protestants: Hispanic Christianity within Mainline Traditions, ed. David Maldonado Jr. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1999), 160–​173.

Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje   221 37. Justo L. González, Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 84. 38. Justo L. González, The Mestizo Augustine: A Theologian Between Two Cultures (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016). 39. Orlando O. Espín, “A Multicultural Church? Theological Reflections from Below,” in The Multicultural Church: A New Landscape in U.S. Theologies, ed. William Cenkner, illus. Noël L. Díaz (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1996), 54–​7 1. 40. Roberto S. Goizueta, “A Christology for a Global Church,” in Beyond Borders: Writings of Virgilio Elizondo and Friends, ed. Timothy Matovina (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 155. 41. Oscar García-​Johnson, The Mestizo/​a Community of the Spirit: A Postmodern Latino/​a Ecclesiology (Eugene, OR: Pick Wick, 2009). 42. García-​Johnson, The Mestizo/​a Community of the Spirit, 99. 43. García-​Johnson, The Mestizo/​a Community of the Spirit, 98. 44. García-​Johnson, The Mestizo/​a Community of the Spirit, 99. 45. Virgilio P. Elizondo and Timothy M. Matovina, eds., Mestizo Worship: A Pastoral Approach to Liturgical Ministry (Collegeville, MD: Liturgical Press, 1998). 46. Roberto L. Gómez, “Mestizo Spirituality: Motifs of Sacrifice, Transformation, Thanksgiving, and Family in Four Mexican American Rituals,” Apuntes: Reflexiones Teológicas Desde el Márgen Hispano 2, no. 2 (1991): 81–​92. 47. Ana María Pineda, “The Oral Tradition of a People: Forjadora de Rostro y Corazón,” in Hispanic/​Latino Theology: Challenge and Promise, ed. Ada María Isasi-​Díaz and Segovia Fernando (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 104–​117; Jeanette Rodríguez, “Mestiza Spirituality: Community, Ritual, and Justice,” Theological Studies 65, no. 2 (2004): 317–​339. 48. Rodríguez, “Mestiza Spirituality.” 49. Rodríguez, “Mestiza Spirituality,” 323. 50. Rodríguez, “Mestiza Spirituality,” 319. 51. Teresa Delgadillo, Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race, and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 52. Gilberto Cavazos-​González, “The Study of Spirituality,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/​a Theology, ed. Orlando Espín (West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 421–​438. 53. Cavazos-​González, “Study of Spirituality,” 430. 54. Elizondo, Galilean Journey. 55. Roberto S. Goizueta, Caminemos con Jesús: Toward a Hispanic/​ Latino Theology of Accompaniment (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999). 56. Goizueta, “A Christology for a Global Church.” 57. Goizueta, “A Christology for a Global Church,” 150–​151. 58. Goizueta, “A Christology for a Global Church,” 155. 59. Luis G. Pedraja, Jesus Is My Uncle: Christology from a Hispanic Perspective (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999). 60. Jacques Audinet, The Human Face of Globalization: From Multicultural to Mestizaje, trans. Francest Dal Chele (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). See also Néstor Medina, “Hybrid Cultures or Multiculturalism: Navigating the Contested Spaces of Mestizaje Discourse,” paper presented at the panel: Beyond Mestizaje: Revisiting Race, Syncretism, and Hybridity, American Academy of Religion, Religion in Latin America and the Caribbean Group, Washington, DC, 2006.

222   Néstor Medina 61. Alejandro García-​Rivera, St. Martín de Porres: The “Little Stories” and the Semiotics of Culture, foreword by Virgilio Elizondo, introduction by Robert J. Schreiter (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 51. 62. Arturo Bañuelas, “U.S. Hispanic Theology,” Missiology: An International Review XX, no. 2 (April 1992): 276–​277 In the same article, Bañuelas speaks of the almost “messianic” role of mestizoXas: “As mestizos, we can turn to all of the peoples in the Americas and reply that our neighbor is literally next door. The mestizo partial mixture of races is a foretaste of a possible new universal humanity with no boundaries” (Bañuelas, “U.S. Hispanic Theology,” 294). 63. Luis G. Pedraja, “A New Vision: Ministry Through Hispanic Eyes,” Apuntes: Reflexiones Teológicas Desde el Márgen Hispano 16, no. 2 (1996): 51–​58. 64. Orlando O. Espín, “The State of U.S. Latino/​a Theology: An Understanding,” Perspectivas: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Paper Series, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 19–​55. 65. Orlando O. Espín, “The State of U.S. Latina/​o Theology: An Understanding,” in Hispanic Christian Thought at the Dawn of the 21st. Century, ed. Alvin Padilla, Roberto Goizueta, and Eldín Villafañe (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005), 98–​116. 66. Andrew Irvine, “Mestizaje and the Problem of Authority,” Journal of Hispanic/​Latino Theology 8, no. 1 (2000): 5–​37. 67. Irvine, “Mestizaje and the Problem of Authority,” 19–​20. 68. Manuel A. Vásquez, “Rethinking Mestizaje,” in Rethinking Latino(a) Religion and Identity, ed. Miguel De La Torre and Gastón Espinosa (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2006), 129–​157. 69. Rodríguez, “No Longer Jew nor Greek but Mestizo?”; Rodríguez, Racism and God-​Talk. 70. Rodríguez, “No Longer Jew nor Greek but Mestizo?,” 138. 71. Ada María Isasi-​Díaz, “Re-​Conceptualizing Difference,” in La Lucha Continues: Mujerista Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 75. 72. Michelle A. Gonzáles, Afro-​ Cuban Theology: Religion, Race, Culture, and Identity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006). 73. De La Torre, “Rethinking Mulatez,” 159. As far as De La Torre is concerned, mulatez is a linguistic sign deployed by “white” LatinaXos, which marks their rejection of blackness as a viable ideological component of LatinaXo identity and theology (De La Torre, “Rethinking Mulatez,” 167). See also Aquino, “Mestizaje.” 74. Medina, Mestizaje. 75. Medina, Mestizaje, c­ hapters 4–​5. 76. Cited in Cavazos-​González, “Study of Spirituality,” 430. 77. Robyn Henderson-​ Espinosa, “The Entanglement of Anzaldúan Materiality as Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning and Interrelatedness” (Denver, CO: University of Denver, 2016). 78. Robyn Henderson-​Espinosa, “Queer Theory and Latina/​o Theologizing,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/​a Theology, ed. Orlando Espín (West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 339 As I indicated earlier, Orlando Espín was the first to expose LatinaXo heteronormativity. See his Grace and Humanness: Theological Reflections Because of Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007). 79. Henderson-​Espinosa, “Queer Theory,” 340. 80. Henderson-​Espinosa, “Queer Theory,” 340. 81. Henderson-​Espinosa, “Queer Theory,” 340.

Ethics, Theology, and Mestizaje   223 82. Jorge A. Aquino, “’Ni blanquitos ni negritos’: Race, Nation, and Identity in the United States Latina/​o Theology,” unpublished dissertation (Berkley, CA: Graduate Theological Union, 2006), 118. 83. Aquino, “ ‘Ni blanquitos ni negritos’,” 132. 84. Aquino, “Mestizaje.” 85. Aquino, “Mestizaje,” 304. 86. Aquino, “Mestizaje,” 305. 87. Aquino, “Mestizaje,” 304. 88. Orlando O. Espín and Miguel H. Díaz, eds., From the Heart of Our People: Latino/​ a Explorations in Catholic Systematic Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999); Miguel De La Torre and Gastón Espinosa, eds., Rethinking Latino(a) Religion and Identity (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2006). 89. Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” Nepantla: Views from the Margins 1, no. 3 (2000): 533–​580. 90. Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/​Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 91. Nelson Maldonado-​ Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–​3 (May 2007): 240–​270.

Bibliography Cavazos-​González, Gilberto. “The Study of Spirituality.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/​ a Theology, edited by Orlando Espín, 421–​ 438. West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. De La Torre, Miguel, and Gastón Espinosa, eds. Rethinking Latino(a) Religion and Identity. Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2006. Delgadillo, Teresa. Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race, and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Espín, Orlando. Grace and Humanness: Theological Reflections Because of Culture. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007. Espín, Orlando O., and Miguel H. Díaz, eds. From the Heart of Our People: Latino/​a Explorations in Catholic Systematic Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999. García-​Johnson, Oscar. The Mestizo/​a Community of the Spirit: A Postmodern Latino/​a Ecclesiology. Eugene, OR: Pick Wick, 2009. Goizueta, Roberto S. Caminemos con Jesús: Toward a Hispanic/​ Latino Theology of Accompaniment. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999. Gómez, Roberto L. “Mestizo Spirituality: Motifs of Sacrifice, Transformation, Thanksgiving, and Family in Four Mexican American Rituals,” Apuntes: Reflexiones Teológicas Desde el Márgen Hispano 2, no. 2 (1991): 81–​92. Gonzáles, Michelle A. Afro-​Cuban Theology: Religion, Race, Culture, and Identity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. Henderson-​Espinosa, Robyn. The Entanglement of Anzaldúan Materiality as Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning and Interrelatedness. Denver, CO: University of Denver, 2016. Henderson-​ Espinosa, Robyn. “Queer Theory and Latina/​ o Theologizing.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/​a Theology, edited by Orlando Espín, 339. West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.

224   Néstor Medina Isasi-​Díaz, Ada María “Re-​Conceptualizing Difference.” In La Lucha Continues: Mujerista Theology, 75. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004. Maldonado-​Torres, Nelson. “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept.” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–​3 (May 2007): 240–​270. Medina, Néstor. Mestizaje: (Re)Mapping “Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/​o Catholicism. Medina, Néstor. “U.S. Latina/​o Theology: Challenges, Possibilities, and Future Prospects.” In Theology and the Crisis of Engagement, edited by Jeff Nowers and Néstor Medina, 141–​160. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013. Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/​Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pedraja, Luis G. Jesus is My Uncle: Christology from a Hispanic Perspective. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999. Quijano, Anibal. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Nepantla: Views from the Margins 1, no. 3 (2000): 533–​580. Rodríguez, Jeanette. “Mestiza Spirituality: Community, Ritual, and Justice.” Theological Studies 65, no. 2 (2004): 317–​339. Vásquez, Manuel A. “Rethinking Mestizaj.” In Rethinking Latino(a) Religion and Identity, edited by Miguel De La Torre and Gastón Espinosa, 129–​157. Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2006.

Chapter 12

L atinos/​a s, Hea l i ng , a nd Christia ni t y Brett Hendrickson

This chapter examines the varieties of healing traditions practiced by Latino/​ a Christians. Of course, Latino/​a Christians are by no means alone in finding healing and wholeness in their religion. Christians of all ethnic backgrounds in the United States, including Latinos/​as, have approached healing from various angles, frequently with a link to the Bible and church traditions. For example, a notable passage from the epistle of James provides concise instructions for Christians concerning healing: “Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.”1 In addition to linking sickness and suffering with sin, the passage instructs Christians to treat the sick with prayer, the attention of the elders (often interpreted as the “laying on of hands”), and anointing. This has served as a template for many Christian healing rituals.2 Of course, Jesus’s numerous healing miracles likewise have led Christians to consider healing a central feature of the religion.3 Finally, a number of biblical texts seem to suggest that a person’s well-​being is profoundly linked to spiritual peace. For instance, Paul writes to the Romans, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”4 From this vantage, true health is spiritual even when the body declines and suffers. Christians thus move along a continuum of sorts when it comes to healing. On one end of this continuum we find a robust confidence in the Christian God’s miraculous intervention in the bodies of the faithful, curing them from all kinds of maladies. Healing miracles are effected through means that often include supplication as well as the ministrations of some sort of conduit for divine intervention such as an evangelist, priest, or saint. On the other end, we encounter a focus on spiritual wholeness as a powerful force for healing even when a physical cure is not possible or even expected.

226   Brett Hendrickson Here, patients express feelings of tranquility, restoration, and community support in the face of suffering. Two features of this continuum are, first, people can move along it, even during the course of one illness. And, second, the sought-​after healing need not be only of a physical, mental, or spiritual nature; it can also extend to the healing of broken relationships in families or in entire communities.5 To summarize, biblical and church traditions influence Christian healing, and Christians generally experience religious healing on a continuum with miraculous and corporal intervention on one end to a holistic sense of peace and restoration in the self and in community on the other. Latino/​a Christians fit into these patterns like most other Christians, but they also bring their own unique historical and cultural contexts to bear. Historical and colonial links to Latin American Catholicism, European metaphysical and esoteric movements, indigenous healing traditions, and African influences have had an enormous impact on the development of various Latino/​a religious healing modalities. Since the dawn of Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century and the spread of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, more and more Latinos/​as are also finding healing through ecstatic and spirit-​filled forms of Christian worship. In what follows, while remaining attentive to general forms of Christian healing, the focus is on expressions of healing that have emerged uniquely from Latino/​a historical and contemporary realities. The chapter begins with an examination of Latino/​a Catholic healing and then turns to a variety of Latino/​a health ways that overlap significantly with Catholicism. Attention is paid to the historical development of these modalities, their relationship to Catholicism, their practices and assumptions, and the role they play in constructing and maintaining Latino/​a ethnic identity. The chapter then moves to Protestant Latino/​a healing, particularly the spirit-​filled and thaumaturgic cures espoused by Pentecostal and charismatic Christians. The chapter concludes with a discussion of issues in the study of Latino/​a Christian healing.

Latino/​a Catholic Healing Although survey data are not unanimous, around 70 percent of the more than 50 million Latinos/​as in the United States self-​identify as Catholic.6 Many of these people embrace Latino/​a Catholic devotional practices as part of their overall healthfulness. A hallmark of Latino/​a Catholic healing is devotion to the saints, including the Virgin Mary. According to Catholic doctrine, the saints’ vantage point in heaven affords them the opportunity to intercede with God on supplicants’ behalf. Traditionally, certain saints have been especially linked to healing and are popular among many Latino/​a Catholic devotees. For example, St. Jude (San Judas) is the patron of lost causes and a frequent recipient of prayers for healing. On February 2, Catholics celebrate the feast of Candlemas, which commemorates the presentation of the baby Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem. The following day is the feast of San Blas, a sainted doctor whom many Latinos/​as call on to relieve ailments of the throat. Typically, on either Candlemas or

Latinos/as, Healing, and Christianity    227 February 3, Latinos/​as Catholics will gather to hear the Mass and have their throats blessed against sickness; the presider holds a pair of crossed candles to the neck of supplicants and prays for their wellness. It is also common to present baby dolls at this feast to obtain health and blessings for the children in one’s family. The Christ child in the persona of the Santo Niño de Atocha is likewise a popular saint-​like figure to whom many Latinos/​as, especially Mexican Americans, pray for healing and protection from harm. Finally, Mary stands out as perhaps the most prominent caretaker and healer for many Latino/​a Catholics. It is common for devotees to make a promesa, or manda, to Mary, a pledge to complete some act of devotion to her such as a pilgrimage or series of prayers upon her fulfillment of one’s request. The Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe is easily the most recognizable form of Mary, but she also appears in other forms that are popular among Latinos/​as depending on their national heritage. For example, Our Lady of Charity is the patron of Cuba, Our Lady of Altagracia is important for Dominicans, and the Virgin of Chiquinquirá is popular among Colombians. Yet saints that the Catholic Church recognizes are not the only holy figures to provide healing in Latino/​a communities. So-​called folk saints are common recipients of devotion, especially in the US-​Mexico border region, where these holy figures have proliferated. Folk saints, unlike their counterparts within the official Catholic fold, are not canonized, did not necessarily live exemplary lives, and often wield a self-​contained power that far surpasses mere intercession with God. Moreover, many of the most popular folk saints were powerful healers in life and often amplify their medicinal knowledge and unique talents as folk saints. Juan Soldado and Jesús Malverde are two examples of such saints. Juan Soldado was a Mexican soldier who was convicted of rape and then murdered but has become venerated as a powerful saint by followers who hold that he was unjustly accused. Another complex figure is Jesús Malverde, a legendary borderlands criminal who stole from the rich to give to the poor. He is often invoked today by border crossers, including narcotics traffickers. Powerful healers who have been venerated as folk saints include Teresa Urrea, Don Pedrito Jaramillo, and El Niño Fidencio.7 Material objects and artistic expression often accompany Latino/​a Catholic devotion to saints, official and folk. This is especially the case when it comes to prayers and pleas for healing. At many healing shrines and chapels frequented by Latinos/​as, petitioners may leave ex votos in offering to saints in fulfillment of a devotional promise. These ex votos can be as simple as a message written on a piece of paper or as elaborate as a painted placard that depicts the saint, the petitioner, and other details relating to the requested healing. In other cases, devotees leave milagros, small tin effigies of body parts. Other devotional offerings related to healing are photographs of the sick who are either seeking a cure or giving thanks for one. Likewise, those who have experienced dramatic healing may also leave offerings of crutches, braces, and other medical equipment that is no longer needed. For instance, a heart milagro may indicate a prayer for a heart condition or a broken heart while a tin arm may represent a need for healing in the arm or for strength. At some shrines, it is not uncommon to see thousands of milagros left on and around a statue or image of Mary or another powerful saint.8 In the

228   Brett Hendrickson Southwest, historically Latino/​a Catholic church buildings often feature unique artwork that highlights Latino/​a devotions. Examples include santos, bultos, and retablos. Santos are folk paintings of Jesus, Mary, the saints, and other religious scenes used to decorate worship spaces and to focus devotion. Bultos are three-​dimensional, painted, wooden statues of similar subject matter, and retablos are altarpieces and screens made to adorn the altars and apses of churches with figures typical of Latino/​a devotion.9 Pilgrimage is an ancient practice of Christian healing that continues to hold importance for many Latinos/​as today. In medieval Europe, Christians would travel from their homes to well-​known churches and shrines to worship, to enjoy the fellowship of pilgrims on the road, and to petition God for healing of various maladies. This healing was often mediated through relics, remnants of a saint’s body or accoutrements, which were thought to contain and focus God’s power.10 One of the largest and most important Catholic pilgrimages in the United States is to the Santuario de Chimayó, a small, adobe church in northern New Mexico. Although the Santuario houses no relics, the church is unique for a small hole in the floor of a side chapel. Pilgrims and others come to gather dirt from this hole due to its purported miraculous and healing properties. Devotees rub the dirt on the part of their body in need of healing, and use the dirt to focus their prayers. After World War II, a Good Friday pilgrimage to the Santuario grew in popularity, and now it is common for over thirty thousand pilgrims to walk for miles through New Mexico’s high desert terrain to the Santuario to arrive at the church on Good Friday. Hundreds of thousands of others come to the church at other points throughout the year to gather the miraculous dirt and to make petitions to the Santo Niño de Atocha, an image of the Christ child prominently featured at the Santuario.11 The pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayó is likely the largest Latino/​a pilgrimage, but Latino/​a pilgrims also journey to other holy sites, including the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the north of Mexico City as well as to the Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine located in a suburb of Chicago.12

Curanderismo Many Latinos/​as participate to some extent in a wide variety of religious and folk healing traditions that originated in Latin America in concert with Catholicism. The Spanish word for “healer” is “curandera/​curandero,” and therefore, these folk healing traditions are generally referred to as “curanderismo.” In the United States, curanderos/​ as practice their healing arts in many Latino/​a communities, and their shops, variously called “yerberías” or “botánicas,” dot many urban landscapes. Moreover, Latino/​ a home remedies as well as folk etiologies for many illnesses can also be considered part of curanderismo. While curanderos/​as are by no means official partners of the Catholic Church, their methods as well as their baseline assumptions about the health of the human person often overlap considerably with Catholic teaching and draw heavily on Catholic prayers and rituals.

Latinos/as, Healing, and Christianity    229 Curanderismo resulted in part from the cultural contact and violence of Iberian colonialism. At the time of the conquest, European health care was in no way more advanced than that of the indigenous people of the Americas. Iberian medicine, influenced both by Christian and Muslim populations, often attributed disease to God’s providence and punishment. Iberian Catholics often understood that sicknesses were transmitted by contact with unsavory smells or the sight of certain objects or people. Preventative medicine included the use of amulets to ward off the evil and eye and other such contagions. In addition to prayer to the God and the saints, treatments involved restoring balance in the body’s humors.13 Given the Europeans’ ignorance of the herbal and natural remedies native to the American continent, indigenous health ways were able to have a considerable effect on emerging Latin American societies. This was especially important in the context of disease and mass death that accompanied European colonization. Indigenous medical knowledge of American herbal remedies and other materia medica combined with Iberian Catholic notions of illness and recovery. In practice, this often meant that priests and monks with medical training (or at least an interest in medicine) would administer remedies to patients in a religious context that included intercession to the appropriate saints as well as an obvert linking of confession, penance, and divine judgment with the experience of sickness. A well-​known example of this kind of combinatory religious and indigenous healing is the work of a Jesuit named Juan de Esteyneffer who was active in northern New Spain at the opening of the eighteenth century. Able to communicate in various indigenous languages, in 1711, he collected and published a compendium of diseases and their treatments in an influential text known as the Florilegio Medicinal, or “Medical Anthology.” Esteyneffer’s treatments typically prescribe some herb-​or mineral-​based medicine combined with an admonishment to pray to a particular saint for healing.14 The Florilegio remained one of the most important and well-​ circulated popular medical books in Mexico and the southwestern United States even into the twentieth century.15 The documentary record privileges the work of people like Juan de Esteyneffer, representatives of the colonial powers who were able to leave written texts. However, it would be incorrect to assume that, during the colonial period, only people like him were practicing medicine. Indeed, Esteyneffer’s own writing draws on the knowledge of the indigenous and mestizo people he served in northern New Spain. What we know about Mesoamerican indigenous medicine is gleaned from two main sources: codices and ethnographic research with contemporary people. Both of these sources have limitations. The codices were compiled and written by Spanish religious and therefore are inevitably colored by their prejudices and interpretations. The ethnographic research is likewise filtered through the researcher and must attempt to account for change in practice over centuries of colonial experience. Nonetheless, important work has been done to compile and understand Mesoamerican health ways. Mexican historian Alfredo López Austin carried out an exhaustive study of the ideologies related to the human body in central Mexico. Among many other findings, López Austin notes the importance of what he calls an “animistic entity” known as the tonalli. The tonalli, which is an animating and integrating force, can depart from the body in ways that lead to illness

230   Brett Hendrickson and even death.16 Contemporary understandings of the soul among many Mexicans and Mexican Americans follow this pattern and hold that illness can be caused when a fright or trauma causes the soul to leave the body. Ultimately, it is impossible to trace with precision the ways in which indigenous knowledge have influenced contemporary Latino/​ a healing, but we can be certain that these American health ways continue to express themselves in the religious and folk medicines of Latino/​a people. As mentioned, the historical record would seem to suggest that missionary clergy and indigenous doctors were the primary medical practitioners in the colonial period, but we must assume, even without clear documentation, that much healing occurred in family and community settings. The healers that work in these contexts have long been known as curanderas and curanderos. Their work was especially important in the remote northern parts of the Spanish empire, where medical and religious professionals were rare at best. The general lack of both doctors and priests meant that going to the curandero/​a for healing constituted an integrated opportunity to treat physical, social, and religious needs. After northern Mexico was annexed following the US-​Mexico War (1846–​1848), curanderos/​as served communities throughout the new border region. By the twentieth-​ century, economic conditions and segregation of Mexican Americans often meant that cities and towns in the West and Southwest were divided by ethnicity. Residents of the Mexican barrios often had little or no access to medical care in clinics and hospitals and therefore had little choice but to continue to rely on curanderismo. In addition to addressing the injuries, illnesses, and conditions known to biomedical science, curanderos/​as also treated a variety of maladies that anthropologists have called “Mexican illnesses.” Anglo scholars maintained that these illnesses, which include empacho, mal de ojo, and susto, were psychosomatic reflections and distillations of Mexican American cultural assumptions about the body.17 Visiting the curandero/​a for treatment also presented an occasion for ill Mexican Americans to interact positively with a restorative part of their own ethnic community over and against the anomie that resulted from racial prejudice and lack of economic opportunity.18 The anthropologist Octavio Romano V. documented that curanderos/​as typically operate on a continuum of care. At the most basic end of this continuum are the household healers—​usually women—​such as sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers who are the custodians of home remedies and prayers. Although these people may not identify themselves as curanderas, they are the point of departure within this healing system. The next levels radiate out from the household to neighborhood, city, and regional curanderos/​as, who, successively, are able to treat conditions that are more serious. The higher up the continuum one goes, the more likely it is that curanderismo is the sole profession of the healer. The intrinsic power of curanderos/​as likewise increases when healing becomes their sole profession. In other words, the few professional curanderos/​ as both have more knowledge than household healers and have been recognized for their unique gifts as healers. The final stages of the typology include the care of well-​known folk saints. Significantly, Romano ends his continuum with officially canonized saints of the Catholic Church as the highest form of curandero/​a. The implicit argument is that saints’ miraculous healing of the sick through intercession with God is consistent with

Latinos/as, Healing, and Christianity    231 all other levels of curanderismo all the way down to a grandmother’s home remedies and prayers for her sick family members. Such a typology can help scholars think about different modes of curanderismo but can also obscure that which does not fit neatly in the typology. For example, even though Romano places folk and official saints at one end of his continuum, saints are by no means a last resort for healing but rather form part of curanderismo at every level.19 Indeed, folk saints have long been important objects of devotion for many Latino/​ a Catholics, especially in the US-​Mexico border region, and as indicated earlier, they are often known as powerful healers. While not all folk saints start out as healers, it is common for powerful curanderos/​as to gain this status both during and after their lives.20 For example, during her tumultuous life, Teresa Urrea (1873–​1906) came to be known as the Santa de Cabora after the location of her father’s ranch in Sonora, Mexico. She attracted thousands to Cabora, where she miraculously healed with the touch of her hands in combination with typical folk remedies. Her fame eventually led to negative attention from the regime of Porfirio Díaz, and she was exiled to the United States, where she continued to heal both Mexicans and Anglos until her death.21 Another well-​ known curandero turned folk saint was Don Pedrito Jaramillo (d. 1907), who was active in the Río Grande Valley of Texas. Recognized principally for his water-​based cures and other creative therapies, Jaramillo, like Urrea, attributed his power to heal to God. Since his death, Don Pedrito has maintained a following among healers who pray to him for his intercession and even channel his spirit.22 Perhaps the most celebrated folk saint healer of the border region is El Niño Fidencio. Fidencio Constantino Síntora was a house servant on a ranch in Nuevo León who also worked as a curandero. Famous for his quirky personality, elaborate costumes, and ritualized healing, he attracted many followers during his life. After his death in 1938, his followers have formed parachurch-​like organizations where spirit mediums, known as materias or cajitas, are possessed by Fidencio and continue his healing ministrations to thousands on both sides of the border. These fidencistas have developed a rich liturgical tradition, similar in some ways to the Catholic Mass as well as set celebrations throughout the year based on events in El Niño’s life. Although many of these practices occur in Nuevo León, fidencismo is growing in popularity and prominence in many parts of the United States, with particularly important followings in Texas.23 Curanderismo is not only a Mexican and Mexican American tradition but exists in variations across Latin America. Latinos/​as with Caribbean as well as Central and South American heritage, like their Mexican American counterparts, have brought their religious healing traditions with them to the United States. The centrality of popular Catholic devotion to saints both official and folk is commonplace. For instance, Guatemalans have brought their devotion to San Simón, also known as Maximón, to the United States, where he continues to grant favors and heal the sick.24 Caribbean Latinos/​as also practice curanderismo, one that is infused with African pantheons and herbal remedies. As discussed in more detail later, Caribbean curanderismo overlaps considerably with several African-​descended religious and healing traditions.

232   Brett Hendrickson For most practitioners and patients, curanderismo operates as an integrated part of their Catholic identity. In this sense, going to a curandera for treatment, an act that likely includes prayer, as well as other metaphysical assumptions about the body and its well-​ being, is congruent with a Catholic worldview. Nonetheless, sometimes tensions have developed between practitioners and Catholic officials. In the colonial period, there are many examples of friars and priests condemning curanderismo as witchcraft. For instance, an eighteenth-​century priest stationed in Abiquiu, New Mexico, implicated curanderas in the town in witchcraft and went so far as to carry out a series of inquisitorial trials against several healers.25 In the contemporary context, priests may continue to associate curanderismo with practices inimical to Catholicism, such as devotion to non-​Christian beings or the misattribution of God’s power to saints.26 Other priests, however, recognize that curanderismo is an important ethnic and spiritual practice that helps their parishioners maintain wellness. Some curanderos/​as and their clientele, albeit a minority, have begun to treat curanderismo as a stand-​alone religious tradition separate from Catholicism. In these cases, it is usual for participants to focus on the reclamation of pre-​Hispanic religious narratives and deities as the source of a holistic approach to life.27 While curanderos/​as have mostly treated a Latino/​a clientele in the United States, they have had a small but significant role in healing people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In recent decades, some curanderos/​as have integrated with other complementary and alternative medicines and metaphysically oriented healing traditions. This blending has made curanderismo more available to non-​Latinos/​as than ever before. For example, it is not uncommon in the United States for curanderos/​as, in addition to their own traditional practices, to incorporate other therapies such as Reiki, yoga, and acupuncture into a holistic and inclusive approach to healing.28 The opposite is also true: an acupuncturist may also offer an egg-​cleansing (limpia) or soul retrieval ceremony reminiscent of curanderismo.29

Other Latino/​a Healing Traditions Influenced by Christianity In the colonial and commercial milieu of the Atlantic world, Christianity has been a constant influence on Latin American religious expression, even that which diverges in significant ways from Christian belief and practice. Curanderismo is perhaps the most obvious example of how Christian prayers and rituals can entwine with other sources of medicinal and therapeutic knowledge, but it is not the only instance of this kind of combination. (It is worthwhile noting that neither curanderismo nor any other religious healing practice is held in isolation from others; rather, they often overlap.) Christianity lends a number of features to other Latin American religious traditions, including the powerful personages of saints, conceptions of the soul or spirit as an aspect of the

Latinos/as, Healing, and Christianity    233 human being that persists after bodily death, and the material trappings of priesthood. The particularities of colonial experience across Latin America have affected how Christianity has shaped other religious healing practices. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Caribbean region and Brazil received large numbers of enslaved Africans, often in proportions that far outnumbered European and European-​descended inhabitants. This context made it possible for several western and central African religious traditions to flourish, at least in part, alongside the Catholicism of the Iberian colonizers. Several Afro-​Latino religions formed with relatively similar characteristics in this crucible of slavery, Catholicism, and African traditions, including Lucumí (also known as Santería) and Palo Monte in Cuba, the Veintiuna Divisiones in the Dominican Republic, Vodou in Haiti, and Candomblé and Umbanda in Brazil. In these religions, an African pantheon of powerful but sometimes capricious deities interact with practitioners through rituals that often include dance, drumming, sacrifices of plants and animals, possession trances, and divination. The African divinities were typically matched with Catholic saints both to hide the African religious practices from the ecclesiastical and political authorities and to enhance and commingle the powers of Christian saints and African gods. In many cases, practitioners of these religions self-​identify as Catholics as well as followers of, for instance, Lucumí, and do not make precise differentiations between Catholic saints and African deities. In other cases, devotees have begun to distinguish African-​origin traditions from Christianity as a form of anticolonial reclamation of African identity.30 These religious traditions have found expression in the United States, primarily with Caribbean immigrants and their descendants but also with non-​Latino/​a converts.31 Afro-​Latino religions are important sources of healing for many practitioners. At times, prayers made for healing in these religions are similar or identical to those made to the saints by other Latino/​a Catholics. In other cases, rituals in search of healing depart considerably from Catholic patterns. For example, in Lucumí, the African deities, known as orichas, can help restore the sick to wellness. The oricha most associated with medicine and healing is Babalú-​Ayé, who is matched with the Catholic San Lázaro (St. Lazarus). In this case, the biblical image of Lázaro as a poor beggar covered with sores but yet the recipient of God’s power to redeem and heal interacts suggestively with the oricha, Babalú-​Ayé, to bring healing and restoration to the faithful.32 Another Latino/​a healing tradition is espiritualismo. Espiritualismo, although not explicitly Christian, developed in a Latin American context and draws on curanderismo, folk Catholicism, and a Euro-​American fascination with séances. In espiritualista temples, there is a hierarchical leadership structure with a guía, “guide,” overseeing a large group of mediums known as materias. The materias have a variety of roles. In the first case, they channel the spirits of the dead, including Catholic saints and prominent historical figures, to impart lessons to the community. In the second case, the materias meet one on one with health seekers—​who may or may not be regular members of the temple. In these encounters, the medium channels a healing spirit, who then provides information regarding a potential cure. The materia also carries out a blessing of the sick person and rubs his or her hands lightly up and down the body in a manner reminiscent

234   Brett Hendrickson of the way a curandero/​a would treat a patient.33 The medical advice that materias give to their patients is not the only healing that occurs at espiritualista temples. Anthropologists who have studied espiritualistas in Mexico and the United States have found that the materias themselves, during trance possession, experience a pleasant and therapeutic sense of joy and communion with the sacred. Moreover, the community that is forged among the mediums creates healthy social networks of mutual care.34

Latino/​a Pentecostalism and Healing Arguably, the most important shift in Latino/​a Christianity over the course of the last one hundred years has been the growth and proliferation of Protestantism—​especially Pentecostalism—​in Latino/​a communities. Surveys done shortly after the turn of the century demonstrated that nearly 25 percent of Latinos/​as were Protestants. A resounding 85 percent of Latino/​a Protestants identified as “Evangelical and Born-​ Again,” which included charismatic and Pentecostal Christians. The main reason that the ratio of Latino/​a Pentecostals and Evangelicals to Catholics is not even higher than this in the United States is because of ongoing Catholic immigration, particularly from Mexico. The factors behind this shift are multiple and include “aggressive proselytism, indigenous clergy, churches, liturgy, prayer groups, increased pastoral and lay leadership opportunities, church planting, healing, and greater roles for women in ministry.”35 Other scholars emphasize the role that healing has played in the astronomic growth of Pentecostalism. For instance, religious studies scholar Candy Gunther Brown writes, “Pentecostalism attracts adherents primarily through its characteristic healing practices.”36 Pentecostal healing functions within the general contours of Pentecostal assumptions about how the Christian God enters into adherents’ lives. Pentecostal Christians believe that the third person of the Christian trinity, the Holy Spirit, showers spiritual gifts onto Christians, especially during enthusiastic worship services. In the context of Pentecostal worship, which generally includes singing, movement, and lively exhortation, people receive what they consider supernatural intervention in their bodies. One form this takes is glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. But, as Brown and others have argued, divine healing is an even more important and attractive gift of the Spirit. In divine healing, a person is blessed with the power to channel God’s healing power, often through the laying on of hands. The sick and suffering pray together with the healer for a miraculous cure, which is often experienced on the spot.37 Latinos/​as have been involved with Pentecostalism since its genesis in the early twentieth century. The famous revival at Azusa Street in Los Angeles included Latino/​a participants, some of whom would go on to lead their own Pentecostal congregations in both the United States and Mexico. For example, evangelists Abundio and Rosa López and Adolfo C. Valdez were present at Azusa Street and eventually spread the Pentecostal message to various continents.38

Latinos/as, Healing, and Christianity    235 One of the best-​known healers within and beyond Latino/​a Pentecostalism was Francisco Olazábal (1886–​1937), a native of Sinaloa, Mexico. Beginning his ministry in the United States as a Methodist, he soon converted to Pentecostalism and gained success as a healer in California. His achievements there eventually propelled him to Chicago and later New York. His evangelistic and healing campaigns among Puerto Ricans in the 1930s attracted thousands. Historian Gastón Espinosa writes that Olazábal and his followers proclaimed that “hundreds of people were healed of blindness, tuberculosis, deformity, tumors, heart conditions, rheumatism, deafness, and many other ailments and diseases” during this time period.39 This success soon attracted a non-​Latino/​a audience, and Olazábal’s healing ministry extended to Anglo and African American communities in New York. In addition to the miraculous healing of bodily afflictions, Pentecostalism in Latino/​ a communities has also sometimes aspired to heal social ills. In her study of Latino/​ a Pentecostalism, historian Arlene Sánchez Walsh profiles the ministry of Victory Outreach, a Latino/​a-​conceived and operated Pentecostal ministry to help urban young people to leave drug addiction and gang life. Victory Outreach’s founder, Sonny Arguinzoni, reoriented Pentecostal community outreach to appeal to troubled youth who needed to find a new direction and community. Through support groups and rehabilitation facilities, Victory Outreach—​in their assessment—​helped to bring God’s healing to individuals, families, and communities. In so doing, it recasts Pentecostal healing as a holistic balm for troubled Latino/​a youth. “Physical healing within Victory Outreach not only means the healing of chronic illnesses, diseases, drug addictions, and other ailments, but there are dozens of reports of spiritual ‘deliverance’ from behaviors that the church views as ‘ungodly,’ such as drug use, drinking and illicit sexual behavior.”40 Charismatic Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century continued to be important for many Latinos/​as a source of healing. The “Word of Faith” movement, which has evolved and proliferated in Latino/​a Pentecostal communities, maintains that God gives what one asks for in faith, on the first request, without fail. The believer must merely embrace the gift. Many Latino/​a Pentecostals have found the certainty of the Word of Faith message to be liberating and reliable in a world full of suffering.41 Outside the bounds of Protestantism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal has also attracted Latinos/​as. The typical emphasis on healing found in non-​Catholic forms of Pentecostalism mixes easily with the long-​standing traditions of anointing with oil, laying on of hands, and the intercession of the saints in the charismatic wing of the Catholic Church.42 Survey research suggests that at least a quarter of all Latino/​a Catholics are charismatic, and it is reasonable to speculate that this percentage will continue to grow on pace with the increase in Latino/​a Pentecostalism.43

Conclusion/​Summary Healing has been an intrinsic part of Christianity from its inception.44 Therefore, it is little wonder that Latinos/​as have likewise relied on the healing power of the Christian

236   Brett Hendrickson God and God’s representatives to treat their suffering, cure their diseases, and to restore wholeness to broken bodies and relationships. The particularities of the Latino/​a experience have shaped how this healing takes form. Spanish colonization and evangelization of indigenous populations, and the accompanying brutality and dislocation, necessitated a faith that included healing. A medicinal and religious tradition developed that drew as much on Iberian Catholicism as it did on indigenous medicines and understandings of the human body. Curanderismo and other combinatory healing practices have creatively and effectively addressed the health needs of many Latin Americans and Latinos/​as. The expansion and imperialism of the United States into the West and the Caribbean created new challenges for Latinos/​as that often required the balms, rituals, and comforts of a religion that included healing power. In the last century, charismatic forms of Christianity have grown rapidly in Latino/​a communities, often because they specialize in miraculous healing. Clearly, religious healing has been and promises to remain an essential element of Latino/​a Christianities. There are many opportunities for future study in this area. As the Latino/​a population continues to grow and diversity, it will be important to understand better how religious healing traditions from different national origins come to interact and even combine in the United States. For instance, will curanderismo in the Southwest incorporate Lucumí insights and rituals? Another topic that requires more attention is how Latino/​a Catholics are influencing the position of healing within the US Catholic Church. Additionally, Latino/​a healing remains little integrated into the research related to health outcomes and effectiveness of complementary and alternative medicine. Likewise, more research is required concerning how Latinos/​as combine traditional healing with biomedical health care. Finally, more attention can be paid to how Latino/​a religious practices such as healing are having an impact on non-​Latino/​ a communities in the United States. Latino/​a Christians—​and those influenced by Christianity—​have many rich healing traditions that will continue to support the holistic wellness of millions of people.

Notes 1. James 5:14–​16 NRSV. 2. Lizette Larson-​Miller, “‘Healed to Life’: The Historical Development of Anointing of the Sick at the Heart of the Church’s Healing Ministry,” Liturgy 22, no. 3 (May 7, 2007): 3–​12. 3. Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 21–​22. 4. Romans 8:6. 5. A typology of religious healing that includes the models for this continuum is found in Martin E. Marty, “Religion and Healing: The Four Expectations,” in Religion and Healing in America, eds. Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 487–​504. 6. Paul Perl, Jennifer Z. Greely, and Mark M. Gray, “What Proportion of Adult Hispanics Are Catholic? A Review of Survey Data and Methodology,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45, no. 3 (September 1, 2006): 419–​436. 7. James S. Griffith, Folk Saints of the Borderlands: Victims, Bandits & Healers (Tucson, AZ: Rio Nuevo, 2003); Frank Graziano, Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America

Latinos/as, Healing, and Christianity    237 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Paul J. Vanderwood, Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). 8. Eileen Oktavec, Answered Prayers: Miracles and Milagros along the Border (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995). 9. Charles Carrillo and Thomas J. Steele, A Century of Retablos: The Dennis & Janis Lyon Collection of New Mexican Santos, 1780–​1880 (Phoenix, AZ: Hudson Hills, 2007). 10. Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978); Robert A. Scott, Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimage, and the Healing Power of Belief (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 11. Stephen F. De Borhegyi and E. Boyd, El Santuario de Chimayo, reprint ed. (Santa Fe, NM: Ancient City Press, 1982); Brett Hendrickson, The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayó: America’s Miraculous Church (New York: New York University Press, 2017); Juan Javier Pescador, Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009). 12. Elaine Peña, Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 13. Justin K. Stearns, Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), esp. ch. 4. See also Luis García-​Ballester, Medicine in a Multicultural Society: Christian, Jewish and Muslim Practitioners in the Spanish Kingdoms, 1222–​1610 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001). 14. Juan de Esteyneffer, Florilegio Medicinal, ed. María del Carmen, Anzures y Bolaños (Mexico City: Academia Nacional de Medicina, 1712). 15. Esteyneffer, Florilegio Medicinal, 31–​32; Margarita Artschwager Kay, “The Florilegio Medicinal: Source of Southwest Ethnomedicine,” Ethnohistory 24, no. 3 (1977): 251–​259. 16. Alfredo López Austin, The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, trans. Thelma Ortiz de Montellano and Bernard Ortiz de Montellano (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), 221–​228. 17. For examples of this stance, see Arthur J. Rubel, “Concepts of Disease in Mexican-​ American Culture,” American Anthropologist 62, no. 5 (1960): 795–​ 814; Margarita Artschwager Kay, “Health and Illness in a Mexican American Barrio,” in Ethnic Medicine in the Southwest, ed. Edward Spicer (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), 99–​166. 18. Ari Kiev, Curanderismo: Mexican-​American Folk Psychiatry (New York: Free Press, 1968), 19. 19. Octavio Ignacio Romano V., “Charismatic Medicine, Folk-​Healing, and Folk-​Sainthood,” American Anthropologist 67, no. 5 (1965): 1154. 20. Griffith, Folk Saints of the Borderlands. 21. Mario Gill, “Teresa Urrea, La Santa de Cabora,” Historia Mexicana 6 (1957): 626–​644; Frank Bishop Putnam, “Teresa Urrea, ‘the Saint of Cabora,’” Southern California Quarterly 45 (1963): 245–​264; Jennifer Koshatka Seman, “Laying-​on Hands: Santa Teresa Urrea’s Curanderismo as Medicine and Refuge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Studies in Religion 47, no. 2 (2018): 178–​200. 22. Ruth Dodson, Don Pedrito Jaramillo, “Curandero” (San Antonio, TX: Casa Editorial Lozano, 1934). 23. Dore Gardner and Kay Turner, Niño Fidencio: A Heart Thrown Open (Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1992); Antonio N. Zavaleta, “El Niño Fidencio and

238   Brett Hendrickson Fidencistas,” in Sects, Cults, and Spiritual Communities: A Sociological Analysis, ed. William W. Zellner (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 95–​115. 24. Sylvie Pédron Colombani, “The Journey of San Simón from Guatemala to the United States: Processes of Reappropriation of a Popular Saint of Guatemala,” ed. Angela Renée de la Torres Castellanos, María Cristina del Refugio Gutiérrez, and Nahayeilli Juárez-​Huet, New Age in Latin America (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 197–​216. 25. Malcolm Ebright and Rick Hendricks, The Witches of Abiquiu: The Governor, the Priest, the Genízaro Indians, and the Devil (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 108, 140. 26. A recent example has to do with official Catholic responses to Santa Muerte. For instance, see Stephen Woodman, “Mexican Church Seizes on St. Jude to Counter Santa Muerte Cult,” National Catholic Reporter, October 28, 2017, https://​www.ncronl​ine.org/​news/​spiri​ tual​ity/​mexi​can-​chu​rch-​sei​zes-​st-​jude-​coun​ter-​santa-​mue​rte-​cult. 27. An example of this is Elena Avila and Joy Parker, Woman Who Glows in the Dark: A Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health (New York: J.P. Tarcher/​Putnam, 1999). 28. Brett Hendrickson, Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American Curanderismo (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 131–​134. 29. Kalyn Raphael, Shamanic Egg Cleansings (Peyton, CO: Lightwurks LLC, 2003). 30. The literature on Afro-​Latino religions is large and growing. Examples include Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-​Gebert, Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2011); Brian W. McNeill et al., “Santería and the Healing Process in Cuba and the United States,” in Latina/​o Healing Practices: Mestizo and Indigenous Perspectives, ed. Brian W. McNeill and Joseph M. Cervantes (New York: Routledge, 2008), 63–​79; Aisha M. Beliso-​De Jesús, Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 31. C. Lynn Carr, A Year in White: Cultural Newcomers to Lukumi and Santería in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016). 32. Miguel A. De La Torre, Santería: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 70. 33. Hendrickson, Border Medicine, 105–​106. 34. Kaja Finkler, “Non-​Medical Treatments and Their Outcomes, Part 1,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 4 (1980): 271–​310; Silvia Ortiz Echániz, Una religiosidad popular: el Espiritualismo Trinitario Mariano (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1990). 35. Gastón Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda, “Hispanic Churches in American Public Life: Summary of Findings” (Notre Dame, IN: Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2003), 14–​16. 36. Candy Gunther Brown, ed., Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8. 37. Joseph W. Williams, Spirit Cure: A History of Pentecostal Healing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 38. Gastón Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 22–​24.

Latinos/as, Healing, and Christianity    239 39. Gastón Espinosa, “El Azteca: Francisco Olazabal and Latino Pentecostal Charisma, Power, and Faith Healing in the Borderlands,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67, no. 3 (September 1, 1999): 605. 40. Arlene M. Sánchez Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 105. 41. Arlene Sánchez Walsh, “Santidad, Salvación, Sanidad, Liberación: The Word of Faith Movement among Twenty-​First-​Century Latina/​o Pentecostals,” in Global Pentecostalism and Charismatic Healing, ed. Candy Gunther Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 151–​185. 42. Timothy M. Matovina, Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 101–​103. 43. Espinosa, Elizondo, and Miranda, “Hispanic Churches in American Public Life,” 15. 44. Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity; Gary B. Ferngren, Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

Bibliography Avila, Elena, and Joy Parker. Woman Who Glows in the Dark: A Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health. New York: J.P. Tarcher/​Putnam, 1999. Carr, C. Lynn. A Year in White: Cultural Newcomers to Lukumi and Santería in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Carrillo, Charles, and Thomas J. Steele. A Century of Retablos: The Dennis & Janis Lyon Collection of New Mexican Santos, 1780–​1880. Phoenix, AZ: Hudson Hills, 2007. De Borhegyi, Stephen F., and E. Boyd. El Santuario de Chimayo. Reprint ed. Santa Fe, NM: Ancient City Press, 1982. De Esteyneffer, Juan. Florilegio Medicinal. Edited by María del Carmen. Anzures y Bolaños. Mexico City: Academia Nacional de Medicina, 1712. De La Torre, Miguel A. Santería: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004. Dodson, Ruth. Don Pedrito Jaramillo, “Curandero.” San Antonio, TX: Casa Editorial Lozano, 1934. Ebright, Malcolm, and Rick Hendricks. The Witches of Abiquiu: The Governor, the Priest, the Genízaro Indians, and the Devil. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Espinosa, Gastón. “El Azteca: Francisco Olazabal and Latino Pentecostal Charisma, Power, and Faith Healing in the Borderlands.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67, no. 3 (September 1, 1999): 605. Espinosa, Gastón. Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Espinosa, Gastón, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda. Hispanic Churches in American Public Life: Summary of Findings. Notre Dame, IN: Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2003. Ferngren, Gary B. Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Finkler, Kaja. “Non-​Medical Treatments and Their Outcomes, Part 1.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 4 (1980): 271–​310.

240   Brett Hendrickson García-​Ballester, Luis. Medicine in a Multicultural Society: Christian, Jewish and Muslim Practitioners in the Spanish Kingdoms, 1222–​1610. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001. Gardner, Dore, and Kay Turner. Niño Fidencio: A Heart Thrown Open. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1992. Gill, Mario. “Teresa Urrea, La Santa de Cabora.” Historia Mexicana 6 (1957): 626–​644. Graziano, Frank. Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Griffith, James S. Folk Saints of the Borderlands: Victims, Bandits & Healers. Tucson, AZ: Rio Nuevo, 2003. Gunther Brown, Candy, ed. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Hendrickson, Brett. Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American Curanderismo. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Hendrickson, Brett. The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayó: America’s Miraculous Church. New York: New York University Press, 2017. Kiev, Ari. Curanderismo: Mexican-​American Folk Psychiatry. New York: Free Press, 1968. Larson-​Miller, Lizette. “‘Healed to Life’: The Historical Development of Anointing of the Sick at the Heart of the Church’s Healing Ministry.” Liturgy 22, no. 3 (May 7, 2007): 3–​12. López Austin, Alfredo. The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas. Translated by Thelma Ortiz de Montellano and Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, 221–​228. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988. Margarita Artschwager, Kay. “The Florilegio Medicinal: Source of Southwest Ethnomedicine.” Ethnohistory 24, no. 3 (1977): 251–​259. Margarita Artschwager, Kay. “Health and Illness in a Mexican American Barrio.” In Ethnic Medicine in the Southwest, edited by Edward Spicer, 99–​166. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977. Marty, Martin E. “Religion and Healing: The Four Expectations.” In Religion and Healing in America, edited by Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered, 487–​504. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Matovina, Timothy M. Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. McNeill, Brian, and Joseph M. Cervantes, eds. Latina/​o Healing Practices: Mestizo and Indigenous Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2008. Murphy, Joseph M. Botánicas: Sacred Spaces of Healing and Devotion in Urban America. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. Oktavec, Eileen. Answered Prayers: Miracles and Milagros along the Border. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Pédron Colombani, Sylvie. “The Journey of San Simón from Guatemala to the United States: Processes of Reappropriation of a Popular Saint of Guatemala.” In New Age in Latin America, edited by Angela Renée de la Torres Castellanos, María Cristina del Refugio Gutiérrez, and Nahayeilli Juárez-​Huet, 197–​216. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Peña, Elaine. Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Perl, Paul, Jennifer Z. Greely, and Mark M. Gray. “What Proportion of Adult Hispanics Are Catholic? A Review of Survey Data and Methodology.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45, no. 3 (September 1, 2006): 419–​436.

Latinos/as, Healing, and Christianity    241 Pescador, Juan Javier. Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Porterfield, Amanda. Healing in the History of Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Putnam, Frank Bishop. “Teresa Urrea, ‘the Saint of Cabora.’” Southern California Quarterly 45 (1963): 245–​264. Raphael, Kalyn. Shamanic Egg Cleansings. Peyton, CO: Lightwurks LLC, 2003. Romano, Octavio Ignacio V. “Charismatic Medicine, Folk-​Healing, and Folk-​Sainthood.” American Anthropologist 67, no. 5 (1965): 1154. Rubel, Arthur J. “Concepts of Disease in Mexican-​American Culture.” American Anthropologist 62, no. 5 (1960): 795–​814. Sánchez Walsh, Arlene. Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Sánchez Walsh, Arlene. “Santidad, Salvación, Sanidad, Liberación: The Word of Faith Movement among Twenty-​First-​Century Latina/​o Pentecostals.” In Global Pentecostalism and Charismatic Healing, edited by Candy Gunther Brown, 151–​185. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Scott, Robert A. Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimage, and the Healing Power of Belief. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Seman, Jennifer Koshatka. “Laying-​on Hands: Santa Teresa Urrea’s Curanderismo as Medicine and Refuge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Studies in Religion 47, no. 2 (2018): 178–​200. Stearns, Justin K. Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Vanderwood, Paul J. Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Williams, Joseph W. Spirit Cure: A History of Pentecostal Healing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Woodman, Stephen. “Mexican Church Seizes on St. Jude to Counter Santa Muerte Cult.” National Catholic Reporter, October 28, 2017. https://​www.ncronline.org/​news/​spirituality/​ mexican-​church-​seizes-​st-​jude-​counter-​santa-​muerte-​cult Zavaleta, Antonio N. “El Niño Fidencio and Fidencistas.” In Sects, Cults, and Spiritual Communities: A Sociological Analysis, edited by William W. Zellner, 95–​115. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Chapter 13

L atina/​o /​x Pi l g ri mag e and Em b odi me nt Daisy Vargas

The traditions of Latina/​o/​x pilgrimage are rooted in indigenous sensibilities and Christian practices that are themselves rooted in indigenous and place-​based ceremonial centers and objects. Pilgrimage, in the traditional sense, refers to the leaving of one’s place of origin to find and locate the transcendent in a foreign place. As historians of religion in Latin America note, walking was the primary “means of travel and movement before the arrival of European draft animals,” and walking was how place was imbued with sacrality and religious meaning.1 Individuals and communities participated in religious experiences and traditions characterized by movement toward places, around places, and within places; they were deliberate and intentional movements of the body, accompanied by other community members, material objects, and historical and ritual memory. The introduction of Roman Catholicism through the colonial project shared similar traditions of pilgrimage and peregrination, and the legacies of these traditions is reflected in the contemporary practices of Latina/​o/​x Catholics in the United States. This chapter presents four ethnographic case studies in Latina/​o/​x pilgrimage—​The Virgin of Guadalupe, El Santo Niño de Atocha, El Señor de los Milagros, San Toribio Romo—​to consider how devotional labor and pilgrimage emphasize the affective bonds in the spaces in between that created assemblages and networks of being and meaning for and by Latinos/​as. The study of pilgrimage among Latinas/​os has focused mostly on pilgrimage as religious migrant movements, and more recently has turned toward examining the movement of the “religious through migrants” and migrant bodies.2 While the practices of Latina/​o/​x devotees are indeed fundamental aspects of Latin American Christianity, scholars such as Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Kathryn Lofton caution against dismissing Latin American theoretical and theological innovations in favor of reducing Latina/​o/​x and Latin American religion purely to the body.3 It is equally important to note that each of these pilgrimages includes pilgrimage objects, devotional labor, ritual burdens, and transnational connections as I emphasize the theme of walking within each of these, with special attention to the connections

Latina/o/x Pilgrimage and Embodiment    243 between the material objects of devotion and the bodies of devotees, and the affective relationships and networks of actors and actants within pilgrimage traditions in Latina/​ o/​x communities.4 Pilgrimage, though itself an embodied religious practice, is augmented with the physical presence and contact of devotional objects on the bodies of devotees—​shoes, andas, saint images, and so on. The body is not only the vehicle for devotional labor but also the locus from which it emerges. With the introduction of Spanish Catholicism throughout the colonial period, indigenous communities labored to understand Christianity within the context of Nahua practices and violent occupation. Material and pilgrimage traditions in Mexican Catholicism reflect these longer historical experiences and indigenous epistemologies. In the Latina/​o/​x devotions to the Virgin Mary and the Christ child, both Iberian and indigenous ritual traditions are reflected in practices of walking, running, and the cradling and carrying of saints as infants.5 While the advancements of modern technologies of travel and communication have created new channels of movement and relocation, the idea of pilgrimage as an embodied form of workshop is still seen, especially in Latina/​ o/​x traditions of pilgrimage. That is, the body becomes both the tool and the recipient of transformation and ritual practice and process. In Latina/​o/​x religious pilgrimage, beliefs tied to preconquest understandings of the metaphysical and material world are present in its Christianities in the ritual practices and practice of its communities and in the ritual postures of the body. The terms to describe communities with Latin American origins are continually shaped and reshaped through emerging negotiations and reinterpretations of these terms. The term Latina/​o/​x is one recent iteration of this discourse, and while this chapter attempts to account for the regional diversity found under the umbrella term of Latinidad, it does not reflect the racial, economic, and geographic diversity of communities categorized as Latina/​o/​x. Historically, Christian pilgrimage devotions were introduced to Latin America by Spanish Catholicism throughout the colonial period. Mapped onto indigenous religious and philosophical beliefs about the natural world, Latin American Christianity is one place where traces of preconquest relationships and encounters with sacred objects and places are still visible. While the number of Latina/​o/​x Protestant communities continues to increase, Latin American Christianity and pilgrimage have been historically Roman Catholic, and they will be the focus of this chapter. Nevertheless, each ethnic Catholic community represented in the chapter struggles with religious issues and racial identity in the United States and accompanying historical and contemporary discourses.

Walking with the Virgin of Guadalupe The scholarship on Latina/​o/​x Christian pilgrimage has largely focused on pilgrimages to the shrine where the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe is believed to have occurred. Spanish clergy carried European traditions of pilgrimage to New Spain, as well

244   Daisy Vargas as a Catholic identity shaped by both the Reconquista and the Counter Reformation. The fifteenth-​century victory of the Catholic Spanish monarchy over Muslim leadership in Spain, as well as the reaffirmation of Catholic traditional practices by the Council of Trent, created a matrix of conversion, devotionalism, and patriotism in Latin America. As with previous periods of Christian missionary work in Europe, Spanish friars succeeded in translating and reinterpreting Christian practices and doctrines to be legible to indigenous communities. This included the recognition and reinscription of indigenous sacred sites, devotional images, and ritual postures as Roman Catholic. As described in the sixteenth-​century accounts of the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun, among these preconquest traditions were pilgrimages to Tenochtitlan (present-​day Mexico City) for the veneration of Aztec deities.6 Preconquest Tenochtitlan and postconquest Mexico City represented Aztec and Iberian imperial power; with the rise of the Guadalupan apparition narrative, it also reaffirmed the sacred geography of the center of Mexico and New Spain. While scholars continue to debate the historical foundations of the Guadalupe myth, the accepted narrative describes the sixteenth-​century encounter between the indigenous neophyte Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin and the Virgin Mary. After a series of unsuccessful attempts in petitioning the first Bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumarraga, to create a church in honor of the apparition, Juan Diego succeeds in convincing Zumarraga when the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe appears imprinted on his tilma (a traditional Nahua shawl-​like garment). Scholars of Mexican religion note the significance of the location of the shrine at Tepeyac, the traditional place of Aztec veneration and pilgrimage to a complex of mother goddesses represented with Tonantzin (Our Mother). By the early seventeenth century, some Catholic missionaries (like Sahagun) debated the Christian motivations of indigenous pilgrims to the Virgin of Guadalupe and accused neophytes of continuing pagan worship to Aztec deities. Others, including Archibishop Alfonso de Montúfar, extolled the value of devotionalism and pilgrimage as important influences for indigenous conversion. For many devotees of the Virgin of Guadalupe, devotion at the Basilica at Tepeyac is located on this historical and cultural continuum of preconquest indigenous religion and Christianity. Mexican Catholic devotional practices are largely centered on the votive offerings and mandas (or promesas) representing an affective relationship between devotees and objects of ritual devotion. More than transactional exchanges of payment for the fulfillment of requests and petitions, in the Mexican Catholic framework, a manda also reflects feelings of regard toward the sacred, including feelings of love, affection, and compulsion. In this sense, when the devotee petitions a saint image and requests intercessions of healing, transformation, safety, and so on, the promise made in fulfillment of the vow involves affective categories and registers of familial obligation and care. Popular mandas include vows for the construction and maintenance of shrines, the painting of commemorative ex-​votos, as well as pilgrimages to major shrines. Pilgrimage traditions within Roman Catholicism, as they are infused in the indigenous heritage in Mexico, compel the devotee to participate in the ritual devotion of

Latina/o/x Pilgrimage and Embodiment    245 “walking” from home to the destination of devotion (shrine, etc.) For those who choose to journey to sacred places, the financial, physical, and emotional burdens are included as part of devotional labor. The streets that surround the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City are lined with vendors, ready and eager to sell their wares to pilgrims that arrive year-​ round as part of their pilgrimage to the famed apparition of the Virgin Mary.7 Most pilgrims arrive in the days leading up to December 12, the official feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the almost ten million decodes fill the main roads leading up to the Basilica. Families and individuals camp on the sidewalks of the street as many devotees approach the Basilica in ritual supplication—​some crawling on their knees in acts of penance and the fulfillment of their mandas while others carry images of the Virgin on their backs. Preconquest Mesoamerican religion included a pantheon of deities, sacred sites, and nonhuman entities that were coidentified with material objects. As part of a material religion, many sacred effigies were swaddled as bundled infants characterizing tenderness as a devotional practice and posture. Indeed, sixteenth-​century Mexican codices depict Teomamaque “God-​bearers” or Aztec priests participating in sacred pilgrimages with sacred bundles as back burdens in their ritual reenactments and memorialization of mythic and historical migrations.8 La Villa de Guadalupe (as the neighborhood is known) was known historically for its abundance of shoe stores (zapaterias). Indeed, the formerly cobblestone main road leading up to the Basilica is named “The Calzada de Guadalupe,” referring both to footwear and the act of donning shoes. The Calzada and the surrounding neighborhood streets continue to be populated by shoe stores tasked with selling zapatos, botas, and huaraches (shoes, boots and sandals) to the arriving and departing pilgrims searching to replace worn and battered footwear during their sojourn. Traditional pilgrimage journeys begin with the first footsteps out of the home and become an extended walking journey. Pilgrims who walk across large sections of Mexico often do so in groups or in parts, braving the elements and often navigating unknown terrain. Historically, and in contemporary practice, as pilgrims arrive in closer proximity to shrines, they may shift from walking to a kneeling position, journeying the remaining distance on their knees. Today, pilgrimages to the modern Basilica of Guadalupe are fulfilled when pilgrims glance at the Juan Diego’s tilma from a moving platform, given only a few seconds to glance at the image in adoration. While they no longer kneel in front of the tilma in supplication, they nevertheless wear their devotion and the effects of pilgrimage on their bodies—​in the torn and bloodied knees of their pants, and in the muddied and worn soles of their shoes. As Elaine Peña explains in her work on Guadalupan devotion in central Mexico and the United States Midwest, pilgrims’ “devotional labor and the physical marks on their bodies—​the presence of calluses, scabs, bruises, suffering however ephemeral—​evince their faith [and] become indelible memories.”9 In Mexico City, devotees complete their mandas and buy new shoes, symbols imbued with transformation and renewal with which to return home.

246   Daisy Vargas Scholars such as Peña and Alyshia Galvez emphasize Guadalupan pilgrimage within a larger framework of transnationalism and migration, as well as the intersection between religion and the political realities of Latina/​o/​x immigration. The Antorcha Guadalupana is another example of Roman Catholic Guadalupan devotion with preconquest connections. The binational antorcha (torch run), between Mexico City and New York, began in December 2002, as a way of connecting to communities “of . . . people divided by the [US-​Mexican] border.”10 In preconquest Mesoamerica, indigenous communities participated in rituals at the end of every fifty-​two-​year cycle. Part of this ritual process of renewal included the extinguishing of fires throughout communities and the creation of a New Fire “in the chest of a sacrificial victim.” This new fire, symbolizing the dawn of the next cyclical calendar, was carried and delivered by relay runners across the Aztec Empire.11 The fire carried by contemporary Guadalupan devotees in the antorcha reflects both contemporary indigenous traditions of the La Mixteca region of Mexico related to ritual fire and renewal, as well as the Catholic identification of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the dawn of Christianity in the Americas. In the context of the Latina/​o/​x community in the United States, the torch run unites Guadalupanos across international borders and brings into focus the plight of the undocumented. Saint devotion connects communities otherwise separated by economic and political hardships through acts of ritual and memory.

Walking with El Santo Niño de Atocha For over a decade, the Roman Catholic parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, in Santa Paula, California, receives the imagen peregrino of the Santo Niño de Atocha.12 For less than a month, the image visits the small agricultural town north of Los Angeles “for those who cannot pilgrimage to Plateros for financial reasons, and for migrants who are not able to go back and visit Santo Nino or their families.”13 During the month of May, the Mexican Roman Catholic community of Santa Paula displays the visiting image in the parish church, where it receives visitors and devotees throughout the day. As part of the annual celebration dedicated to El Santo Niño de Atocha, the image is processed through the town streets to the local community recreational park, accompanied by a group of danzantes dressed in Neo-​Aztecan garments, charros on horseback, and local residents. The imagen is processed onto a large platform, where a Mass is dedicated to the Christ child. Roman Catholics from different regions of Southern California make the pilgrimage to Santa Paula every year, connected by devotion to the image and familial and community ties to the region.14 Veneration of the Virgin Mary and the Christ child in Mexico were introduced to Mexico in the sixteenth century, as Dominican clergy promoted the supremacy of the Spanish crown to indigenous neophytes. By the seventeenth century, a shrine to the Virgen and Santo Nino de Atocha was erected in Plateros, Zacatecas, a silver mining town located on the Camino Real de Tierrra Adentro, running from Mexico City

Latina/o/x Pilgrimage and Embodiment    247 through Zacatecas, and up to Santa Fe, New Mexico, facilitating the later connection between the devotion between Plateros and Santa Fe. By the time cult of the Santo Nino de Atocha eclipsed the veneration of the Virgin in the eighteenth century, the image of the Santo Nino began to reflect the push for Mexican independence from Spain and was the object of veneration among the lower classes, including workers and prisoners who labored the local silver mines. The image at this point no longer reflected the dress of the royal Spanish courts, but shifted to the straw hat and basket representative of pilgrimage as well as a pilgrimage gourd.15 Legends surrounding the image include the movement of the object to help trapped miners and prisoners in Zacatecas, the wanderings validated by the well-​worn soles of the sandals described by believers, and inspiring the gifting of children shoes as part of the fulfillment of the manda. Historians such as Brett Hendrickson and Juan Javier Pescador note the historical ties between Zacatecas and New Mexico, including the 1858 dedication of a chapel to the devotion of the Santo Niño in Chimayo, New Mexico.16 The increasing popularity of El Santo Niño de Atocha’s novenas and stories of miracles have created new roles for the image that fulfill the requests and needs of Latina/​o/​x communities—​as healer, protector against accidents in the workplace, protector of the incarcerated, and protector of children. While Plateros was declared a sacred place of pilgrimage in 1955, the increased landscape of surveillance and apprehension at the US-​Mexico border, and the financial, legal, and geographic restrictions, have made pilgrimage to Mexico difficult for many devotees in the United States. Alternative pilgrimages, to Chimayo and to Santa Paula, California, create transnational and translocal connections to Mexico and to Plateros, as the ritual processions and devotions to El Santo Nino de Atocha connect devotees to the seventeenth-​century shrine. During the Lenten season, the cofradías, lay devotional groups, of Los Hermanos de la Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesùs Nazareno (from here referred to as the Hermanos Penitentes) in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, participate in the ritual reenactments and commemoration of the trials and crucifixion of Jesus. These groups, lay religious confraternities who trace their origins to the first Franciscan orders in the region, continue the ancestral tradition of processing up the Cristo de Sangre Mountains to the Santuario de Chimayó.17 Along the route, they are accompanied by other lay Catholic devotees, many of whom bear crosses and flowers as part of offerings and ritual cargos in their devotional practices.18 Since the nineteenth century, Los Hermanos Penitentes have attracted international attraction through travel brochures and sensationalized accounts of ritual violence.19 While the Good Friday pilgrimage to Chimayó was not officially performed until 1954, it becomes one alternate place and mode of religious ritual and performance for the cofradía. In recent years, the pilgrimage has also attracted large numbers of non-​Christian participants who understand Chimayó as a place of spiritual potency.20 The devotees that process up the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to Chimayo carry the wooden crosses as ritual burdens of penance and ritual connection to the physical labors of Christ. Through the physical act of suffering, the Hermanos Penitentes reinscribe

248   Daisy Vargas the landscape of New Mexico with their Catholic heritage, perform ritual penance and public devotion, and connect to the mythical origins of their religious beliefs. Historical accounts of Los Hermanos describe the election of one Hermano from each cofradía as the symbolic Jesus in the Lenten procession, tied to a cart and subjected to the lashings and crucifixion of the biblical narrative.21 Indeed, it was observations and exaggerations of ritual violence that shaped the historical literature of Penitente devotion and pilgrimage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More recent scholars of Penitente devotion, including Ramón Gutiérrez, Alberto Pulido, and Daisy Vargas, interrogate the use of racialized tropes and descriptions of New Mexican Roman Catholicism in these historical narratives and refocus attention to the significance of kinship and ritual practices among the Hermanos.22 Today, the Hermanos Penitentes and other devotees carry their crosses to the shrine. These crosses are often left leaning against the chain link fence surrounding the pathway leading up to the main church. As devotees and pilgrims arrive, many leave petitions and rosaries attached to the fence. Altars are decorated with photographs and notes of gratitude for miracles that have been fulfilled. On Good Friday, pilgrims process to the front door of the church, where wooden bultos of Catholic saints line the nineteenth century altar. They genuflect and continue on to the small door located to the left of the sanctuary. There are two smaller rooms—​one with the pocito (little well) filled with holy dirt, and another with a small image of El Santo Niño de Atocha, attract the most attention. Devotees take turns entering the room with the pit of dirt—​some scoop dirt and rub it on their hands and bodies, others fill small containers to transport the dirt home, and some ingest it. As they leave the room, pilgrims are confronted with an abundance of photographs and used crutches—​symbols of the restorative healing many devotees claim to experience after their contact with the dirt. Scholar of religion Manuel A. Vasquez emphasizes the importance of these embodied practices in the understanding of religion among Latina/​ o/​x and Latin American communities.23 Up the road from the main church is a smaller chapel dedicated to the veneration of El Santo Niño de Atocha. Built in 1856, to commemorate Severiano Medina’s pilgrimage to Zacatecas, the recently renovated chapel attracts the devotion of pilgrims for petitions related to children and healing. In a small side room of the chapel, devotees leave coins in the hand of the wooden image to petition the saint, as well as written promesas, locks of hair, and small toys. More striking is the abundance of children’s shoes left by pilgrims. As El Santo Niño de Atocha is understood to be a pilgrim, the shoes are meant to replace and reinvigorate his own as he wears them down through his walking. In recent years, an additional building has been added to the Chimayo complex. There, visitors are confronted with orderly displays of children’s shoes lining every inch of the walls of the rooms. Rather than leave the pilgrimage site with their own new shoes, the pilgrims to Chimayó leave new shoes at the pilgrimage site, reaffirming the inversion of El Santo Niño of Atocha as the traveling imagen peregrino, and the shifting geographies of movement and devotion.

Latina/o/x Pilgrimage and Embodiment    249

Walking with El Señor de los Milagros: Penance and the Cargo The month of October in the San Fernando Valley outside of Los Angeles is known among the local Peruvian community as “El mes morado” (the purple month). Throughout October, local parish cofradías dedicate their time and labor to the organization and the performance of ritual processions in honor of El Senor del los Milagros, “The Lord of Miracles,” a Peruvian image of the Nazarene Christ. Each week, parishes throughout Southern California perform their annual devotional ritual of processing a large wooden anda (a large wooden sedan) weighing more than a ton, bearing a large approximately six-​foot-​tall gilded replica of El Señor de los Milagros, surrounded by flowers. A dozen adult men, clad in purple, slowly and deliberately sway, bow, and proceed under the enormous weight of their burden, accompanied by the singing and veiled veladoras, who guide the procession with incense.24 The Hermanos can be heard grunting and groaning under the physical weight of the anda with their sweat visibly dripping down their faces. This hour-​long procession can be seen taking a toll on the bodies of the Hermanos as their arms and legs tremble with the constant raising and lowering of the wooden platform, their muscles stressed the point of exhaustion. The slow-​moving procession, often moving only six feet at a time and circumambulating the church, is completed with a community feast. It also serves as a precursor for the larger pilgrimage event later in the month, when all of the local Hermandades gather for a procession of thousands of devotees at Our Lady of Angels Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles. Local downtown buildings are bathed in purple on this evening, as devotees to El Señor de los Milagros process down Temple Avenue toward La Placita Church, following a group of local Hermanos honored with the task of accompanying the image. In the urban streets of Los Angeles, the participants in this procession are connected to their transnational counterparts in Lima, Peru (and beyond). The origins of the image El Senor de los Milagros, also known as El Cristo Morado, can be traced back to seventeenth-​century Peru, and devotion to the image increased as the image escaped damage following the Lima earthquakes in 1665 and 1746. The tradition of procession began approximately three decades after the painting of the image in 1665, and El Señor de los Milagros was recognized as the patron saint in 1665. This tradition continues today, among transnational Peruvian communities around the globe and facilitated through lay confraternities who train year-​round to carry the physical burden of the anda. The Peruvian Civil War began in the 1980s between the Peruvian National Government and the Maoist guerilla group El Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path, represented two decades of violent conflict). The Southern California Peruvian community is a product of this conflict, as Peruvians created new communities abroad to escape the threat of war. Former political allegiances and alliances remain alive and well, as the conservative and liberal politics of many Peruvian Americans are translated into

250   Daisy Vargas discourses of respectability and Latinidad in the United States. At a Catholic Mass held in commemoration of Peruvian independence, a liberationist priest used the homily as an opportunity to critique the current political regime as Peruvian ambassadors and local business leaders listened in awkward and uncomfortable silence. Now, in post-​Peruvian-​war Los Angeles, the fissures and the painful memories of the conflict remain palpable in the penitential act of carrying El Señor de los Milagros; while Peru continues to confront its legacies of violence, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States does what the one in Peru cannot—​provide a place for penance and reconciliation. Though the Peruvian Catholic community in Los Angeles retains many of the conservative-​leaning politics of the Church in Peru, it also reflects a more racially and socioeconomically diverse community in diaspora. United through Peruvian national identity, nostalgia and longing for an ancestral home, and a devotion to El Señor de los Milagros, Peruvian community members labor together under the wooden heavy wooden sedan. In her anthropological work among Peruvian devotees to El Señor de los Milagros in Rome, Italy, Valentina Napolitano approaches the study of Roman Catholicism by reorienting the scholarship on pilgrimage and devotion away from defining these processions as religious migrant movements and toward understanding the movement of the religious through the body.25 The physical burden of the anda and its taxing effects on the human body—​shaking muscles and cracking joints, calluses, and sore shoulders—​serve as an offering of penance and of unity. Garbed in the traditional color of sorrow and suffering, the Hermanos perform an embodied act of reconciliation.26

Walking with San Toribio Romo On the morning of December 21, 2014, the American leg of the San Toribio Romo reliquary tour joined the annual celebration of Posadas Sin Fronteras on the bus ride to Calexico, California, to process the saint relics in the small border town.27 The day-​ long journey, departing from Los Angeles, California, included members of the Quica Project, a now defunct organization named after the sister of the historical Romo, and dedicated to the promotion of Catholic education. The group of fifty sojourned to Calexico, a small desert town in the Imperial Valley with two destinations in mind—​ the potter’s field housed in the Terrace Park cemetery, where the unidentified remains of migrants who perished crossing the dangerous terrain of the region are buried; and a portion of the border wall east of the official port of entry.28 At both locations, the pilgrims removed the four-​foot reliquary created in the likeness of Romo, containing a fragment of his left ankle bone, and processed around the locations before the group began two separate open-​air masses. As part of Posadas sin Fronteras, the pilgrims incorporated the image of Romo in a translation of the Mexican Catholic tradition of the posada, or the recreation of Joseph and Mary’s search for shelter before the birth of Jesus. In the context of the US-​Mexico border, the search is translated as a contemporary

Latina/o/x Pilgrimage and Embodiment    251 refugee tale.29 The imagen peregrino, the relics and the reliquary of Romo, travelled to different dioceses throughout the United States, making devotion to the saint possible for migrants who were otherwise unable to cross the border into Mexico. Romo thus joined the pantheon of patron saints dedicated to the cause of migration in this region. Toribio Romo González, a Mexican priest murdered during the anticlerical Cristero Rebellion in 1928, is venerated in Santa Ana de Guadalupe, Jalisco, Mexico. When Pope John Paul II canonized the figure, the young blue-​eyed cleric became a symbol of Central Mexican and conservative Catholic identity—​a martyr who refused government orders to abandon his religion. Romo’s history of discouraging migrants from migrating to the United States is relatively unknown and ignored, as his popularity in the last five decades has grown with migrants seeking safe passage to the United States. Petitioned as a protector of undocumented crossings, Romo devotees often vow to return to Santa Ana de Guadalupe on their mandas and promise to help with the upkeep of the shrine where his remains are buried.30 In historian William Taylor’s description and definition of colonial era pilgrimage, he deconstructs the Spanish word peregrinacion (peregrination) and its broad inclusion of both traditional forms of pilgrimage (travels to distant lands for devotional purposes) and romerías (shorter devotional journeys), and the collapsing of both distinct practices into one category.31 While the traveling relics of San Toribio Romo create temporary spaces of pilgrimage and allow for shorter pilgrimage journeys, they also take on political dimensions. Like the display and procession of other Catholic images in Latina/​o/​x historical periods of political action, San Toribio Romo moves in religion and religious communities to assert identity in secular spaces. The procession of Romo along the US-​ Mexico border also contests the sanctions and legislation that limit the legal presence and participation of Latina/​o/​x migrant groups. Like the migrants crossing into the United States, pilgrimage images and relics (classified as human remains) endure and survive a similar scrutiny and restriction to movement.32 Similarly to the pilgrimage image of El Santo Niño de Atocha, Romo’s travel to diasporic Latina/​o/​x communities in the United States asserts otherwise political ideologies that position and affirm the inclusion of Latina/​o/​x migrants and their descendants in the American cultural landscape. Images of saints, like Romo and El Santo Niño de Atocha, reflect the religious poetics of Latina/​o/​x communities in the United States, as saint devotions in the United States change and adapt to the reflect changing social circumstances and needs of Catholic communities. These religious poetics imply a set of “strateg[ies] of performed and narrated religious discourse” that can be reconstituted within the context of the emerging political and cultural realities of Latina/​o/​x communities.33 These strategies prove especially relevant for undocumented migrants who cross the border into the United States and face physical danger. For Leon, signs, myths, rituals, narratives, and symbols often serve as the only protection for the well-​being of migrants, especially against exploitation and marginalization; sometimes religious poetics serves to subvert official structures of power. As the image of Romo is an imagen documentado, the reliquary and its relics move in-​between spaces of legal and extralegal presence and precarity. Processed along the

252   Daisy Vargas border wall in the Calexico sun, devotees and the relics attracted the attention of Border Patrol agents, who observed the procession from their bicycles and SUVs. The image of Romo became a pilgrimage symbol calling attention for the undoing of restrictive immigration policy and united pilgrims from both sides of the international fence, inviting the communion of Catholic devotees and activists through singing, praying, walking, and the physical touch of fingers as they passed small notes between the metal grates of the rusted border wall.34

Conclusion: Pilgrimage and Transnational Identities In her foundational text on Chicana spirituality, Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua writes that Chicana/​o identity is shaped by a tradition of movement—​“a tradition of migration, a tradition of long walks.”35 Similarly, Mexican and Chicana/​o/​x cultural historians and critics have generalized Mexican Catholic identity as being rooted and centered on two things: walking migrations and saint devotions. While these embodied expressions of cultural and religious identity are fundamental aspects of devotionalism in Latin American and Latina/​o/​x communities, they are often used to distinguish between orthodox Christianity (read: Protestant) and folk Catholicism, largely ignoring the long history of religious and intellectual traditions of the Americas.36 Religion, as León writes, is constantly being redefined “through the matrix created by eternal returns,” with “each destination promis[ing] a greater home, yet it is in the cycle of return itself that time and place become meaningful.”37 In his study of Guadalupan devotions in Los Angeles, California, Luís D. Leon theorized that the sacred geography of the US-​Mexico borderlands was reflected in “a material and symbolic order that is constantly moving but circumscribed by three broad transitions: (1) the dialectical exchange between the home altar and the Catholic Church, (2) the movement of pilgrims between saints, and (3) the movement of the saints themselves.38 Further, León expands on the notion of migration and the cyclical nature of mythical and physical returns. Leon adds that the religious poetics of Mexican Catholic practices are re(enacted) through migrant border crossings, as beliefs and devotions imbue the geographic landscape with shifting cultural and political meaning. Pilgrimages to saints imbue both the image and the devotee with the agency to subvert geopolitical boundaries; when individuals find they cannot cross physical barriers, the saints come to them—​“not only do pilgrims move between saints; saints also move.”39 For devotees in the United States, the Santo Niño performs a modern miracle; sin documentos and wearing huaraches, he crosses the US-​Mexican political border. He symbolically walks in their shoes, dwells in their newly formed homes, and then returns to his point of origin. El Santo Niño switches roles with migrants—​he becomes a pilgrim travelling to perform his own acts of piety in a place

Latina/o/x Pilgrimage and Embodiment    253 far from home and under the scrutiny of the state. El Santo Niño travel exalts those in diaspora, providing them with moments of joy, beauty, and reassurance. The presence of the image also evokes emotions of peace and tranquility, facilitating feelings of homecoming and familiarity for those whose travel is restricted. A focus on pilgrimage, of both humans and devotional objects and images, provides scholars with new avenues to approach historical and contemporary issues of migration, labor, and politics; the affective bonds between devotees and saint images, forged through the devotional labor of pilgrimage and procession, create a historical and theological bridge between preconquest religion, colonial Catholicism, and contemporary Christianity. For those who have the ability to travel across national borders, the act embarking on a journey to a mythic (and physical) center of origin connects contemporary religious actors to ancestral histories and memories of travel. Transnational movement transforms travel into ritual, a pilgrimage not only to the religious centers that saints inhabit, but to an origin place from which mythic stories of heritage take place. Mexico in the transnational imaginary becomes to these first generations what Aztlan is for the Chicano nationalist movement—​a place of belonging and return. Peña reflects that “the sacred place become a sacred place only when devotees embodied performances—​their voices raised in ecstasy, their praying and dancing bodies in motion, the labor and care they offer to maintain the shrine—​initiate the succession of transformative moments that give meaning to [it].”40 Processions involving saint figures and images map alternative forms of belonging onto the American landscape and beyond. They create transnational and translocal connections to other Latin American and Latina/​o/​x across national borders, while continuing to affirm national identity in the United States. This “spiritual transnationalism” denotes the ways in which believers deploy religion to affirm national identity” and “also create spiritual and symbolic ties to their heritage.”41 Spiritual and religious transnationalisms describe systems of movement between origins and destinations, often informed by economic or political motivations, but always creating modes of spiritual and religious exchange. As León notes, migrants travel north to the United States with a particular set of religious values and traditions. The plasticity of religious and cultural identities, however, means that if, and when, migrants choose to return to Mexico, those values and traditions will have been modified by their experience in the United States. In an exchange of reciprocity, the back-​and-​forth movement of Mexicans guarantees a continued connection between devotees in diaspora and creating spiritual movement for those who are otherwise restricted from geographic movement. As I have presented in this chapter, pilgrimage traditions among Latina/​ o/​ x communities in the United States are as much about religions traveling on the bodies of migrants as they are cultural descriptors of migrant communities in diaspora. Further, pilgrimage is not only about the religious moving through the migrant body, but about the political and cultural implications of migrant religious bodies and images on a racialized American landscape. While our discussion of pilgrimage among Latina/​ ox communities may signal ties to communities of origin outside of the United States,

254   Daisy Vargas Latina/​o/​x pilgrimage, procession, and embodiment in the United States is always a political act.

Notes 1. William Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images: Religious Life in Mexico before the Reforma (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011). 2. Valentina Napolitano, “On a Political Economy of Political Theology: El Señor de los Milagros,” in The Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader, ed. Kristin Norget et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017), 244. 3. See Jennifer Scheper Hughes, “A Materialist Theory of Religion: The Latin American Frame,”, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 24, no.4-​5 (January 2012), 430-​444.and Kathryn Lofton, “The Body on Manuel Vasquez’s More Than Belief,” Introduction to the Yale Roundtable on Belief, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 24, no.4-​5 (January 2012), 51-​54. 4. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 5. Bennett, Vibrant Matter. 6. Bernadino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Books 1–​3 (University of Utah Press, 2012). 7. Ethnographic research, including participant observation in Mexico City and the Basilica de Guadalupe, was conducted in the summer of 2015 with the generous support of the Marcoux Travel Fellowship though the Department of History at the University of California Riverside. 8. de Sahagun, Florentine Codex, 104. 9. Elaine Peña, Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 44, 89. 10. Alyshia Galvez, Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Migrants (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 142 11. Galvez, Guadalupe in New York, 8. 12. Ethnographic research and participant observation in Santa Paula, California, was conducted in spring 2012 and 2013 with the support of the Institute for the Study of Immigration and Religion at the University of California Riverside. 13. Gareth Dodd, “Religious Icon from Mexico visits Santa Paula,” Ventura County Star, June 1, 2009. 14. Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Daisy Vargas, “Traveling Image of the Holy Child of Atocha (Santo Niño de Atocha), Plateros, Mexico,” Object Narrative, in Conversations: An Online Journal of the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion (2014), doi:10.22332/​con.obj.2014.35. 15. Juan Javier Pescador, Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño De Atocha (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 85. 16. A shrine to El Señor de Esquipulas had been erected in 1810, and El Santo Niño de Atocha was later added. 17. Northern New Mexico is the site of other similar pilgrimages to shrines in mountain communities, including pilgrimage to Tomé. See Steve Fox, “Sacred Pedestrians: The Many Faces of Southwest Pilgrimage,” Journal of the Southwest 36, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 33–​53.

Latina/o/x Pilgrimage and Embodiment    255 18. Archival and ethnographic research was conducted in Chimayo, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, from 2016 to 2018 with the support of the Charlotte W. Newcombe fellowship and the University of California’s Graduate Research Mentorship Program. 19. Daisy Vargas, “Mexican Religion on Trial: Race, Religion, and the Law in the U.S.-​Mexico Borderlands,” PhD diss. (2019). 20. Brett Hendrickson, “The Interweaving of Pilgrimage and Tourism at the Santuario de Chimayó,” U.S. Catholic Historian 34, no. 3 (2016): 127–​145. 21. After late nineteenth-​century and early twentieth-​century accounts of Penitente ritual violence led to the disciplining of the order by the Archbishop of Santa Fe and attracted tourist attention, Penitente communities began to avoid intrusion by outsiders in their communities. Historians note the decline of participation in Penitente groups post World War II, and while some groups continue to be active, there is no widespread confirmation of a continued tradition of ritual violence. 22. Ramón A. Gutiérrez, “Crucificion, Slavery, and Death: The Hermanos Penitentes of the Southwest,” in Over the Edge: Remapping the American West, ed. Valerie J. Matsumoto and Blake Allmendinger; Vargas, “Mexican Religion on Trial.” 23. Manuel A. Vasquez, More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 24. Research, including interviews and participant observation in Southern California (including the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, and Orange County), was conducted in 2015 as part of the University of California’s Humanities Research Initiative’s two-​year RIDAGA (Religions in Diaspora and Global Affairs project funded through the Luce Foundation). A team of thirty scholars, graduate students, undergraduates, and documentary filmmakers, active in different field sites and working collaboratively across disciplines, participated in the “Global Religious Festivals in Secular Cityscapes: Immigration, Politics, and Religious Performance in California” research group under the leadership of Jennifer Scheper Hughes and Amanda Lucia (University of California Riverside). Valentina Napolitano (University of Toronto), Jonathan Ritter (University of California Riverside), Matthew P. Casey (Arizona State University), and Connie Gagliardi also participated in the El Señor de los Milagros research. 25. Valentina Napolitano, “On a Political Economy of Political Theology: El Señor de los Milagros,” in The Anthropology of Catholicism, ed. Kristin Norget, Maya Mayblin, and Valentina Napolitano (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017). 26. Hughes et al., “Take It Outside,” BOOM: A Journal of California, 67. 27. “LA, San Diego Faithful Pray at US-​ Mexico Border,” Angelus News, December 26, 2014, https://​angelusnews.com/​local/​california/​ la-​san-​diego-​faithful-​pray-​at-​us-​mexico-​border/​ 28. Ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation, was conducted at the invitation of Thomas G. Evans (Claremont Graduate University). 29. Pierrette Hondagneu-​Sotelo, Genelle Gaudines, Hector Lara, and Billie C. Ortiz, “There’s a Spirit That Transcends the Border”: Faith, Ritual, and Postnational Protest at the U.S.-​ Mexico Border,” Sociological Perspectives 47, no. 2, 133–​159. 30. For more on the role of San Toribio Romo as migrant saint, see Thomas G. Evan, “Santo Toribio: The Rise of a Saint,” master’s thesis (University of Denver, 2011). 31. Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images.

256   Daisy Vargas 32. For a discussion of “undocumented” saint images, see Thomas Tweed’s description of the Marian Caridad del Cobre in Our Lady of Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) and Carlos A. Rivas Maradiaga’s “The Guatemalan Cristo Mojado/​Wetback Christ and the Fight against Gentrification in South L.A.,” panel Presentation, “The Chicanx, Latinx, and Central America Migrant Struggle Against Gentrification and Displacement.” Sixth Biennial Latino Art Now! COnference. Houston, Texas. April 2019. 33. Luís D. Leon, La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-​Mexican Borderlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 4. 34. Luís D. Leon discusses the political pilgrimage of the United Farm Workers Union under the banner of Our Virgin of Guadalupe led by Mexican American activist Cesar Chavez from Delano to Sacramento in The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 35. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987). 36. Jennifer Scheper Hughes, “Mysterium Materie: Vital Matter and the Object as Evidence in the Study of Religion,” Bulletin for the Study of Religion 41, no. 4 (November 2012). 37. León, La Llorona’s Children, 260. 38. Luís D. León, “Metaphor and Place: The U.S.-​Mexico Border as Center and Periphery in the Interpretation of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67, no. 3 (Sept. 1999), 547. 39. León, Metaphor and Place, 548. 40. Elaine Peña, “Beyond Mexico: Guadalupan Sacred Space Production and Mobilization in a Chicago Suburb,” American Quarterly 60, no. 3 (Sept. 2008), 724. 41. Léon, Metaphor and Place, 143.

Bibliography Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. de Sahagun, Bernadino. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Books 1–​3. Translated and reprinted. University of Utah Press, 2012. Dodd, Gareth. “Religious Icon from Mexico visits Santa Paula.” Ventura County Star, June 1, 2009. Evan, Thomas G. “Santo Toribio: The Rise of a Saint.” Master’s thesis, University of Denver, 2011. Fox, Steve. “Sacred Pedestrians: The Many Faces of Southwest Pilgrimage.” Journal of the Southwest 36, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 33–​53. Galvez, Alyshia. Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Immigrants. New York: NYU Press, 2009. Hendrickson, Brett. The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayo: America’s Miraculous Church, New York: NYU Press, 2017. Hendrickson, Brett. “The Interweaving of Pilgrimage and Tourism at the Santuario de Chimayó.” U.S. Catholic Historian 34, no. 3 (2016): 127–​145.

Latina/o/x Pilgrimage and Embodiment    257 Hondagneu-​Sotelo, Pierrette, Genelle Gaudines, Hector Lara, and Billie C. Ortiz. “There’s a Spirit That Transcends the Border”: Faith, Ritual, and Postnational Protest at the U.S.-​ Mexico Border.” Sociological Perspectives 47, no. 2, 133–​159. Jennifer Scheper Hughes, “A Materialist Theory of Religion: The Latin American Frame,”, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 24, no.4-​5 (January 2012), 430–​444. Hughes, Jennifer Scheper. “God-​Bearers on Pilgrimage to Tepeyac: A Scholar of Religion Encounters the Material Dimension of Marian Devotion in Mexico.” Journal of Religion and the Arts 18 (2014): 156–​183. Hughes, Jennifer Scheper. “Mysterium Materie: Vital Matter and the Object as Evidence in the Study of Religion.” Bulletin for the Study of Religion 41, no. 4 (November 2012). Hughes, Jennifer Scheper, and Daisy Vargas, “Traveling Image of the Holy Child of Atocha (Santo Niño de Atocha), Plateros, Mexico.” Object Narrative. In Conversations: An Online Journal of the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion (2014). Hughes et al. “Take It Outside.” BOOM: A Journal of California. León, Luís D. La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-​Mexican Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. León, Luís D. “Metaphor and Place: The U.S.-​Mexico Border as Center and Periphery in the Interpretation of Religion.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67, no. 3 (Sept. 1999). Lofton, Kathryn. “The Body on Manuel Vasquez’s More Than Belief,” Introduction to the Yale Roundtable on Belief, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 24, no.4-​5 (January 2012), 51–​54. Maradiga, Carlos A. Rivas. “The Guatemalan Cristo Mojado/​Wetback Christ and the Fight against Gentrification in South L.A.,” Panel presentation, “The Chicanx, Latinx, and Central America Migrant Struggle Against Gentrification and Displacement.” Sixth Biennial Latino Art Now! Conference. Houston, Texas. April 2019. Matovina, Timothy. Theologies of Guadalupe: From the Era of Conquest to Pope Francis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Napolitano, Valentina. Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Napolitano, Valentina. “On a Political Economy of Political Theology: El Señor de los Milagros.” In The Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader, edited by Kristin Norget et al. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. Peña, Elaine. “Beyond Mexico: Guadalupan Sacred Space Production and Mobilization in a Chicago Suburb.” American Quarterly 60, no. 3 (Sept. 2008). Peña, Elaine. Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Pescador, Juan Javier. Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Rivas Maradiaga, Carlos A. “The Guatemalan Cristo Mojado/​Wetback Christ and the Fight against Gentrification in South L.A.” American Art. Taylor, William. Shrines and Miraculous Images: Religious Life in Mexico before the Reforma. Tweed, Thomas. Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Vargas, Daisy. “Mexican Religion on Trial: Race, Religion, and the Law in the U.S.-​Mexico Borderlands.” PhD diss., University of California, Riverside. 2019. Vasquez, Manuel A. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Chapter 14

O c cu p y ing th e C hu rc h The Making of Latina/​o Religious Politics Felipe Hinojosa

Lydia Lopez had never been to Catholic Mass. The daughter of a Baptist church planter, Lopez had only ever known the worlds of Mexican Protestants in Los Angeles. So when a Chicano activist named Fred Lopez invited her to Christmas Eve Mass in December 1969 at the fancy new St. Basil’s Church off Wilshire Blvd., she came dressed to the nines wearing a pink dress, with a pink turban, a white coat, and heels and gloves to match. She was there to join Fred and a group of activists that called themselves Católicos Por La Raza (hereafter Católicos). Made up of a coalition of Catholics and non-​Catholics, Católicos represented a who’s who of activists from across Los Angeles all united in their anger at the exorbitant costs of the newly constructed St. Basil’s Church and at Cardinal James McIntyre’s arrogance. That night Católicos and other supporters, including Lydia, gathered at Lafayette Park, about a mile away from the church, to begin their slow march toward St Basil’s Church. Led by their charismatic leader, Richard Cruz, the group kicked off the march by shouting, “We’re the people, let’s go to church!”1 As Lydia walked down Wilshire Blvd., she noticed religious leaders leading Mass outside of St. Basil’s church, where somewhere between 250 to 300 people gathered outside the church, surrounded by fourteen-​foot poles with papier mâché masks being paraded around Mardi Gras style. But as Lydia described it, the mood changed quickly. Then I see the police on horseback, and there’s a movement to go into the church . . . turns out the church ushers are sheriffs, and all I hear is “Let the poor people in, let the poor people in!”2

From the beginning, the demonstration was peaceful. Members from Católicos later testified that they arrived with no intention to disrupt the Mass. They insisted that the demonstration was about calling out Catholic leadership for spending millions on a church building “with all its stain glass windows, instead of for education, to stop the war in Vietnam and to help the farm workers.”3 The strategy that night for Católicos

Occupying the Church    259 was to hold an outdoor Mass, celebrate communion—​and to shout—​but not to disrupt. Cardinal McIntyre, who had received word that Católicos might make an appearance, believed otherwise and went so far as to hire undercover law enforcement to serve as ushers. There are multiple stories that emerged about that night. According to court transcripts, the crowds of churchgoers started to gather around 11 p.m. and sometime before midnight the lower part of the church was filled to capacity. Just after midnight, the doors to the church were closed and locked, prohibiting anyone else to come in. That’s when a woman in the church stood up and screamed, “Why won’t you let the poor people in?” That set off a panic inside just as some of the demonstrators found an unlocked side door, where they could enter the church. That’s when, as Miguel García described it, the demonstration turned from peaceful to, in his words, “chingazos.”4 Chaos ensued as law enforcement physically assaulted the demonstrators and chased them off church grounds. In the end, twenty-​one activists were arrested and charged with disrupting a religious service, assault, and inciting a riot. While some of the charges were dismissed, most of the activists served jail time and paid significant fines. For Lydia Lopez, who watched from a distance as the violence broke out, that night would change her life forever and set her on a path to become one of the most important voices for immigrant and refugee rights in Los Angeles. It might seem strange to start an essay on Latina/​o politics and Christianity with the chaos that broke out on the steps of St Basil’s Church in 1969. While the case garnered national attention for a brief moment, historians have for the most part regarded it as a one-​shot deal, a “flash in the pan,” so to speak that created commotion and then quickly faded. And while it took place in Los Angeles with a cadre of Chicana/​o activists, Católicos’ flame dimmed almost as quickly as it lit. By the fall of 1970 the flare and energy of Católicos had faded as activists moved on to other issues, most notably their continued struggle against the war in Vietnam, where Chicanos were dying at alarming rates. But the incident does provide a useful starting point for thinking about how Latina/​o movement politics in the 1960s have influenced, been shaped by, and are intricately connected with the rise of religious politics in the civil rights era. While most studies on Latina/​o religious politics center on clergy or religious leadership, this chapter investigates the role of activists outside of the church (nonclergy) with little or no real strong ties to the institutional church. Rather than assume that Latina/​ o religious politics begins with religious leadership, I propose a narrative framework for religious politics in the civil rights era that outlines how both religious insiders and outsiders together came to shape, influence, and in many ways undergird what historian Anthony M. Stevens Arroyo has called the “Latino religious resurgence” in the 1970s.5 Drawing from a range of organizations and activists such as the lay leader Lydia Lopez and the Presbyterian minister Jorge Lara-​Braud, this chapter investigates the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, an era that saw the rise—​theologically and culturally—​of Latina/​o religious politics. I argue that to understand this era we must move beyond the walls of the church and the religious leadership that is so often at the center

260   Felipe Hinojosa of these narratives. Instead, we must include the broad range of religious experiences in the Latina/​o community, both formal and informal, religious and nonreligious, that have pushed back against urban renewal, racial discrimination, and anti-​immigrant/​ refugee policies. By viewing Latina/​o religious politics from the outside in, I follow the call from sociologist and theologian Otto Maduro to take seriously how the politics of faith communities extend beyond the walls of the church. Maduro writes, “underneath, behind, around, within, and beyond the official religion of the established churches blossoms constantly the religious creativity of the common folk, especially when the weight of the mighty forces of this creativity outside the public arena of official religion.”6 The political engagements and relationships between religious insiders and outsiders serve as a window into the emergence of Latina/​o religious politics in the 1970s and 1980s. These relationships forced the institutional church to join the Latina/​o civil rights movement. The result was the rise of a Latina/​o religious Left that since the 1970s has served as one of the strongest proponents for immigrant and refugee rights in the United States.7 If Latina/​o religious politics can teach us about the diversity of movement politics in the civil rights era, another goal of this chapter is to consider its impact on religious studies more specifically. Whereas religious studies scholars have done well to cover the cultural belief practices of Latina/​os, the religious politics of Latina/​o communities remain sorely understudied. This oversight has revealed an embarrassingly large gap in the literature on Mexican American and Latina/​o religious communities. As scholars, we know very little about Latina/​o religious politics and the ways in which it has functioned to undergird social movements. Part of the problem stems from an infatuation with church growth and decline frameworks. There is an infatuation with parish studies/​parishes within Catholic studies and with the growth/​decline of the congregation within Protestant studies. Scholars have justified their disregard for the civil rights movement by arguing that “Hispanic churches of the Southwest appear to have had little, or no, growth” in the years after the civil rights movement.8 Because of this, the civil rights movement, and more importantly Latina/​o participation in it, is dismissed. This focus on numbers—​the growth and decline of churches—​has also driven much of the attention to theories on religious economies and cultures. And studies on religious politics continue to remain tied to a black/​white paradigm that has failed to seriously consider the roles played by Latina/​o activists.9 But all is not lost. In the last fifteen years, Chicana/​o historians such as Lara Medina, Mario T. García, and Roberto Treviño have shifted their lens to the political, viewing religious institutions as political organizations with a stake in community formation and as central players in movements for civil rights and most specifically immigrant rights. Building on that scholarship, I suggest that exploring the interactions, coalitions, and political movements between religious outsiders and insiders carries important implications for how we might conceptualize theory and narrative in Latina/​o religious studies specifically.

Occupying the Church    261

Latina/​o Catholics, Protestants, and Pentecostals: A Brief History Understanding Latina/​o religious politics—​defined as the religious beliefs, ethics, and cultures that motivate social and political action in society—​is today more urgent than ever.10 As I write this chapter, President Trump is in the middle of making his case for building a border wall along the two-​thousand-​mile border between Mexico and the United States. At the center of the movement against a border wall are religious communities all across the United States who see a border wall as incongruent with their faith. And resistance to the border wall is not limited to Christian or Latino groups. Religious groups across the spectrum have united in their disgust for a policy that separates families and concretizes a symbol of hate and division. After visiting the border region in 2016, Pope Francis argued that “a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel.”11 Pope Francis’s bold words are part of a long line of critiques that began most forcefully in the civil rights era. It was during these years that the ethnic affirmations and political eruptions that took place gave rise to a critique against a Eurocentric Christianity and simultaneously gave rise to Latina/​o religious politics and identity. Throughout much of its history in the United States, the institutional church (Catholic and Protestant) effectively functioned as a partner in the establishment of a new racial and capitalist order in the Southwest. In the nineteenth century, whiteness, capitalism, and Christianity were the holy trinity that propelled the colonization of the American West. The construction of the transcontinental railroad, for example, brought together various social and economic forces which served to maintain a white racial and religious hegemony. Euro Americans fenced in land that had once been open, disregarded titles to land written in Spanish or those established by verbal agreements between families, and they established a political order that completely excluded Native Americans and Mexicans in the Southwest. In all of this, religion marched side by side as white Protestant leadership established churches to accommodate their white ethnic faithful and missionary projects to civilize indigenous and Mexican populations. In the years immediately after the Civil War especially, Protestant denominations established missionary projects in the Southwest and Midwest, Mexico, and later Puerto Rico. In the American Midwest, and into parts of Mexico, Protestant missionaries followed the rail lines to build “trackside churches,” where they offered religious instruction to the mostly Mexican agricultural and railroad labor force.12 But mainline Protestants failed miserably in their quest to convert Mexicans to Protestant Christianity. Paternalistic attitudes, the need to abandon all other religious understanding, and the racism of white missionaries all made Protestant Christianity unattractive and culturally bankrupt. In the first few years of the twentieth century, less than 5 percent of the Mexican population identified as Protestant.13 And those who did often carried with them multiple religious

262   Felipe Hinojosa loyalties, especially in their commitments to popular Catholicism. When it comes to success in the religious marketplace, no one was more successful in attracting Mexicans and other Latinos than the Pentecostals. Pentecostalism, with its vibrant worship, grassroots leadership, and promises of physical and spiritual healing, posed a serious threat to the Catholic Church in the United States and Latin America. So much so that in the 1960s a wave of “charismatic Catholicism” developed that provided Catholics with an avenue for adhering to some of the tenets of Pentecostalism without having to leave the Catholic Church.14 The origins of the Pentecostal movement began with the evangelistic work of Charles Fox Parham, who in 1905 first began preaching his Pentecostal message in Houston, Texas. But the significant moment came the following year in 1906 when revival erupted at Azusa Street in Los Angeles and in the process transformed evangelical Christianity in the Americas.15 This was one among many Pentecostal revivals around the world. The theological variance of Pentecostalism, as compared to mainline Protestantism and Catholicism, was its “unique insistence that Christians be baptized with the Holy Spirit and speak in unknown tongues.”16 The success of Pentecostalism hinged on its ability to connect with existing religious beliefs, coming from both popular Catholicism and indigenous beliefs, about divine healing and personal connections to the divine. In addition to Pentecostalism’s promise for physical healing, the movement preached a religious autonomy that, as historian Arlene Sánchez Walsh has argued, “insisted on Latino leadership of the churches.”17 Autonomy, coupled with the fact that women have often been the “transmitters of faith” and active church members, has made Pentecostalism a religious force in Latina/​o communities. In recent years that historic success has translated into a political force. Today, the Latino Assemblies of God denomination (Pentecostal), the largest and most politically influential Latino evangelical group in the United States, has served in an advisory role for three presidents in the last twenty years.18 While Latina/​o Protestantism and Pentecostalism developed along different tracks, they were similar in that movements like the Social Gospel (the religious movement that emerged in the early twentieth century from mainline Protestants in response to the problems of poverty, immigration, and labor) had a minimal effect on Latina/​o Protestant and Pentecostal communities. But that would change dramatically for both groups in the years after World War II and especially with the advent of the Chicana/​ o and Puerto Rican civil rights movements. Because of their location within the barrio and their connections to the community and the moral imperative they felt, Latina/​ o Protestants and Pentecostals became important players in the Latina/​o civil rights movements. The Catholic Church was not far behind either. Under the banner of “Catholic Action,” Catholic activism emerged out of a series of social encyclicals by Pope Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum) in 1891 and later Pius IX in (Quadragesimo Anno) in 1930. Teachings on social engagement emerged at critical moments of the Industrial Revolution and as the country fell into an economic depression. Both of the encyclicals aligned the church to the mostly ethnic white labor movement and solidified the Catholic Church “as one

Occupying the Church    263 of labor’s major allies.”19 The move to recognize the plight of workers and to ecumenical engagement, however, remained tempered by the xenophobia and anti-​labor sentiment that many white Catholics in the pews carried.20 The years after World War I were marked by increased conservatism that for the most part limited the impact of Rerum Novarum. That changed with President Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms and a renewed commitment by the Catholic Church to regain a foothold within the labor movement. In the 1920s, for example, the ecumenical Council of Women on Home Missions organized summer programs for Mexican American farm laborers in California.21 Although deeply colored by racial paternalism, summer programs like this one in California reveal the early connections and efforts by the church to assist Mexican American farmworkers.22 If ignoring racial discrimination was a national practice, local and grassroots efforts reveal how the politics of labor and race coexisted during the middle part of the twentieth century. In 1929, for example, Bishop Cantwell of Los Angeles appointed then Fr. Robert Lucey as director of Bureau of Catholic Charities. Soon after, Lucey started five diocesan community centers with medical clinics and recreation areas in predominantly Mexican American neighborhoods. Catholics did have a few Settlement houses in the Midwest, but nothing that came close to the work of Protestants in this area. And in the 1930s, the Mexican American labor activist Emma Tenayuca made it her moral imperative, based on her Catholic upbringing, to work on behalf of pecan shellers in San Antonio in order to help improve their lives.23 The relationship between Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church continued to evolve in the years after World War II. Councils for the Spanish speaking emerged as an outgrowth of the Bishop’s Committee for the Spanish speaking, which was first organized in 1945. Much of this work was led by Robert Lucey, now Archbishop, who in 1944 organized a seminar for the Spanish speaking in San Antonio as a way to get the conversation started on Mexican American issues. Fifty delegates attended the meeting in San Antonio, which was followed up by another seminar in Denver later that year. The Councils that emerged during this period were tasked with investigating and responding to health care concerns, housing needs, and infant mortality rates of Mexican Americans, all of which had catastrophic effects on community health. By the early 1960s seventy diocesan representatives worked with the Bishop’s Committee for the Spanish speaking in places such as New York, Miami, Cleveland, Denver, Madison, and Baker, Oregon, where working with migrant farmworkers was the central concern. But problems persisted. Even as Mexican Americans represented 27 percent of the US Catholic population in 1970, Mexican American priests were almost nonexistent. The battle to educate and train Mexican American and Latino priests who spoke Spanish and understood the culture was an outgrowth of the dynamic changes brought on by Vatican II and later the Chicano movement. Vatican II (1962–​1965) moved the church away from its fortress-​like presence to one that vowed to engage the world and initiate a dialogue across faith traditions and practices. In the 1960s in particular, the energy and militancy of the Chicano and Puerto Rican movement—​two movements that denounced police brutality, employment discrimination, and the racist educational and political system—​opened the door for religious

264   Felipe Hinojosa reformers and activists to challenge the church’s power in a way not seen before. In the Catholic Church, the civil rights movement in the United States confirmed the post–​Vatican II idea that all Catholics—​not just the leadership—​could be a force for change within the church. For mainline Protestants the support emerged most strongly within the farmworker movement. In fact, it was Protestant groups, and in particular the Presbyterian minister Chris Hartmire, that Cesar Chavez first called to support the boycott in Delano, California, that the National Farm Worker Association (NFWA) joined in 1965. And as early as 1964, Latino ministers from multiple mainline groups organized to push the Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches to become involved in the issues that affected the Spanish-​speaking community. They organized consultations on the role of the church in securing civil rights for Spanish-​speaking people, and they inspired a variety of initiatives that included the establishment of the Hispanic American Institute in 1966, a Spanish-​speaking task force at the national level, and denominational groups such as “La Raza Churchmen” started in California and Arizona to push for Latino causes within their religious circles. These initiatives were formed within the broader spirit of the civil rights movement in the United States along with macro events such as Vatican II and later the liberation theology focused Bishops’ conference in Medellín, Colombia, both of which carried deep reverberations across the hemisphere. Together these events cracked the door open to a new relationship between religious insiders and outsiders. Rather than viewing the institutional church as a fortress closed to outsiders, Vatican II actually changed how the Catholic Church engaged the world—​this revolution spoke of “the whole people of God.” Out of this movement emerged liberation theology, most notably with the writings of Peruvian Priest Gustavo Gutierrez, that stressed that it was not enough for the church to simply empathize and care for the poor, but that in fact the church should work for fundamental political and structural changes to eradicate poverty. Poverty and economic injustice were no longer simply economic conditions but now were labeled as “sin” by liberation theologians. These events shaped Latina/​o religious politics and brought together religious insiders and outsiders within the church to work toward social justice and change. This “crucial conjunction of immigration, Vatican II, and civil rights protest,” as historian John T. McGreevey has argued, changed the color of the church and forced it to deal with its racial exclusions in ways it had not done prior.24 Activist Catholic groups such as PADRES and Las Hermanas (Chicana/​Latina Catholic nuns), along with Protestant groups such as La Raza Churchmen (Presbyterian), the Latin American Methodist Action Group, and the Minority Ministries Council (Mennonite) all clamored for institutional reform and theological education based on the eruptions that came from Latin America. But as important as these macros events were, they do not explain the rise of a grassroots and urban Latina/​o movement taking off across US cities. These movements called out the church for its failure to address anti-​Latino racism, the urban renewal displacing poor Latino families, and the lack of institutional support from the church for the Chicano and Puerto Rican movements. Moreover, while white progressive

Occupying the Church    265 groups such as the National Council of Churches were familiar with the black freedom movement and the urban crisis that plagued American cities in the late 1960s, they had only a marginal understanding of the Latina/​o religious community. After Obed Lopez, the Chicago activist and leader of the Latin American Defense Organization, spoke to a room full of white and black Presbyterian leaders at their biannual General Assembly in 1969 in San Antonio, one white Presbyterian noted how Lopez’s words sounded “like far off thunder,” from a Latino leadership group whose issues and concerns were “only just beginning to come to the surface.”25 Even with the liturgical changes coming from Vatican II and with the buzz of Latin American liberation theology, Latino communities in the United States remained a people without a history.

Occupying the Church: The Rise of Latina/​o Religious Politics in 1969 In 1964, the Rev. Edler Hawkins made history as the first African American elected moderator of the United Presbyterian Church USA (UPUSA). Time magazine took note of the historic triumph by commenting how “the United Presbyterians have a knack for breaking race barriers without catering to either politics or sentimentalism.”26 His years as a pastor of the St. Augustine Presbyterian Church in the Bronx, New York, saw the church not only grow in membership but also become one of the few African American churches with a sizable number of Puerto Ricans attending regularly and with an offering of church services in both English and Spanish. It was Rev. Hawkins’s experience as the pastor of a multiethnic church in the Bronx that made him the obvious choice to preside over a discussion on the wave of church occupations led by Latino and African American groups in places like New York and Chicago in 1969. The meeting was part of the 181st General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church USA held in San Antonio in May 1969. Anxious Presbyterians, worried about the occupation of the Board of National Missions’ in New York City, came out in force. At the center of the discussions were the demands made by James Forman and his radical “Black Manifesto”—​a bold demand for $500 million as reparations from white Christians—​which in the first two weeks of May had captivated the attention of religious leaders across the country. As Forman addressed the Assembly, buoyed by the bold theatrics of occupation in New York, it was clear that his charisma had captured the day. Those who heard him that day described his talk as “witty, knowledgeable, and scathing.”27 Forman was joined that day by a quiet, and largely unknown, Latino cadre that included the Rev. Roger Granados, Tomas Chavez, Jr. (Spanish-​American Outreach, Detroit), Eliezar Risco (editor and cofounder of La Raza newsletter, Los Angeles), and Obed López (director of the Latin American Defense Organization, Chicago). They were there to speak about their own proposal, the “Brown Revolution Manifesto,”

266   Felipe Hinojosa which called for $500,000 for church programs in Latino communities and disinvestment in Latin America, and included a statement of solidarity and support for people of the “third world” and the “Black Manifesto.”28 Designed as an equivalent to the Black Manifesto, the Brown Revolution Manifesto sought to forge solidarity between black and brown activists and clergy.29 But compelling as the Brown Revolution Manifesto was, it paled in comparison to the news that the McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago had been occupied only a few days prior by a rainbow coalition of Latino, African American, and white activists. The only religious outsider at this meeting, Obed López (Mexican born and Chicago resident), shared the news about the occupation. And while Forman captured the imagination of the Presbyterian delegates that day, it was López’s news of an occupation that caused the greatest concern. López was almost the complete opposite of Forman. He was pragmatic, unassuming, quiet, and always dressed to the nines. His button-​down Oxford shirts, thin ties, and perfectly tapered pants earned him the reputation of being a “dapper, little man” from the FBI that surveilled him and labeled him a communist activist in Chicago. After delivering the news of the occupation and the demands being made by the Young Lords, the Poor People’s Coalition, and the residents of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, López quietly returned to his seat. No one in the room was expecting López and few knew of his work in Chicago as a long-​time community leader. But López left the General Assembly that day not only with guarantees that the Presbyterian Church was ready to listen, but with a larger sense that the days of Latina/​ o invisibility within church politics were over. Latina/​os had entered the troubled waters of religious politics in the late 1960s and the news came from an unlikely source, a religious outsider who some commented sounded “like far off thunder,” sharing grievances as a Latino whose issues were “only just beginning to come to the surface.”30 The occupation of McCormick seminary that Lopez spoke about was only the beginning. In 1969, Latino activist groups either occupied or disrupted Protestant and Catholic churches as a way to protest urban renewal, police repression, and anti-​black and anti-​Latino racism. A month after the occupation of McCormick seminary, the Puerto Rican Young Lords occupied the Armitage Methodist Church, only a brief walk from the seminary they first occupied. In addition to prompting both the Armitage church and McCormick seminary to rethink their relationship to the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago, the occupations marked a critical historical moment in the making of Latina/​o religious politics in the United States. These two occupations kicked off a national movement of Latina/​o radical activist groups (religious outsiders) occupying churches and disrupting church services in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, and New York City. Although each context was different, most of the occupations were part of a larger movement to protest urban renewal, housing displacement, and the indifference of churches to the social needs of their communities. The church was a strategic site, indeed a sacred space, which provided a moral high ground for activists to deliver their message. On their own, each of these occupations and disruptions was a dramatic instance that faded almost as immediately as it rose. Each occupation lasted no more than five to

Occupying the Church    267 fourteen days before church officials sought legal help to force the activists out of their churches. Yet in each case the occupations not only garnered the attention of white religious leaders across the country, they also buoyed the causes of Latina/​o Catholics and Protestants (clergy and leadership), whose movements for more visibility within church structures had taken root but remained marginal.31 These occupations and disruptions served as a tipping point of sorts for a Latina/​o religious politics that up to 1969 had remained marginal and relatively unimportant to the mostly white denominational leadership. Each of these cases had to do with a variety of concerns from urban renewal to the opulence of church buildings that originated with young activists—​religious outsiders—​whose only concern was that the church not ignore the social needs of the Latino families they served. Sensational, yet short, the movements in 1969 that took place across the United States—​and continued on a smaller scale in the 1970s—​have for the most part been overlooked by scholars who disregard these movements as having little lasting significance. But their importance does not lie in their lasting significance, but instead in how they provided the necessary spark for the rise of Latina/​o religious politics in the 1970s. Inspired by the black civil rights movement, the rise of liberation theology in Latin America, and the crisis that many Latino communities faced in urban and rural areas, Latina/​o religious politics moved from the margins to the center in 1969. The result was a religious political awakening that gave rise to Latina/​o theology, reform of church institutions, and the development of educational programs focused on Latina/​o religious studies.

Religious Radicals: Lydia Lopez and Jorge Lara-​Braud The 1970s characterized a significant shift in political thinking among Latina/​o religious leaders—​from quiet, patient, and unassuming in the 1960s (they supported the farmworker movement and initiated progressive mandates) to a more bold, radical, and conscientious approach in the 1970s. These new politics were defined by a greater focus on history, on the tragedy of colonialism, and on the ways in which white missionaries and an out-​of-​touch Catholic Church have suppressed Latina/​o desires for church autonomy. No longer satisfied with the simple translation from English to Spanish of church curriculum, and no longer willing to accept a second-​class status within church leadership, Latina/​o leaders stepped up and began the slow and tedious process of imagining a Latina/​o Christianity that took into account culture and spoke to the needs of marginalized communities across the United States. One of the most powerful declarations came in 1971 when a group of Latino religious leaders issued what they called the “Dallas Declaration.” In it they argued not only against the paternalism

268   Felipe Hinojosa of church leaders but also the powerful role that churches can play in the calls for dignity coming from minority communities. Our churches, like our communities, are forced to operate as isolated enclaves. We have virtually no access to the mechanisms of societal or ecclesiastical controls. Decisions are made for us, all the way from services we do not wish to consume to literature we do not care to use. Until very recently “minority” in the Church meant black. Yet, in the Southwest and in the Spanish-​speaking conglomerates of the northeast and the Midwest, our community has been no better off than the blacks. Perhaps we have not earned the right to be heard quite as seriously. By comparison, our self-​ assertion has been timid, and possibly cowardly. Perhaps overly zealous religious mentors from another culture got us to admit with our heads sharp distinctions between eternal and temporal, spiritual and material, heaven and earth, soul and body, Church and world, faith and doubt, individual and society, believer and pagan—​but deep within we have known all along life itself is the sum total of these diversities. For all her sins and follies, the Church remains for minorities the last plank of hope among all other institutions of society.32

For the first time in the history of both Catholic and Protestant churches, Latina/​os had organized multiple leadership groups as a way to push back against the silencing they had experienced in the church. PADRES and Las Hermanas emerged in the Catholic Church, and groups such as MARCHA (Methodists Associated Representing the Cause of Hispanic Americans) and the Minority Ministries Council emerged in Protestant churches among others. And while the farmworker movement in the 1960s is really the first movement to grab the attention of Latina/​o Christians, the 1970s Latina/​o religious politics was characterized by an increased concern with issues facing urban communities. For example, in New York City, the group known as “Acción Civica” brought together five hundred churches across the city in the mid-​1970s to start nutrition programs and create youth employment offices, among other social justice projects. Made up of mostly Pentecostal churches, the group also had participation from Latina/​ o leaders in Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Reformed churches. This largely Pentecostal/​Protestant group called itself the only “authentic indigenous institution in the city.”33 Groups like Acción Civica popped up across the country as Latina/​o religious leaders not only worked for reform within their churches but also committed to working within their surrounding communities. Two of the most important leaders during the 1970s—​of whom little has been written—​were Lydia Lopez of Los Angeles and Jorge Lara-​Braud of Austin, Texas. Both leaders embodied the politics of the era, but both came at it from fundamentally different perspectives. Lydia Lopez was a lay leader, a devout Episcopalian, and someone who never held a post in religious leadership. By contrast, Jorge Lara-​Braud was probably the most recognized Mexican American Protestant leader of his generation. Their stories provide a window into the kinds of work and politics that emerged in the 1970s. While much has been written about the development of theological studies in the 1970s,

Occupying the Church    269 Lopez and Braud represent a grassroots movement of leaders whose recognition is long overdue. Lydia Lopez was born in 1942 in a small unincorporated section of Los Angeles called Jimtown. In the 1950s, when plans to build the 605 freeway came through, the mostly working-​class ethnic Mexican population, which fluctuated between 800 and 1,200, was forced out.34 Lydia’s family was one of those families. Both of her parents, her mother from Durango and her father from Chihuahua, emigrated from Mexico to the United States in the early part of the twentieth century. Lydia’s father was a church planter, Baptist preacher, and a steel mill worker. Her mother was a stay-​at-​home mom, a seamstress, and active church member. As a child, Lydia memorized Bible verses for fun, attended vacation bible school at the Iglesia Bautista Betania, and grew up in a religious social world of church youth groups and Christian schools in and around East Los Angeles.35 In the 1960s, she attended Cal State L.A. and shortly after that started working with the East Los Angeles welfare council. It was there one afternoon that her boss invited her to a demonstration taking place on the corner of Temple and First. It was at this demonstration where she first met Fr. John Luce, the progressive Anglo priest of the Church of the Epiphany. This was the church that in the late 1960s and early 1970s provided a space for the Chicano power group, the Brown Berets, and in many ways made it possible for the movement in Los Angeles to flourish. Fr. Luce was joined at the protest by a group of several other Baptist and Presbyterian ministers who were also there to support the Eastside 13.36 The experience prompted her to leave her Baptist roots in search of a church that was not only more culturally relevant, but one that was involved in the growing Chicano movement in Los Angeles. She found her place at the Church of the Epiphany. The music of the mariachi mass reminded her of her grandmother’s parties, the people were warm and welcoming, and the political commitments of the church inspired her. Attending Epiphany placed her within the orbit of Chicano activism. Epiphany was after all, “the biggest party in town” and the place where many believe the Chicano movement got much of its strength.37 In the next few years, she joined Católicos Por La Raza at St Basil’s Church in 1969 as they disrupted Christmas Eve Mass; she served on the county grand jury in 1971; became the first Latina elected to the conference of the Episcopal Church, and earned a reputation as a “pushy broad.”38 These experiences made her a known figure in Los Angeles politics, especially among lawyers, law enforcement, and politicians across the city. Her rise to community leader and Chicana activist in Los Angeles took place in the 1970s and set her up for what would be one of the most important leadership positions in her life: serving as president of the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) in 1981.39 Her first action as president was to grant $5,000 to SCOP (South Central Organizing Project) as a way to build a coalition between African Americans and Latinos in the city, adding that politicians can no longer “play the Black community off the Brown community.”40 With Lopez’s leadership as both Vice President and later President, UNO pressured major insurance companies to lower their rates to residents on the East Side, persuaded the Safeway grocery store

270   Felipe Hinojosa chain to modernize its stores in the barrios and even build a new one, and convinced the Sheriff ’s department to increase patrols in high-​crime areas. Rooted in the church, the community, and with a strict adherence to the Alinksy method, UNO became a living manifestation for the visions of political activists and religious leaders in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s.41 After two years as UNO’s president, Lopez was ready for a change. In the mid-​1980s, she took a staff position at La Placita church, where she served as fundraiser and media liaison for the parish.42 She joined her good friend Fr. Luis Olivares not only because of their close relationship, but also because of their “shared mission” to help the most vulnerable in Los Angeles. For me the connection was the mission. It was never this is my pew; this is your pew. I never saw it as Roman Catholic or Protestant. As far as I was concerned, I was helping Luis Olivares do his mission and a mission that I was very much in sync with. It pushed the envelope in a way that nobody else was doing. I loved helping that happen.43

She raised money, helped Fr. Olivares with whatever he needed, and served as one of his closest confidants. While her role was mostly behind the scenes, her work was critical to the success of the Sanctuary movement in Los Angeles. For example, she was careful not to get arrested at public demonstrations in support of Central American refugees so that she could help raise the bail for those activists who were arrested and needed help getting out.44 Lopez’s work stemmed out of a deep and abiding faith for doing what’s right and for standing up against injustice. Her work as an activist and as a person of faith spanned the narrative arc that saw her participate with Católicos Por La Raza’s disruption of Christmas Eve Mass in 1969, and more than ten years later she found herself in the middle of the Sanctuary movement in Los Angeles. Although somewhat different, that trajectory was a similar one followed by the Presbyterian minister, Jorge Lara-​Braud. Born in Mexico City on April 3, 1931, Lara-​Braud dedicated his life to bridging the chasm between the church and society by promoting Christian unity, theological education, and religious activism. He first came to the United States as a student in the late 1940s and quickly experienced the sting of anti-​Mexican racism when he and two other friends walked into a café in Wharton, Texas, accompanied by their Anglo teacher. As Lara-​Braud tells the story, in 1949, a “blushing blonde waitress appeared with what sounded like utterances out of a nightmare: ‘I’m sorry, you will have to leave. We don’t serve Mexicans here.’ ” Lara-​Braud was stunned, but not his Mexican American friend. “Don’t take it so hard, it happens to us all the time,” his friend told him. At once Lara-​Braud was marked as a foreigner and with that experience now part of the Texas Mexican experience, as in cafes across Texas, skin color made everyone a Mexican, regardless of citizenship.45 He studied English at the Presbyterian Pan American School in Kingsville, Texas, where he graduated in 1950. From there, Lara-​Braud earned a bachelor’s degree from Austin College in Sherman, Texas (1954), and a master’s of divinity from Austin

Occupying the Church    271 Presbyterian Theological Seminary (1959). Over the next two decades, his academic achievements placed him as the first director of the Hispanic American Institute in Austin; then in Atlanta where he served as director of the Council on Theology and Culture for the Presbyterian Church in the United States; from there as professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary; and finally as director of the Commission on Faith and Order for the National Council of Churches in New York City in the 1970s. A prolific writer, Lara-​Braud authored, translated, and edited a number of texts in the late 1960s and 1970s that included Social Justice and the Latin Churches (translated by Lara-​ Braud) and Our Claim on the Future (edited by Lara-​Braud).46 He was also a frequent contributor to a number of Christian magazines, including Theology Today, Christian Century, Catholic World, Sojourners, and Christianity and Crisis, and frequently spoke to groups such as the Public Affairs Council in Washington DC, the Texas Council of Churches, and other religious organizations. He was a harsh critic of US military involvement in Central America and on occasion spoke at protest rallies at the US Army School of the Americas in Georgia.47 He led several ecumenical delegations to El Salvador and Central America in the late 1970s and became a close friend of the slain Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. In 1981, he contributed a heartfelt introductory chapter to the book, Archbishop Romero: Martyr of El Salvador, published by Orbis Press.48 But perhaps his most important legacy came as founding director of the Hispanic American Institute in Austin, Texas, in 1966. The Institute, which emerged out of a partnership between the Presbyterian Church US (PCUS) and the United Presbyterian Church USA (UPCUSA), served as an ecumenical center for research and religious training for ministry in Mexican American communities across Texas and the Southwest. As director of the Institute, Lara-​Braud worked tirelessly to build bridges between Anglo and Mexican American Protestants.49 In the 1970s, when many denominations were rethinking their strategies and approaches to church missions, Lara-​Braud led the way by drafting policy for Presbyterian mission agencies. One of the most important was titled “Illusion and Reality in Inter-​American Relations,” which helped frame mission policy in the 1970s and 1980s. While Lara-​Braud’s work is most often recognized within religious circles, his work outside the walls of the church also reveals an important aspect of his commitment to Mexican American civil rights in Texas. Lara-​Braud’s work with groups such as the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), the United Farm Worker movement, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), The American G.I. Forum, and a variety of other Mexican American political organizations is a testament to his belief in the important role of religion within movements for social change. One of his most important contributions is a short essay entitled “What Is La Raza?,” first published in La Raza Yearbook in 1968. The essay was reprinted in Aztlán: An Anthology of Mexican-​American Literature in 1972 and most recently reprinted in volume 2 of the Major Problems in American History series. Jorge Lara-​Braud passed away at the age of seventy-​seven and spent his final years as lay pastor of El Buen Pastor Presbyterian Church in Austin.

272   Felipe Hinojosa Like many religious radicals before them, both Lopez and Lara-​Braud made clear distinctions between a racist and discriminatory Christianity and the religion of Jesus, which stands on the side of the disinherited and marginalized. Their voices carried a moral authority that came from years of working with people and with causes they loved; and they found strength in a faith tradition rooted in service, justice, and peace. Their leadership helped define the era of Latina/​o religious politics, spurred on by the Chicana/​o movement and liberation struggles in Latin America. But more importantly, Lopez and Lara-​Braud offer a compelling counternarrative to the one that suggests religion made a hard right turn in the 1970s. While it is true that conservative religion organized a powerful political base in the 1970s, most notably the “Moral Majority,” Lopez and Lara-​Braud’s community-​oriented work suggests progressive religious politics never dissipated. While conservative religion, most notably in the Moral Majority (1979), grabbed the bullhorn, Latina/​o clergy and lay leaders got to work within their denominations and in their communities.

Conclusion By paying close attention to the multiple expressions of the civil rights era—​from occupation to sanctuary—​we begin to see that Latina/​o religious politics is not simply about religious leadership, reforming church denominations, or the kind of theology one practices. It is also where grassroots community movements, church occupations, and religious outsiders have played a major role in defining the political edge of Latina/​ o religiosity. Rather than keep religious studies trapped within a narrow frame that acknowledges something as “religious” only when clergy are involved, we might be better served to highlight the ways in which Latina/​o religious politics benefitted from the politics of groups such as Católicos Por La Raza, the Young Lords, and activists such as Lydia Lopez and Obed Lopez. From these activists we learn that Latina/​o religious politics have presented themselves in different forms, that they included liberation theology and revolutionary nationalism, and that it was a constant debate and struggle between reformist and revolutionary politics. But what does this mean, and what can this teach us, about the future of Latina/​o and religious studies? First off, they remind us that understanding Latina/​o religious politics means moving beyond the walls of the church and examining the ruptures and coming together of religious insiders and outsiders. Writing the new history of the civil rights movement will mean paying close attention to the complex and sometimes disruptive relationships that exist between religious reformers on the inside and activists whose commitments stretch beyond the walls of the church. Groups like Católicos Por La Raza and the Young Lords propelled the work of religious insiders such as PADRES, Las Hermanas, and other religious reformers as Latina/​os contextualized the religious expressions they cared so deeply about in the 1970s. This is especially important today in light of a resurgence of sorts of the religious Left in American politics, much of it in response to President Trump’s

Occupying the Church    273 policies on family separation at the border, his demand for a border wall, and his policies toward Muslim immigrants. From the Rev. William Barber reviving the Poor People’s Campaign to faith communities across the United States standing together against this border wall, the rise of the religious Left has made it necessary to provide a thorough and clear history.50 Even while Latina/​os remain on the margins in religious political history, they were certainly at the center in the formation and development of a religious Left in the 1970s. Most importantly, the movement was not one simply led by clergy, or simply focused on theological concerns, the religious politics of Latina/​o communities also aimed their critique at urban renewal programs, the lack of affordable health care, and they demanded that the church stand up to defend the most vulnerable in our community. Writing a new history of the Latina/​o civil rights movement necessitates a deeper and more robust engagement with religion and religious institutions. Rather than continue to privilege clergy-​led efforts, which are a dominant theme in religious studies, we are better served when we open up our analysis to include the critical roles that religious outsiders and laypeople have played in working to reform the church from the outside in. Doing so opens up new possibilities for centering religion and religious institutions as more than a moral force in society, and instead understand them as cultural and political forces that must be considered alongside movements for labor, immigrant, women’s, and civil rights. Not only in providing moral authority to these movements, where the only voices we hear are from the clergy, but also in how religious outsiders reinvigorate and remind the church that its primary purpose is to serve the people, to serve the community. In the end, it is the people’s church that will bring a clearer vision for justice and peace. Working to unearth the little-​known histories of church-​building occupations, and of social movements led by religious radicals like Lydia Lopez and Jorge Lara-​Braud, is no easy task. It will require scholars of Latina/​o religion to center ethnographic work, oral history, and narrative storytelling grounded in archival research in order to breathe life into the radical and political history of faith that gave rise to Latina/​o religious politics in the civil rights era.

Notes 1. Reporter’s transcript, “The People of the State of California vs. Richard Cruz, Robert Gandara, Fred Lopez, Raul Ruiz, Jose Camarena, Pedro Arias, Alicia Escalante, Richard Martinez, Anthony Salazar, Armando Vasquez,” April 13, 1970, p. 631, Box 8, Folder 4, Católicos Por La Raza Papers, UC Santa Barbara archives, Santa Barbara, California. 2. Lydia Lopez, interview with author, Alhambra, California. 3. Robert Rawitch, “Catholic Church Picketed after Violent Protest,” Los Angeles Times, December 26, 1969. 4. Mario T. García, Chicano Liberation Theology (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2009), 181. 5. Ana María Díaz and Anthony M. Stevens-​Arroyo, Recognizing the Latino Resurgence in U.S. Religion: The Emmaus Paradigm (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). See also Anthony M. Stevens-​Arroyo, “From Barrios to Barricades: Religion and Religiosity in

274   Felipe Hinojosa Latino Life,” in The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960, ed. David Gutierrez (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 303–​354. 6. Otto Maduro, “Notes Toward a Sociology of Latina/​o Religious Empowerment” in Hispanic/​Latino Theology: Challenge and Promise, ed. Ada María Isasi-​Díaz and Fernando Segovia. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 151–​166.157. 7. See Mario T. García, Father Luis Olivares, a Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018); Roberto Treviño, The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-​Catholicism in Houston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Lara Medina, Las Hermanas: Chicana/​ Latina Religious-​ Political Activism in the U. S. Catholic Church (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005); Luis D. León, La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-​ Mexican Borderlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); and Felipe Hinojosa, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). 8. Juan F. Martínez, The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018), 120. 9. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Mark A. Noll, God and Race in American Politics: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 10. I draw much from Catherine Wilson. See her excellent book, Catherine Wilson, The Politics of Latino Faith: Religion, Identity, and Urban Community (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 3. 11. David Waters, “Border Walls Separate Bodies of Christ,” USA Today September 18, 2017, https://​w ww.usato ​day.com/​story/​opin​ion/​faith-​in-​amer ​ica/​2017/​09/​18/​b or​der-​wall-​ separa​tes-​bod​ies-​chr​ist/​677554​001. 12. Adam Morales, American Baptists with a Spanish Accent (King of Prussia, PA: The Judson Press, 1964), 41. 13. For an overview of Protestant missions in the Southwest, see Juan F. Martínez, Sea La Luz: The Making of Mexican Protestantism in the American Southwest, 1829–​1900 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2006). 14. For a good overview of the religious economy, and Charismatic Catholicism’s place in it, see Andrew Chesnut, Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 15. Daniel Ramírez, Migrating Faiths: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 2. 16. Ramírez, Migrating Faiths, 193. 17. Arlene M. Sánchez Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 3. 18. Gastón Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 343. 19. Alan J. Watt, Farm Workers and the Churches: The Movement in California and Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010), 45. 20. For more on how religious “insiders” (priests and other religious leaders) are viewed as more progressive than the religious “outsiders” (white ethnics in the pews, for example), see John McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth Century Urban North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 21. Watt, Farm Workers and the Churches, 4.

Occupying the Church    275 22. See also Sergio M. González, “Juntos en el Nombre de Dios: Milwaukee’s Mexican Mission Chapel of our Lady of Guadalupe, 1924–​1929,” paper presented at the Newberry Seminar in Latina/​o and Borderlands Studies, April 10, 2015. González pushes the periodization further back to the 1920s. 23. The Catholic Church did not support Tenayuca and her communist sympathies. In fact, as Arlene Sánchez-​Walsh argues, it was only by working outside religious institutions that religious activists were able to support striking pecan shellers. See Arlene M. Sanchez Walsh, “Emma Tenayuca, Religious Elites, and the 1938 Pecan-​Sheller’s Strike,” in The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working-​Class, ed. Christopher D. Cantwell et al. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 155. 24. John T. McGreevey, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 162. 25. McGreevey, Parish Boundaries. 26. Claude Hargrove, “Hawkins, Edler Garnett,” in African American National Biography, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford: African American Studies Center), http://​www.oxf​orda​asc.com/​arti​cle/​opr/​t0001/​e4791. 27. No author given. “Challenge and Response,” Presbyterian Life, June 15, 1969. Pitts Theological Library, Emory University. 28. “Brown Revolution Manifesto” presented to the 181st General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church USA at San Antonio, Texas, May 15, 1969. Box F093, File: UPUSA General Assembly 1969. Hispanic American Institute collection, Austin Presbyterian Seminary, Austin, Texas. 29. Roger Granados, “Notes from the UPUSA General Assembly,” May 15, 1969, page 7, Box F093, File: UPUSA General Assembly 1969. Hispanic American Institute collection, Austin Presbyterian Seminary, Austin, Texas. 30. No author given, “Challenge and Response,” Presbyterian Life, June 15, 1969. Pitts Theological Library, Emory University. 31. Sociologists call this the positive radical flank effect, when an action by a radical group strengthens the bargaining position for a moderate group and makes the demands of the moderate group seem reasonable. Belinda Robnett, Carol L. Glasser, and Rebecca Trammel, “Waves of Contention: Relations among Radical, Moderate, and Conservative Organizations,” in Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change. For more on church occupations, see Alberto Pulido, “Are You an Emissary of Jesus Christ: Justice, the Catholic Church, and the Chicano Movement,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies 4 (1991); Elias Ortega-​Aponte, “Raised Fist in the Church! Afro-​Latino/​a Practice among the Young Lords Party: A Humanistic Spirituality Model for Radical Latino/​a Religious Ethics,” PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2011; Darrel Enck-​Wanzer, “Decolonial Imaginaries: Rethinking ‘The People’ in the Young Lords’ Church Offensive” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 98, no.1 (2012): 1-​23.; Karen Secrist, “Construyendo Nuestro Pedacito de Patria: Space and Dis(place)ment in Chicago” PhD diss., Duke University, 2009; Lilia Fernandez, Brown in the Windy City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 191–​ 192; Brian Behnken, Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

276   Felipe Hinojosa 32. “The Dallas Declaration of the National Planning Committee of the Spanish-​American Crisis,” presented to the Section of Hispanic-​American Ministries of the National Council of Churches, January 29, 1971. Box F069, Folder: Dallas. Hispanic American Institute Collection, Austin Presbyterian Seminary, Austin, Texas. 33. David Vidal, “Hispanic Protestant Church Group Forges New Role for the Spanish Speaking in New York City’s Affairs,” New York Times, August 2, 1976. 34. Lynn Simross, “Digging Up Roots of An Early Mexican Barrio,” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1984. 35. Lydia Lopez, interview with author, Alhambra, California, July 4, 2018. 36. Eastside 13: the group of young Chicanos indicted by a grand jury June 1, 1968, on conspiracy charges stemming from the East L.A. blowouts (Chicano student walkouts from public schools). One of those in the Eastside 13 was Fred Lopez, whom Lydia would later marry. 37. Lydia Lopez, interview by author, Ahlambra, California, July 4, 2018. According to Lydia, this was a comment made by Juan Gomez Quiñones. 38. This was a designation that Lydia gave to herself as we discussed her work during the July 4, 2018 interview. 39. Lydia Lopez, interview with author. 40. “Lydia Lopez to Lead UNO,” Eastside Los Angeles Tribune, April 8, 1981. 41. Frank del Olmo, “Latino Activists from UNO Turn Backs on Ballot Box,” Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1980. 42. Mario T. García, Father Luis Olivares, a Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 260. 43. García, Father Luis Olivares, a Biography, 411. 44. García, Father Luis Olivares, a Biography, 430. 45. Jorge Lara-​Braud, “The American Dream and the Mexican-​American,” address presented at the 58th annual conference of the Texas Social Welfare Association, February 24, 1969, Box F098, File: Speeches and Addresses Folder II, Hispanic American Institute, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas. 46. Jorge Lara-​Braud, trans., Social Justice and the Latin Churches (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1969); Jorge Lara-​Braud, ed., Our Claim on the Future: A Controversial Collection from Latin America (Chester Heights, PA: Friendship Press, 1970). 47. Jorge Lara-​Braud, “The Gospel of Justice: Monseñor among His People,” Christianity and Crisis 40, no. 8 (1980): 124–​131; “Biographical Information: Jorge Lara-​Braud,” Council on Theology and Culture Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). For “American Presbyterians: A Family Album.” Record Group No. 301.9, Box 14, File 4, Board of National Missions: Council on Church and Race. July 1983. Presbyterian Historical Society, The National Archives of the PC (USA), Philadelphia, PA. 48. Plácido Erdozain, Archbishop Romero, Martyr of El Salvador (Ossining, NY: Orbis Books, 1981). 49. Jorge Lara-​ Braud, “Our Spanish-​ American Neighbors,” The Christian Century 85 (1968): 43–​45. 50. One of the latest publications attempts to do just that. See Leilah Danielson, Marian Mollin, and Doug Rossinow, The Religious Left in Modern America: Doorkeepers of a Radical Faith (London: Palgrave-​Macmillan, 2018).

Occupying the Church    277

Bibliography Behnken, Brian. Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Chesnut, Andrew. Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Danielson, Leilah, Marian Mollin, and Doug Rossinow, eds. The Religious Left in Modern America: Doorkeepers of a Radical Faith. London: Palgrave-​Macmillan, 2018. Del Olmo, Frank. “Latino Activists from UNO Turn Backs on Ballot Box.” Los Angeles Times, July 27, 1980. Díaz, Ana María, and Anthony M. Stevens-​Arroyo. Recognizing the Latino Resurgence in U.S. Religion: The Emmaus Paradigm. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Emerson, Michael O., and Christian Smith. Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Erdozain, Plácido. Archbishop Romero, Martyr of El Salvador. Ossining, NY: Orbis Books, 1981. Espinosa, Gastón. Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Fernandez, Lilia. Brown in the Windy City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. García, Mario T. Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. García, Mario T. Chicano Liberation Theology. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2009. García, Mario T. Father Luis Olivares, a Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Hargrove, Claude. “Hawkins, Edler Garnett.” In African American National Biography, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Oxford: African American Studies Center. Hinojosa, Felipe. Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Lara-​Braud, Jorge. “The Gospel of Justice: Monseñor among His People.” Christianity and Crisis 40, no. 8 (1980): 124–​131. Lara-​Braud, Jorge, ed. Our Claim on the Future: A Controversial Collection from Latin America. Chester Heights, PA: Friendship Press, 1970. Lara-​Braud, Jorge. “Our Spanish-​American Neighbors.” The Christian Century 85 (1968): 43–​45. Lara-​Braud, Jorge, trans. Social Justice and the Latin Churches. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1969. León, Luis D. La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-​Mexican Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Maduro, Otto. “Notes Toward a Sociology of Latina/​o Religious Empowerment” in Hispanic/​ Latino Theology: Challenge and Promise, ed. Ada María Isasi-​Díaz and Fernando Segovia. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 151–​166. Martínez, Juan F. Sea La Luz: The Making of Mexican Protestantism in the American Southwest, 1829–​1900. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2006. Martínez, Juan F. The Story of Latino Protestants in the United States. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018. McGreevy, John. Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth Century Urban North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

278   Felipe Hinojosa Medina, Lara. Las Hermanas: Chicana/​Latina Religious-​Political Activism in the U. S. Catholic Church. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005. Morales, Adam. American Baptists with a Spanish Accent. King of Prussia, PA: The Judson Press, 1964. Noll, Mark A. God and Race in American Politics: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Ortega-​Aponte, Elias. “Raised Fist in the Church! Afro-​Latino/​a Practice among the Young Lords Party: A Humanistic Spirituality Model for Radical Latino/​a Religious Ethics.” PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2011. Pulido, Alberto. “Are You an Emissary of Jesus Christ: Justice, the Catholic Church, and the Chicano Movement.” Explorations in Ethnic Studies 4 (1991). Ramírez, Daniel. Migrating Faiths: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Rawitch, Robert. “Catholic Church Picketed after Violent Protest.” Los Angeles Times, December 26, 1969. Sanchez Walsh, Arlene M. “Emma Tenayuca, Religious Elites, and the 1938 Pecan-​Sheller’s Strike.” In The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working-​Class, edited by Christopher D. Cantwell et al. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Sánchez Walsh, Arlene M. Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Secrist, Karen. “Construyendo Nuestro Pedacito de Patria: Space and Dis(place)ment in Chicago.” PhD diss., Duke University, 2009. Simross, Lynn. “Digging Up Roots of An Early Mexican Barrio.” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1984. Stevens-​Arroyo, Anthony M. “From Barrios to Barricades: Religion and Religiosity in Latino Life.” In The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960, edited by David Gutierrez. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Treviño, Roberto. The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-​Catholicism in Houston. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Vidal, David. “Hispanic Protestant Church Group Forges New Role for the Spanish Speaking in New York City’s Affairs.” New York Times, August 2, 1976. Darrel Enck-​Wanzer, “Decolonial Imaginaries: Rethinking ‘The People’ in the Young Lords’ Church Offensive” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 98, no.1 (2012): 1–​23. Waters, David. “Border Walls Separate Bodies of Christ.” USA Today September 18, 2017. https://​www.usato​day.com/​story/​opin​ion/​faith-​in-​amer​ica/​2017/​09/​18/​bor​der-​wall-​separa​ tes-​bod​ies-​chr​ist/​677554​001. Watt, Alan. Farm Workers and the Churches: The Movement in California and Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010. Watt, Alan J. Farm Workers and the Churches: The Movement in California and Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010. Wilson, Catherine. The Politics of Latino Faith: Religion, Identity, and Urban Community. New York: New York University Press, 2008.

Chapter 15

L atino Men, M ac h i smo, and Christ ia ni t y Luís León

Reifying and Disrupting Machismo Central to Latina/​o/​x collective and public identities is the construction of machismo. Latino men, despite their countries of origin, religion, or race, are subjected to personal and media valuations of their masculinities using the characteristic negative stereotypes of machismo. These assessments not only hurt Latino men but at once impugn Latina women as enablers of what have been called the “machista vices.”1 I propose that machismo is not a discourse that exists in isolation or secularization, but instead it is a central component to a distinctly Christian, colonial mythology that justified colonialism and continues to support the criminalization and incarceration of Latino men in particular, and regenerates the public mythologies that pathologize indigenous and Latinx communities more generally. Machismo is central to the nexus of immigration, neoliberalism, and the transnational flows and captivities of capital—​especially insofar as capitalist accumulation and consumption answer the affective calls of material salvation, insatiable greed, and cruelty—​both on a personal and collective scale. Concomitantly, Pentecostal spirituality, like the Puritan cage from which it originates,2 sacralizes money, material desire, and can ironically prove cruel in its stark delineation of winners and losers, often ruthlessly casting aside the “unsaved.” Salvation, migration, and material aggregation do the same kind of affective work, satisfying a desire for something more. Pivotal to the control of labor is racialization, functioning as a sieve correlating surplus labor and demand. The longer version of this project attends to the alchemy between Pentecostal salvation, migration, and infinite amassing.3 Racialization of Latina/​o communities is inextricably tied to discourses of machismo. “Machismo” is simply translated as “maleness,” but it has come to signify a cult of extreme virility, staged upon a stark gender duality. Latino men’s behaviors are

280   Luís León publicly regulated and policed according to standards set by common behavioral codes originating in colonial Christian systems. Machismo is defined by many insiders as the masculine practice of shutting down one’s emotional and physical affects. Ilan Stavans describes his indoctrination into Mexican manhood: “To be a Hispanic man was to hide one’s emotions, to keep silent when it came to expressing your heart. We are supposed to swallow our pain and never cry como una nina—​like girls. Keep a straight face, suck it up—​se muy mucho.”4 The condition of Latino maleness is produced by a racial narrative: Stavans was taught to be a Hispanic man, not just a man, not just a Mexican, not just a human. Yet Stavans’s own account testifies to the way he himself was conditioned to transgress macho norms: “My father taught me to show affection in public. When departing, he would kiss me without inhibition.”5 His accounting for his own gender socialization creates a tension between the discursive myths and actual practices of Latino masculine formation. This tension was explored also by the Mexican Nobel Prize–​winning author Octavio Paz (1914–​1998) in his The Labyrinth of Solitude published in 1961. Writing on machismo, Paz claimed, facetiously, that Mexican men could maintain their macho identity even when engaging in homosexual encounters if they opened up another man: “Masculine homosexuality is tolerated, then, on condition that it consists in violating a passive agent. . . . the important thing is not to open oneself up and at the same time to break open one’s opponent.”6 Too much academic writing on gender systems in Latin America reifies machismo, leveling complex gender systems to a unidimensional macho monolith that is sometimes crossed, but never de-​ stabilized; unwittingly serving multinational imperialist projects. One anthropologist has proposed: “Loyalty to and credence in the ideal norms are considerable. They are constantly reiterated in many media, especially in primary socialization. The machismo complex may not be a sui generis reality, but belief in and approval of it channel behavior to conformity.”7 The anthropologist Roger Lancaster writes: “machismo is more than an ‘effect’ produced by other material relations. It has its own materiality, its own power to produce effects, . . . its own economy.”8 Certainly machismo emerges from within a distinct social ecology, but reifying it in these ways ignores its complex colonial history, multiple manifestations, and everyday transgressions. No one denies that patriarchy and oppression of women are tragic realities; however, this is not a discrete Latino pathology. Instead, Ana Castillo and others understand machismo as a legacy of colonialism, particularly Christian misogyny. She writes: “It is of utmost importance to understand the damage that machismo has done and continues to do to humankind in the name of tradition and in the name of much that we hold sacred through institutional religion. We must recognize that certain behavior that has been accepted by our culture and sanctified by the church is not innate. Men are not born macho, they are made macho.”9 Like Castillo, my work frames the problem of machismo as a religious issue, but complicates the blame for its perpetuation to capitalistic interests served by institutional religion, and deployed as public policy. The macho is the male counterpart to marianismo, or the Latin American devotion to the Virgin Mary in a multiplicity of iterations. In Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe

Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity    281 reigns supreme. She signifies mythical virgin motherhood, inspiring the discourse of hembrismo, or femaleness. Her narrative activates the macho—​especially in as much as women are destined to emulate the Catholic feminine ideal by embodying virgin motherhood: marianismo. An Iberian religious inheritance has shaped gendered behavioral codes in Latin America, pivoting on the holy couplet: marianismo (marianism)/​machismo. Machismo would not be possible without the long-​suffering, demure, sacred figure of the virgin mother who, according to the anthropological mythology, enables machista attitudes and behaviors. Hence, machismo is a key element in a religious script defining gender codes. In other words, machismo is a myth. There is no doubt that domestic abuse occurs in Latina/​o/​x households. The question, however, is the extent to which those behaviors are accepted as the cultural norm and celebrated as the cult of machismo. At least one anthropologist has found that these stereotypes belong to a social-​science Orientalizing discourse, and that they are not native to the way Latin American men see themselves. Matthew Guttman’s study of family and masculinity in Mexico challenges and disrupts racializing machista narratives: The Meanings of Machismo: Being a Man in Mexico City.10 In it, he documents the way Mexican men see themselves, parent their children, relate to women, and talk about sex. His findings are consistent with those of Alfredo Mirande, in his study, Hombres y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture, who found that Latino men articulated a definition of machismo in which men adhere to a “code of honor,” valuing strength while respecting women, their families, and each other.11 Similarly, my work challenges stereotypic understandings of machismo by framing it as a complex religious problem, one that has a mythological component to it. The value of masculine identity is set within a human economy of performance and symbolic exchange; performance enables increase, and consumption or expenditure of emblematic capital. Hence, men negotiate their masculinity—​the more masculine heteronormative capital they acquire, the more they can spend. In this way, men who have banked stores of macho heterosexuality can then exchange it to allow for homo social, erotic, and affective behaviors while still maintaining the lion’s share. This work will critically explore the complex mythological dimensions of the macho within the broad context of Christianity.

A Pentecostal High On April 15, 2013, the cover story of Time magazine declared that Latino evangelicals and Pentecostals were “transforming religion in America.”12 While there has been considerable research on Pentecostal conversion in Latin America, there has been little written on Pentecostalism among Latina/​os in the United States.13 According to a study released in 2014 conducted by the Pew Research Center, 16 percent of Hispanics in the United States are evangelical and Pentecostal. The exact figures on Latina/​os converting to Pentecostalism are impossible to determine, and estimates are contested. In 1997, the sociologist Andrew Greely, also an ordained Catholic priest, famously speculated

282   Luís León that 600,000 Latinos “defected” from Catholicism to evangelical and Pentecostal faiths each year. However, more recently Timothy Matovina discovered that Greely had miscalculated, and that the correct number resulting from Greely’s calculation was 60,000.14 In 2014, Gaston Espinosa wrote: “Of the 53 million Latinos in the United States, “about 66 percent are Catholic, while 27 percent identify as Protestant and non-​ Catholic Christian, though some put the figures at 62 percent Catholic and 33 percent Protestant and unaffiliated. Over 80% of all Latino Protestants self-​identify as born again.”15 Despite the disagreement over the statistics, there is little question that Latina/​ os are converting to Catholicism, and that the majority of these Protestant converts are evangelical and Pentecostal. As a result of the Pentecostal conversion phenomenon among Latina/​os, researchers are asking about the motivations for the shift from a distinctly postcolonial Catholicism to born-​again religions. The rise of Pentecostalism across the Latina/​o Americas has spawned studies arguing that evangelico conversion provides the antidote to what has been deemed “machista vices. The sociologist Bernice Martin argues: “curbing the typical vices of the ‘machista’ culture of the men in the streets and bars, notably drink, drugs and ‘whoring.’ Indeed, it would not be an overstatement to claim that an indispensable part of the appeal of Pentecostalism is its ability to save the men from ‘machismo’ and put the family back together as an effective unit of economic co-​operation as well as of stable relationships.”16 Certainly Pentecostalism’s prohibition of alcohol can reform dysfunctional male drunkenness where it exists, which, unlike Martin’s suggestion, is not universal.17 Describing alcoholism, drug addiction, and frequenting of “whores” as “typical” macho behavior perpetuates racial stereotypes, generalizing and pathologizing Latina/​o families. More nuance is required in academic discussions of machismo. Similarly, in 1995, the anthropologist Elizabeth Brusco published a book entitled The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Columbia.18 Like Martin, she found that Latin American women convert to Pentecostalism at much higher rates than do men. Brusco argues that Pentecostalism reinforces what she calls the “undeniable” gendered reality of entrenched cultural values, but empowers women by elevating “domesticity.” Pentecostal conversion “reattaches males to the family . . . it glorifies and supports what is female.”19 In fact, “the theme of male domestic abdication” grounds her study.20 Her ethnography of Columbian Pentecostals waxes broadly on all Latinos, and her analysis affirms and advances the social scientific and psychological literature on machismo as cultural and individual pathology: “machismo is best applied to the pattern emerging from male self-​doubt.”21 As a self-​described “feminist,” Brusco focuses on women’s roles. Reviewing the literature on machismo, she stresses the active role of Latinas as agents of their own oppression. “The female counterpart to machismo, marianismo, is in every way machismo’s mirror image. Arrogance and intransigence in the male are mirrored by self-​ abnegation and submission in the female. A double standard of extreme proportions awards all the spoils to men and reduces women to little more than domestic slaves.”22 Brusco distinguishes between what she calls the “confident true macho,” associated with strength and other positive characteristics, and machismo, who she describes as the

Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity    283 typical wife-​beating, alcoholic, drug-​addicted, hypersexual adulterer. Yet she dismisses the former by arguing that those characteristics are better described by other anthropological categories. Perhaps the most accepted explanation for the surge comes in the form of the rational choice consumerism theory, best articulated by Andrew Chestnut. Chestnut argues that the rapid growth of Pentecostalism is fruitfully viewed through the model of the religious marketplace, wherein Pentecostals offer an upgraded Christian product to Catholic consumers, peddling charismatic gifts of the Spirit, principally ecstatic worship and divine healing.23 That is, as Chestnut puts it: The utilitarian nature of Pentecostalism and popular religion in general means that the spiritual products offered to consumers of the divine must prove useful in their daily lives. Products that do not relate to believers’ quotidian existence will find few purchasers in the popular religious marketplace . . . spiritual products that hold little relevance to the social reality of impoverished believers will collect dust on the lower shelves of the market. If Pentecostalism is thriving in the [unregulated] Latin American religious marketplace, it is largely due to the utility of its products in consumers’ everyday lives.24

My research suggests an alternative to the rational choice consumerism model arguing for an affective contagion approach to understanding conversion, whereby ideas and practices are transmitted and circulate throughout populations by simple connection, bodies acting upon other bodies, spreading affect like viruses attaching themselves to organisms. In the words of one theorist: “The social contagion thesis holds that emotions and beliefs spread through and leap between populations in a process more akin to a disease like the flu than rational choice. . . . While the social contagion thesis may be simple, its conclusions are radical: under certain circumstances mere touch or contact with some sociocultural phenomenon is sufficient for cultural transmission to occur.”25 Social contagion spreads affects. While there is not universal agreement on the definition of affect, in the words of Kevin O’Neill: “Affect is similar to emotion or feeling, but has much more to do with the body than either. Affect is raw, reactive sensation. . . . It takes place before consciousness and before discourse. Hair standing on the back of a neck, the warm glow of holiday festivities, the rush of enthusiasm at a political rally—​this is affect.”26 An originator of the theory, Baruch Spinoza, articulates it as follows: “By affect I understand affections of the body by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections.”27 Brian Massumi, when translating Giles Deleuze and Felix Guttari, defines affect/​affection as follows: “neither word denotes a personal feeling . . . is an ability to affect and to be affected. It is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act.”28

284   Luís León In concert with affect and contagion, meme theory presents an alternative to rational choice. Building on the gene theory as articulated by Richard Dawkins, memetics suggests that memes—​ideas, practices, and affects—​spread by means of a vehicle, in this case the body, and the replicator, which is the meme struggling to replicate itself. In this model, a meme is treated “as a replicator in its own right, operating entirely for the benefit of its own selfish replication.”29 Replication occurs through imitation, either voluntary or involuntary. This theoretical framing enables me to propose that Pentecostalism, as a constellation of affects and affective behaviors, can be understood through another speculative option: the mechanisms whereby Pentecostalism are transmitted are emotional, energetic, chemical, and memetic. I suggest this as an imaginative frame, and not as empirical science. I propose this heuristically, not as scientific conclusion, but as another way of imagining the phenomenon of Pentecostal conversion and transmission. As Anna Gibbs puts it: “Rather, what I am suggesting is that theory needs to adopt a heuristic function, drawing creatively on different forms of knowledge to ask what if one conceived the world in this way? What then becomes possible in the space opened up by such a ‘passionate fiction’ ”?30 Framing the spread of Pentecostalism in this way enables a scholarly understanding of the emotional intensities of evangelical conversion, proposing new models to comprehend the increase of born-​again religion among Latinos, men in particular, while enabling also a deeper grasp of machismo, religion, affect, and transmission theory. The space opened in the history of religions by this passionate fiction is indeed radical, for it challenges conventional theories of the development and growth of religion, proposing that religious conversion is not so much the product of agents of personal subject formation, the modern self-​contained individual, who make informed decisions, but as a constellation of affects and memes struggling to reproduce themselves, hence realizing what Manuel Vasquez calls “a materialist” history of religion wherein belief, if not subordinated to the body, is at least co-​constitutive of religious evolution.31 Affect is a pre-​emotional sensation that flows from one body to the next. The affects transmitted in Pentecostal ritual produce Eros, that is, the binding love among men that is a life force yielding psychic and physical union, a death of the individual self while giving birth to a newly formed organism. Once members of a community contract Pentecostalism, it acts as a meme, whereby others imitate it in both voluntary and involuntary practices. In short, it can go viral, becoming rhizomatic, with roots in many soils, affecting and affected by a multiplicity of social, cultural, and political formations. Affective Pentecostal ritual allows men to discharge surplus repression—​especially during the rites of initiation or conversion wherein men weep openly, lay hands on and caress one another, embrace, and nurture each another—​the affective Pentecostal spirit is contagious, passing from one man to the next, forming erotic bonds—​unifying bodies—​which then, as they tell it, motivates them to convert others. Edward Orozco Flores describes macho-​disrupting men’s behavior in a Pentecostal (Victory Outreach) service as follows: “it was common at church services to see tattooed, overweight men

Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity    285 with shaved heads and gang clothing touching, embracing, or whispering affectionate words in each other’s ears.”32 The affective state is transitive and liminal, and many converts to Pentecostalism struggle with the mandates of their new faith while others remain within the religion for only a short time. The narratives of these men demonstrate that the Pentecostal meme is contagious, that men affect and are affected by one another, converting more and more bodies and souls in memetic imitative practices which facilitates its transmission and spread. The contagion model of Pentecostal transmission addresses questions left unanswered by the rational choice consumerism model. For example, if converting to Pentecostalism from Catholicism is a rational choice, why do some, most, Latina/​os resist it? Are they not rational? Contagion theory would suggest that those who are able to repel the allure of Pentecostalism carry the antibodies to infection, which may be a cultural and physical disposition and cognitive commitments that act as repellants. Why is there a high rate of recidivism among Pentecostal converts, and why do others remain within the faith? Again, the contagion theory would have it that there are differing amounts of viral load within each individual that either enable the virus to attain or to falter. The rational choice model offers very little by way of explanation for Pentecostalism’s failures among Latina/​o/​xs. Pentecostal subjectivity is characterized by intensely emotional experiences and expressions which are more fully accounted for by a theory of affect rather than a theory of autonomous subjectivity and rational decision-​making. While affect and contagion hypothesis frame human agency as susceptible to ideas as the body is subject to viruses, transmission of the ideas and practices is intentional and volitional. Typically, as in the case of Latina/​o/​x communities, the transmitter or evangelist is an external agent who comes preaching an idea or practice which they intend to spread horizontally; but vertical transmission also occurs when members of one’s own community communicate the meme. Taking this into account, my research asks not only about the marketability of the message, but the material conditions—​economic, cultural, racial, and emotional, under which the message is rejected or takes hold and attains. I propose that there may be more to the spread of Pentecostalism in Latina/​o/​x communities than rational choice or church growth models can explain—​an approach centered on the emotions. In this model, Pentecostal conversion occurs in groups (two or more), wherein men affect one another, which then spreads feelings and emotions, which results in contagious imitative behaviors that manifest as Eros; this is what I call spiritual erotics—​a process that transforms Latino masculinity. Much of this work is animated by an exploration of this transformation.

Bad Hombres When Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy, on June 16, 2015, from the gilded halls of Trump Tower in New York, he did so with an invective against Latina/​o/​x and Muslim immigrants. In a speech televised for millions to view, he declared:

286   Luís León When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. . . . They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people . . . they’re sending us not the right people. It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably—​probably—​rom the Middle East. . . . And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast.33

Political observers knew at that point that Trump would run a toxic and divisive campaign, based on stoking fear and hatred, particularly of Latin American immigrants. More specifically, and more importantly for this study, he was referring to Latino men, calling them “rapists,” “drug runners,” and more general criminals. I feel confident that he is not happy with female Latina immigrants but women generally are not counted among the ranks of rapists and drug runners, and therefore not the center of his rhetoric of terror. Later, in a debate with Hilary Clinton on October 19, 2016, he brought his diatribe into sharper gendered relief. After referencing “four mothers” who had children killed by “people that came into this country illegally,” and falsely claiming that Clinton was proposing amnesty for immigrants, he once again evoked the promise of a border wall with Mexico to stop immigration which was a signature fallacy of his campaign. Now, I want to build the wall. We need the wall. And the Border Patrol, ICE, they all want the wall. We stop the drugs. We shore up the border. One of my first acts will be to get all of the drug lords, all of the bad ones—​we have some bad, bad people in this country that have to go out. We’re going to get them out; we’re going to secure the border. And once the border is secured, at a later date, we’ll make a determination as to the rest. But we have some bad hombres here, and we’re going to get them out.34

A central platform of Trump’s appeal was to build a wall with Mexico (which Mexico was to finance), to keep Latinos, men in particular, from entering the United States. On January 25, 2016, Trump issued an executive order, entitled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States. Its mission statement explains that “With honor and integrity, we will support victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens through access to information and resources.” Run through the offices of Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the order establishes what it calls Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement (VOICE), which has set up a hotline in order to “serve the needs of crime victims and their families who have been impacted by crimes committed by removable criminal aliens.”35 Statistics show that Latinx immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than US citizens.36 I argue that machismo is a myth, not a fiction; that is, an authoritative religious script for human behavior that is authorized by notions of the sacred—​a gendered order of divine creation. As such, it is intimately bound up with the regulation and maintenance of “sexuality,” what Michel Foucault describes as “rules and norms,” supported by “religious, judicial, pedagogical, and medical institutions.”37 Yet, like other religious

Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity    287 beliefs, machismo mandates its own transgression. In the words of Georges Bataille: “Religion is the moving force behind the breaking of taboos.” More specifically, for Bataille Christianity is “founded on a reaffirmation of the primary taboos, this spiritual life yet implies a celebration, that is, the transgression not the observation of the law.”38 In this scheme, contravention is necessary for the production and maintenance of spirituality.

Latino Pentecostal Narratives Nicki Cruz was born in 1938 in Puerto Rico to parents who practiced brujeria (witchcraft) and were devout Espiritistas (Spiritists); they abused Nicki, referring to him as the son of Satan. At the age of fifteen, his parents sent him to live with his older brother in New York City. He soon ran away from his brother’s house and began living on the streets, where he joined a street gang in Brooklyn who called themselves the Mau Maus. In 1958, Cruz encountered a white Pentecostal preacher from the Midwest, David Wilkerson, who had relocated to New York to preach to gangs. Wilkerson converted Cruz, and Cruz began an outreach to delinquent youth called Teen Challenge. Today Cruz is a well-​known evangelist and author. I read Cruz’s story mainly as it is recounted in his memoir entitled Run, Baby Run published in 1968. Wilkerson tells his story in a book called The Cross and the Switchblade, published in 1962. In 1970, a film adaptation of the book was released starring Pat Boone as David Wilkerson and Erik Estrada (in his screen debut) as Nicky Cruz. The film has been viewed by an estimated fifty million people in over thirty languages in 150 countries. Run, Baby Run begins with an account of Cruz’s troubled childhood, focusing on conflicts with his parents. In the following excerpt, he recounts a formative episode: The waves of hate flooded over me again. The tears coursed down my face and once more I began to scream. “I hate you, mama! I hate you. I hate you.” My voice echoed against the emptiness under the house. Reaching a state of complete emotional climax, I collapsed on my back in the dirt and rolled over and over, the dust covering my body. Exhausted, I closed my eyes and wept until I fell into a tortured sleep.

Cruz awakes when his father discovers him, shouting “Pig. What have you been doing under that house so long. We don’t want no pigs around here. Go clean up and come to supper.” He continues: I obeyed, but as I washed my body under the pump, I knew I would hate forever. I knew I would never love again . . . anyone. And I knew I would never cry again . . . never. Fear, dirt, and hate for the Son of Satan. I had started to run.

288   Luís León While still a teenager in Brooklyn, Cruz advanced to the leadership of the Mau Maus, which is how he met Wilkerson, who had embarked on a mission to minister to street gangs in New York City. When the two first met, Cruz spat on Wilkerson and threatened to cut him into a million pieces. Wilkerson responded by telling Cruz that each of those pieces would say, “I love you.” Wilkerson persisted and eventually wins Cruz’s trust. Cruz accepts an invitation to attend an evangelistic crusade at an auditorium. Cruz plans to use the event as a venue for a rumble with a rival gang. Both gangs attend the ceremony. The following is Cruz’s description of the events that took place there: Wilkerson was speaking again. He said something about repenting for your sin. I was under the influence of a power a million times stronger than any drug. I was not responsible for my movements, actions or words. It was as though I had been caught in a wild torrent of a rampaging river. I was powerless to resist. I didn’t understand what was taking place within me. I only knew the fear was gone.

As you can see, Cruz isn’t making a rational choice for Pentecostalism, he isn’t persuaded by a narrative, and he isn’t weighing the costs and benefits of a religious product. He is swept into an affective space that, at first, he can’t put into words. He involuntarily begins to imitate those around him. Beside me I heard Israel [his friend] blow his nose. Behind me I heard people crying. Something was sweeping through that massive arena like the wind moving through the tops of trees. Even the curtains on the side of the auditorium began to move and rustle as if stirred by a mysterious breath. Wilkerson was speaking again. “He’s here! He’s in this room. He’s come especially for you. If you want your life changed, now is the time.” Then he shouted with authority: “Stand up! Come forward!” I felt Israel stand to his feet. “Boys, I’m going up, who’s with me?” I was on my feet. I turned to the gang and waved them on with my hand. “Let’s go.” There was a spontaneous movement out of the chairs and toward the front. More than 25 of the Mau Maus responded. Behind us about 30 boys from other gangs followed our example. We stood around the bottom of the stage looking up at Wilkerson. He dismissed the service and told us to follow him to the back rooms for counseling. Israel was in front of me, his head bowed, his handkerchief to his face. We went through the door and into a hallway that led to the dressing rooms. Several of the gang members were standing around the hallway giggling. “Hey Nicky, what’s the matter baby, you got religion?” I looked up and one of the girls stepped forward in front of us. She pulled her halter up and exposed her bare breast for us to see. “You go in there and you can kiss this good bye.”

Cruz responds with “ ‘You make me sick.’ Nothing else mattered at the moment except the fact that I wanted to be a follower of Jesus Christ—​whoever he was.” Perhaps one can make the argument that at that moment Cruz was choosing to follow Christ, yet when

Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity    289 he says “whoever he was,” he betrays that he has no idea what that means. If it’s a choice, it is uninformed. Cruz continues: A man talked to us about the Christian way of life. Then Wilkerson came in. “All right, fellows,” he said. “Kneel down right here on the floor.” I thought he was crazy. I never had knelt down in front of anyone. But an invisible force pressed down on me. I felt my knees buckling. I couldn’t remain erect. It was as though a giant hand were pushing me downward until my knees hit the floor. The touch of the hard floor brought me back to reality. It was summer. It was time for the rumbles. I opened my eyes and thought to myself. “What are you doing here?” Israel was beside me, weeping, loudly. In the midst of all this tension I giggled. “Hey, Israel, you’re bugging me with that crying.” Israel looked up and smiled through the tears. But as we looked at each other I had a strange sensation. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes and suddenly they spilled over the sides and dripped down my cheeks. I was crying. For the first time since I cried my heart out under the house in Puerto Rico—​I was crying.

Cruz is affected by Israel and others. Cruz asks God to change him, and at that moment: I felt myself being picked up and swept heavenward. Marijuana! Sex! Blood! All the sadistic, immoral thrills of a million lifetimes put together could not begin to equal what I felt. I was literally baptized with love. . . . I was in love with God . . . with Jesus Christ . . . and with those around me. Israel and I embraced. The tears running down our faces and wetting each other’s shirts. I loved him. He was my brother.

The language of brotherhood suggests that it is an agape love that is transmitted rather than Eros, but their actions suggest otherwise. Wilkerson had stepped out but was now back in the room. I loved him too. That skinny grinning preacher I had spit on just a few weeks before—​I loved him.

Here Cruz omits the language of kinship. In the days that come, the Pentecostal meme spreads as some gang members imitate Cruz, while Israel rejects the virus and returns to his former gang lifestyle. Another narrative of conversion is that of Sonny Arguinzoni, who was born in Brooklyn in 1939. His story is recounted in an autobiography entitled Sonny, published in 1987. He was raised in what he describes as a “traditional Christian” household. His father was Italian, and his mother was Puerto Rican. As a teenager, he began associating with the Viceroy gang, committing petty crimes and using drugs; he becomes addicted to heroin. After a failed stint in drug rehab, he returned to the streets, where he met Nicki Cruz and became born again. Shortly thereafter he matriculated to the Latin American Bible Institute (LABI) in La Puente, California. Upon his graduation from LABI, he married Julie Rivera, a Mexican American, and together they started Victory

290   Luís León Outreach Ministries for gang members, drug addicts, and prostitutes in the Pico Aliso housing projects in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles. Today Victory Outreach boasts six hundred churches around the world, and Sonny Arguinzoni has achieved celebrity status. Arguinzoni’s early life was not tumultuous like that of Cruz, but he was lured into a life of crime and drugs that was easily accessible to him. Arguinzoni’s conversion was gradual, forced, mediated through a series of affective encounters with Cruz. The first occurred when he was tricked into going to Cruz’s Teen Challenge Christian center in New York by his friend Chino, who had been converted earlier. There he finds Cruz, who tells him that he is a dirty drug addict and needs Christ in order to change. I wanted to punch him in the nose, but something in his eyes held me, a steady strength I knew I couldn’t force myself past. I was bigger than he was, but there was a fire burning deep within those dark eyes of his. He pointed to an empty chair next to the aisle where we were standing. “Kneel down. I want to pray for you.” To my own surprise, I knelt by the chair without objection, thinking, who’s afraid of prayer. . . .I’ll let this quacky guy pray for me and then I’ll split from here. The fellow put his hands on my shoulders. “God, You changed me,” I heard him pray. I was listening to his words, and I thought my ears were playing tricks on me. This guy couldn’t be the guy who had terrorized Brooklyn and waged a one-​man war on the police! Or could it! He was still standing with his hands on my shoulders, and then I heard him mumble some strange words I couldn’t understand. [Speaking in tongues] Suddenly my eyes were running running over with tears. . . . Perspiration broke out all over me, the tears were coursing down my face. Then all at once I got control of myself and scrambled to my feet. “Man, you guys are brainwashing me!” I was angry and embarrassed. “You think I’m going for this? You’re trying to make me feel sorry for myself. I’m getting out of here.”

Despite this initial rejection, Cruz continues to pursue Arguinzoni, until one afternoon at the Teen Challenge Center, Arguinzoni surrenders completely. Man, I thought, if this thing is really God working on me, I don’t want to fight it any longer. I looked up at those little white clouds and I thought, Man, I want to be free and clean like them. I looked at the buds on those branches outside the window, and it was like I could see a picture of my heart wanting to burst out of the crusty old shell that had kept it closed up for such a long, cold, dark winter. As soon as I said, it, that thing in me burst and overflowed, and I pressed my hands against my eyes to stop the tears; but they flowed through my fingers, and I really didn’t care anymore, because God was flushing out all the junk, the hardness, the filth, and the loneliness. I threw myself down on the floor in front of the altar and cried and cried.

Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity    291 I don’t know how long I stayed there, but some of the kids came in later, and when they saw me they said, “Praise the Lord!” and “Hallelujah!” and “Thank you Jesus.” I didn’t even care that they saw me crying like a baby on the floor. I got up and looked at them—​Chino and Nicky and some other guys—​and I suddenly had a real warm feeling for them come up inside me. I thought, I’m different; I never cared for nobody before.39

While Arguinzoni is alone in a room at his pivotal moment, he is in an affective space, populated by Cruz and others who have been affecting him. The result of the transmitted affect is to weep; the pivotal moment for both men is marked by tears. David Wilkerson has noted the phantasmagoric emotional shift and its attendant terror that accompanies the conversion event: “What is it about tears that should be so terrifying? the touch of God is marked by tears . . . deep, soul-​shaking tears, weeping . . . it comes when that last barrier is down and you surrender yourself to health and wholeness. . . . I knew from my work in the church how important a role tears play in making a man whole.40

Beyond the Bad Hombre The Chicano novelist Rudolfo Anaya describes the macho mandate of shutting down as the ethic of aguantar, or holding it in, closing off one’s emotions: “The macho does not cry in front of men. A macho does not show weakness. Grit your teeth, take the pain, bear it alone. Be tough.”41 The ethic of closing down, or aguantar, is performed in opposition to what Stavans has iterated as “ ‘the shameful art of abrirse’—​opening up and losing control.”42 The first macho proscription bans male tears. Weeping is a macho taboo because it marks men as open, exhibiting weakness and vulnerability. One of the principal accounts of machismo is that the macho is a sociopath, incapable of feeling empathy. Yet, when examined through the lens of affect theory, a contrary picture emerges. These ritualists are filled with emotion, with love, especially Eros, for one another. Pentecostal initiation requires opening oneself up to receive the Holy Spirit, a moment marked by tears of joy and ecstasy, as is all subsequent spiritual intercourse; when affected, Latino men open up and transgress macho boundaries, performing macho transgressions, thereby demonstrating that violation of macho norms is possible—​this is a radical realization with transformative possibilities. More, the spiritual, emotional, community-​minded Latino citizen unsettles the myth of a singular, monolithic bad hombre, a sociopath, who hails his own marginalization and incarceration. As we have seen, the construction of machismo has been nurtured and fed by a distinct form of American Christian Empire that has posited Latino men as existing in direct contrast to idealized and heteronormative white American values. As we have seen, machismo is not a discourse that exists in isolation or secularization. Instead, it is a central component to a distinctly Christian, colonial mythology that justified colonialism

292   Luís León and continues to support the criminalization and incarceration of Latino men in particular, and regenerates the public mythologies that pathologize indigenous and Latinx communities more generally. The rise in popularity of Pentecostalism among Latino men is directly related to the emotional, affective release and power they experience, which allows them to transgress the limited gendered identities and roles they are held to within broader American society.

Notes 1. See Bernice Martin, “New Mutations of the Protestant Ethic among Latin American Pentecostals,” Religion 25 (1995): 101–​117. 2. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd., Museum Street) 1930. 3. On this topic, see Leah Sarat, Fire in the Canyon: Religion, Migration, and the Mexican Dream (New York: New York University Press, 2014). 4. Ilan Stavans, “The Latin Phallus,” in Muy Macho: Latino Men Confront Their Manhood, ed. Ray González (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 153. 5. Stavans, “The Latin Phallus,” 153. 6. Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude (New York: Grove Press, 1961) 40. 7. Stephen O. Murray, Latin American Male Homosexualities (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 64. 8. Roger N. Lancaster, Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 236. 9. Ana Castillo, “Ancient Roots of Machismo,” in Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma Ana Castillo (New York: Plume Books, 1995), 87. 10. Matthew Gutmann, The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 11. Alfredo Mirande, Hombres y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). 12. I use the terms “evangelical,” “Pentecostal,” and “born again” synonymously. Technically, evangelicals are Protestants who have experienced the ritual of becoming “born again”; following their interpretation of St. John 3:3, they have confessed their sins directly to God and professed Jesus as their lord and savior. Becoming born again is followed by charismatic engagements with the Holy Spirit, marked by weeping and other signs of emotionalism, including fainting and convulsions. Pentecostals are evangelicals who emphasize the gifts of the spirit as enumerated by St. Paul in Corinthians 1:9, particularly the gifts of divine healing and glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. Latin Americans and Latina/​os make little distinction between evangelicals and Pentecostals. 13. These exceptions are Gaston Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015) and Arlene Sanchez Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 14. Timothy Matovina, Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 102. 15. Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals, 4.

Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity    293 16. Martin, “New Mutations of the Protestant Ethic among Latin American Pentecostals,”110. 17. See Sarat, Fire in the Canyon, for an ethnographic exploration of an indigenous community in Mexico. 18. Elizabeth Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Columbia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). 19. Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo, 3. 20. Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo, 79. 21. Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo, 79. 22. Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo, 79, emphasis added. 23. See especially R. Andrew Chestnut, “Spirited Competition: Pentecostal Success in Latin America’s New Religious Marketplace,” in Spirit and Power: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism, ed. Donald E. Miller et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 65–​83. 24. Chestnut, “Spirited Competition,” 68. 25. Darrin Hicks, “Darkness on the Edge of Town: On the Interface Between Linguistic and Racial Ideologies,” in The Prettier Doll: Rhetoric, Discourse and Ordinary Democracy, ed. K. Tracy, J. McDaniels, and B. Gronbeck (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press), 103–​ 141, 122. 26. Kevin O’Neil, “Beyond Broken: Affective Spaces and the Study of American Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, no. 4 (December 2013): 1093–​1116, 1095. 27. See Baruch Spinoza, “On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, in Spinoza Ethics, ed. and trans. by G. H. R. Parkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 163–​224. 28. Brian Massumi, “Notes on Translation,” in Giles Deleuze and Felix Guttari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), iv. 29. Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 219. 30. Anna Gibbs, “After Affect: Sympathy, Synchrony, and Mimetic Communication,” in Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, The Affect Theory Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 189, emphasis in original. 31. Manuel Vasquez, More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 32. Orozco, Edward Orozco, God’s Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery (New York: NYU Press, 2013), 156. 33. http://​time.com/​3923​128/​don​ald-​trump-​annou​ncem​ent-​spe​ech/​. 34. https://​www.was​hing​tonp​ost.com/​news/​the-​fix/​wp/​2016/​10/​19/​the-​final-​trump-​clin​ton-​ deb​ate-​tra​nscr​ipt-​annota​ted/​?utm_​t​erm=​.7e432​9c7e​944, October 19, 2016. 35. https://​www.ice.gov/​voice. 36. http://​theh​ill.com/​lat​ino/​324​607-​repo​rts-​find-​that-​imm​igra​nts-​com​mit-​less-​crime-​ than-​us-​born-​citiz​ens. 37. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume Three (1984), trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 3–​4. 38. Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1957), trans. Mary Dalwood (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986), 69. 39. Sonny Arguinzoni, Sonny (San Dimas, CA: Victory Outreach International). 40. Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade (New York: Penguin Publishing Group), 1986). 41. Rudolfo Anaya, “I’m the King: The Macho Image, in González, ed, Muy Macho, 1996), 63. 42. Stavans, The Latin Phallus, 148.

294   Luís León

Bibliography Anaya, Rudolfo. “I’m the King: The Macho Image.” In Muy Macho, edited by González, 1996. Arguinzoni, Sonny, Sonny (San Dimas, CA: Victory Outreach International). Bataille, Georges. Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1957). Translated by Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986. Blackmore, Susan. The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Brusco, Elizabeth. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Columbia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Castillo, Ana. “Ancient Roots of Machismo.” In Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma. New York: Plume Books, 1995. Chestnut, R. Andrew. “Spirited Competition: Pentecostal Success in Latin America’s New Religious Marketplace.” In Spirit and Power: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism, edited by Donald E. Miller, 65–​83. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Espinosa, Gaston. Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume Three (1984). Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Gibbs, Anna. “After Affect: Sympathy, Synchrony, and Mimetic Communication.” In The Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Gutmann, Matthew. The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Hicks, Darrin. “Darkness on the Edge of Town: On the Interface Between Linguistic and Racial Ideologies.” In The Prettier Doll: Rhetoric, Discourse and Ordinary Democracy, edited by K. Tracy, J. McDaniels, and B. Gronbeck, 103–​141. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Lancaster, Roger N. Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Martin, Bernice. “New Mutations of the Protestant Ethic among Latin American Pentecostals.” Religion 25 (1995): 101–​117. Massumi, Brian. “Notes on Translation.” In Giles Deleuze and Felix Guttari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Matovina, Timothy. Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Mirande, Alfredo. Hombres y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. Murray, Stephen O. Latin American Male Homosexualities. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Orozco, Edward Orozco, God’s Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery. New York: NYU Press, 2013, 156. O’Neil, Kevin. “Beyond Broken: Affective Spaces and the Study of American Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, no. 4 (December 2013): 1093–​1116. Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. New York: Grove Press, 1961. Sanchez Walsh, Arlene. Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self and Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

Latino Men, Machismo, and Christianity    295 Sarat, Leah. Fire in the Canyon: Religion, Migration, and the Mexican Dream. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Spinoza, Baruch. “On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions.” In Spinoza Ethics, edited and translated by G. H. R. Parkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 163–​224. Stavans, Ilan. “The Latin Phallus.” In Muy Macho: Latino Men Confront Their Manhood, edited by Ray González. New York: Anchor Books, 1996. Vasquez, Manuel. More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (London : George Allen & Unwin Ltd., Museum Street) 1930. Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade (New York: Penguin Publishing Group), 1986).

Chapter 16

L atinx Indigene i t i e s a nd Christia ni t y Natalie Avalos

Indigenous religious traditions continue to shape the identities and realities of Latinx peoples in the United States. Many of their contemporary expressions were forged in the Americas when borders among Latin American nations were less clear and large swaths of the United States were still a part of Latin America. Latinos are a people interrelated by overlapping colonial projects that transformed a multitude of indigenous nations into “Latin America.” Their layered religious lifeways now serve for some as a means to cultural sovereignty under continued colonial relations north and south of the US-​Mexico border. The decolonial and nationalist movements of the twentieth century paved the way for indigenous religious traditions to revive and rebound among them, to come out of the shadows. With this renewal came a sense of pride in indigenous identities (culture and language) and lifeways that contributed to or catalyzed social changes, such as movements of political autonomy in Chiapas to more subtle changes, such as the re-​ embrace of traditional medicine and healers in the form of curanderismo in the United States and Latin America.1 The dynamic nature of these religious traditions allows them to develop in new directions, particularly as expressions of popular religiosity in the United States, such as a fashionable rebirth of brujería here and a transcultural embrace of Dia de Los Muertos there, multiply. While Christianity mediates these religious expressions, they are not quite Christian. They may negotiate Christian symbols, prayers, and sensibilities, but they evince something more: the complex and myriad lifeways indigenous to the Americas, making them entirely anew.2

Latinx Indigeneities Latin America’s colonial history produced a complex religious reality in the United States. It is one that appears to be nominally Catholic, even increasingly Protestant,

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    297 yet still profoundly indigenous in subtle and major ways. In Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, he argues that its indigenous Mesoamerican past continues in the Mexican present. In fact, we cannot position Mesoamerican culture in the past, but must acknowledge it as a living culture, shaping the lifeways of its Indian, detribalized rural, and urban mestizo communities. While Western influence encouraged the Mexican—​and other Latin American states—​to situate itself as a great hybrid mestizaje that glorifies its Mesoamerican past, it actively colludes to dispossess its indigenous communities into the present. Scholars generally challenge the assumption that colonial encounters were a one-​way totalizing process. Indigenous Mesoamerican communities transformed the colonial Spaniards just as the inverse took place—​in transcultural waves. I start with this framing in order to contextualize indigenous religious practice among Chicanx/​Latinx peoples in the United States.3 While detribalization has made locating a coherent indigenous identity and religious practice difficult for these communities, these lifeways and aesthetics persist in various ways. While there are multiple indigenous religious expressions throughout Latin America that have been carried to the United States, I will focus on two traditions growing in popularity here, curanderismo and the Conchero dance tradition, as well as some features of indigenous religious life. One of the most violent dimensions of settler colonialism are the white supremacist ideologies, in this case Spanish, that permeate a colonial order, compelling individuals with varying proximities to indigeneity to desire an aspirational whiteness.4 This whiteness may never be achieved through “blood” or phenotype but instead through a process of de-​Indianization, facilitated by forms of ethnocide that “prohibited identities and proscribed languages, to the final accomplishment of colonization, when the colonized finally accepted internally the inferiority the colonizers attributed to them, renounced their own identity, and assumed another and different one.”5 Bonfil Batalla argues that most mestizo peasant communities are culturally Mesoamerican yet don’t claim or recognize themselves as “Indian.” Here, we see Indianness as an ontological category, a way of being and seeing in the world. The unstated aim of mestizo colonial dominance was to cede power to Europeans, since one could never ostensibly become European by blood or custom. The second-​best option was to acculturate to a state of “not Indian,” meaning leaving your specific social and economic networks of power, religious affiliations, and linguistic roots in order to be considered gente con razón. The central tension that lies at the heart of Mexican and other Latin American communities is that between its indigenous civilization and Western Christianity. This tension is not just a clash of civilizations but also an ongoing shifting tide of asymmetrical power that seeks to continually subjugate the majority population through a white supremacy leveraged through the Christian Church. Mesoamerican civilization is not gone; it is the naturalized cultural expression of the majority population. It is just disavowed through a tacit agreement with Western Christian power structures. Indigenous and mestizo peoples have attempted to resolve this tension through religious revitalization and other forms of social/​economic resistance. What one must understand about indigenous religious traditions in the

298   Natalie Avalos Americas, Mesoamerica in particular, is that individuals and communities live in an interdependent relationship with the land. Many Indian and mestizo communities in Mexico and beyond continue to live in close proximity to the land and recognize its sacred nature. In indigenous communities, religious propitiations for a good crop are commonplace. Such practices acknowledge that human destiny is deeply contingent and intertwined with the land. There is a moral dimension to this relationship. One comes to know oneself in the world through one’s relationship with the spiritual world imminent in the land. In the mestizo communities the same crops may be planted, the social structure of power may be similar, and the sense of reciprocity between one and the greater society remains. Bonfil Batalla describes the lifeways of these rural “peasant” communities in Mexico as follows: The basic economic activity is agriculture, which to a large extent makes use of Indian techniques. Corn continues to be the principal crop, along with other products of the milpa, depending on local conditions. . . . In terms of land tenure, individual property coexists with ejidos and communal mountain land. In the organization of agricultural work people make use of family solidarity and the cooperation of neighbors, based on reciprocity. Wage labor in agricultural tasks is infrequent. Myths, stories, and legends in which the natural world figures as a living entity persists, as do propitiatory practices and beliefs about supernatural beings, all of which are clearly of indigenous origin.6

Although detribalization through ethnocide has been curated through colonial forces for hundreds of years, the continuity of these seasonal rhythms conveys cyclic notions of time and space that reflect the same sacred relationships to land. This metaphysical foundation has remained even as it has broadened in composite to accommodate features from a Christian premodern world. Indigenous religious lifeways from Latin America continue in diaspora, often in conversation with Native North American religious lifeways in the United States because these religious traditions are not just isolated religious practices but holistic metaphysical systems, replete with medicinal practices of the body, sets of ethics, and unique conceptualizations of self in relation to the cosmos. They are not so easily eliminated. Despite five hundred years of colonialism, indigenous Latinx America continues and even thrives. For Latinx communities in the United States, these rhythms continue in unique ways. They may constitute the metaphysical foundation from which this population draws in order to make sense of the world; they may constitute features of religious practice, conceptualizations of the soul, sacred relationships to the land and to community. While one cannot generalize here and say this is the experience of all Latinos in the United States, these dynamics make a compelling case for the existence of Latinx indigeneities in diaspora. Catholic missionization and compulsory conversion produced a curiously hybrid religious world, one where indigenous worldviews that had been in conversation with one another for centuries collided with a complex Iberian Catholic one. There is not

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    299 one single coherent outcome but instead multiple branches of religious expression. At times, the Catholic elements appear additive, like new dressing on a doll, and at other times sacred ideas, such as “God” or Jesus Christ, the “son,” conceptually merged with existing ones. While some Catholic friars initially intended to totally eliminate the indigenous religious world, which was totalizing, other missionaries were not necessarily invested in destroying indigenous religious lifeways but instead in reshaping them.7 Premodern Iberian Christianity had a long history of absorbing earth-​based practices and redirecting them for Christian purposes. After these attempts clearly failed, they resorted to reframing existing practices. Mesoamerican temples and shrines that had been dedicated to local deities and sacred spiritual powers were razed. In their place, Catholic churches were built. Sacred Mesoamerican sites, such as Tepeyac, Chalma, Amecameca, and Cholula that had been a site of pilgrimage for centuries, now continue to be in their Catholic form.8 Religious performance in the form of traditional dances and songs, mitotes, continued as well with new lyrics, melodies, and instrumentation. Regional deities became patron saints. An indigenous Christianity did develop; however, it continued to be monitored by the Spanish Catholic Church who used their power for colonial control. David Carrasco’s work helps us understand how this indigenous Christianity, or what he calls “jaguar Christianity,” developed.9 As the most influential civilization at the time of contact the Aztec, or Mexica, cosmovision combined the earth-​based traditions of surrounding tribes. As friars began to minister to the Mesoamerican people, they inevitably merged Christianity with this cosmovision by translating Christian teachings into Nahuatl. While these translations made such teachings intelligible, coaxing the naturally reluctant converts into practice, it also transformed their meaning, resulting in new notions of “sin, crucifixion, sacrifice, salvation, saints, and God.”10 Here, a Christian world is mapped onto an indigenous one. This indigenous world is animate, dynamic, earth-​based, cyclic, and participatory—​meaning it responds reciprocally to the individual and collective actions of the people, to propitiations and rituals. To this day, Nahua-​speaking peoples create papier mâché Christ figures, cristos de caña, out of maize, a plant that was long considered sacred and the very germinating principle from which the people themselves emerged. “When native artists made these images of the crucified Jesus out of their revered corn plants, they were linking the profound knowledge they had of the divine seeds in plants with the new knowledge they had of the divine life inside of Christ.”11 Missionaries continued to cater to their potential converts by constructing new outdoor chapels that appealed to the aesthetics and cosmovision of the Mesoamerican peoples. They combined Aztec and Christian imagery and even invoked Aztec heroes in their teachings, providing a space for Native peoples to reconceptualize components of each tradition. The outcome was a reshaping, not elimination of indigenous religious lifeways. What emerged from the forging of these metaphysical worlds is still taking new directions today. In order to understand how this theological mestizaje or metaphysical syncretism can express itself in hybrid form and still be understood and even redefined as an indigenous religious tradition by practitioners, we should consider Maria Jesus Buxó i Rey’s theory

300   Natalie Avalos on the “religious imagination.” According to her framework, Iberian Catholicism and Native religiosity can converse and converge over time to create a living tradition—​one imagined and defined by the social body. Stevens-​Arroyo describes this imagination as “the power of the social group to match symbols and religious meaning in ways that elude the direct control of clergy or theologians.”12 In essence, these traditions transform in the hands and hearts of the people who develop their own interior and local meanings for beliefs and practices. According to Buxó i Rey, there are three effects of the religious imagination: “(1) It adds embellishments to doctrine and ritual that legitimate the origins and substance of devotion; (2) it links life, death, and other such experiences to cognitive and emotional strategies for survival in a changing world; and (3) it creates legends and miracles for popular devotion so that the attendant fervor and piety thus produced sustain belief in religion.”13 In order to illustrate how the religious imagination integrates and builds upon existing frameworks to create new rituals of devotion, Stevens-​Arroyo uses the example of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We can only understand her culturally specific meaning to Latinx believers by considering the layers of her mythology: her appearance to Juan Diego at Tepayac; her association with Mary of Nazareth yet distinction as Guadalupe, a Nahuatl-​speaking “morenita”; and her miraculous image on Juan Diego’s tilma. He notes that although there have been debates about the historical facts versus the mythologized interpretations of her origins, we can only really understand her culturally specific sacrality by considering the layers of meaning produced by the religious imagination.14 In essence, we can only really understand the depth of this devotion by exploring her cultural relevance, her cultivated mythology. The historical facts become secondary here. Virgilio Elizondo makes a similar argument in his theological reading of Our Lady, noting that she was born out of conquest, dispossession, and despair—​her appearance was a miracle that catalyzed the birth of the mestizo people, providing the indigenous peoples with a new raison d’être under occupation.15

Popular Catholicism as Indigenous Religion? When we think about Latino popular religion, we must consider how its retention and integration of indigenous elements distinguish it from other forms of Catholicism. In this context, it is difficult to know whether popular Latino Catholicism particularly from Mexico and in the Southwestern United States is an indigenous religious tradition with Catholic elements or a European Catholicism that has integrated indigenous practices and beliefs. Maybe, depending on where one stands, it is both. Scholars of Latinx religions have framed this blending of cultures as a mixture that produces a new cultural expression, what theologian Virgilio Elizondo has described as “religious mestizaje.” In other words, this blending has created a surprisingly coherent world, where pilgrimages to sacred sites and the recognition of ancestors are framed within a now more complex Catholic-​indigenous metaphysic. Scholars of Native American religions have spoken of the Lakotification of Christianity among the Lakota, for instance. Here, the use of

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    301 mestizaje is apt, particularly if we consider the retention of social networks and other indigenous lifeways that remain. Yolanda Broyles-​González’s account of her Yaqui grandmother’s life as a curandera in northern Mexico emphasizes the varying degrees of secrecy practitioners were compelled to take due to state policies that sought to eliminate Indians well into the twentieth century. Not only did her grandmother have to hide her Yaqui identity and language fluency to prevent being identified as an “Indian,” and thus, an enemy of the state, she describes a religio-​cultural world that must be cloaked in order to survive. To be publicly identified as Yaqui (or any other tribal affiliation) in the late nineteenth or early twentieth-​century Americas was almost an instant death-​warrant. Native forms of worship and celebration were forced to the underground of disimilo (camouflage). Even the United States did not pass a Freedom of Religion Act until 1978. Until then, Native American spirituality (hence culture) was outlawed. It is no different in Mexico. On both sides of the border to be indigenous is to be displaced, hunted, sold, relocated, fleeing, or hiding behind “Mexicanness,” or nowadays “Hispanic.”16

This camouflaging was specifically intended to hide indigenous identity and blend into the “mexicanidad” bourgeoning in twentieth-​century Mexico. Native peoples in the borderlands were under siege by both the US and Mexican states. Their religious lifeways became an integral component in surviving but also making sense of this chaotic world. Broyles-​González argues that Catholicism acted as the perfect cloaking device for adhering to the standards of normativity that had finally reached rural areas of Mexico that had been protected by their distance from central power for centuries. Broyles-​González recounts her grandmother’s historias as instructive of these politics. In them she distanced herself from the exploitative nature of the Catholic Church and openly critiqued “los civilizados” who felt “superior to the “lowly” Indian masses.”17 Her ethnographic account helps us understand how indigenous practices still continue in modified form in the borderlands. Catholic components coexist in this space but either conceptually merge or are woven in such a way that they appear additive to the overall indigenous structure and intent. Broyles-​González describes one such marriage rooted in the Yaqui tradition of her grandmother: The Yaqui Waehma (a springtime celebration during the Lenten season) incorporates Jesus and Mary for good measure. Some Catholic nomenclature, concepts, and symbols are woven into the Yaqui ceremony in ways that nonetheless preserve the foundation of Yaqui beliefs and meanings. Mother Mary, for example, is enlisted to help symbolize the sacredness of Yaqui land. Jesus dies on the benevolent human cross formed by the Mother Earth’s (Mary’s) arms. Yaqui “Catholicism” provides a socially protective veneer as well as ritual protection for the utterly un-​Catholic Deer Dancers and Pascola.18

302   Natalie Avalos Ironically, indigenous religious continuity, here specifically Yaqui religion, is made possible by what Broyles-​González calls the Indianization of Catholicism or the “colonization of the colonizer.” In addition to learning a unique and unorthodox pantheon of saints, prayers to La Santa Sábila (aloe vera), Broyles-​González’s grandmother provided her with Native-​centered feminist values rooted in Yaqui mythology. These cuentos are rooted in Native tradition of teaching community values through mythohistories. One such cuento focused on Yomumuli, an Indian girl who is the mother of all Indians and acts as spiritual mediator between human mortals and the divine beings of the spirit world. In this story, the author sees both herself and her grandmother. She recognizes the political stakes of religious survival as well as the profound agency of Native women. This shift in reading and negotiating power, while seemingly small, is quite weighty; it conveys the bottom-​up response to hegemonic Catholic/​Iberian beliefs and lifeways imposed upon indigenous peoples, who in turn, absorb them into their own fundamental world and speak them anew. Indigenous aesthetics, values, and lifeways, such as these, carry on through folk religious practices among mestizo Latinx communities in the United States in a variety of forms. In this way, indigenous American religious praxis is a living tradition among them, even when it is deeply steeped in the disimilo that kept it alive. Her account conveys the existence of and experiential legitimation of a spirit world that is porous and can propitiate. A world of faithful resistance was forged by women who retained indigenous religious praxis to protect and heal their communities. Their popular religious expressions, such as the community canonization of a famous healer and outlaw, Jesús Malverde, act as a counterdiscourse, a challenge to church authority. These popular expressions of religion are improvised in ways that adhere to the community’s worldview; their religious imagination is driven by an indigenous metaphysic that sees oneself as part of a larger whole in a “sacred life-​cycle.” And that affords canonization to local heroes and healers due to their contribution to community survival and well-​being. Broyles-​González’s grandmother is one example of how radical decolonial agency has been negotiated over the centuries by indigenous and detribalized mestizos. This testimony is not just about religious retention; it is about the retention of identity, philosophical integrity, and community fortitude in the face of multiple forms of genocide. In the last decade, this kind of popular Catholicism has been framed as a powerful tool of social mobility and political resistance, particularly in response to the dispossession experienced after the arrival of white settlers and the subsequent annexation of Mexican lands by the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. While scholars of American religion had relegated religious belief and practice to the private or “domestic” sphere, contemporary work has uncovered how this praxis drove social activism during the latter nineteenth century and continues to inspire Latino communities today.19 After US conquest, settler populations imposed new structures of power on Latino communities, such as new dioceses in cities like Santa Fe, Galveston, San Francisco, Denver, and Tucson. European clergy, mostly French and Irish, were dismissive of Latino religious life as superficial, scandalous, and even barbarous. They

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    303 admonished Mexican Catholics to abandon their long practiced religious festivals, public processions, and feasts in order to “strictly adhere to the rubrics of the Roman Ritual.”20 In an attempt to discipline and “civilize” Spanish-​speaking communities, such practices were generally banned, with some exception. However, they continued with aplomb often in direct reaction to these repressions. In the ensuing struggle for social power and visibility in the Southwest, Spanish-​speaking communities would use their Catholic faith and long relationship to the region to organize themselves in local elections, protect Spanish language schools, and resist the secularization of the public sphere. Latinos framed themselves as the morally righteousness but also as the indigenous inhabitants of a land now invaded by intolerant foreigners. While this strategy was an ambivalent one, resting on its own complex and contradictory history of colonial complicity in the region, it was often effective. The renewed commitment to religious traditions deemed inappropriate by settler communities, Catholic and non-​Catholic, reinforced an already existing social network that generally resisted the erosion of Latino-​indigenous cultural forms. Religious societies like northern New Mexico/​southern Colorado’s Penitente brotherhoods grew and continue to function in many respects. The lay organization of feast days for Our Lady of Guadalupe or St. Agustín provided communities with an opportunity to reclaim the public sphere. Outsiders often joined in on such celebrations, which signaled a retention of social power. While the degree of these celebrations and their frequency may have changed, the social networks remained a powerful means to social and political organization. For instance, customs like compadrazgo, or godfather/​godmother systems, continued to shape the social life of New Mexican communities, providing them with what could be understood as the continuation of traditional forms of social organization, influenced from both indigenous and Iberian customs. When my Chicanx and Latinx students read about the indigenous expressions of this religious mestizaje, they are generally relieved. Many of them are invested in decolonization and have become not only suspicious of institutional religion but also even resentful of it. They are elated to learn that many of the practices they grew up with either in their home countries or in the United States are earth based or historically connected to an indigenous aesthetic. For many, it is viscerally painful to recognize and confront the potential losses of indigenous life through conquest. They want to know that there is still something about their lives that is rooted in their indigenous history. When we read about saint devotion and pilgrimages, they excitedly share stories of their families making such trips, of limpias, and of mini shrines adorned with aloe vera.

Curanderismo and Indigenous Knowledge During my fieldwork in New Mexico, I attended Cheo Torres’s summer course on curanderismo at University of New Mexico. This two-​week class attracts over a hundred

304   Natalie Avalos people every summer and appears to be growing. Curanderismo has been described as a combinative medicinal system, a merging of Spanish premodern/​Catholic and indigenous American systems, then later, African earth-​based traditions. In this merging, a unique holistic healing system is created, one where the healer draws upon her many influences to heal body and soul. Expert practitioner Elena Avila argues that its hybridity contributes to its efficacy, since its merging of multiple systems provides a space for the body, mind, and spirit to be treated as a unified whole. She suggests that this holistic framework is more effective because it is earth based; its holism reflects the coextensive relationship between “the nature of humans and their environment.”21 In other words, an indigenous metaphysic understands human life as an extension of the land, interconnected to one’s environment. In an indigenous worldview, one’s own emotional and physiological healing is dependent on a spiritual connection to land and the spirit world that extends from it. While there are debates in the literature on whether or not this hybrid tradition actually retains indigenous elements, with some prominent scholars in the field leaning toward this position, there are many other critical perspectives from practitioners and scholars that say otherwise.22 As a scholar of Native American and indigenous religious traditions, I read the former position as one rooted in common assumptions that indigenous lifeways are either an artifact of the past and/​or its contemporary expression or regeneration as “inauthentic” and suspect. Another possible reason for this view is the general paucity in understanding indigenous religious traditions to the degree that they are not recognized even when present, particularly in syncretic forms. The syncretic expressions of popular Latinx Catholicism implies that a changed form of religious expression necessarily devours or subsumes the more vulnerable of the two—​in this case, the indigenous, as it was structurally stigmatized as epistemic error. Recent work in Native American and indigenous studies has not only challenged such assumptions, it has also challenged the discourse of “authenticity” as one rooted in a racist epistemology that views Native life as static and unchanging, in order to deny Native rights and justify continued indigenous dispossession. We can understand curanderismo as an earth-​based tradition that incorporates the belief in saints, plant medicine, cupping, pláticas (therapeutic talks), and limpias (spiritual cleansings) in dialogue with divinity, or the spirit world. The nature of this divinity is less clear, but its ambiguity is likely strategic, given Broyles-​Gonzales’s earlier account. In a contemporary US context, curanderismo takes the everything-​spiritual-​but-​the-​ kitchen-​sink approach and continues to be additive, even integrating some metaphysical healing practices, such as energy work like reiki and acupuncture.23 Avila notes that “curanderismo uses whatever works: herbs, counseling, soul retrieval, psychodrama, rituals, spiritual cleansings,” even referrals to see a biomedical practitioner. The healer heals through religious/​spiritual power: “the healing takes place under one roof, with earth as the foundation and God as the source.”24 Again, “God” here is not so clear. While it may signify the Christian God, it may also signify a divine source of power grounded in an indigenous metaphysic. I say more about this later.

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    305 Avila draws from a variety of images and tradition-​specific language, depending on her client—​that is, an elderly Mexican grandmother that venerates the saints, an African man who is grounded in earth-​based religion, or a white professional woman who is agnostic. This mediation is up to the intuited discretion of the curandera. As religious healers, they use their own cultivated spiritual gifts to discern how best to negotiate each client’s needs. Quite simply, they act as a conduit for spiritual power—​what most indigenous communities would consider a medicine person. This ability is described as a gift, or don, in Ana Castillo’s novel about a New Mexican family, So Far From God. While some preternatural gifts among its team of sisters come from heaven, Caridad’s prophetic, intuitive sense develops after a near-​death experience and miraculous recovery. She soon meets an elderly curandera, Doña Tomas, who provides her with a comprehensive and careful training in the healing arts once she recognizes Caridad’s don. Here Castillo speaks to the religious imagination that has permeated Latino religious life in the United States and beyond, that one’s indigenous identity is still present through the soul’s ability to commune with the cosmos, a self-​aware and participatory cosmos that just may be determining such events. Stories of such abilities are common in the literature on curanderas and curanderos, such as the famous Tehueco healer who appeared to have the power to heal with her hands, Teresa Urrea, as well as Texas curandero, Don Pedrito Jaramillo, who is now venerated as a “folk saint.”25 Autoethnographic work on curandera/​os helps us better understand the political stakes of using this don, or ability. The Chicano experience of coming to curanderismo, as explained by Elena Avila, in her book, Woman Who Glows in the Dark, is demarcated with struggles over the racialized stigma of indigenous medicinal practice as “primitive,” unscientific, and superstitious. She notes that an important part of her journey to this practice was reclaiming her indigenous identity—​an identity that is often derided and shrouded in secrecy for the sociopolitical reasons described earlier. As a detribalized Chicana, she is led to connect with her own ancestral traditions and joins the Danza Azteca community in New Mexico, a Conchero dance group with roots in Mesoamerican culture. She soon visits Mexico and begins training under Maestro Andres Segurá, who is both the leader of their danza and what she calls a “curandero total,” or a curandera with expertise in each dimension of this healing art. He teaches her about the plant medicine and how to care for the various ailments that arise within their circle of community. In the process, she learns how to connect to the land and indigenous community of dancers in a sacred way; it is a critical process of her becoming. She notes that this process was not without its challenges. Some of her indigenous companeros in Mexico were perplexed or resentful of her, calling her a half-​breed or Yankee. It is here that the US story becomes profound; she relates the struggle that US Latinos face due to their racialized dispossession in the United States and estrangement from traditional practice. In essence, she articulates to herself why this journey of cultural and spiritual reclamation is so necessary. As she learns the language of an earth-​based metaphysical world, she becomes “whole” again, fully accepting her identity as a mestiza. It is this internal and external reconciliation that provides a space for her don to develop properly.

306   Natalie Avalos A more recent narrative on curanderismo comes from Patrisia Gonzales’s 2012 book, Red Medicine: Traditional Indigenous Rites of Birth and Healing, which serves as a powerful personal testimony to the ways the living indigenous traditions of Mexico continue to shape religious life transnationally in the borderlands and beyond. Gonzales, a Chicana of Kickapoo descent from Texas, grounds her text in an indigenous metaphysic from the outset, drawing from Pueblo scholar Gregory Cajete’s work Native Science that argues Native approaches to knowledge production necessarily combine the immaterial and material. Gonzales argues that we can only understand these healing traditions by recognizing the interconnected relationship humans have with the natural world. In essence, we must recognize the immaterial dimension of the material world. It is this spiritual something, what many Native peoples in the Americas refer to as the spirit world, that guides and interconnects all expressions of life. In her two-​decade training in curanderismo, and indigenous knowledge more largely, she has come to understand that “the natural world is part of the community and helps to create community. From the natural world emerges natural knowledge.”26 Her assertion is a common one in Indian country. The land and the imminent spiritual power within it are the source of intelligence; the spirit world teaches the people how to live well. She recounts visits with pregnant women under the guidance of a Nahua midwife, doña Filomena. This training deepens her knowledge of plant medicines but also develops her ability “to work with maguey medicine and purifying light. She taught me the power of el ombligo y como juntar el pulso, how to read the body’s energy through the navel, and moon teachings of la luna llena.”27 Native ethics are primarily driven by reciprocity. As she began working with certain sacred plantas in a ceremonial context—​ peyotzin, yauhtli, maguey, tobacco—​these plants became her “guides in understanding fertility, pregnancy and labor, and general imbalances, be they physical or spiritual.”28 In an indigenous metaphysic, it is understood that plants are teachers; when you develop a sacred, respectful relationship to medicinal plants, they may choose to instruct you on their use. Gonzales frames indigenous medicinal and midwifery knowledge as an outcome of ceremony. In an indigenous context, ceremony can be understood as the formalized expression of gratitude and humility that humans perform to not only honor the spirit world but also acquire sacred knowledge. In fact, she organizes her text as a succession of ceremonies that draws the reader into the unseen world. She notes that learning the underlying “matrix of indigenous medicine,” sometimes referred to by practitioners as the “hidden medical system,” is done primarily through oral instruction. Indigenous communities carefully guarded this knowledge as a response to stigma and racial terror but also its potential misuse. This is likely why indigenous knowledge often eludes or confounds scholars who do not know these protocols. To know and learn about this knowledge, one must experience it; it is experiential. “In Mexico, my elders speak of mistica as a certain quality of knowledge that is experienced and emerges from experience. Mistica occurs when knowledge, mastery, or skill, and mystery are conjoined.”29 Here, learning context matters. As Avila notes, she needed to learn how to negotiate an indigenous world. Gonzales attests to the same, preparing for such instruction through her long-​term commitment to indigenous ceremony,

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    307 nurturing the mutuality of community relationships—​a critical expression of Native ethics. Her work, which includes ethnographic interviews with other Chicanas who have reclaimed their indigenous identity, conveys the profound reemergence of indigenous knowledge among Chicanx and Latinx peoples over these past few decades. This sociopolitical shift reflects a post–​civil rights era freedom to assert one’s identity. For Gonzales, this shift reflects the rekindling of religious/​ceremonial life, which provides a space for ancestral memory to emerge: The hidden transcripts of Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous medicine were presenting themselves among Indigenous-​ rooted peoples otherwise known as mestizos, Mexicans Americans or Chicanos, as well as American Indians, that is Nde [sic] Apaches and Yaquis, who were assumed into the Mexican related categories. Similarly, other Indigenous people from throughout the Americas and living in the United States challenged the assumption that they were Latinos. The hidden was becoming spoken as elders gave their permission to share some of the knowledge more publicly. Elders recognized that the specter of danger that accompanied asserting Indigenous lifeways had changed.30

Much like the Red Power movement and accompanying boom of religious revitalization among Native Americans in the 1960s/​1970s into the present, the Chicano Power and other Latinx nationalist movements nurtured the contemporary resurgence of indigenous lifeways negotiated among Latinx communities.

Reclaiming Indigenous Religious Praxis as Decolonization As I got to know some of the other attendees in the curanderismo class, I learned that there were several local kalpullis, curandera collectives, whose members contributed to the class instruction and who organized various healing events locally throughout the year. The class itself ends with one such event and features curanderas providing limpias, massages, medical consults, and even energy work such as reiki. One of the class instructors, Antoinette Gonzales, or Tonita, manages a Mexican-​style sweat lodge called Temazcal Tonantzin in Albuquerque. This clearly indigenous tradition attracts Chicanx mestizos, local Native folks, and appears to be welcome to all. Although the various course instructors and guest lecturers explained the Iberian and even African influence that has shaped contemporary expressions of curanderismo in the United States and other regions of Latin America, there was a clear interest in understanding and reclaiming the indigenous traditions of the Americas among the mostly Chicanx attendees. This interest is both religious and political. The need and want to know what has been obscured, demonized, and even destroyed among those of mestizo descent is palpable. I know because I share this interest and desire. For me, as a Chicana woman of

308   Natalie Avalos Apache descent, it is both an intellectual curiosity to better know this indigenous world but also an existential drive to know my own role within in. What did my ancestors believe? What were their practices? How did they understand the cosmos, the divine? How did they negotiate health, well-​being, and happiness through their relationship with the sacred? And most of all, was this spirit world still accessible to us descendants or to all people that propitiated it? One day in class, a colleague and I sat and chatted with two curanderas from Kalpulli Izkalli, a local kalpulli that has been operating for twenty years. I had met this other scholar of Latino religions in the class. We had initially discussed some of the metaphysical or “New Age” language that had come up in class that appeared to be unspoken or unacknowledged. I was curious to understand how a “New Age” framework—​one that universalizes our complex spiritual worlds as rightfully accessible to all—​influenced contemporary readings of curanderismo. But our discussion here took a different turn. It focused on the cultural goals of the class and the kalpullis in general. One of the senior curanderas explained that ultimately their work sought to decolonize their communities, in other words, to reclaim indigenous lifeways for Chicanx/​Latinx peoples. The implication being that in the process of reconnecting to these practices, you can reconnect to an indigenous sacred world, learn about and experience one’s spiritual heritage, and shed the false consciousness of aspirational whiteness cultivated by overlapping colonial projects. In other words, explore a social, spiritual, and political identity that more clearly resonates with your history. The curandera noted that as a kalpulli they are critical of the Catholic (Iberian) elements that have been interwoven in some of the texts, oral and written, passed down from older generations of curanderas, saying, “We just take out the Catholic stuff.” My colleague and I looked at each other as if to say, “Is it really that simple?” I don’t think either of us really knew what to make of this statement at the time. Is it possible to reconnect with this indigenous metaphysical world in this way, by just excluding the things that are perceived as extraneous? Are they not an integral part of the tradition? Is this religious healing practice truly rooted in an indigenous metaphysic? Are the Catholic/​ Iberian elements merely superficial—​are its material objects and practices, candles, images of saints, prayers to God really a cloaking device of disimilo? If we consider the religious imagination and the impetus among communities to continually redefine their religious worlds, it may be. The class opened with a ceremony and closed with one, too. The prayers that were made during these events and the many times in between were not directed to the Christian God but to Ometeotl. In the Mesoamerican tradition, Ometeotl meant dual god; ome (two) and teotl (god) are the expression of the divine union of female and male energies imminent in the cosmos, its complementary and procreative qualities act as a divine catalyst for all creation.31 This sacred duality is a fundamental feature of Mesoamerican metaphysics. However, this dual nature of the cosmos, or the idea that all natural phenomena have feminine and masculine qualities that complement to create a balanced whole, is common among many indigenous peoples in North America, including tribes in the United States such as the Diné, or Navajo. In order to understand

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    309 how or why a concept like Ometeotl is popularly functioning among contemporary curanderxs, we must again consider the religious imagination. This concept, along with that of teotl, still functions within the religious worlds of Nahua speakers today. While Aztec religion no longer functions unchanged by contact, it still functions to varying degrees through multiple outlets,32 one of which is curanderismo. Scholars suggest that these indigenous religious expressions are best understood through a new analytic driven by another complementary relationship, that of myth and history.33 Akin to the religious imagination, a mythohistory seeks to read indigenous myth and historical facts as two pieces of a larger mosaic that can properly convey Mesoamerican conceptualizations of animate divinity (teotl), religious embodiment, and how they may continue to operate in the present. As Carrasco argues earlier, notions of the sacred have necessarily changed. Images like the Christ figure became associated with corn/​maize, and Christian divinity merged with maize’s fecund and life-​giving properties.34 This additive relationship is not quite an evenly distributed syncretism or cloaking but instead appears to merge Christian concepts and images with an indigenous metaphysic. We must also understand this merging as dynamic. Thus, expressions and retentions of indigenous religious traditions will vary in Mexico and beyond (other parts of Latin America), dictated by the religious imagination of Latinx peoples in specific regions. While there are multiple indigenous communities in Latin America, a large Nahua-​speaking population in Mexico enables a popular regeneration of a concept like Ometeotl, so that it can function as part of a living tradition brought to the United States through generations of religious healers and practitioners.

Danza Azteca: The Revival of Ceremony Danza Azteca, often referred to as the Conchero dance tradition, is not one coherent system but a number of indigenous ceremonial dance systems that have influenced one another, interconnected, and conjoined over the centuries in postcontact Mexico. Music—​the playing of flutes, drums, and conchas—​and dance were fundamental dimensions of Mesomerican ceremonial life. When Catholic missionaries could not eliminate these practices, they decided to reshape them in pragmatic ways, altering them with new songs, lyrics, and themes to fit a Christian narrative of conquest and salvation. Although there were multiple expressions of ritual dance specific to peoples throughout the Americas, two expressions of Church-​sanctioned ritual dance emerged during the early colonial period: mitotes and danza/​ Conchero.35 Bernardino de Sahagun, a Franciscan friar, describes indigenous ritual dances as a scourge of the devil in his Florentine Codex (1577): “It is well established that the songs and psalms he [the devil] has composed are the cave, the forest, the thorny thicket where the accursed adversary now hides.”36 This perspective in not universally shared, however; these dances

310   Natalie Avalos are perceived favorably by Jesuit missionary Andrés Péres de Ribas, in his History of the Triumphs of Our Holy Faith, where he says: “the mitote, or festive dance, which is a particularly enjoyable sight and is new both to Spain and other nations. The mitote that the seminarians of San Gregorio celebrate is called the mitote of the emperor Moctezuma. Although in the past it was dedicated to gentile purposes, now it is a Christian celebration dedicated to the honor of Christ Our Lord, King of Kings.”37 Although mitotes generally referred to the theatrical dances indigenous peoples enacted at religious festivals, such as la danza de la conquista, which acted out the dramatic battle between Spaniards and the indigenous, they were not necessarily, as Ribas believes, so dedicated to a Christian-​centric purpose, nor were they seeking to celebrate their “defeat and humiliation.”38 Mesoamerican peoples’ rich history of theater and dance motivated them to refashion the “dances of the Moors and the Christians” brought from Spain into narratives that would reflect their “experience of the Christian conquest” but also subtly incorporate themes from pre-​Colombian myths and dramas that spoke to their prior world.39 There are multiple accounts of the Conchero dance tradition’s origins in Mexico, either with the Otomí-​Chichimeca or Tlaxcalan tribes, or even as an iteration of mitotes. These dance societies, or mesas, are associated with the cross, a symbol reflecting the four directions in a precolonial context, as well as a ritualized Mesoamerican military order, providing a hierarchical organization for dancers, that is, lieutenant, general, and so on. The dance is characterized by a circular formation, with male and female dancers aligning in cardinal points as they perform intricate steps in unison. Dancers may wear feathered headdresses, tunics, seed rattles around their ankles, a strip of red cloth wrapped around their temples and waists as a means of spiritual protection, and carry gourd rattles as they dance. The music consists of drums, conch shell trumpets, and a lute made of armadillo shell, referred to as concheros. These ceremonies may consist of pilgrimages to the holy shrines of their patron saint or all-​night vigils that seek to honor deceased friends, relatives, and ancestors. It is likely that their veneration of the cross and a variety of saints, including Our Lady of Guadalupe, whom they recognize as “the great Mother,” provided danzantes a disimilo in order to continue as a sanctioned ritual practice, protected from Church persecution. Described by several scholars as a religious tradition, the Conchero’s current form was developed in the 1960s and became popular with Chicano nationalist movements for self-​determination in the United States.40 Native American studies scholar Inés Hernández-​ Ávila (Chicana/​ Nez Perce) and anthropologist Susanna Rostas both participated in and studied one particular mesa, El Santo Niño de Atocha, which functions mostly in Mexico but includes practitioners living in the United States. El Santo Niño de Atocha,is the patron saint of this particular mesa. This “nińo Dios” is a saint developed in the Americas that represents the Christ child but is also associated with a Mesoamerican solar deity Tonatiuh, whose child form, Piltzintecuhtli, is revered by Native communities as a “god-​child.”41 Rostas explores the indigenous and Catholic layers of the tradition, noting how rural newcomers to the mesa in Mexico City are more likely to position themselves as self-​consciously Catholic, emphasizing their role in the dance “as soldiers for Christ” versus the “middle-​class” dancers who

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    311 “have thought about their religiosity in greater depth” and may be ambivalent or even reject Catholicism.42 In this way, dancers come to the practice with varying religious motivations and sociopolitical analysis of colonial history. Hernández-​Ávila positions the Conchero dance tradition as a strategically dynamic one that has “survived centuries of missionization” that has the potential to heal detribalized Chicanx/​Latinx peoples in the United States by reorienting them to indigenous lifeways.43 This tradition not only educates but also bridges the division between Latin America and Latinx peoples living in diaspora in the borderlands or anywhere in the greater United States. Affirming Avila’s testimony, the scholarship suggests that this dance tradition heals Chicano-​mestizo peoples by enabling them to reintegrate their fractured identities. It acts as an embodied therapeutic that helps them work through deeply internalized feelings of shame for being of Indian descent cultivated through the colonial project—​ feelings of shame for having lost a connection to these traditions and buying into aspirational whiteness. Through the dance, they can reintegrate the parts of themselves that they had been socialized to hide or disavow. Sacred relationships to community as well as larger cosmos are also regenerated. Like curanderismo, this practice reframes identity in a holistic way, reflecting an indigenous metaphysic that draws an “interrelationship between body, mind, heart, will, and spirit.”44 One of the most important dimensions of this practice is the ethic of mutuality or mutualismo it inscribes upon the body. Although there is a hierarchy among members, noting seniority and even spiritual attainment, every member has a role that contributes to the whole. This essential lesson teaches that one is coextensive with others, not just socially but metaphysically. Hernández-​Ávila tethers this awareness to the dance’s greater spiritual aim, saying, “A danzante’s responsibility in life is to know how to move consciously and harmoniously through ordinary and ceremonial time and space, tuning one’s own rhythms to the rhythms of the community, the earth, and the universe.”45 Here, it is implied that the practitioner can develop the internal acuity to negotiate life’s challenges by moving with and through them. They can also develop a spiritual fortitude that trusts in a larger cycle of creation, whether or not they believe in the Christian God, of which they are part. For Latinx communities in the United States who continue to experience the everyday violence of marginalization and racial stigma, this kind of inner agility may mean the difference between thriving and despair. Again, Christianity mediates these religious expressions; but they are not quite Christian. They are something more, something unique—​something entirely of their own. They evince strategic survivals of Native metaphysical worlds that continue with and for the people.

Notes 1. Anthony Stevens-​Arroyo, “From Barrios to Barricades: Religion and Religiosity in Latino Life,” in The Columbia History of Latinos in the Unites States Since 1960, edited by David Gutiérrez (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 345.

312   Natalie Avalos 2. Scholars of Native American and indigenous religious traditions refer to these traditions as “lifeways” in order to convey both their tribally specific characteristics but also holistic nature. In this sense, Native religious expressions are inseparable from a Native metaphysic or worldview and so refer to ways of being in and perceiving the world that shape daily life. 3. The use of “x” in both Chicanx and Latinx has been used more recently in the Latino/​a/​x community to challenge the gender binary that the exclusive use of the o/​a, in “Latino/​a” for instance, denotes. In this way, the use of the “x” makes these terms gender inclusive and neutral. 4. Settler colonialism is a type of colonialism that seeks to replace the indigenous or original inhabitants of a given land base with a settler colony, such as the United States or Australia. Its internal logic is driven by the elimination of its indigenous inhabitants through various forms of genocide in order to naturalize settler power. 5. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization (Austin: University of Texas Press), 20. 6. Bonfil Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 44. 7. Ana Maria Díaz-​Stevens and Anthony Stevens-​Arroyo, Recognizing the Latino Resurgence in U.S. Religion (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). 8. Bonfil Batalla, Mexico Profundo, 86. 9. David Carrasco, “Jaguar Christians in the Contact Zone,” in Enigmatic Powers: Syncretism with African and Indigenous Peoples’ Religions Among Latinos, edited by Anthony M. Stevens-​Arroyo and Andres I. Pérez Y Mena (New York: PARAL/​Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies, 1995), 69-​79. 10. David Carrasco, The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 11. Carrasco, The Aztecs. 12. Díaz-​Stevens and Stevens-​Arroyo, Latino Resurgence, 55. 13. Díaz-Stevens and Stevens-Arroyo, Latino Resurgence, 55. 14. See William B. Taylor’s exploration of the social history of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which notes several ways that the Virgin Mary was appropriated and repurposed in New Spain. William B. Taylor, “The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: An Inquiry into the Social History of Marian Devotion,” American Ethnologist 14, no. 1 (Feb. 1987): 9–​33. 15. Virgilio Elizondo, The Future Is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000). 16. Yolanda Broyles-​ González, “Indigenizing Catholicism: Chicana/​ India/​ Mexicana Indigenous Spiritual Practices in Our Image,” in Chicana Traditions Continuity and Change, ed. Norma E. Cantú and Olga Nájera-​Ramírez (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 120–​121. 17. Broyles-​González, “Indigenizing Catholicism,” 129. 18. Broyles-​González, “Indigenizing Catholicism,” 122. 19. Timothy Matovina, “Conquest, Faith, and Resistance in the Southwest,” in Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States, ed. Gastón Espinoza, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 19–34. 20. Matovina, “Conquest, Faith, and Resistance,” 22. 21. Elena Avila, Woman Who Glows in the Dark (New York: Tarcher/​Penguin Press, 2000), 17. 22. Brett Hendrickson, Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American Curanderismo (New York: New York University Press, 2014); Patrisia Gonzales, Red Medicine: Traditional Indigenous Rites of Birthing and Healing (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012).

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    313 23. Hendrickson, Border Medicine. 24. Avila, Woman Who Glows in the Dark, 17. 25. Hendrickson, Border Medicine; Jennifer Koshatka Seman, “Laying on Hands: Santa Teresa Urrea’s Curanderismo as Medicine and Refuge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Studies in Religion/​Sciences Religieuses 47, no. 2 (June 2018): 6. 26. Gonzales, Red Medicine, xxi. 27. Gonzales, Red Medicine, 14. 28. Gonzales, Red Medicine, 14. 29. Gonzales, Red Medicine, 16. 30. Gonzales, Red Medicine, 37. 31. Sylvia Marcos, “Mesoamerican Women’s Spirituality: Decolonizing Religious Beliefs,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25, no. 2 (Fall 2009), 25-​45; David Carrasco, Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), 25–45. 32. Molly Bassett, The Fate of Earthly Things (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). 33. Bassett, Fate of Earthly Things. 34. Carrasco, “Jaguar Christians.” 35. Kristina Nielson, “The Role of Interpretation in Determining Continuity in Danza Azteca History,” Ethnomusicology Review, 12, no.2 May 17, 2014, https://​w ww. ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/​content/​role-​interpretation-​determining-​continuity-​ danza-​azteca-​history 36. Bernadino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: Introduction and Indices, edited by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe, NM: The School of American Research, [1577] 1982), 58, quoted in Nielson “Danza Azteca History.” 37. Andrés Pérez de Ribas, History of the Triumphs of Our Most Holy Faith Amongst the Most Barbarous and Fierce Peoples of the New World (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, [1645] 1999), 714–​7 15, quoted in Nielson, “Danza Azteca History.” 38. Carrasco, “Jaguar Christians,” 73. 39. Carrasco, “Jaguar Christians,” 73. 40. Colín Ernesto, Indigenous Education through Dance and Ceremony: A Mexica Palimpsest (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Susanna Rostas, Carrying the Word (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2009); Ines Hernandez-​Avila, “La Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha and the Conchero Dance Tradition of Mexico-​Tenochtitlán: Religious Healing in Urban Mexico and the United States,” in Religion and Healing in America, ed. Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 359-​374. 41. Broyles-​González, “Indigenizing Catholicism;” Hernandez-​Avila, “La Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha.” 42. Rostas, Carrying the Word, 22. 43. Hernández-​Ávila, “La Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha,” 360. 44. Hernández-​Ávila, “La Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha,” 361. 45. Hernández-​Ávila, “La Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha,” 367–​368.

Bibliography Avila, Elena. Woman Who Glows in the Dark. New York: Tarcher/​Penguin Press, 2000. Bassett, Molly. The Fate of Earthly Things. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.

314   Natalie Avalos Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo. Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. Broyles-​González, Yolanda. “Indigenizing Catholicism: Chicana/​India/​Mexicana Indigenous Spiritual Practices in Our Image.” In Chicana Traditions Continuity and Change, edited by Norma E. Cantú and Olga Nájera-​Ramírez, 117–​132. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Carrasco, David. The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Carrasco, David. “Jaguar Christians in the Contact Zone.” In Enigmatic Powers: Syncretism with African and Indigenous Peoples’ Religions among Latinos, edited by Anthony M. Stevens-​Arroyo and Andres I. Pérez Y Mena. New York: PARAL/​Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies, 1995, 69–​79. Carrasco, David. Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Colín, Ernesto. Indigenous Education through Dance and Ceremony A Mexica Palimpsest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Díaz-​Stevens, Ana Maria, and Anthony M. Stevens-​Arroyo. Recognizing the Latino Resurgence in U.S. Religion. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Elizondo, Virgilio. The Future Is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000. Ernesto, Colín. Indigenous Education through Dance and Ceremony: A Mexica Palimpsest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Gonzales, Patricia. Red Medicine: Traditional Indigenous Rites of Birthing and Healing. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012. Hendrickson, Brett. Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American Curanderismo. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Hernández-​Ávila, Inés. “La Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha and the Conchero Dance Tradition of Mexico-​Tenochtitlán: Religious Healing in Urban Mexico and the United States.” In Religion and Healing in America, edited by Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered, 359–​374. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Luis, Leon. “Borderlands, Bodies and Souls: Mexican Religious Healing Practices in East L.A.” In Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture, edited by Gastón Espinosa and Mario T. García, 296–​324. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Luna, Jennie Marie. “Danza Mexica: Indigenous Identity, Spirituality, Activism, and Performance.” PhD diss., University of California Davis, 2012. Marcos, Sylvia. “Mesoamerican Women’s Spirituality: Decolonizing Religious Beliefs.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 25–​45. Matovina, Timothy. “Conquest, Faith, and Resistance in the Southwest.” In Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States, edited by Gastón Espinoza, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda, 19–​34. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Nielson, Kristina. “The Role of Interpretation in Determining Continuity in Danza Azteca History.” Ethnomusicology Review. May 17, 2014. https://​www.ethnomusicologyreview.ucla. edu/​content/​role-​interpretation-​determining-​continuity-​danza-​azteca-​history Rostas, Susanna. Carrying the Word. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2009. Seman, Jennifer Koshatka, “Laying on Hands: Santa Teresa Urrea’s Curanderismo as Medicine and Refuge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Studies in Religion/​Sciences Religieuses 47, no. 2 (June 2018): 178–​200

Latinx Indigeneities and Christianity    315 Stevens-​Arroyo, Anthony. “From Barrios to Barricades: Religion and Religiosity in Latino Life.” In The Columbia History of Latinos in the Unites States Since 1960, edited by David Gutiérrez, 303–​354. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Taylor, William B. “The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: An Inquiry into the Social History of Marian Devotion.” American Ethnologist 14, no. 1 (February 1987): 9–​33.

Chapter 17

Prosperit y G o spe l a nd L atino s /​as Tony Tian-​R en Lin

“We have to turn the heat on or it’ll be too cold for service,” Pastora Bessy says as she turns on the lights. Fluorescent glow quickly fills the windowless basement space. She moves like a woman with a lifetime’s experience in multitasking. It is 7 a.m. on a chilly Sunday morning in northern Virginia. The worship service is three hours away, but the musicians will begin rehearsal soon. Pastora Bessy shows up early and prays over every space. She starts on the stage and asks for God’s blessings on the musical instruments, caressing each one lovingly as she imparts her blessing. She moves through the aisles, saying a blessing over each row of chairs with her hands up as if shooting an invisible force out of her palms. The whole time she utters prayers in Spanish and undistinguishable syllables. She works her way to each Sunday school classroom, mentioning names and claiming spiritual awakening for all who enter the room. Sometimes she senses the presence of negative spirits in the room and must perform an exorcism. But not today. She walks back to the meeting room, on her knees, facing the stage, praying over the podium and the baskets that will receive the offering. Her prayers are loudest at this point, and she is filled with emotions as she concludes. The first time I went to church I was in New York. In El Salvador I had friends who were Christians but I never went; I was young [and] I just wanted to have fun. But in New York I worked hard and still had many problems. I was depressed. At one point I couldn’t get out of bed; my husband was feeding me crackers and soup to keep me alive. My hair was falling out because of the depression. We lost thousands of dollars in a business. I was so depressed. I wasn’t eating because I just wanted to die. One day I decided to kill myself. I left my house to commit suicide, en serio, but I didn’t even know what I was going to do, I just started walking. I didn’t know what I was doing. Perhaps I thought I would get killed walking the streets. Then I ran into a friend and she started talking to me. I told her I had to do something important, but she said come with me for a bit, just a little bit, then you can go do what you have to do. We went to a church. She took me to the very front row and gave me a Bible. The place

Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/as    317 was full and the service already started. After we sat down she said, “I have to go to the bathroom” and left me and you know since that day I never saw her again. I don’t even have her telephone. That was God! I would have left the service, but she sat me in the front row and I was embarrassed to walk out. During the service I felt loved. Everything the preacher said was about me. It was God talking to me. God made me feel his love. That love, a feeling I never had, deep from inside me, this peace, and joy and love. Love.

Bessy pauses as she gets emotional: The feeling of suicide and depression left me that day. I started going Bible studies, praise time, classes, prayer vigils. I went to everything. Our lives began to change when we learned to follow the Lord. In the church we learned to be faithful, to tithe, to ask God for blessings. We had to get our lives aligned with the will of God before we were blessed. We had to be faithful for God to restore us. We lost everything because we did it our way. But once we learned to conduct our lives in God’s way we prospered. God opened the gates of heaven and poured out his blessings over us until we were overflowing. We recovered everything we lost, our debt was miraculously canceled, and we earned even more than we had because we were faithful.

Four years ago, their church in New York commissioned Bessy and her husband Eduardo to start a branch in Manassas, Virginia. Eduardo serves as the pastor and Bessy’s formal title is prophetess, though she goes by “pastora,” the Spanish feminine for pastor. They started the church in their apartment, and it quickly grew to about sixty members. The sending church strategically chose a city where 35 percent of the population is Latino1. Within a year, they moved to this basement space in the back of a strip mall of this Washington, DC, suburb. The space was much larger than what they needed, but Pastora Bessy said they declared in the name of Jesus that there would be two hundred worshipers in five years. Both Eduardo and Bessy still work full-​time jobs; Eduardo is in construction and Bessy runs a cleaning company where she employs members of her church. “My life before Christ was empty. I had no hope. I did not want to live because I did not know why I was put on this earth,” Bessy said contemplatively. “Now my life is full of joy. I know God wants me to prosper in this world. He wants me to help others prosper. I want everyone to know that the only way to prosper and triumph is to be faithful to God.” Bessy is one of roughly fifty-​six million Americans of Latin American descent living in the United States. She is also part of the growing number of Latinos who believe in the Prosperity Gospel, the belief that God will grant wealth and health to believers who have enough faith. Her story is representative of those from this faith community. She encountered this faith at a moment of great personal distress. This faith reordered her life, giving her renew purpose and hope. Prosperity Gospel is an all-​consuming religion that offers comfort and strength to the weak, at a cost. It demands its adherents to sacrifice their time, talents, and treasures in exchange for the blessings they desire. It is a

318    Tony Tian-Ren Lin religion that has a logic of its own with a capitalist economic rationale: Invest in God and you will gain a return but only if you have enough faith. Millions of Prosperity Gospel Christians around the world weighted this proposition and considered it worthy. What they gain far outweighs what it demands of them. Prosperity Gospel reached global dominance in a short time. It is present in every continent, and its influence reaches far beyond its Pentecostal origins. This chapter is an overview of the ways Prosperity Gospel, in its many manifestations, shapes Latino immigrant communities. I offer an overview of Prosperity Gospel as a religious movement and describe their core beliefs. The focus is on first-​generation immigrant Prosperity Gospel Latinos and their social and cultural ramifications. While only one-​third of all Latinos are foreign born, they are overrepresented in this faith tradition. Prosperity Gospel is a totalizing religion that redefines private lives, daily behavior, concepts of the good, and ultimately the individuals themselves. It is an American creation at its core. Inadvertently, the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment in Prosperity Gospel results in the adoption of middle-​class, white, American norms. Today, roughly 70 percent of Americans believe God wants them to prosper, and over a quarter believe they must follow the Prosperity Gospel formula to earn that wealth.2 The percentage is higher in Latinos (74 percent) who believe God will grant them wealth and healing. While the rate of Prosperity Gospel believers is higher outside of the United States, this chapter is focused on Latin American immigrants living in the United States. Prosperity Gospels is a malleable faith. It absorbs elements of local cultures unique to each region. American Prosperity Gospel has a much more potent white Protestant capitalist milieu than the Prosperity Gospel in other countries. As such, American Prosperity Gospel is a vehicle of assimilation for new immigrants. Religions sort the concepts of the sacred and the profane in societies. Rituals are performed by believers to gain favors from deities. Narratives of the divine are created to make sense of life and give meaning to daily experiences. Stories are constructed to give pious answers for unexplained suffering. These explanations are known as theodicies, explanations for the existence of evil in light of a good god. They provide an answer to the timeless question, Why do bad things happen to good people? But they not only offer an account for suffering but also pleasure. Sociologist Max Weber noted, “the fortunate is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he ‘deserves’ it, and above all, that he deserves it in comparison with others.”3 Weber argued that a deeply ingrained Protestant ethic ensured the fusion of productive labor and the assurance of one’s salvation. The root and effect of Prosperity Gospel are similar to Weber’s Protestants. Christians who desire to know they are saved, favored, and blessed can be assured through their daily experiences and material possessions. It is born out of the tension between scarcity and abundance. It is both a vindication of divine grace in the presence of evil and a reason to remain hopeful while in misery. It explains suffering and offers hope to escape from it. Religious devotion for material gain is neither new nor exclusive to Christianity. Religions evolve to satisfy the needs of the people. The founding principles of Buddhism

Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/as    319 are anti-​materialistic. Yet customers to Chinese restaurants in the United States are often greeted at the door by statues of an overweight happy Buddha holding money or gold in his hands. The image is an anathema to original Buddhist teachings but irrelevant to immigrant business owners hoping for great wealth. The American ethos slips into every religion that land on its shores. They evolve to a more utilitarian, individualistic, and therapeutic creed. Christianity is no exception. Modern American Christianity adapted to fit a capitalist economic system designed to benefit white Protestants. The traditional nuclear family, home ownership, economic stability, and leisure became imbedded in the American ideals. Christian businessmen groups rose to prominence in the early 1900s with the promise of helping men be better and more profitable in their work.4 Alcoholic Anonymous was founded by Christians on the principle that faithfulness could cure addiction. During the Cold War, Christianity and consumerism were an affront to the enemies of the state. Religions, Christianity included, are functional. They endure because people find them useful. Prosperity Gospel is the latest incarnation of old beliefs. The explicit materialistic aims of Prosperity Gospel, devoid of the asceticism or moral restrains that distinguished Webber’s Protestants, are a recent evolution that parallels American consumer culture. Prosperity Gospel is the Gospel of the American Dream. The present version of Prosperity Gospel was popularized during the post—​World War II financial boom when some Americans rose in their socioeconomic rank. Kenneth Hagin (1917–​2003) and Oral Roberts (1918–​2009) were the Southern revival preachers responsible for the rise of Prosperity Gospel and its many variations. Hagin experienced what he considered a miraculous healing in his late teens. That experience led him to believe that just as God created the universe through verbal commands, Christians had the power to speak things into reality—​particularly good health and wealth. He encouraged believers to name their specific desires in their prayers. It is this practice that led some to label him a “name-​it-​and-​claim-​it” preacher. Oral Roberts taught that it was God’s desire for his people to be financially prosperous and healthy. He preached this message with reference to new cars, houses, and his worldwide ministry. He went on to establish Oral Roberts University, an influential institution that continues to advance his teachings. Their version of Prosperity Gospel grew rapidly through southern revival circles when Prosperity Gospel and Pentecostalism were synonymous. Yet, even in the early days, a softer version of Prosperity Gospel was propagating outside their revival tents. Norman Vincent Peale (1898–​1993) preached the same message to the urban elite. Peale was the pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. He pastored wealthy New Yorkers who wanted to justify their wealth. His sermons were infused with what became known as psychological language. Like Hagin and Roberts, Peale taught his parishioners that they could speak things into reality. He taught his followers to think their way out of problems and into success. With the right mentality, anything was possible. Prosperity Gospel is a product of modernity. The formulaic system by which believers can trigger the blessings from God is methodical. Instead of a supposed blind faith, they

320    Tony Tian-Ren Lin apply “scientific” formulas to their interactions with the divine. Like the laws of physics, the Prosperity Gospel formula never fails them. The basic blueprint for prosperity and abundance is simple: Faith +​Action =​Blessings God will reward anyone who has faith and acts on that faith. A version of this formula is present in every religious system. Worshipers believe that a higher power can do things for them (faith), but they must do something (action) to gain their deity’s favor (blessings). The most prominent is the Evangelical belief that spiritual salvation is at hand (faith) but one must accept Jesus Christ into their hearts (action) in order to have eternal life (blessing). Other acts of faith could be dancing, singing, self-​emulation, or even ritual sacrifices. The core belief of Prosperity Gospel is similar. They believe their God will grant them every desire of their heart, but they must demonstrate their faith in this God through sacrificial monetary offering or other acts of faith for the blessings to materialize. The premise is that God is all-​powerful and will exercise this power in response to a believer’s faithful actions. Though the formula for prosperity is simple, the nuanced definition of each variable is highly complicated. It is through the components of this formula that the paradox of Prosperity Gospel is able to thrive. Faith and action are subjectively defined and are sometimes contradictory, as is the result, the blessings. Faith in Prosperity Gospel has its origins in nineteenth-​century New Thought Metaphysics. It stems from the same roots as Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science movement. The core of Eddy’s teachings centered on the power of prayer to heal physical illness. E. William Kenyon, a New England preacher, came under its influence and put a Christian spin to the idea, preaching the power of the mind to accomplish all things. Kenneth Hagin, one of the founders of modern Prosperity Gospel, was known to preach Kenyon’s sermons verbatim. The idea that faith was the power of the mind over the material world was further popularized by Norman Vincent Peale, whose wealthy New York City church gave him the credibility his rural counterparts lacked. The publication of his best-​selling book The Power of Positive Thinking in 1952 popularized this idea to the mainstream. At the core of this idea is the importance of faith, or positive thinking, over doubt or fear. Skepticism and mistrust are ways that believers self-​sabotage their blessings. But faith alone is not enough. Action must follow that faith. Believers are required to work toward their blessings. Oral Roberts invented the “seed-​faith” concept whereby believers could plant a financial seed to activate their financial harvest. In this practice, a $100 seed-​faith offering to a ministry would sprout into a miraculous $10,000 return. While there are sensationalized stories of poor Christians giving away their savings to preachers in hope of miracles, it hardly ever happens in reality. Latino Prosperity Gospel believers are not naive. Their beliefs have a logic of their own, one that makes sense to them. Theirs is a meritocratic dream where immigrants can work their way from rags to riches. Hard work is required, but they know that hard work alone is not enough.

Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/as    321 Instead of meritocracy, they believe in, what I call miraculous meritocracy. They work to earn miracles that will bring about prosperity and success. The work is not simple. They must do something significant enough to get God’s attention. This logic encourages Prosperity Gospel Christians to work hard and start risky entrepreneurial ventures. Prosperity Gospel Pentecostals do not wait around idly for miraculous wealth. They search for jobs, start businesses, and actively seek opportunities for advancement because their hard work will move the hand of God to give them their blessings. Prosperity Gospel is a thoroughly meritocratic religion. The faithful person who works the hardest and makes the greatest investments and sacrifices is the one who is rewarded. Implicitly, the poor remain in that state because they did not work hard enough or have enough faith. Then there’s the blessing. The outcome of the formula is the most subjective element. Blessings can be both tangible and intangible. It is ever-​evolving. Popular stories tend to focus on material success. But the most sought-​after blessing is psychological. Prosperity Gospel Latinos obtain hope and comfort from this faith. Hence the paradox of Prosperity Gospel because the faith they need to apply the formula is the hope and confidence they seek. It works by offering a sense of agency in moments of helplessness. It affirms that they are the captain of their own souls. To those who are rendered helpless by systemic discrimination and economic alienation, this is invaluable. They are not victims, poor, or sick. Those realities do not define them. What they believe about themselves is reality. Prosperity Gospel is an audacious theodicy. Prosperity Gospel is a product of Western capitalism. The post–​World War II prosperity the United States experienced between 1945 and 1960 fueled a hunger for the good news of the American Dream, particularly in those who have yet to attain it. As nations around the world struggled for stability and peace, many Americans felt the need to justify and embrace the prosperity that engulfed their nation. It is estimated that in the mid-​twentieth century over half of all material goods in the world were “Made in the USA.” As America became the richest country on earth, Prosperity Gospel became Manifest Destiny for the twentieth century. It framed the wealth and prosperity of the United States and its citizens as deserved and earned. This logic tied war victory to God’s preferential treatment, which justified the well-​deserved good life of all Americans while simultaneously giving hope to Americans who have yet to attain that good life. The two distinctive beliefs that all Prosperity Gospel believers share are as follows: (1) all believers are entitled to prosperity and health because it is God’s will for them, and (2) positive confession and acts of faith are required on behalf of the believers to materialize this health and prosperity into their lives. While nuanced definitions of wealth, health, and faith vary within different expressions of Prosperity Gospel, the logic is the same. Most Christians believe that God can heal and help them financially, but Prosperity Gospel Christians believe they are entitled to those palpable signs of God’s grace. In Prosperity Gospel, true believers have the God-​given authority to claim and demand their blessings. These claims must be asserted through positive confessions: verbalizing what one desires and steadfastly believing that God will deliver. For these demands to

322    Tony Tian-Ren Lin be answered, they must prove their faith by making sacrificial offerings. Like pastors Eduardo and Bessy, they had to rent a space and get more chairs than they needed if they truly believe God will bring two hundred worshippers soon. To rent a space for fewer people would be viewed as a sign of unfaithfulness, which leads to God not granting their wish. In personal lives, believers acquire furniture for houses they do not yet own and purchase cars with money they have not yet earned. Prosperity Gospel churches grow because they are built on the imperative to gain converts. Believers share their faith and give testimony to what God has done as a means to earn God’s attention and be blessed. Those who bring new converts to the church are celebrated and earn social capital. This urgent need to share their faith at all times and by any means necessary leads them to build partnerships with media conglomerates, making them appear larger than life. Since the 1990s, Prosperity Gospel developed a “softer” message. It adapted from the promise of material goods and physical healing to include psychological comfort. As some branches of Pentecostalism soften their practices to integrate into mainstream America, they evolved into a more contemporary and less expressive practice known as Neo-​Pentecostalism. This version of Pentecostalism focused on the therapeutic functions of providing emotional comfort to believers without the traditional practices disparaged by the larger society. The most popular versions of Prosperity Gospel made a similar shift away from material goods and into therapeutic help. This shift to a psychological model coincided with the spread of positive psychology, a branch of psychology concerned with happiness and the “good life.” Preachers such as Joyce Meyer, T. D. Jakes, and Joel Osteen toned down their wealth and health message and focused on mental empowerment and happiness. Prosperity Gospel became the spiritual counterpart of positive psychology. A religion that is constantly adapting its message to the zeitgeist must also relentlessly provide updates to believers. Prosperity Gospel leaders are extremely successful at delivering their message. They relied on the power of the media from its inceptions. Early Prosperity Gospel preachers ruled the airways on AM radio and were at the forefront of recording and distributing their messages through records, cassette tapes, and eventually online. Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the largest Prosperity Gospel media company, started by buying a few hours in local television stations in 1973. Today it worth nearly $1 billion, and it can be viewed on every corner of the world. By their reporting, they are watched by roughly two billion people every year. The success of TBN spun-​off channels for different demographics. Magazines, movies, books, music, and festivals were created to push the same message: If you have faith and act on it, God will bless you. This aggressive self-​promotion makes Prosperity Gospel the most visible and influential form of Christianity in the twenty-​first century. Most American Christians do not adhere to the crudest version of Prosperity Gospel, and most churches reject those teachings. But their incessant self-​promotion makes them more visible than other forms of Christianity.

Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/as    323

Latino Prosperity Gospel It is not uncommon to find Latino faith leaders and churches who are critical of Prosperity Gospel. Yet there is a disproportionate influence and presence of Prosperity Gospel Latinos in public because of their marketing efforts. The influence of Prosperity Gospel is present in all Latino forms of Christianity but greatest among Pentecostals. It is not difficult to find weekly charismatic meetings in Catholic churches with large Latino memberships teaching Prosperity Gospel ideas. These Charismatic Catholic meetings are almost identical to a Prosperity Gospel Pentecostal service.5 There is singing, healing, and speaking in tongues, and the meetings are led by lay leaders of both genders. These lay Catholic leaders hold charismatic retreats and conferences where participants receive healing and bargain with their God and the Virgin Mary. The core of the message is identical to Protestant Prosperity Gospel. Faith and action lead to blessings. Latino Prosperity Gospel is not a Spanish version of their English-​ speaking counterparts. Many of the leaders and the members in these churches came from countries with well-​established Prosperity Gospel churches. They are as diverse as the Latino community. As a utilitarian religion, the message and culture of each church are adapted to suit the needs of the particular community. Themes of displacement, hope, and ethnic pride are incorporated into their theology. The reach of Prosperity Gospel in Latino communities is intertwined with the spread of Pentecostalism in Latin America. By the 1980s, Pentecostal preachers like Jimmy Swaggart, Morris Cerullo, and Benny Hinn filled soccer stadiums throughout Latin America. Yet no religion is accepted wholesale. Religions are introduced into particular societies and translated for new cultures. Everywhere it went, Prosperity Gospel picked up local cultures, traditions, and beliefs. While North American preachers held mass rallies, it was the work of native leaders that led to its spread. Prosperity Gospel in Latin America is a movement of its own. At the core of their message is one of self-​ empowerment. Prosperity Gospel preachers in each country rose to prominence and led their own movements, founded churches, established schools, and created media conglomerates. While American preachers are known, each country has their own Prosperity Gospel celebrity preachers. Today, the largest Prosperity Gospel church network in the world is not in the United States but in Brazil. The connection between Latino and Latin American Prosperity Gospel cannot be disentangled. The most prominent Latino Prosperity Gospel preachers in the United States immigrated from Latin America. They were educated and formed as preachers overseas. Their congregations have strong ties to Latin America. Yet their field of influence is most clearly seen in the United States. This is true even for preachers who remain in their home countries. For example, Guatemalan Prosperity Gospel preacher “Cash” Luna (his real name is Carlos Enrique Luna) can be seen on American televisions weekly through the TBN. He is fluent in English and tours North America so his fans can see

324    Tony Tian-Ren Lin him in person. The Prosperity Gospel definition of success necessitates a presence in the United States. After all, the Prosperity Gospel ideal is rooted in the white Anglo-​Saxon Protestant model. US presence symbolizes ultimate success for these preachers. Latinos who tune into Spanish language channels like Telemundo and Univision inevitably bring Prosperity Gospel into their homes, even nominally, as these churches fill up much of the airtime in these channels’ local affiliates. The largest Prosperity Gospel broadcaster in the world, TBN, has multiple Spanish-​language channels such as Enlace and Salsa, which stream Prosperity Gospel preachers into viewers’ homes twenty-​four hours a day. While TBN is based in the United States, TBN Enlace is headquartered in Costa Rica. Their programing can be viewed across the United States and every Spanish-​ speaking country in the world. For those who are marginalized, an optimistic and comforting message can go a long way. The testimonies of sudden wealth and healing streaming daily into their homes are an invaluable source of hope. Their continuous effort to self-​promote and share their faith does not go in vain. The number of converts in these churches is growing faster than churches of other traditions. Over half of all Latino Evangelical Protestants are converts, and of those converts, 43 percent converted from Catholicism.6 As recent converts are tasked with the responsibility to recruit new members, the growth of Latino Prosperity Gospel is boundless. Today the majority of Christians in Latin America, both Protestant and Catholic, believe that God grants wealth and good health to believers who have enough faith. The most recent immigrants to the United States originate from countries with especially high rates of Prosperity Gospel believers—​Honduras (84 percent), El Salvador (82 percent), and Guatemala (90 percent). They bring their Prosperity Gospel teaching with them when they relocate. While most prominent US Prosperity Gospel preachers have adopted a therapeutic model, immigrants in pursuit of the American Dream continue to focus on material prosperity. The intensity by which Prosperity Gospel is preached varies by immigrant generation. First-​generation immigrants will adhere most intensely to the American Dream and the material promises. They emphasize the promise of meritocracy and the self-​empowerment that comes from believing in personal responsibility for the outcomes of their lives. Second-​and third-​generation immigrants will be most attracted to the therapeutic effects of being with coethnics who share similar challenges. The fastest growing Latino Prosperity Gospel church in the world is the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) (Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus) based in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The UCKG is considered the largest Prosperity Gospel church network in the world because of its rigorous expansion methods. Local pastors are carefully vetted and every church is accountable to headquarters in Sao Paolo. Their churches are known by the tag line “Pare de Sufrir” (stop suffering). Founded by Bishop Edir Macedo in 1977 as a Pentecostal church, today it is a bank, a TV channel, and an amusement park with a life-​sized replica of Noah’s Ark. Their television channel is a multi-​billion-​ dollar media company. The election of conservative Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 is attributed to the promotional efforts of the UCKG marketing machine. This global church-​media conglomerate with branches in the Americas, Europe, and Africa

Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/as    325 is unapologetic about its message of prosperity. In each city, they establish their church in the most expensive area to symbolically position themselves in the mainstream. In the United States, they have over 260 locations with the highest concentrations in the states with highest Latino population, California, Texas, and New York. As mainline churches decline and eventually close, UCKG buys their properties and gives them new life as Latino Prosperity Gospel churches.

Their American Dream Eduardo came to the United States from El Salvador fleeing the disaster of the war in the 1990s. His brother was killed in the war, and the Temporary Protective Status for Salvadorian refugees made it possible for him to stay in the United States. He graduated high school and thought of further schooling, but he was already working with a group of painters getting $13 an hour, an extraordinary amount for a young man at that time. He met Bessy at a party and soon moved in with her. Bessy held a string of gendered immigrant jobs for women, some simultaneously: cleaning, cooking, providing childcare, and sewing. Together they lived in a basement apartment in Queens, New York, and started to get a taste of their American Dream. The first nightmare started when they realized that they could not have children. Bessy sank into depression and was unable to work for days. Her identity as a woman was shattered. An opportunity arose for them to invest in a construction company remodeling old houses in New York. The potential for great gain was irresistible, and Eduardo and Bessy agreed to put down their savings in the hope of a comfortable life. Bessy confessed her stance that her infertility was the result of exhaustion and overwork. It was always her fault. She hoped that working less and resting more could lead to pregnancy. Their business venture went well until the housing bubble busted in 2008. Bessy’s depression paralyzed her. They went from a comfortable life to one of desperation until she found Prosperity Gospel. Bessy talks about the financial crash as a blessing because it was that incident that ultimately led her to her present state. Her encounter with Prosperity Gospel saved her life. It gave her hope and motivation to keep trying. And she did. Today they live comfortably on their incomes, have a thriving ministry, a growing congregation, and own a detached single-​family home near the center of town where they host gatherings weekly. Their sermons are peppered with reminders that they are the living testimonies that faith can lead to the American Dream. The story of pastors Eduardo and Bessy is an inherently American one. The myth of endless frontier and prosperity has shaped the legend of America since the country’s founding. Migrants escaping violence or poverty came to the United States in hopes of a better life. For groups of European immigrants, the dream eventually came true. They affirmed the idea that innovation, determination, and moralistic religious obedience lead to good things. Waves of immigrants left their homeland dreaming of a better life

326    Tony Tian-Ren Lin in America, including the many Latin American immigrants in the late twentieth and early twenty-​first centuries. As social beings, humans are shaped by our environment even as we shape it. Transplanted people are dropped into a culture that is not their own, and the crash of customs, traditions, and identities is disorienting. Religion has long served as a socializing force helping immigrants make sense of their lives in a new land. Prosperity Gospel is the religion that most easily facilitates and accelerates this process by socializing believers around the world into American ideals. The teachings of the religion are the reason for their migration. This is the case with Central American migrants who were Prosperity Gospel Pentecostals long before they migrated. They arrive to the United States already committed to the principles of individualism, divine entitlement, and meritocracy. In this faith they find a familiar and comforting message. Prosperity Gospel is a powerful modern framework by which marginalized immigrants construct an identity that gives meaning to their lives in the United States. The process is often unintended, but the transformation is all the same. As they strive to be faithful Prosperity Gospel Christians, their behaviors and worldviews end up resembling the characteristics and hopes of the ideal white, middle-​class American. Traditional models of the family, home ownership, stable income, and church attendance are lifted as markers of superiority. For Latin American immigrants excluded from conventional paths to success, any semblance of progress is a sign of hope. While adherents join for spiritual reasons, they are socialized to conform and aspire to white, middle-​class American norms. From acquisition of the English language to the adoption of financial practices, these immigrants adopt the markers of success for middle-​ class Americans. They might not be rich yet, but they can resemble that life by imitating those who are wealthy. This is also true of nonimmigrant believers. Prosperity Gospel reinforces and reproduces the socioeconomic hierarchies and the principles of Western capitalism. It justifies the economic divide between the rich and the poor. It reinforces the self-​reliant myth of this country. It keeps the American Dream alive. Prosperity Gospel is inherently individualistic. American Protestantism laid the foundation for nationalism and eventually individualism.7 Leading back to Puritan New England, the idea that God had destined a group of chosen people to create a new Promised Land defined the American imagination. More than a belief system, it was an effective myth destined to inspire a new nation. American exceptionalism led to a hyperindividualism that grew to oppose the common good. The “American” was defined as a self-​made man (in those days it was primarily men) because this was a nation where everyone had an equal opportunity for success. Equality and democracy were ideas that depended on each citizen believing they had a part in shaping their nation. Prosperity Gospel, the religion created out of these ideals, embodies this individualism. It is especially attractive to Latinos because they are shut out of civil society. Each believer is empowered to believe they have the right to demand blessings from God. Their faithfulness entitles them to this form of direct access. In the same way Americans have a voice in the future of the nation, believers have the power to shape their future. This is a powerful concept for the marginalized. It is the path to empowerment many desperately seek. It affirms that their personal desires are God’s will for their lives. For many of these

Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/as    327 immigrants, this means that communal ideals of the family and the common good must be surrendered at the altar of individualism. Closely related to individualism is the sense of entitlement to material possessions. Prosperity Gospel is Manifest Destiny for the undestined. Those without the power to invade and annex have Prosperity Gospel. They have no need to conquer because God will grant them their wishes. Yet the concept is the same. It is God’s will that the faithful prosper and flourish. This is applied to material goods and one’s position in life. Prosperity Gospel Christians are entitled to everything that belongs to God. For Latino immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, this gives them the right to be in this country. Their upward mobility is destined by God. Even if individuals and institutions seek to exclude them, their faith tells them they have as much right as anyone else to be in this country. This is the real power of Prosperity Gospel in Latino communities. This faith licenses the faithful to live freely and confidently. Perhaps the most transformative aspect of Prosperity Gospel is its meritocratic core. The formula for prosperity ensures there are no freeloaders. Everyone who works hard and follows the rules will be blessed. Those who struggle only have themselves to blame. In this religion, grace is earned. Action must be taken to trigger God’s blessings. It is necessary to pray and work. Prosperity Gospel Christians are equipped with a high view of themselves, extreme confidence in success, and the prerogative to act on those beliefs. This leads to unending pursuit of education and constant entrepreneurial ventures. The best-​known action in popular culture might be the “sowing” of financial seeds in the church. But in practice, education and work are the most popular actions Latino Prosperity Gospel Christians take after conversion. Education is mainly in the church through attendance of conferences, workshops, and special classes in addition to the worship services. But it includes mainstream education as well. Graduations are celebrated both as a blessing from God and as a sign of one’s faithfulness. Seeking new jobs and starting new businesses are also popular acts of faith. Success in these ventures is erratic but also secondary. In Prosperity Gospel logic, the primary goal of the risky behavior is the risk itself. The risky action is part of their hard work to prompt God to bless them. For pastors Eduardo and Bessy, getting their church to two hundred members is not as important as taking the risk to start that church.

Prosperity Gospel in Daily Life Prosperity Gospel requires the synchronization of every aspect of life toward the formula. It is not a religion that can be compartmentalized into private and public spheres. The formula only “works” if a person is totally subjugated to this life. The point of this faith is to display God’s blessings through physical means. It is to show others and oneself that they are blessed. This is why Prosperity Gospel is such a powerful transformative force. Simply believing that God will make one rich is not enough. Deliberate and

328    Tony Tian-Ren Lin public acts of faith are required. Starting a new business, moving to a new location, and even giving away money are necessary proof of faith. The most immediate realm of influence is family life. Like other forms of traditional Christianity, Prosperity Gospel teaches that the family is a sacred institution. This is appealing to Latinos who come from countries where this model is held up as the standard. When the hierarchy of the church is replicated in the home, the family is “right before God.” This means the father takes on the role of the pastor, the mother is his assistant, and the children are the congregants who the pastors are responsible for nurturing and raising in faith. When this ranking is replicated successfully, the family is granted higher prominent status in the church. The father, particularly, is offered more visible leadership roles. The ideal family is both the reason God blesses and the blessing itself, thereby enforcing the cycle of blessings and those who deserve blessing. Maintaining a traditional family in modern America is hard work. In practice, it is an ideal rather than a reality. To compensate, churches highlight ideal families whenever they are available. Bessy and Eduardo constantly emphasize their complementary partnership before the church. While Pastora Bessy came to the faith first, it was only after her husband’s conversion that they began to prosper. Her submission to Eduardo is often exaggerated because they do not have any children. They work harder to showcase a model marriage because they are far from their ideal. Hence, even the perfect family in their church is aspirational. Bessy emphasizes her submission in her testimony: I worked so hard and prayed so much for my husband when I first became a Christian. We didn’t grow up with faith. We were together for many years but not married correctly. I prayed and prayed that God would lead my husband to the faith. At first it didn’t seem like anything was changing, but as he began to see the changes in me, he started to ask me questions. He saw that I was different, and then I began to get work. I got jobs I didn’t usually get because God was already prospering me. When he saw the miracles in my life, he started coming to church. Then God began performing miracles in his life. A man at the church offered him a much better job. He began to read the Bible and we began to pray together. After he was baptized and became active in the church, we began to prosper. His back pain went away. He was not angry anymore. There was no more screaming in our house. It was such a blessing.

Prosperity Gospel often leads to what I call suave machismo.8 Machismo is the Spanish term for male chauvinism. Prosperity Gospel in general emphasizes a softer male superiority. Men must lead the household while women are viewed as the weaker gender in need of protection and guidance. Since the ideal Prosperity Gospel male is a pastor, the husband and father must live an exemplary life and pastor the family. Fathers are expected to provide spiritual care for the children, primarily through prayer and Bible reading. The husband must do the same for his wife. Prosperity Gospel men work hard to fulfill that role. As a result, there is more time spent at home. Husbands value their wives as partners and consult with them on daily decisions. Sundays are spent together in church, where they reap the benefits of being an ideal family or hope to become

Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/as    329 one. For families from traditional cultures which emphasize male superiority, this is a welcomed change for the wives. Prosperity Gospel can also be a source of empowerment for women. The core of this religion teaches individuals to have dominion over reality. Every Prosperity Gospel Christian believes that they are superior to nonbelievers because they have special knowledge of a formula that can bring about miracles. Women live with the confidence that they know something most men do not. Their congregations affirm their authority. In these churches it is not unusual for women to preach and lead. The men at Eduardo and Bessy’s church do not hesitate to follow Bessy’s directions. Pastor Eduardo is the only male in senior leadership. The prophetess, the Evangelists, and the Bible teachers are all women. As in the case of Bessy and Eduardo, the wife is often the spiritual leader in the family. Bessy came to faith first and was a student of Prosperity Gospel longer than Eduardo. Her superior knowledge of the faith is not something that Eduardo hides. He mentions it often in sermons and publicly refers to the lessons learned from his wife. Yet in practice, in the eyes of the church, Eduardo is still the lead pastor of the church. Bessy often defers to her husband’s authority, constantly mentioning him when she preaches. She consciously plays a submissive role to him in order to reinforce the ideal family model. The depiction of the traditional family ranking is more important than the reality. Latino Prosperity Gospel churches are largely apolitical. There are exceptions, but unlike their non-​Latino counterparts they have little use for political power. The culture war issues are beyond their most immediate needs. At the time I visited Pastora Bessy’s church, famous Prosperity Gospel preachers had already circled their wagons around Donald Trump. It was a topic of national conversation, but it was irrelevant to this immigrant church. Prosperity Gospel is a utilitarian faith. It is a religion that evolves toward the practical needs of the believer. Politics rarely produce results for marginalized communities. Cozying up to political leaders may have practical implications for non-​ Latino churches. It gives them a platform and the public validation they crave. For most immigrant, Spanish-​speaking Prosperity Gospel Christians, politics has little use. The primary reason they convert to Prosperity Gospel is because American institutions do not serve them. This is why Prosperity Gospel came to prominence in the first place. When medicine and science do not work, this faith brings miraculous healing. When hard work and dedication do not lead to upward mobility, they believe in miraculous meritocracy. When the social and political systems exclude them from assistance and protection, Prosperity Gospel assures them to be entitled by God to be in this country and seek their prosperity. On the first Sunday I visited, a mother with four young children attended for the first time. Dana had arrived in Virginia a few days before. She was an active Prosperity Gospel Christian in Honduras and sought out a similar church as soon as she arrived. She offered an impromptu testimony for safety in crossing the border and successfully gaining refugee status. “God told me to come to this country,” she declared before the congregation. “So I put our lives in the hands of God and we got here safely.” This act of faith was rewarded with protection during her journey. The miracle she experienced

330    Tony Tian-Ren Lin was greater than she realized because soon after her arrival, the Trump administration implemented the family separation policy that would place children in cages and deport their parents. Thousands of children were separated and hundreds will never reunite with their families. Even as pictures of children in cages circulated the world, Bessy and Eduardo continue their ministry unchanged. They celebrated with immigrants like Dana who miraculously made it across the border, but they were silent about the politicians behind this cruelty. At the peak of the family separation policy with unending rumors of immigration raids, Pastor Eduardo preached a month-​long sermon series on anxiety and worries. He empowered the congregation to trust God because anxiety was an act of unfaithfulness. The sermons never mentioned what was happening at the borders, but it alluded to the stress and worries in migrant communities. Believers are encouraged to seek instant spiritual gratification. Institutional change and civic involvement are not practical and do not lead to immediate results. They often require the type of sacrifice that is incomparable to those seeking their own welfare. Hence, politics is rarely drawn into their purview. Yet a breach might be coming where Latino immigrants can no longer tolerate the political silence in their churches. As aggressive policies against their communities reach deeper into their daily lives, government policies and politicians will not be ignored. How this will manifest in the different Latino communities remains to be seen. I visited Eduardo and Bessy the following winter. It was still dark outside, and four church members were already preparing for worship service. I last saw them five months earlier. I was invited back as they prepared to move to a new building just outside of town. It was a day of celebration. That afternoon 168 people filed into the church, more than double the numbers I saw in my first visit. Thirty short of the two hundred they claimed in the name of Jesus when they started the church. They grew even in politically and economically challenging times. Prosperity Gospel will continue to grow among Latinos and other marginalized Christians, as long as the American Dream dominates the public imaginary. The belief that one’s hard work and determination can bring dreams into reality is too irresistible. It empowers the powerless, gives hope to the hopeless, and justifies the injustices they face. It is the perfect principle to pacify the masses and reproduce the status quo. It is the founding principle of this nation and the primary tool by which American caste systems are maintained. Prosperity Gospel is a tool for assimilation into American intuitions and social life. Yet Prosperity Gospel is no longer an American religion. The center of Prosperity Gospel Christianity moved to the Southern Hemisphere by the early twenty-​first century. While American Prosperity Gospel preachers are millionaires who fly in private jets, their Latin American counterparts are billionaires. The economic and cultural power Prosperity Gospel preachers in Latin American and Africa hold overshadows that of their American counterparts. The formula for prosperity has been internalized in those countries, perhaps more than in the United States. Like Dana, who crossed the border less than a year ago, many arrive already committed to an individualistic, meritocratic, and materialistic way of life. The future growth of Latino Prosperity Gospel will be fueled and led by Latin American Prosperity Gospel

Prosperity Gospel and Latinos/as    331 where in many countries it is unashamedly political. They have taken a page out of US white evangelicalism by diving into the political culture wars. Whether the legalization of abortion or same-​sex marriage, Latin American Prosperity Gospel churches have mobilized their adherents to advocate for conservative positions. In the case of Brazil, the Prosperity Gospel church and multimedia platforms were dispatched for the campaign of a right-​wing candidate. That form of prosperity gospel is infiltrating US Latino Prosperity Gospel, and the rise of a politically active generation may be on the horizon. In sum, Prosperity Gospel flourishes where the American Dream endures. The challenges of Late Modernity will push more people toward the edge of economic and social stability. Modern Prosperity Gospel emerged precisely for such times as these. Throughout history, resilient people have demonstrated an incredible capacity to hope even in the midst of despair. Latin American immigrants and their children will continue to strive for their American Dream. Since the dream belongs to the dreamers, these new Americans will play an important role in defining the ideology that shaped this nation.

Notes 1. The term Latino refers to those of people Latin American descent of all genders. I use the term Latino because it is the designation most often used by the subjects of my ethnography. 2. Bob Smietana, “Most Churchgoers Say God Wants Them to Prosper Financially,” LifeWay Research, July 31, 2018, https://​life​wayr​esea​rch.com/​2018/​07/​31/​most-​chur​chgo​ers-​say-​ god-​wants-​them-​to-​pros​per-​fina​ncia​lly/​. 3. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1946), 271. 4. David W. Miller, God at Work: The History and Promise of Faith at Work Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 5. For these and the following statistics on Latinos, see Pew Hispanic Center and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2007). 6. PEW Research Center, “Renewalism and Latino Behavior,”Pew Hispanic Center and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life,” In “Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion,” April 25, 2007, 29. 7. Andrew Delbanco, The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 8. Very similar to the findings in W. Bradford Wilcox’s Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). This pattern is also confirmed by Elizabeth E. Brusco’s research in The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010).

Bibliography Attanasi, Katherine, and Amos Yong, eds. Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socio-​Economics of the Global Charismatic Movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

332    Tony Tian-Ren Lin Bowler, Kate. Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Brown, Candy Gunther. Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Brusco, Elizabeth E. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia . Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Coleman, Simon. The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Delbanco, Andrew. The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Gerth, H. H., and C. Wright Mills. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1946. Hagan, Jacqueline Maria. Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope, and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Harrison, Milmon F. Righteous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary African American Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Marti, Gerardo. Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Menjıvar, Cecilia. Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Miller, David W. God at Work: The History and Promise of Faith at Work Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Mulder, Mark T., Aida I. Ramos, and Gerardo Marti. Latino Protestants in America: Growing and Diverse. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. Pew Hispanic Center and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2007. Sánchez-​Walsh, Arlene M. Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Smietana, Bob. “Most Churchgoers Say God Wants Them to Prosper Financially.” LifeWay Research, July 31, 2018. https://​lifewayresearch.com/​2018/​07/​31/​most-​churchgoers-​say-​god​wants-​them-​to-​prosper-​financially/​ Wilcox, W. Bradford. Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Chapter 18

Christianities a nd t h e C on struction of L at i nx Et hnoracial I de nt i t i e s Jonathan Calvillo

I vividly remember the altar call moments in the Los Angeles–​area Pentecostal church of my childhood. As people of distinct Latin American backgrounds crowded at the altar, the accents of Peruvians, Dominicans, Guatemalans, and others melded into a chorus of voices crying out for an encounter with God. Some among them engaged in the Pentecostal practice of praying in tongues. As I listened, I sometimes wondered if the spiritual languages of worshippers were inflected with their everyday ethnic accents or if their ethnic particularities were washed out in those moments of divine empowerment. Essentially, my childhood self was asking a question I would come to ask years later as a formally trained sociologist: How do particular practices of Christianity shape Latinxs’ ethnoracial identities? In this chapter, it is precisely this question I wrestle with. Employing a constructionist framework which understands race and ethnicity as categories continually shaped by social processes, I examine how Christian traditions shape Latinxs’ ethnoracial identities. Drawing from years of fieldwork within Latinx communities, and reviewing existing literature, I spotlight three social dynamics through which Christian traditions shape Latinx ethnoracial identities: temporal-​spatial relations, authenticity policing, and political engagement. Amid these intersecting dynamics, and in the context of colonial histories, Latinxs negotiate ethnoracial identities and signal their place in US society. Ethnoracial identities are descent-​ based categories of belonging dynamically demarcated by social boundaries and negotiated along power differentials. As belonging in US society has persistently been constructed in relation to whiteness, Latinx ethnic identities have historically been negotiated in relation to whiteness, and likewise in relation to blackness, and indigeneity. Christianity, particularly Protestantism, has long informed the construction of whiteness in the United States, where it has functioned as a marker of substantive citizenship. Often perceived as racial others, Latinxs have had to

334   Jonathan Calvillo negotiate their place in US society in relation to ethnoreligious white normativity. Some Latinxs have encountered in Christianity pathways of mainstream societal incorporation, while others have found in Christianity means of resistance and alternative modes of societal belonging that decenter whiteness. Christianity, then, has long served as a source of social legitimacy for Latinxs, authenticating Latinxs’ presence in the US mainstream, and/​or bolstering a sense of authentic belonging within spaces on the margins of US society. The dynamics of negotiation examined in this chapter account for the multiple ways Latinxs legitimize their ethnic identities in relation to Christianity. I first offer a framework of ethnoracial identity formation that emphasizes the historical factors linking Latin American religions and Latinx ethnoracial identity. I explore how Catholicism in particular, and Christianity in general, historically function in an inculturated manner within Latinx communities. Secondly, I explore the aforementioned social dynamics of Latinx identity negotiation as they manifest variably across Christian traditions. Through these analyses I remain attentive to how processes of Latinx ethnoracial identity formation occur at both the macro level and the micro level, and how both are deeply personal and highly imposed, involving ingroup and outgroup negotiations. The analyses I conduct here offer directions of further inquiry for researchers of Christianity and Latinx identity formation.

Defining Terms Race and ethnicity are closely related concepts that among Latinxs are particularly complicated to parse out. I employ the composite term “ethnoracial” to account for the overlap of race and ethnicity, but at various points differentiate between the terms. Race and ethnicity similarly denote descent-​based social categories. Race is socially constructed along the lines of perceived biological descent and often carries with it consequences of essentialized ascription. That is, racial labels are often mapped onto particular somatic features, problematically associated with social hierarchies, and imbued with behavioral expectations. For many Latinxs, who descend from multiple and distinct continental ancestries, sometimes within the same household, racial categorization is complex. Ethnicity is socially constructed along the lines of shared history and culture, emphasizing some degree of intergenerational cultural transmission. Ethnic groups are less rigidly read along outward appearance and more so along cultural, regional lines, though physical characteristics can function in tandem with other markers to denote ethnic distinction. While state-​sanctioned definitions currently classify Latinx identity along ethnic, not racial lines, many Latinxs experience ascribed racial identities that saliently shape their life opportunities. Black and indigenous Latinxs have especially had to contend with racialized identities resulting from colonial hierarchies and institutionalized inequalities. Indeed, the settler-​colonial systems wherein whites have benefitted from the exploitation of black and indigenous peoples

Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    335 have remained deeply ingrained in Latin American societies and in the United States. US patterns of segregation, delayed social mobility, and nativism reify notions that Latinxs, broadly, are racially distinct from whites. The persistence of such experiences among a significant sector of Latinxs positions Latinx identity as a racialized identity. Racial, ethnic, and religious identities are intricately linked for Latinxs, given their antecedents in Latin America. Christianity was introduced to Latin America under the auspices of empire, a reality that is true for early Catholic efforts, as well as for later Protestant efforts. The motivations of Christian missionaries, whether contemptible or noble, were generally supported by powerful nation states and institutions. With religion often functioning as an important corollary to early Latin American civil societies, the racial stratification that emerged in colonial Latin America was reflected within religious communities. Even as religion served as an important mediator of societal belonging, racial classifications largely structured the life opportunities available to Latin American populations, including within religious spaces. The religious spheres accessible to people of distinct racialized classes provided important opportunities for collective identity formation, both on the margins, and in the mainstream of society. The descendants of indigenous and African peoples, those who bore the brunt of religious and racial ideologies, ultimately fashioned distinct practices and forms of lived Christianity. Indeed, the social stratification experienced vis-​à-​vis the established pigmentocracy facilitated the emergence of distinct ethnic practices among marginalized groups. That is, groups of people deemed as racially distinct or racially subordinate, typically barred from positions of power and privilege in the religious sphere, exercised some degree of agency in how they lived out their Christian faith. African and indigenous expressions blended with European Christian traditions in Latin America. Some of these indigenized modes of Christianity remained on the periphery as less acceptable forms of popular religion, but some of these expressions influenced broader societal practices throughout Latin America. Latin Americans who ultimately migrated to the United States, or who found themselves in colonized United States territories, inflected their religious practices with localized realities and ethnicized traditions. The expressions of Christianity found throughout Latin America and among US Latinxs are thus negotiations between local, ethnic expressions and larger regional and international movements. The deep history of Catholicism within Latin America translates into a deeply inculturated tradition within a majority of Latin American societies. As Catholicism has significantly shaped Latin America, Latinx identity has been markedly shaped by Catholicism. On the one hand, Latinx Catholicism is able to draw from distinct traditions throughout Latin America. On the other hand, Latinx Catholicism in the United States is not solely an artifact of migration but is rather a living tradition that has persisted in North American territories for centuries.1 From the milestones and rhythms of sacramental life, to the localized devotion and pageantry in honor of saints, to the centrality of sacramental parish life within many Latinx neighborhoods—​these and other aspects have keenly marked Latinx community life, even for many Latinxs who

336   Jonathan Calvillo are not Catholic.2 The pervasively ingrained nature of Catholic tradition has meant that in some contexts it has functioned as a boundary marker of Latinx ethnic authenticity. In recent decades, shifts in Latinx religiosity have garnered much attention.3 Two trends have especially affected Catholic majority status among Latinxs—​religious disaffiliation and conversion to Evangelical Protestantism. These trends are relevant to ethnic identity in that a traditional marker of Latinx ethnicity, Catholicism, is being contested. Alternatively, the long-​standing histories of some Protestant denominations within Latinx communities also contribute forms of inculturated ethnoreligious traditions. Musical repertoires of coritos, Pentecostal prayer styles, and expectations of pastoral authority have been distinctly iterated within Latinx Protestant traditions. In some parts of the Southwest, communities of Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist traditions have existed since early in the United States’ occupation of those territories.4 Still, even as non-​Catholic traditions provide opportunities for ethnic expression, the relationship of Latinx ethnic identities to Catholicism remains important. Given the dynamic nature of Latinx religious identities, the social boundary approach is helpful for understanding how Latinxs negotiate their identities. Proponents of this view contend that ethnoracial identities are delimited by social boundaries—​contested categories of belonging performatively enacted through everyday relationships, reflecting ingroup and outgroup negotiations, and shaped by access to power and resources.5 Ethnoracial boundaries may transition between bright or blurred states,6 and they reflect contestation of markers, members, and meaning.7 Particular symbols function as ethnic boundary markers, signaling a person’s membership within an ethnoracial category. This may include items such as language, national identity, and phenotype, though these are by no means universal or static. The authenticity of particular markers is up for debate, at both collective and individual levels, affecting what it means to belong, and who counts as a true member. The most salient markers are understood by group members as representing the essence of their population.

Temporal-​Spatial Relations Key processes of Latinx identity emerge from commemorations of ancestral places and ancestral pasts. This intersection of temporal and spatial dimensions is uniquely meaningful to many Latinxs who are either connected to experiences of migration,8 and/​ or have ties to Latinx communities where spatial belonging has entailed ethnoraical struggle via histories of colonization. As Latinxs’ locales change across time, their modes of performing embodied and spatialized memories provide ample symbols for demarcating ethnoracial boundaries.

Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    337

Place-​Based Identities Rituals and practices related to immigrant homelands and ethnic enclaves in the United States often energize Latinx ethnic identities. On Good Friday, on a bright afternoon in East Boston, for example, I participated with a Latinx majority crowd as they reenacted the Via Crucis. The procession began at Holy Redeemer Church and went through some streets in East Boston. The crowd of hundreds, spanning all ages, adorned the cityscape. Over a megaphone, a lay leader narrated the series of acts that took place leading up to Jesus’s crucifixion. Residents of newer luxury apartments watched the procession from their apartment buildings, as many working-​class residents joined in along the way. The procession approached the commerce center of the neighborhood, where shops and businesses catering to the area’s majority Central American community were situated. The Consulate General of El Salvador was close by. For some participants, this procession mirrored the processions that they participated in in their homeland regions. Yet, simultaneously, as an act of devotion in a highly contested space, one in which the cost of living was steeply rising, the procession was also an act of place making, signaling a claim to space in the United States and in Boston. This fortified connection to a Latin American context, and strengthened connection to a US context, reflects how relationships to place figure prominently in ethnic identity formation and in Latinx imaginaries. For both native-​born and immigrant Latinxs, ethnic places have long held a prominent role in ethnic identity formation. Notions of “being from somewhere” matter. Many Latinxs orient their sense of identity around a homeland, a place that they or their ancestors left behind but are still connected to relationally, culturally, and possibly economically. The immigrant journey tends to heighten ethnoracial salience, raising awareness in immigrants of ethnoracial distinctions; likewise, migratory journeys in some cases heighten immigrants’ religiosity, encapsulating what some scholars understand as a theologizing experience.9 For undocumented immigrants, faith communities provide especially salient modes of sanctuary,10 whether in localized refuge or in embodied forms. On US soil, too, Latinx enclaves have been centers of ethnic identity maintenance; on the one hand, such spaces retain a wealth of cultural resources, and, on the other hand, they exhibit high rates of segregation. Christian communities play significant roles in mediating Latinxs’ relationships to place by promoting particular theologies of place, performing rituals which evoke memories of place, and mediating how Latinxs sustain homeland ties. Many Latinxs maintain transnational ethnic identities, identities tied to both the sending nation and the receiving nation. Latinx Christian churches often sustain transnational ethnic identities through cultural practices and modes of resource exchange. The incorporation of particular music, the decor employed in the church, and the sayings pastors employ in their homilies may readily remind parishioners of their sending contexts. Various neo-​Pentecostal and Evangelical churches, for example, were founded in Latin America, and Latin American leaders and practices influence

338   Jonathan Calvillo US adherents. Movements such as La Luz Del Mundo and Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus are linked to Mexico and Brazil, respectively. Likewise, Catholic parishes that I observed provided space for Latinx immigrants to host feast days in honor of patron saints from their homelands. Through various means of communication, including social media platforms, these celebrations were shared with relatives abroad, and resources from abroad were implemented in the US celebration. Local spaces can be especially critical to indigenous immigrants who establish transnational nodes of cultural preservation amid forces of assimilation, erasure, and inequality. Church communities may offer local resources for indigenous practices to persist and may sustain channels of exchange with indigenous homelands, enriching local communities in the process. Latinx majority neighborhoods in the United States provide unique spaces for the enactment of ethnically infused localized Christian practices; celebrations of las posadas, forms of evangelistic outreach, Christian musical genres, and shrines and altars are types of Christian expressions that Latinxs adapt and/​or develop within US barrios. Yet not all Christian groups relate to ethnic places in the same way. Freier,11 for example, in comparing Catholic and Evangelical churches, notes that a Catholic church draws from a more spatially concentrated area, while an Evangelical church is less centered in a geographic area. Similarly, Marquardt distinguishes between a “plaza del pueblo,” or community space approach taken by a Catholic church, and a more socially enclosed “safe haven” approach taken by a Protestant church.12 Matovina,13 too, notes the propensity of Catholic churches toward public community engagement, more so than Protestant churches. The way Christian churches situate themselves within ethnic enclaves is especially critical to populations that are vulnerable, such as undocumented immigrants. Ethnic enclaves can be spaces of sanctuary and churches can be nodes within broader networks of safety and support for unauthorized immigrants and their families. Churches committed to interconnected support systems within ethnic enclaves help vulnerable immigrants to retain a sense of localized ethnic belonging.14

Generational Transitions Jesus Ibarra had invested much in ensuring that his children retained the faith of their parents. His oldest daughter, Tania, who had recently graduated from a local parochial school, excelled educationally, was now in college, and was contemplating joining a convent. Yet, as he discussed how proud he was of Tania, Jesus lamented that the young adult programs at his local parish were not meeting her needs. The urgency of the matter was amplified given that Jesus’s English-​speaking younger sons would soon be young adults as well. He explained, “Tania found another parish that has great programs for young adults. It’s in the city next to ours. I’ve talked to el Padre about making sure we have strong programs for these young adults.” Jesus opined, “We need for the youth to retain their culture,” revealing that ethnic identity transmission mattered to him. The young adult ministry that Tania now attended was largely Vietnamese and Latinx. Though he

Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    339 had no problem with his daughter having a diverse set of friends, he hoped to instill in his children a sense of ethnic tradition rooted in their faith. Intergenerational ethnic transmission has drawn attention within scholarship focused on immigrants and their progeny. Thirty-​three percent of Latinxs are foreign born,15 so understanding this issue as a transition from the first generation to the second is important. Nevertheless, with most Latinxs now being US born, intergenerational transmission of ethnoracial identities is increasingly a later generation matter. The issue must be considered from both the immigrant perspective and the native-​ born perspective. The concept of assimilation is a popular framework for explaining how ethnics retain or lose their ethnic identities across generations. The classic take on assimilation is that immigrants gradually lose their ethnic distinctions and blend into middle-​class white society. This model was largely predicated on the experiences of European immigrants from the turn of the previous century, who were ultimately incorporated into the “white Anglo-​Saxon Protestant” cultural milieu. From this perspective, the attenuation of ethnic boundaries accompanies societal incorporation for Latinx immigrants. However, though most Latinxs arrive in the United States affiliated with some form of Christianity, many are received in the United States as racialized minorities not easily ascribed into whiteness. The burden of racialization sustained by socioeconomic inequalities and falsely attributed to ethnic sensibilities inhibits the opportunities for many Latinxs to merely blend into the white cognate of their religious tradition. Indeed, for some Latinxs, particularly Afro-​Latinxs of the second generation and beyond, sociocultural incorporation may bring them to identify with African Americans rather than with whites. Still Latinxs do acculturate across generations, such as by becoming English dominant, supporting the notion that roadblocks rest not in cultural distance, but in structural disadvantages. In terms of religious participation, often Latino immigrants find and found coethnic church spaces that represent their religious tradition. A pressing question for many Latinx church leaders is whether second-​generation Latinxs will remain in Latinx church traditions, whether they will integrate into non-​Latinx majority churches, or whether they will abandon Christian churches altogether.16 Latinxs who exit from Latinx church traditions typically experience intergenerational cultural discontinuity at least in the realm of church, as well as a loosening of coethnic social closure. Latinx churches have responded to generational transitions in various ways, from creating bilingual services, to launching English language services, to founding English language congregations geared toward later generation Latinxs,17 with the intent to sustain some degree of ethnoreligious continuity. In some cases, later generation entrepreneurs take the initiative to create religious spaces welcoming later generation Latinxs. The efforts to preserve ethnic cohesion do not solely reside in first-​ generation Latinxs but also in later generation Latinxs. The sustainability of the ethnic church, then, is an important point of consideration in discussions of how Christianity contributes to Latinx ethnoracial identities. The decline of ethnic churches might indicate ethnoreligious attenuation, or it might signal the development of new adaptive forms addressing the realities of later generation Latinxs.

340   Jonathan Calvillo The multiethnic or multicultural church is a congregational model that some scholars consider to be an adaptive alternative which provides room for ethnic identity retention.18 Multiethnic churches that promote healthy views of ethnicity might provide a way for Latinos to retain some ethnic continuity. However, some multiethnic churches promote assimilationist views predicated on white normativity. In such cases, multiethnic and multicultural congregations will likely promote a colorblind approach precipitating ethnic decline among Latinxs and others.

Policing the Boundaries of Ethnic Authenticity Carmen and Byron are a married couple deeply involved as lay leaders in an independent Pentecostal church. Byron is from El Salvador, and most of his family members are Pentecostal. Carmen is from Mexico, and her extended family is both Catholic and Protestant. They both support missionary work in Mexico and El Salvador. Carmen explains that coethnic coworkers interpret both her Evangelical identity and her marriage to someone from El Salvador as signs that she is not Mexican. According to her, “I don’t know if they focus on me like that because my husband is from El Salvador and they think that most people from El Salvador are Evangelical. Right away you get labeled like this. Then they find out I’m Mexican and they say, ‘Oh!’ ” Carmen indignantly adds that “Even if they know where I’m from, some people forget that I am Mexican.” Overall, Carmen feels that her ethnic identity is not affirmed. Essentially, Carmen is describing the phenomenon of authenticity policing, wherein the legitimacy of a person’s claims to membership in a certain ethnic group is questioned. Interactions between people of different religious affiliations facilitate opportunities for ethnic authenticity policing. Among Latinxs, Catholics may question the ethnic authenticity of Protestants who do not partake in Catholic traditions associated with the ethnic majority.19 Yet Latin American majority/​minority relationships might be reinterpreted in the United States. For example, among Latinxs that are third generation and beyond, more than a quarter are Protestant,20 some of whom legitimize their ethnoreligious identities by situating themselves within the US Protestant majority.21 Claims of authenticity can take other forms. Adherents of sacramental churches, such as Catholic and Mainline Christians, may claim authenticity via the intergenerational transmission of church sacraments, a process which may involve deeply personal instruction and mentoring across generations. Adherents of churches that emphasize conversion experiences may assert individual religious authenticity vis-​à-​vis religious change. Some churches may likewise emphasize versions of ethnic authenticity rooted in highly localized cultures, such as in Ramos et al.’s study of a Protestant congregation invested in the borderlands culture of El Paso, Texas.22 A common outcome, as Jimenez notes,23 is that targets of authenticity policing distance themselves from coethnics

Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    341 who police them. Ethnic identities, as modes of community cohesion, then, are in part negotiated through authenticity claims. In my observations, across Latinx religious groups the desire was rarely to bring harm to religious others, but rather to bring others into one’s fold of authenticity.

Particularism of Religious Boundaries Religious particularism, the maintenance of social closure along religious lines, bolsters ethnoracial boundaries within numerous Christian traditions. In some Latinx churches, high levels of ascetic expectations, membership selectivity, or concerted differentiation from outsiders not only limits outside influence but often fuels coethnic cohesion. Particularism especially has ethnic implications for groups oriented toward larger faith networks based in Latin America. Such groups follow directives, organizational models, and/​or traditions from Latin America, more so than from US-​based movements. The case of La Luz del Mundo is one example of a church highly invested in distinguishing themselves from other movements and oriented toward its headquarters in Mexico. Interviewing members of La Luz del Mundo in East Boston, my team of researchers met congregants that were Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan, all highly integrated into the church community. The church culture was internally preserved along pan-​ethnic lines, and simultaneously oriented toward the denominational headquarters in Mexico. Founded by Aaron Joaquin Gonzalez in Mexico in 1926, a denominational apostle based in Guadalajara, Mexico, presides over the leadership of the movement. The church headquarters sustains a robust transnational network of churches and adherents, and the practice of La Santa Cena has traditionally required an annual pilgrimage to Guadalajara, Mexico. In recent years, to accommodate undocumented members, the church has provided options for commemorating La Santa Cena at US meeting sites, without the risk of crossing national borders. Still, the church headquarters, known as “the beautiful province,” is regarded dearly by adherents. As members of local congregations typically meet daily for prayer and worship services, they ensure a tightly knit support network persists in the church. Churches and movements that are highly particularistic often invest in keeping members from socializing with coethnics of different traditions. In such cases, ethnic persistence becomes a mostly isolated endeavor, situated within a church setting, but separated from larger ethnic networks and activities. As Crane notes in his study of Latinx congregations,24 “These religious subcultures may stand independent of ethnic subcultures, and cultural norms may be rejected or accepted according to one’s religious ideology.” In his study of Christian gang recovery programs focused on Los Angeles Latinx communities, Flores notes that high religious boundaries figure prominently into the experience of one program, Victory Outreach. 25 The Chicano street culture that participants are familiar with is to some extent preserved, in a morally reformed fashion. Predicated on a hypermorality, participants experience a type of segregated redemption. Flores contrasts this with the Catholic organization Homeboy Industries,

342   Jonathan Calvillo which encourages a more ecumenical approach and works toward reintegration into the broader ethnic community. Particularism is often accompanied by high degrees of church participation. Several studies suggest that parishioners of conservative Latinx Protestant churches tend to participate in church activities at higher rates than Latinx parishioners of Catholic churches.26 In my fieldwork among parishioners in Santa Ana, California, congregants of a conservative Pentecostal church noted that friends and family members lamented their absence at social functions due to their church participation. Some Catholic parishioners I interviewed also exhibited high rates of church participation, often due to involvement in church leadership roles. High levels of social closure place the onus of ethnic identity production on participation within churches.

Popular Religion Popular religion challenges the boundaries of institutional religious orthodoxy and is often effective toward maintaining ethnoracial boundary markers. Popular religion may be seen as a set of religious practices and customs that reside outside of institutionally sanctioned traditions, typically negotiated in relation to faith institutions, and practiced by the masses. Espín defines the concept as “a way of knowing and constructing the ‘real.’ ”27 Latinx popular religion is often negotiated in relation to Catholicism or Protestantism and derived from indigenous, African, and European ancestral practices associated with specific geographic communities. The case of the Abeita family illustrates how practices of popular religion may cause tension in a family setting even as they relate to ethnic identity. A family conflict arose in the Abeita family around the practice of limpias, a particular expression of popular religion. A limpia is a cleansing ritual typically administered by a curandero/​a, or folk healer, intended to free a person from ailments of physical, emotional, or spiritual nature. A third-​generation Chicano boy named Joaquin had been having nightmares at night with resulting ongoing anxiety. His paternal grandmother, Gloria, who was Catholic, decided to take the boy to a curandera for a limpia, despite the fact that some Catholics in her community were opposed to this type of practice. Joaquin’s mother, Anita, who was Pentecostal, also felt uneasy about the practice, but desired to maintain peace with her mother-​in-​law’s plan. Anita’s mother, who was also Pentecostal, voiced a more negative outlook of the limpia and decided to pray for the young boy, that neither the nightmares nor the limpia would affect him negatively. As Joaquin eventually overcame the nightmares, family tensions fizzled, but the situation illustrates the varied relationships that different Christians have to modes of popular religion. Partaking in popular religion often involves having social ties to practitioners embedded within ethnic communities and having the cultural capital tied to participation in these customs. In the case of the Abeita family, Joaquin’s participation in a form of popular religion involved reconnecting to the ethnic neighborhood where his grandparents resided, as well as being introduced to customs loosely rooted in indigenous spirituality. The situation in Joaquin and Anita’s household illustrates that distinct

Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    343 approaches to popular religion exist across Latinxs. Gloria, who was Catholic, was comfortable seeking out the help of a curandera, but many Catholics I met while doing fieldwork opposed this type of activity. Most Pentecostals tended to have negative views of curanderismo, but in the case of Anita, she allowed it for the sake of maintaining family stability. In as much as such practices become markers of ethnic belonging, their acceptance or rejection shapes ethnic distinction. Some Catholic leaders find a place for certain popular practices. For example, in speaking of Saint Juan Diego, Elizondo28 connects the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe to “the restoration of the traditions and culture of the ancestors. They were not false or diabolical, nor were they opposed to the Christian faith. Their ways would indeed be converted to Christianity, many of their ways would be modified and even enriched, but not at the cost of abandoning the sacred ways of their ancestors.” Some leaders see the possibility for popular traditions to be integrated into institutionalized practices. Lived religion, a related concept, highlights everyday expressions of religion enacted by everyday people, shifting the focus from religious professionals to laypeople.29 Lived religion overlaps with popular religion in the ways in which it centers forms of devotion beyond institutionally sanctioned modes. Lived religion, however, includes individualized forms of practice along with collective practices. Lived religion might allow individual adherents to practice forms of popular religion directly prohibited by their institutional faith, for example, as a way to sustain ties to ethnic traditions. The growth in some sectors of African-​based and indigenous-​based practices may offer adaptive ways to remain in an institutionalized Christian tradition and still maintain ties to a non-​Eurocentric ancestral past for some Latinxs.

Demarcating Boundaries through Politics Civic Engagement During a visit to the Spanish language service at Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana, the pastor addressed the recent Parkland shooting. Father Abel Lopez spoke passionately about the need to rally for stricter gun laws so that such tragedies would be reduced. For Rev. Lopez, originally from Cuba, his sermons were more than oratory exercises. On this occasion, he stated that he would be sending a letter to the denomination advocating that they organize an initiative in response to the recent act of violence. On other occasions he led parishioners publicly in acts of protest and peace, such as marches against gang violence, and against police violence in the majority Latinx neighborhood surrounding the church. Recently some of his parishioners had taken part in the “blessing of the streets,” a March for peace on Palm Sunday sponsored by a Catholic parish down the street. By leading parishioners in social actions articulated as acts of

344   Jonathan Calvillo faith, Padre Abel was communicating to his diverse Latinx congregation that they as Christian Latinxs had a role to play in enacting justice. Latinx Christian communities invigorate modes of Latinx collective consciousness when they provide platforms for political mobilization. Political organizing rooted in ethnoreligious communities reifies ethnoracial identity. Externally, organizing spotlights ethnoracial communities as vehicles for social change. Internally, it affirms to a group their capacity for collective action along ethnoracial lines, and likewise serves to strengthen social ties, heightening the group’s collective identity. Both conservative and progressive Christian orientations can serve to amplify ethnic identity in as much as they draw from moral and spiritual imperatives to motivate political action among Latinx Christians. Alongside local, parish-​based social action, as regional coalitions, organizations, and denominations, engage in political advocacy for what are interpreted as Latinx issues, the connection between faith and Latinx identity is further legitimized. Immigration reform in recent years has arguably been the issue most saliently associated with Latinx identity. High-​level Catholic leaders have especially held a key role in advocating for immigration reform.30 Indeed, this support from both the upper ranks and the local ranks of the Catholic Church translated to over a fourth of Latinos claiming that their parishes supported the immigrants’ rights protests of 2006.31 Labor is another sphere of social action which has involved Latinxs. The work of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez around labor issues helped to bolster the connection between Catholic faith and labor, particularly as they employed ritual and symbols familiar to Latinx Catholics. Reies Lopez Tijerina drew from his Pentecostal background as he mobilized Hispanos in New Mexico around land grant issues. The conservative-​leaning NHCLC and its president, Rev Samuel Rodriguez, claim that Latinos have a unique place in national politics, not strictly beholden to liberal or conservative agendas.32 These efforts send dual messages that Latinx issues are legitimate and that ethnoreligious identity is a source of political power. Legitimacy related to political organizing sometimes arrives from outside of Latinx communities as political agents identify Latinx Christian communities as bases to appeal to. Some political candidates, for example, have recognized that Latinx Christian churches wield influence over multitudes of Latinxs and may seek opportunities to maintain ties with churches and church leaders. Such efforts bolster the notion that Latinx Christian churches are centers of ethnic identity recognition and mobilization. Nevertheless, some Latinx Christians downplay their ethnic identities for the purpose of political coalition building and emphasize faith or political identities. Some Latinx conservatives, for example, join anti-​immigrant coalitions; while such Latinxs might not consider this a negation of their ethnoracial identities, their positions fortify boundaries against a significant segment of coethnics. Latinxs who see an “American” identity as their master status might have such political inclinations. Nevertheless, it is possible for some Latinxs to espouse anti-​immigrant sentiments yet remain active within Latinx-​ serving churches.

Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    345 The responses of Latinx Christians to social justice movements centering African American experiences provide an important bellwether of Latinx ethnoracial boundary work. Such movements present opportunities for Latinxs to listen to and learn from African American leaders and to recognize shared and parallel histories of struggle. Amid such movements, do Latinx Christians stand alongside African Americans, or do they distance themselves from African Americans? Do Latinxs prioritize upper-​middle-​ class white respectability at the expense of advocacy for black people? Latinx responses to these movements have interethnic and intraethnic repercussions. Black and Latinx identities are not mutually exclusive as Afro-​Latinxs are integral members of Latinx communities. In these moments Latinx Christian communities have opportunities to articulate how African Americans and Afro-​Latinxs figure into the construction of Latinx identities, acknowledging the cultural expressions and civil rights afforded to non-​black Latinxs through black cultural and social movements.33

Internal Politics of Participation Latinx participation within Christian institutions lends legitimacy to specific types of Latinxs as model ethnic participants. Opportunities to participate within religious bodies, especially in leadership roles, mediate the visibility of particular identities and signal the roles available to people of particular identities. Upon visiting a diverse Latinx Pentecostal congregation during their Sunday worship service, for example, I was struck by the image represented by the vast majority of leaders occupying public, front-​stage roles. From the associate pastor who initially welcomed attendees, to the lead singers who led congregational hymns, to the senior pastor, most were white-​passing Latinxs. As I looked out into the congregation, I saw a much different image, one of Latinxs representing a vast array of hues and features; from Afro-​Latinxs, to Latinxs with indigenous features, to white-​passing Latinxs. The Americas and the Caribbean were broadly represented in the pews, but not so much on the front stage. The preference given to people that fit a particular image and the concomitant structures that filter and funnel people into certain roles may influence the idealized image of what a Latinx Christian should look like. Religious participation—​particularly in leadership roles—​can function as a form of empowerment, one which is especially meaningful within populations for whom opportunities are limited. Are women, queer members, and people of the working class given prominence in the ethnoreligious community? Members may play key roles in the preservation of ethnoreligious culture, but how they are recognized and honored within congregations reflects congregational ethnoreligious ideals. The way churches engage matters of ethnic diversity also shape Latinx congregants’ ethnic identities. Experiences which orient congregants’ understandings of diversity help congregants to situate themselves within both congregational and societal hierarchies. To what extent, for example, do Latinx congregations emphasize their links to white coreligionists? To what extent does a Latinx congregation emphasize

346   Jonathan Calvillo panethnicity as a primary mode of ethnic identity? To what extent is a global Christian identity emphasized over and above an ethnic identity? Such conversations and forms of engagement sensitize congregants in regards to which points of reference should be most normative in their identity formation. The very ethnoracial labels that Latinxs are encouraged to use within Christian communities have political implications. Research suggests that Latinxs today wrestle with the labels of ethnoracial categorization offered by the state.34 For example, as Emeka and Vallejo35 note, many Latinos struggle with how to respond to questions of racial identification in the United States. While some accept categories of “white,” or “black,” based on ancestry36 and/​or affiliative identities,37 others prefer to identify themselves as “Other.”38 Setting aside racial categories, many first-​generation Latinxs identify primarily with their nation of origin.39 In addition, pan-​ethnic categories, recognized by the state, the media, and activists,40 offer a degree of societal legitimacy. Perceptions of shared pan-​ethnic culture and history may fuel pan-​ethnic identities among Latinxs, even if such a frame is externally imposed.41 Yet, as Dowling contends,42 pan-​ethnic labels are used disparately and hold inconsistent regional meanings. “Latinx,” for example, the label I use in this chapter, is intended to include distinct gender identities and has gained usage in academia, but it is less commonly used in the general Latinx population.43 In the end, labels themselves are suggestive of the situational, contextual, and constructionist dimensions of ethnoracial identities. Congregations are uniquely positioned to shape the discourses of self-​identification that Latinxs embrace. Latinxs are increasingly part of multiethnic congregations, and as such, research on how multiethnic churches engage ethnic diversity is relevant to this conversation. According to Garces-​Foley,44 the Catholic Church, as a denomination, traditionally espouses a multicultural outlook that emphasizes inculturation and hospitality.45 Inculturation, in the Catholic multicultural approach, is the commitment to a symbiosis between the theologies and practices of the church, on the one hand, and the cultures of the local community, on the other.46 Many Catholic parishes employ a multicultural parish structure in which a Mass in Spanish or Portuguese is meant to serve Latinxs, but other language Masses are available for other linguistic groups. The Evangelical Protestant approach to ethnic integration, according to Garces-​Foley,47 has been dominated by two dueling outlooks: the church growth paradigm characterized by the homogenous unit principle, and the multiethnic church paradigm. The church growth paradigm emphasizes that churches are more successful at expanding their membership when they focus on homogenous units, either as an entire congregation or within subsets of their congregation. The evangelical multiethnic church paradigm has long emphasized “racial reconciliation,” working to bring congregants of diverse ethnic backgrounds under the same roof. Evangelical notions of unity in diversity tend toward processes of homogenization via integration. For Latinxs, then, the question becomes whether the multiethnic model encourages them to shed their ethnic differences or facilitates a sense of ethnic continuity.

Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    347

Conclusion There is no singular way to be Latinx in the United States, yet Christian traditions offer Latinxs numerous pathways of collective ethnic identity formation and legitimation. Latinxs committed to mainstream societal integration may especially seek sources of legitimation from within their religious tradition that allow them to approximate the views, tastes, and practices of their white counterparts. Latinxs who have faced forms of ethnoracial descrimination and/​or have a stronger racialized consciousness may seek instead forms of resistance to white normativity from their religious traditions. With these distinct expressions of Latinx identities emerging from numerous Christian communities, how might unified, collective Latinx identities persist? Despite intragroup differences among Latinxs, as Latinxs sustain outgroup distinctions through temporal-​ spatial relations, authenticity discourses, and political participation, some degree of ethnoracial collectivity and consciousness may remain. These arenas, as I have argued, are uniquely negotiated within Christian communities, spaces of socialization which continue to significantly shape ethnoracial boundaries and experiences of belonging among Latinxs.

Notes 1. Timothy Matovina, Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 2. Allan Figueroa Deck, “Latino Migration and the Transformation of USA Catholicism: Framing the Question,” Perspectiva Teológica 46 (2015): 89–​112. 3. Pew Research Center, “Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region” (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2014), https://​www.pewfo​rum. org/​2014/​11/​13/​relig​ion-​in-​latin-​amer​ica/​. 4. Paul Barton, Hispanic Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010). 5. Stanley R. Bailey, “Unmixing for Race Making in Brazil,” American Journal of Sociology 114, no. 3 (November 1, 2008): 577–​614, https://​doi.org/​10.1086/​592​859. 6. Richard Alba, “Bright vs. Blurred Boundaries: Second-​Generation Assimilation and Exclusion in France, Germany, and the United States,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28, no. 1 (2005): 20–​49. 7. Andreas Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 8. Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 9. Timothy L. Smith, “Religion and Ethnicity in America,” The American Historical Review 83, no. 5 (1978): 1155–​1185. 10. Melissa Guzman Garcia, “Mobile Sanctuary: Latina/​o Evangelicals Redefining Sanctuary and Contesting Immobility in Fresno, CA,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, (May 13, 2020): 1–​19, https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13691​83X.2020.1761​780.

348   Jonathan Calvillo 11. Luisa Feline Freier, “Religion, Ethnicity and Immigrant Integration: ‘Latino’ Lutherans versus ‘Mexican’ Catholics in a Midwestern City,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 8, no. 2 (September 1, 2008): 267–​289. 12. Marie Friedmann Marquardt, “Structural and Cultural Hybrids: Religious Congregational Life and Public Participation of Mexicans in the New South,” in Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America, ed. K. I. Leonard, A. Stepick, M. A. Vasquez, and J. Holdaway, 189–​218 (Lanham, MD: Rowman Altamira, 2005). 13. Timothy Matovina, “Latino Catholics and American Public Life,” in Can Charitable Choice Work?: Covering Religion’s Impact on Urban Affairs and Social Services, ed. Andrew Walsh (Hartford, CT: Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, 2001): 56–77. 14. Sujey Vega, Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest (New York: NYU Press, 2015). 15. Luis Noe-​Bustamante, “Key Facts about U.S. Hispanics and Their Diverse Heritage,” Pew Research Center (blog), September 16, 2019. https://​www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2019/​ 09/​16/​key-​facts-​about-​u-​s-​hispan​ics/​. 16. Daniel A. Rodriguez, A Future for the Latino Church: Models for Multilingual, Multigenerational Hispanic Congregations (Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011). 17. Mark T. Mulder, Aida I. Ramos, and Gerardo Martí, Latino Protestants in America: Growing and Diverse (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). 18. Gerardo Marti, “Affinity, Identity, and Transcendence: The Experience of Religious Racial Integration in Diverse Congregations,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 53–​68. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1468-​5906.2009.01429.x. 19. Patricia Fortuny Loret De Mola, “The Santa Cena of La Luz Del Mundo Church: A Case of Contemporary Transnationalism,” in Religion across Borders: Transnational Religious Networks, edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2002), 15–​50. 20. Pew Research Center, “Religion in Latin America.” 21. See J. Benjamin Taylor, Sarah Allen Gershon, and Adrian D. Pantoja, “Christian America? Understanding the Link between Churches, Attitudes, and ‘Being American’ among Latino Immigrants,” Politics and Religion 7, no. 2 (June 2014): 339–​365, https://​doi.org/​ 10.1017/​S17550​4831​4000​042. 22. Aida I. Ramos, Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder, “The Strategic Practice of ‘Fiesta’ in a Latino Protestant Church: Religious Racialization and the Performance of Ethnic Identity,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 59, no. 1 (2020): 161–​179, https://​doi. org/​10.1111/​jssr.12646. 23. Jimenez, Replenished Ethnicity. 24. Ken R. Crane, Latino Churches: Faith, Family, and Ethnicity in the Second Generation (New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2003), 17. 25. Edward Flores, God’s Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery (New York: New York University Press, 2014). 26. Matthew O. Hunt, “Religion, Race/​Ethnicity, and Beliefs about Poverty,” Social Science Quarterly 83, no. 3 (September 1, 2002): 810–​831, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​1540-​6237.00116; Cecilia Menjívar, “Religion and Immigration in Comparative Perspective: Catholic and Evangelical Salvadorans in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix,” Sociology of Religion 64, no. 1 (March 1, 2003): 21–​45, https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​3712​267.

Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    349 27. Orlando O. Espín, “Tradition: Culture, Daily Life and Popular Religion, and Their Impact on Chritian Tradition,” in Futuring Our Past: Explorations in the Theology of Tradition, ed. Orlando O. Espín and Gary Macy, Studies in Latino/​a Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 16. 28. Virgilio P. Elizondo, “Converted by Beauty,” in The Treasure of Guadalupe, ed. Virgilio P. Elizondo, Allan Figueroa Deck, and Timothy Matovina (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 76. 29. Nancy T. Ammerman, “Finding Religion in Everyday Life,” Sociology of Religion 75, no. 2 (2014): 189–​207. 30. Milagros Peña, “Latinx Religious Organizations: Lifelines for Social and Political Engagement on Immigration in the United States,” Journal of Global and Area Studies 3, no. 1 (2019): 43–​60. 31. Timothy Matovina, Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 32. Gastón Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 33. Olga M. Segura, Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021). 34. Julie A. Dowling, Mexican Americans and the Question of Race (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014). 35. Amon Emeka and Jody Agius Vallejo, “Non-​Hispanics with Latin American Ancestry: Assimilation, Race, and Identity among Latin American Descendants in the US,” Social Science Research 40, no. 6 (2011): 1547–​1563. 36. Emeka and Vallejo, “Non-​Hispanics with Latin American Ancestry.” 37. Tomas Jimenez, Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 38. Emeka and Vallejo, “Non-​Hispanics with Latin American Ancestry.” 39. Emeka and Vallejo, “Non-​Hispanics with Latin American Ancestry”; Dowling, Mexican Americans and the Question of Race; Paul Taylor et al., “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity” (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2012). 40. G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 41. Mora, Making Hispanics 42. Dowling, Mexican Americans and the Question of Race. 43. Luis-​Noel Bustamante, Lauren Mora, and Mark Hugo Lopez, “Latinx Used by Just 3% of U.S. Hispanics. About One-​in-​Four Have Heard of It,” Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project (blog), August 11, 2020, https://​www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​hispa​nic/​2020/​08/​11/​ about-​one-​in-​four-​u-​s-​hispan​ics-​have-​heard-​of-​lat​inx-​but-​just-​3-​use-​it/​. 44. Kathleen Garces-​Foley, “Comparing Catholic and Evangelical Integration Efforts,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47, no. 1 (March 1, 2008): 17–​22, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​ j.1468-​5906.2008.00389.x. 45. See Jeremy Rehwaldt, “Responses by White Christians to Recent Latino Immigration in the Rural U.S. Midwest,” Religions 6, no. 2 (June 15, 2015): 686–​7 11, https://​doi.org/​10.3390/​ rel​6020​686. 46. Dennis M. Doyle, “The Concept of Inculturation in Roman Catholicism: A Theological Consideration,” U.S. Catholic Historian 30, no. 1 (2012): 1–​13, https://​doi.org/​10.1353/​

350   Jonathan Calvillo cht.2012.0000; Carl F. Starkloff, “Inculturation and Cultural Systems (Part 2),” Theological Studies 55, no. 2 (June 1, 1994): 274–​294, https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​004​0563​9940​5500​205. 47. Garces-​Foley, “Comparing Catholic and Evangelical Integration Efforts.”

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Latinx Ethnoracial Identities    351 Guzman Garcia, Melissa. “Mobile Sanctuary: Latina/​o Evangelicals Redefining Sanctuary and Contesting Immobility in Fresno, CA.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (May 13, 2020): 1–​19. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13691​83X.2020.1761​780. Hunt, Matthew O. “Religion, Race/​ Ethnicity, and Beliefs about Poverty.” Social Science Quarterly 83, no. 3 (September 1, 2002): 810–​831. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​1540-​6237.00116. Jimenez, Tomas. Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Marti, Gerardo. “Affinity, Identity, and Transcendence: The Experience of Religious Racial Integration in Diverse Congregations.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 53–​68. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1468-​5906.2009.01429.x. Matovina, Timothy. Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Matovina, Timothy. “Latino Catholics and American Public Life.” In Can Charitable Choice Work?: Covering Religion’s Impact on Urban Affairs and Social Services, edited by Andrew Walsh. Hartford, CT: Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, 2001, 56–77. Mora, G. Cristina. Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Mulder, Mark T., Aida I. Ramos, and Gerardo Martí. Latino Protestants in America: Growing and Diverse. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Noe-​Bustamante, Luis. “Key Facts about U.S. Hispanics and Their Diverse Heritage.” Pew Research Center (blog), September 16, 2019. https://​www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2019/​ 09/​16/​key-​facts-​about-​u-​s-​hispan​ics/​. Peña, Milagros. “Latinx Religious Organizations: Lifelines for Social and Political Engagement on Immigration in the United States.” Journal of Global and Area Studies (JGA) 3, no. 1 (2019): 43–​60. Pew Research Center. “Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region.” Washington DC: Pew Research Center, 2014. https://​www.pewfo​rum.org/​ 2014/​11/​13/​relig​ion-​in-​latin-​amer​ica/​. Ramos, Aida I., Gerardo Martí, and Mark T. Mulder. “The Strategic Practice of ‘Fiesta’ in a Latino Protestant Church: Religious Racialization and the Performance of Ethnic Identity.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 59, no. 1 (2020): 161–​179. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​ jssr.12646. Rehwaldt, Jeremy. “Responses by White Christians to Recent Latino Immigration in the Rural U.S. Midwest.” Religions 6, no. 2 (June 15, 2015): 686–​7 11. https://​doi.org/​10.3390/​rel​6020​686. Rodriguez, Daniel A. A Future for the Latino Church: Models for Multilingual, Multigenerational Hispanic Congregations. Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011. Segura, Olga M. Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021. Starkloff, Carl F. “Inculturation and Cultural Systems (Part 2).” Theological Studies 55, no. 2 (June 1, 1994): 274–​294. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​004​0563​9940​5500​205. Taylor, J. Benjamin, Sarah Allen Gershon, and Adrian D. Pantoja. “Christian America? Understanding the Link between Churches, Attitudes, and ‘Being American’ among Latino Immigrants.” Politics and Religion 7, no. 2 (June 2014): 339–​365. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​ S17550​4831​4000​042.

352   Jonathan Calvillo Taylor, Paul, Mark Hugo Lopez, Jessica Hamar Martínez, and Gabriel Velasco. “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2012. Tweed, Thomas A. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Vega, Sujey. Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest. New York: NYU Press, 2015. Wimmer, Andreas. Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Index

Due to the use of para id indexing, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Tables and figures are indicated by t and f following the page number

A AAFCJ (Apostolic Assembly of Faith in Christ Jesus), 131–​32, 135–​37, 139–​40, 143–​44 Aarón (Eusebío Joaquín González), 132, 137 Abakuá, 72–​73, 79–​80, 81 Abeita family, 342–​43 Acción Civica, 268 Acuña, Rodolfo, 6 Adoración Nocturna (Nocturnal Adoration Society), 24 Adventists and Adventism, 56–​57, 176–​77 AETH (Asociación para la Educación Teológica Hispana), 113, 118 affective contagion, 283, 284–​85 Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, 40–​41, 43, 68 Afro-​Cuban label, 68–​69 Afro-​Cuban religions as folklore, 77 Afro-​Cuban religious practices, 72–​73, 76, 79–​81 Black fraternities, 72–​73 cafeteria Catholics, 79 competing religions, 77–​78 declaration of religious tolerance, 77 Easter Sunday Catholics, 79 ethnic societies, 72–​73 evangelization, 69–​70 fetishism, 70–​7 1 historical and contemporary ritual practice, 81–​83 identity, 80 indigenous peoples, 69 legal matrimony, legal color, and concubinage, 71 Lucumí, 72–​73

migration and exile, 78 a-​mi-​manera Catholics, 79–​81 papal visits, 77–​78 parochial schools, 76 persecution, 76–​77 pilgrimage to El Rincón, 82 post-​Revolution, 76–​78 pre-​Revolution, 69–​76 prevalence of multiple allegiances, 79–​80 race war of 1912, 75–​76 racial divide, 74–​75 Recopilación, 69–​7 1 role of women in sustaining devotions, 83 slavery, 69–​7 1, 73–​74 Spanish Inquisition, 70 Spiritism, 73–​74 veneration of Marian figures, 81–​82 whitening efforts, 75–​76 “witch crazes,” 75 AG (Assemblies of God), 131–​32, 141–​42, 143–​45, 262 agency, 4–​5, 8–​9 affect and contagion hypothesis, 285 fetishism, 70–​7 1 indigenous women, 302 LDS Church, 153 pilgrimage, 252–​53 Prosperity Gospel, 321 Protestants, 115–​16 Puerto Rican Christianities, 49, 59 racial, ethnic, and religious identity, 335 Agnosticism. See Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism Agrupación Católica Universitaria, 36

354   Index Aguilar, Mario E., 201–​2 Ahmadiyya, 171 Aidi, Hisham, 173 Alaniz, Enemecio and Concepción, 134 Alberto (Central American immigrant), 96 Alcoholics Anonymous, 318–​19 Alemany, Joseph, 20–​21 Alianza de Ministerio Evangélicos Nacionales (AMEN), 141–​42, 144–​45 Al-​Puerto Rikani, Khalil, 173–​74 al-​Qaeda, 179 Alvarado, Juan, 172 Amat, Thaddeus, 20–​21 American G.I. Forum, 271 a-​mi-​manera Catholics, 79–​81 Afro-​Cuban religious practices, 79–​81 cafeteria Catholics, 79 Easter Sunday Catholics, 79 identity, 80 prevalence of multiple allegiances, 79–​80 Anaya, Rudolfo, 291 Andover Newton Theological Seminary, 141–​42 Angelus Temple, 134–​35 Annunciation House, 95 Antorcha Guadalupana, 246 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 6–​7, 211, 216, 252 Apache, 307–​8 Apolonia, 45n.25 Aponte, Carmen, 56–​57 Apostolic Assembly of Faith in Christ Jesus (AAFCJ), 131–​32, 135–​37, 139–​40, 143–​44 Aquino, Jorge, 214–​15, 216 Aquino, María Pilar, 210, 214–​15 Arará, 72–​73, 79–​80, 81 Archbishop Romero (introduction by Lara-​ Braud), 270–​7 1 Arecibo Church of Christ, 60–​61, 61f Arguinzoni, Sonny, 141, 235, 289–​91 Arguinzoni, Sonny, Jr., 141 Armitage Methodist Church, 266 Asamblea de Iglesias Cristianas, 138–​39 Asociación para la Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH), 113, 118 Asociación Tepeyac de New York, 28–​29 ASR (Azusa Street Revival), 112, 130–​32, 133, 234, 262

Assemblies of God (AG), 131–​32, 141–​42, 143–​45, 262 Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism conversions to Islam, 177, 184–​85 Cuba, 34–​35, 42, 76–​77 number of unaffiliated, 186n.13 Atkinson, Maria, 135 Audinet, Jacques, 212–​13 Augustine of Hippo, 210–​11 Augustinian Recollects order, 25–​26 Austin College, 270–​7 1 Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 270–​7 1 authenticity policing, 340–​43 particularism of religious boundaries, 341–​42 popular religion, 342–​43 Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, The (Barnet), 74–​75 Avila, Elena, 303–​4, 305, 306–​7, 311 Aztec, 6–​7, 183–​84, 243–​44, 245, 246, 299, 308–​9 Aztlán: An Anthology of Mexican-​American Literature, 271 Azusa Street Revival (ASR), 112, 130–​32, 133, 234, 262

B Babalú Ayé, 40, 82, 233 Badillo, Carmen, 28 Baker Eddy, Mary, 320 Ball, Henry, 133–​34, 137–​38 Ballard, M. Russell, 162 Bando de Buen Gobierno y Policia, 73 Bañuelas, Arturo, 212–​13, 214–​15 Baptists and Baptist Church ethnoracial identities, 336 history in southwest, 112 Puerto Rico, 47–​48, 52–​53, 55, 60 religiosity and identity, 118–​19 socioeconomic status, 114–​15 Bárbara (saint), 20–​21, 79, 82 Barber, William, 272–​73 Barnet, Miguel, 74–​75 Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 90, 228, 244, 245 Bataille, Georges, 286–​87

Index   355 Batista, Fulgencio, 36–​37 Bay of Pigs invasion, 34–​35 Bazán, Demetrio, 137–​38 Becker, Charles, 28 Belen Jesuit School, 36 Benavides, Albert, 28 Benedict XVI, 42–​43, 77–​78 Berean Bible Institute, 133 Berle, Beatrice Bishop, 52–​53 Berlin Conference, 47–​48 Berrios, Abelardo, 138–​39 Bessy (pastora), 3–​4, 316–​18, 325–​26, 328, 329–​30 Betto, Frei, 42 Biden, Joe, 144–​45 Bishop’s Committee for the Spanish speaking, 263 Black fraternities, 72–​73 “Black Manifesto,” 265–​66 Black Virgin of Regla, 82 Blanca (Central American immigrant), 96–​97 Blas (saint), 226–​27 Bolsonaro, Jair, 324 Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo, 296–​98 Bonpane, Blase, 199 Book of Mormon, 151, 153–​54, 155–​56, 163 Boone, Pat, 287 borderlands ethnoracial identities, 340–​41 indigeneities, 301, 306, 310–​11 mestizaje, 211, 212, 216 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 19, 23 Pentecostalism, 131, 133, 135, 136–​37 pilgrimage, 252–​53 Protestantism, 111 Borderlands/​La Frontera (Anzaldúa), 252 Boston College, 141–​42 Bowen, Patrick, 173 Bracero Program, 22–​23, 112, 136–​38 Brekus, Catherine, 3 Brief Course in Christianity (Cursillo de Cristiandad), 24, 36, 57–​58 Brigham Young University, 159 Brown, Candy Gunther, 234 Brown, David H., 73 Brown, Richard, 201 Brown Berets, 269

“Brown Revolution Manifesto,” 265–​66 Broyles-​González, Yolanda, 301–​2, 304 brujeria (witchcraft), 72, 76, 80, 232, 287, 296 Brusco, Elizabeth, 282–​83 Buddhism, 318–​19 Buddy, Charles F., 25–​26 Bueno, Rico, 192 bultos, 227–​28, 248 Bureau of Catholic Charities, 263 Bush, George W., 144–​45 Buxó i Rey, Maria Jesus, 299–​300 Byron (lay leader), 340

C cabildos de nación (ethnic societies), 72–​73, 80–​81, 83 Cabrera, Félix, 60 Cachita (La Caridad del Cobre), 5, 35, 38–​41, 43, 45n.24, 76, 79, 81–​82, 226–​27 cafeteria Catholics, 79 CAIR (Council on American-​Islamic Relations), 172–​73 Cajete, Gregory, 306 Cal State L.A., 269 Calabar Ékpè secret society, 72–​73 Calles, Plutarco Elías, 22–​23 Calvario City Church, 60 Calvary Chapel, 141 Candlemas, 226–​27 Candomblé, 233 Cantú, Benjamín, 137 Cantwell, John Joseph, 263 car blessings, 201 Carbajal de Valenzuela, Romana, 132 Cardinal Cushing Center, 57–​58 Carlos (Latino LDS), 153, 155 Carlos II, 69 Carmen (lay leader), 340 Carmencita (Colón’s mother-​in-​law), 51–​52 Carolina (Guatemalan immigrant), 96 Carrasco, David, 298–​99, 309 Carrera Internacional de la Antorcha Guadalupana (International Guadalupan Torch Run), 28–​29 Carroll, Coleman F., 35–​36, 40 Casa del Carmen, 57, 58 Casanova, José, 98

356   Index Casas, Bartolomé de las, 32 Castañeda-​Liles, María Del Socorro, 197 Castellanos, Isabel, 32–​33 Castellanos, Jorge, 32–​33 Castillo, Ana, 280, 305 Castro, Fidel, 31, 33–​35, 36–​37, 38, 41–​42, 76–​77 Castro, Raul, 41–​43 Catholic Welfare Bureau, 35–​36 Catholic World, 270–​7 1 Catholics and Catholicisms Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, 68 Catholic Action, 262–​63 Central American immigration to US, 87 Charismatic Renewal, 24, 138, 140–​41, 226, 235, 261–​62, 283, 323 conversions to other religions, 115–​17, 174–​ 75, 177 Cuban-​descent Catholics, 31 curanderismo, 228–​29, 230–​32 decline and losses, 110, 174–​75, 186n.14 demographics compared to Protestants, 114–​15 ethnoracial identities, 335–​36, 337–​38, 340–​41, 342–​43, 346 healing traditions, 226–​28 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 15 pilgrimage, 242 popular Catholicism, 192 Puerto Rican Christianities, 47, 49, 51–​53, 54–​55, 57–​58, 59, 61, 198–​99 terminology, 8 Católicos Por La Raza, 198, 199, 258–​59, 269, 270, 272–​73 Cavazos-​González, Gilberto, 211–​12 Cecilia Valdés o la Loma del Ángel, 68–​69 Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 53–​54 Center for Urban and Ministerial Education, 141–​42 Central American immigration to US, 87 bonding vs. bridging, 90–​91 community building, 91–​92 hostile immigration policies, 88 immigrants’ views of the Church, 95–​98 institutional response and actions, 92–​95 prearrival immigrants’ experiences, 89–​90 psychological comfort, 88

sanctuaries and settlement assistance, 87–​88 transnational ties, 98–​99 Centro Hispano Católico, 35 Cerullo, Morris, 323 Charismatic Renewal, 24, 138, 140–​41, 226, 235, 261–​62, 283, 323 Chavez, Cesar, 25, 27–​28, 130, 263–​64, 344 Chavez, Tomas, Jr., 265–​66 Chestnut, Andrew, 283 Chicano Park, 192–​94, 201–​2, 203n.8 Chicano Park Steering Committee, 192–​93 Chicanos/​as activism during 1960s, 25 Chavez’s labor organization efforts, 27–​28 Chicano/​a studies, 6–​7 civil rights activism and politics, 262, 263–​ 65, 269–​70 curanderismo, 305–​9 Las Hermanas, 26 lowriding, 200–​1 march on St. Basil’s Church, 258–​59 popular Catholicism, 199–​200 Theology for the Poor, 199–​200 tradition of movement, 252 use of term, 25 children Cuban-​descent children of exiles, 35–​36, 38 mistreatment of in detention, 94–​95 transnational ties, 99 Childs, Matt D., 72 Chino (friend of Sonny Arguinzoni), 290, 291 Cho, David Yonggi, 143 Christian Brothers of De La Salle, 76 Christian Century, 270–​7 1 Christian Church John 3:16, 138 Christian Science, 320 Christianity and Crisis, 270–​7 1 Christmas, 42–​57, 76–​77, 79, 162, 199, 258, 269, 270 church occupations, 265–​67 Church of God, 143–​44 Church of God Cleveland, 138–​39 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​Day Saints. See LDS Church Church of San Juan Bosco, 35, 36 Church of the Epiphany, 269

Index   357 civil rights activism and politics. See religious politics CLADIC (Concilio Latino Americano de Iglesias Cristianas), 134–​35, 138–​39 Claremont Colleges, 172–​73 Claudia (Salvadoran teacher), 95, 97–​98 Clinton, Bill, 92, 96–​97 Clinton, Hilary, 286 Code Noir, 69 cofradías, 72–​73, 247–​48, 249 Colombian G12 Vision, 143 Colón, Jesús, 51–​52 colonialism Cuba, 32–​34, 36–​37, 39–​40, 69–​76, 79, 80, 81, 83 curanderismo and other healing traditions, 229–​30, 232–​33, 235–​36 ethnoracial identities, 334–​35, 336 indigenous peoples, 296–​97, 298–​99, 302–​3, 308, 310–​11 Latina/​o/​x Christian studies, 6 LDS Church, 154, 156, 160 machismo, 279–​80, 291–​92 mestizaje, 208, 209, 216–​17 Mexico, 15–​19 pilgrimage, 242, 243, 251, 253 Protestantism and, 117–​18 Puerto Rico, 46, 47–​49, 54 settler colonialism, 10n.4 Commission on Religion and Race, 263–​64 Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), 28 Community Service Organization (CSO), 27–​28, 130 compadrazgo (godparentage), 19, 303 Comunidad Maya, 92 Comunidades Mayas Indigenas, 92 Conchero dance tradition (Danza Azteca), 201–​2, 305, 309–​11 Concilio Latino Americano de Iglesias Cristianas (CLADIC), 134–​35, 138–​39 Conde-​Frazier, Elizabeth, 197 Congregationalists and Congregationalism, 47–​48 contagion theory, 283–​85 controlling imagery, 120

COPS (Communities Organized for Public Service), 28 Corpus Christi, 21–​22 Cortés, Beatice, 28 Cortés, Ernie, 28 Council of Trent, 243–​44 Council of Women on Home Missions, 263 Council on American-​Islamic Relations (CAIR), 172–​73 COVID-​19 pandemic, 4–​5 Coyolxauhqui, 6–​7 Crane, Ken R., 341–​42 Craven, Thomas P., 58 Cristero Rebellion, 22–​23, 251 Cross and the Switchblade, The (Wilkerson), 287 Crusade for Justice, 25 Cruz, Nicki, 141, 287–​90 Cruz, Richard, 199–​200, 258 Cruz, Samuel, 54 CSO (Community Service Organization), 27–​28, 130 Cuban Refugee Program, 35 Cuban Revolution, 31, 33–​35, 36–​37 Cuban-​descent Catholics, 31 African religious practices, 33–​34 Afro-​Cuban religions, 40–​41, 43 assimilationist vs. anti-​assimilationist approaches, 35–​36 Catholic Church in Cuba, 31–​34 challenges, 43 church outreach to exile community, 31–​32 criticism of Revolution, 34–​35 development of current state, 41–​43 Diocese of Miami, 35–​36 distinction and diversity, 31 education and lay movements, 36 evangelization of nominal Catholics, 40–​41 exiles and children of exiles, 38 Fidel Castro’s relationship with Catholic Church, 41–​42 fluid construction of nationhood, 38 historical weakness, 33–​34 identity, 32–​33, 36–​41 immigration and exile, 31, 34–​36 indigenous peoples and, 32 integration and resettlement, 35–​36

358   Index Cuban-​descent Catholics (cont.) La Caridad del Cobre, 38–​41, 43 mestizaje, 214–​15 nationalization of schools, 34–​35 nations of origin, 44n.5 neglect of African population, 33 normalization of US/​Cuba relations, 41–​43 political refugees, 36–​41 programs for children, 35–​36 racial makeup, 37 Raul Castro’s presidency, 42–​43 Revolution and its aftermath, 34–​36 riots, 37 slavery, 32–​34 socioeconomic makeup, 37 US intervention in Cuba, 36–​37 Vatican’s role and papal visits, 41–​43 Cuéllar, Gregory, 94–​95 curanderismo, 342 Catholicism, 228–​29, 230–​32 Chicanos/​as, 305–​9 continuum of care, 230–​31 defined, 228 folk saints, 230–​31 healing traditions, 228–​32 indigenous peoples and indigeneities, 228–​ 29, 301, 303–​7, 308–​9 tensions with Church, 232 tonalli, 229–​30 women, 230–​31 Cursillo de Cristiandad (Brief Course in Christianity), 24, 36, 57–​58

D “Dallas Declaration,” 267–​68 Damascus Christian Church, 138–​39 Dana (Honduran immigrant), 329–​31 Daniela (Chicago interviewee), 57 Danza Azteca (Conchero dance tradition), 201–​2, 305, 309–​11 Daughters of Mary (Hijas de María), 24 Davalos, Karen Mary, 195–​97 Dawkins, Richard, 284 Day of Kings (Día de Los Reyes), 81 De La Torre, Miguel, 213–​14 Deleuze, Giles, 283 Delgadillo, Teresa, 211

Derrida, Jacques, 208 Día de los Muertos, 23–​24, 296 Día de Los Reyes (Day of Kings), 81 diaspora. See also migration Cuban-​descent Catholics, 33–​34, 38–​40, 43 indigenous peoples, 298, 310–​11 Peruvian Catholics, 250 pilgrimage, 250, 252–​54 Puerto Rican Christianities, 53–​55, 58–​59, 61–​62, 135, 138 Díaz, María Elena, 69 Díaz, Porfirio, 22–​23, 231 Díaz de Léon, José Antonio, 20 Díaz-​Stevens, Ana María, 21–​22, 194–​95 Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, Juan, 28–​29, 153, 209, 244, 245, 300, 342–​43 Diné (Navajo), 308–​9 Disciples of Christ, 47–​48, 112 Dolan, Jay P., 88–​89 Dreamers and DACA, 164–​65, 167n.47 Duany, Jorge, 46 Dubois, W. B., 211

E Easter, 77, 79, 212 Easter Sunday Catholics, 79 Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 54–​55 Eastside 13, 276n.36 Ecumenical Ministry of Agricultural Workers, 58 Edmund’s Act, 155–​56 Eduardo (pastor), 317, 325–​26, 328, 329–​30 El Buen Pastor Presbyterian Church, 271 El Colegio Biblico Apostólico Nacional, 137 El Cristo Morado (El Señor de los Milagros), 249–​50 El Niño Dios, 196–​97 El Niño Fidencio (Fidencio Constantino Síntora), 135, 227, 231 El Rey Jesús Global, 144–​45 El Rincón, pilgrimage to, 82 El Salvador. See also Central American immigration to US Catholic Church and immigration to US, 87–​90, 92, 95–​96, 97, 98–​99 ethnoracial identities, 337, 340, 341 Pentecostalism, 134, 136–​37, 143

Index   359 Prosperity Gospel, 324, 325 Protestantism, 110 religious politics, 270–​7 1 Temporary Protected Status, 87–​88 El Salvador del Mundo (The Savior of the World), 92 El Santo Niño de Atocha, 226–​27, 246–​48, 251, 252–​53, 310–​11 El Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), 249–​50 El Señor de los Milagros (El Cristo Morado), 249–​50 El Templo Betel, 138–​39 ELIM, 143 Elizabeth (nun), 93 Elizondo, Virgilio, 26–​27, 209–​11, 212–​13, 214–​ 15, 300–​1, 342–​43 Elvira (Salvadoran nurse), 95 Embry, Jessie, 157–​58 Emeka, Amon, 346 Encuentros of Hispanic Catholic leaders, 26 Enlace TV channel, 324 Epiphany, 81 Episcopal Church of the Messiah, 343–​44 Episcopalians and Episcopalianism, 114, 268 Erickson, Kathleen, 94 Espín, Orlando, 211, 213, 214–​15, 342 Espinosa, Gastón, 173–​74, 175–​76, 235 Espinoza, Carmelita, 26 Espiritismo (Spiritism), 43, 47, 73–​74, 77–​78, 79–​80, 81, 287 Estenoz, Evaristo, 75–​76 Esteyneffer, Juan de, 229–​30 Estrada, Erik, 287 ethnic societies (cabildos de nación), 72–​73, 80–​81, 83 ethnoracial essentialization, 109, 120, 121–​22, 183–​84, 213, 334–​35 ethnoracial identities, 333 authenticity policing, 340–​43 civic engagement, 343–​45 defined, 333–​34 generational transitions, 338–​40 internal politics of participation, 345–​46 lived religion, 343 particularism of religious boundaries, 341–​42 place-​based identities, 337–​38

political engagement, 343–​44 popular religion, 342–​43 racial, ethnic, and religious id, 334–​36 temporal-​spatial relations, 336–​40 Evangelicals and Evangelicalism, 110, 113, 234. See also Pentecostals and Pentecostalism Central America, 88 congregational life, 119, 120 conversions to, 176–​77, 284, 336 Cuba, 77–​78 defined, 292n.12 ethnoracial identities, 337–​38, 340, 346 language, 115 Pentecostalism, 130–​31 political alignment, 119 Prosperity Gospel, 284, 320, 324, 330–​31 Puerto Rico, 62 religious politics, 262 socioeconomic status, 114–​15 exile. See migration Ezekiel (prophet), 50–​51

F Faith in Action (Pacific Institute for Community Organization [PICO]), 28 Farhadian, Charles E., 173–​74 farmworker movement, 25, 27–​28, 130, 199, 263–​64, 268, 271, 344 Farrakhan, Louis, 171 Fernández Piérola, Ramòn, 33–​34 fetishism, 70–​7 1 Fidel and Religion (Betto), 42, 77 5th Street Methodist Church, 56–​57 Figueroa, Yahya, 171–​72 First Spanish Baptist Church of Philadelphia, 54–​55 Five Percenter Nation, 171 Fletcher, Mujahid, 173 Florentine Codex (Sahagun), 309–​10 Flores, Edward, 341–​42 Flores, Patricio, 26 Flores, Samuel Joaquín, 137, 140 Flores v. Meese, 94–​95 Florilegio Medicinal (Esteyneffer), 229 Fonseca, Onofre de, 45n.25 Forman, James, 265, 266 Fortuny Loret de Mola, Patricia, 90–​91

360   Index Foucault, Michel, 187–​88n.27, 286–​87 Foursquare Church, 134–​35 Fox Parham, Charles, 262 Francis (pope), 41–​43, 261 Franciscan religious order, 15, 16–​17, 18–​19, 20–​21, 243–​44 Francisco (Salvadoran priest), 91–​92, 98 Freedom of Religion Act, 301 Freemasonry, 47 Freier, Luisa Feline, 338 Fuller Theological Seminary, 139–​40

G Gabriel (angel), 51 Galedary, Marta, 172–​73, 181, 182–​83 Gallardo, Gloria Graciela, 26 Gallego, Beatrice, 28 Galvan, Juan, 173–​74, 175–​76, 181, 182–​83 Galvez, Alyshia, 246 Garces-​Foley, Kathleen, 346 Garcia, Ignacio, 159, 160–​61, 164 García, Mario T., 260 García, Miguel, 199–​200, 259 García Rivera, Alejandro, 212–​13 García-​Johnson, Oscar, 211 García-​Treto, Francisco, 210–​11 Gaxiola, Manuel, 139–​40 gender. See also LGBTQAI +​communities; machismo; women Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, 71, 73–​74 ethnoracial identities, 346 Islam, 178t LDS Church, 152 mestizaje, 209, 211, 214, 216 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 17 Pentacostalism, 131–​32, 142 Prosperity Gospel, 328–​29 Puerto Rican Christianities, 59 Gibbs, Anna, 284 Girón, José, 137–​38 Glasser, Ruth, 58 Global Relief Society, 151–​52 godparentage (compadrazgo), 19, 303 Goizueta, Roberto, 209–​10, 211, 212, 214–​15 Goldschmidt, Walter R., 194–​95 Gomez, José, 29 Gonzales, Antoinette “Tonita,” 307–​8

Gonzales, Patrisia, 306–​7 Gonzalez, Aaron Joaquin, 341 González, Eusebío Joaquín (Aarón), 132, 137 Gonzalez, Ibrahim, 171–​72 González, Justo, 118, 210–​11, 213–​14 González, Michelle, 213–​14 González Rubio, José, 20–​21 Good Friday, 23–​24, 42–​43, 228, 247, 248, 337 Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, 141–​42 Graham, Franklin, 60–​61 Granados, Roger, 265–​66 Granjon, Henry, 22 Great Depression, 22–​23, 136, 137–​38 Greeley, Andrew, 176–​77, 281–​82 Guadalupanas, 24 Guajardo, Francisco, 158 Guatemala. See also Central American immigration to US Catholic Church and immigration to US, 87–​91, 92, 95–​96, 98–​99 healing traditions, 231 mestizaje, 207 Pentecostalism, 134 Prosperity Gospel, 323–​24 Protestantism, 110 Gutiérrez, Ramón, 247–​48 Guttari, Felix, 283 Guttman, Matthew, 281

H Hagan, Jacqueline, 90–​91 Hagin, Kenneth, 140–​41, 319, 320 Haitian Revolution, 69 Hart-​Cellar Act (National Immigration of Act), 112 Hartmire, Chris, 263–​64 Hawkins, Edler, 265 Haydee (Chicago interviewee), 57 HCAPL, 175 healing traditions, 225 Afro-​Latino religions, 233 Catholic healing, 226–​28 continuum of, 225–​26 curanderismo, 228–​32 espiritualismo and materias, 233–​34 influences on, 225 Mary and saints, 226–​27

Index   361 material objects and artistic expression, 227–​28 Pentecostal healing, 234–​35 pilgrimage, 228 Helg, Aline, 75–​76 Henderson-​Espinosa, Robyn, 214–​15 Hendrickson, Brett, 247 Herberg, W., 87 Hermana Sarita (Sarita Macias), 201–​2 Hermanos Cheos, 49 Hernández, Sonia, 28 Hernández-​Ávila, Inés, 310–​11 Hijas de María (Daughters of Mary), 24 Hinn, Benny, 323 Hiraldo, Samiri Hernández, 59–​60 Hispanic American Institute, 271 Hispanic Muslim Day, 172 Hispanic Theological Initiative, 118 HispanicMuslims.com, 181, 182 Historia de una pelea cubana contra los demonios (Ortiz), 70 History of the Triumphs of Our Holy Faith (Péres de Ribas), 309–​10 Holy Feast (La Santa Cena), 137, 144, 341 Holy Ghost sisters, 26 Holy Name Society (Santo Nombre), 24 Holy Redeemer Church, 337 Holy Week, 21, 22 Hombres y Machos (Mirande), 281 Homeboy Industries, 341–​42 Honduras. See also Central American immigration to US Catholic Church and immigration to US, 87–​90, 91, 94–​96 Pentacostalism, 137 Prosperity Gospel, 324, 329–​30 Hoyos, Juan de, 39 Hoyos, Rodrigo de, 39 Huerta, Dolores, 25, 27–​28, 344 Hunter College, 53–​54 Hurricane María, 60 hybridities, 43, 81, 120–​21, 208, 296–​97, 298–​300, 303–​4. See also mestizaje

I IAF (Industrial Areas Foundation), 28 IAFCJ (Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús), 136, 137, 139–​40

Ibarra, Jesus, 338–​39 Ibarra, Tania, 338–​39 Iber, Jorge, 159 ICE (US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement), 94–​95, 286 ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), 172 identity. See also ethnoracial identities Afro-​Cuban Catholics, 80 Baptists, 118–​19 Cuban-​descent Catholics, 32–​33, 36–​41 Latino Protestants in America, 117–​19 LDS Church, 152–​55 a-​mi-​manera Catholics, 80 Muslims, 172–​73 Protestants, 117–​19 Igelsia Pentecostal Unida Latinoamericana (IPUL), 62 Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús (IAFCJ), 136, 137, 139–​40 Iglesia Bautista Betania, 269 Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal, 135, 138, 143 Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Movimiento Internacional, 138 Iglesia de la Fe Apostólica Pentecostés, 133 Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God [UCKG]), 143, 324, 337–​38 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, 92–​93 immigration. See migration Immigration and Nationality Act, 136 In His Own Language (Embry), 157 indigenous peoples and indigeneities, 296 accepting inferiority, 297 Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, 69 Catholic Church in Cuba, 32 colonial period, 16–​19 Conchero dance tradition, 305, 309–​11 Cuban-​descent Catholics, 32 curanderismo, 228–​29, 301, 303–​7, 308–​9 development of indigenous (jaguar) Christianity, 298–​99 ethnoracial identities, 334–​35 Hispanicization, 17 interdependent relationship with the land, 297–​98 LDS Church, 151, 153–​54

362   Index indigenous peoples and indigeneities (cont.) lifeways, 296, 312n.2 mestizaje, 209 pilgrimage, 242, 243–​44, 245, 246 popular Catholicism, 300–​3 reclaiming indigenous religious practice as decolonization, 307–​9 religious imagination theory, 299–​300 Spanish missions and, 15–​17 transcultural wave, 296–​97 Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), 28 Industrial Mission of the Episcopal Church, 58 Instituto Teológico Apostólico Internacional, 137 Insular Cases, 46–​47 International Guadalupan Torch Run (Carrera Internacional de la Antorcha Guadalupana), 28–​29 IPUL (Igelsia Pentecostal Unida Latinoamericana), 62 Irvine, Andrew, 213 Irving, T. B., 181–​82 Isabel (Catholic woman), 88 Isasi-​Díaz, Ada María, 3–​4, 210, 213–​14 Islam. See Muslims and Islam Islamic Center of Southern California, 172–​73 Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), 172 Islamic Horizons, 172 Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, 172–​73 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), 172 IslamInSpanish, 173 Israel (friend of Nicki Cruz), 288, 289

J Jaramillo, Don Pedrito, 135, 227, 231 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 77, 176–​77 Jesuit Refugee Service/​USA, 94 Jesuits, 36, 41–​42, 228–​29 Jesus, Wilfredo de, 144–​45 Jesus Christ Central American immigration to US, 93–​94, 97–​98 Cuban-​descent Catholics, 39, 42 healing traditions, 225, 226–​27 indigenous peoples and indigeneities, 301, 309

LDS Church, 151 machismo, 288–​89 mestizaje, 211–​12 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 21, 23–​24, 27 pilgrimage, 246–​48, 249–​51 Prosperity Gospel, 320 Puerto Rican Christianities, 51, 55 Jimenez, Tomas, 340–​41 John Paul II, 42, 77, 251 John the Baptist, 21–​22 Jones, Daniel W., 155–​56 Josefina (Salvadoran immigrant), 95–​96 Joseph (father of Jesus), 250–​51 Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion, 175–​76 Jude (saint), 226–​27 Julio (Central American immigrant), 97–​98

K Kardec, Allan, 73–​74 Kennedy, John F., 57 Kenyon, E. William, 320 Knight, Franklin W., 32–​33 Korner Car Club, 201

L la Alianza Islámica, 171–​73, 181 La Asociacion Latino Musulmana de America (LALMA), 172–​73 La Caridad del Cobre (Cachita), 5, 35, 38–​41, 43, 45n.24, 76, 79, 81–​82, 226–​27 La Ermita de la Caridad, 35, 39–​41 La Frontera (Anzaldua), 6–​7 La Hermosa Provincia, 137 La Iglesia de Jesucristo de las Americas, Inc., 139–​40 La Luz del Mundo (LLDM), 132, 144, 337–​38, 341 La Milagrosa (Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal; Spanish Chapel), 54–​55, 57 La Placita church, 249, 270 la Propagación Islámica para la Educación de Ala el Divino (PIEDAD), 172, 181 La Raza, 265–​66 La Raza Churchmen, 263–​64 La Raza Unida Party, 25 La Raza Yearbook, 271 La Regla de Ocha. See Santería

Index   363 La Santa Cena (The Holy Feast), 137, 144, 341 La Santa Sábila, 302 La Sinagoga, 138 La Viña, 141 LABI (Latin American Bible Institute), 137–​38, 141–​42, 289–​90 Labyrinth of Solitude, The (Paz), 280 Lacend, José, 55 LADO (Latino American Dawah Organization), 172, 181 Lakota, 300–​1 LALMA (La Asociacion Latino Musulmana de America), 172–​73 LALMA (Los Angeles Latino Muslim Association), 172–​73, 181 LALMA.org, 181 Laman and Lamanite identity, 152–​55 Lamy, Jean Baptiste, 19 Lancaster, Roger, 280 Lara-​Braud, Jorge, 259–​60, 268, 270–​73 Las Hermanas (The Sisters), 26, 264, 268, 272–​73 Las Hijas de María, 57 las posadas, 23–​24, 338 Latin American Bible Institute (LABI), 137–​38, 141–​42, 289–​90 Latin American Defense Organization, 264–​66 Latin American Methodist Action Group, 264 Latin Kings, 171–​72 Latina Muslimah, 181 Latinas/​os/​x growth of population in US, 5–​6 Latina/​o/​x Christian studies, 6–​7 terminology, 10n.1, 145n.3, 218n.1, 312n.3, 331n.1 Latino American Dawah Organization (LADO), 172, 181 Latino Muslim conference, 172 Latino Muslim Voice, The, 172 Latino Protestants in America (LPAs), 109 ancestral heritage, 115–​16 characterizing services as a “fiesta,” 119–​21 congregational life among, 119–​21 conversion among, 115–​17 demographics of, 114–​15 diversity among, 109–​10

diversity of interaction with, 118–​19 getting closer to God, 116 greater autonomy, control of identity, and evangelization initiative, 113–​14 growing conspicuousness, 110 growth of, 109–​10 history of, 111–​14 immigration, 109–​10 language, 115 missionaries and Americanization, 111–​12 outside of Catholicism, 118 political alignment, 119 post-​war annexation, 111 preserving cultural distinctiveness, 119 problems associated with conversion, 116 Puerto Rican and Central American LPAs, 113, 115–​16 religiosity and identity, 117–​19 significant conversions, 112 socioeconomics, 114–​16 spectrum of racial/​ethnic identities, 117–​18 LatinoDawah.org, 172 Lázaro (saint), 82, 233 LDS Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​ Day Saints; Mormons), 151 celebrating Latina/​o/​x cultural contributions, 162–​63 conversions to, 176–​77 conversions to Islam, 177 current state of, 161–​63 efforts to reconnect with headquarters, 156–​57 English vs. Spanish wards, 151–​52, 157–​61 future of, 163–​65 immigration, 161–​62 Lamanite identity, 152–​55 Mexican Revolution, 156–​57 missioning efforts in Mexico, 151, 155–​57 number of Spanish-​speaking members, 151 polygamous colonies, 155–​56 representation in hierarchy, 151–​52, 165n.4 split and mending, 157 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 271 Lebaron, Alan, 92 Lehi, 153 Lemuel, 153

364   Index Lent, 22, 247–​48 Leo XIII, 262–​63 León, Luis D., 251, 252–​53 LGBTQAI +​communities Cuba, 76–​77, 78 internal politics of participation, 345 machismo, 280 mestizaje, 214 Liberating Spirit, The (Villafañe), 141–​42 liberation theology, 4, 58, 99 Chicano activism during 1960s, 25 Cuba under Castro, 42 LDS Church, 164–​65 mestizaje, 215–​16 popular Catholicism, 199–​200 religious politics, 263–​65, 267, 272 limpias, 232, 303, 304, 307–​8, 342 LLDM (La Luz del Mundo), 132, 144, 337–​38, 341 Lofton, Kathryn, 242 Lopez, Abel, 343–​44 López, Abundio and Rosa, 132, 234 López, Alma, 6–​7 Lopez, Fred, 258 Lopez, Luis, 133 Lopez, Lydia, 3–​4, 258, 259–​60, 268–​70, 272–​73 López, Obed, 264–​66, 272 López, Yolanda, 6–​7 López Austin, Alfredo, 229–​30 Lopez Oliva, Enrique, 42–​43 López Pulido, Alberto, 88, 195 Lopez Tijerina, Reies, 137–​38, 344 López-​Saunders, Laura, 90–​91 Los Angeles Daily Times, 131 Los Angeles Latino Muslim Association (LALMA), 172–​73, 181 Los Hermanos Cheos, 198–​99 Los Hermanos de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno. See Los Hermanos Penitentes Los Hermanos Penitentes, 22, 198, 247–​48, 255n.21, 302 los pastores, 21, 196–​97 Louis XIV, 69 lowriding movement, 200–​1 LPAs. See Latino Protestants in America Luce, Alice, 133 Lucey, Robert, 263

Lucumí. See Santería Lugo, Juan, 54, 135, 138 LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens), 271 Luna, Carlos Enrique “Cash,” 323–​24 Lutherans and Lutheranism, 268 Luz de Las Naciones, 162

M MACC (Mexican American Catholic College; Mexican American Cultural Center), 26–​27 Macedo, Edir, 324 machismo, 279 aguantar vs. abrirse, 291 centrality of, 279 defined, 279–​80 gender socialization, 279–​80 as myth, 286–​87 negative stereotypes of, 279 Pentecostal narratives, 287–​91 Pentecostalism and contagion theory, 281–​85 Prosperity Gospel, 328–​29 reifying and disrupting, 279–​81 Trump, 285–​86 Macias, Sarita (Hermana Sarita), 201–​2 Maduro, Otto, 259–​60 Major Problems in American History, 271 Maldonado-​Torres, Nelson, 217 Malverde, Jesús, 227, 302 mandas (promesas), 244, 245, 248, 251 Manifest Destiny, 321, 327 Manuel (Salvadoran immigrant), 95–​96 Maranatha Church, 143 Marble Collegiate Church, 319 MARCHA (Methodists Associated Representing the Cause of Hispanic Americans), 268 Marian veneration (marianismo), 246–​47. See also La Caridad del Cobre; Virgin of Guadalupe Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, 81–​82 Afro-​Cuban veneration, 70–​7 1, 76 Black Virgin of Regla, 82 healing traditions, 226–​27 indigenous religion, 301

Index   365 La Caridad del Cobre, 35, 38–​41, 43, 45n.24, 76, 79, 81–​82, 226–​27 machismo vs., 280–​81 Virgin of Guadalupe, 3–​4, 5, 6–​7, 20, 21–​22, 23–​24, 27–​29, 116, 153, 196–​97, 201–​2, 209, 226–​27, 243–​46, 252–​53, 280–​81, 300, 310, 342–​43 Mariel boatlift, 31, 37, 78 Mario (Salvadoran immigrant), 97 Marquardt, Marie Friedmann, 338 Martí, José, 50–​51, 74–​75 Martin, Bernice, 282 Martínez, Antonio José, 19, 179 Martínez-​Vázquez, Hjamil, 173–​74 Masked Africanisms (Cruz), 54 Massumi, Brian, 283 Matovina, Timothy, 338 Mau Maus, 287, 288 Maximón (Simón) (saint), 231 MAYO (Mexican American Youth Organization), 25, 271 McCormick Theological Seminary, 266 McGreevey, John T., 264 McIntyre, James, 199, 258–​59 McNamara, Patrick, 195 McPherson, Aimee Semple, 134–​35 Meanings of Machismo, The (Guttman), 281 Medellín episcopal conference of 1968, 25 Medina, Lara, 197, 260 Medina, Severiano, 248 megachurches, 120–​21, 138, 144–​45 meme theory, 284 Mennonites, 264 Merier, Johannes, 33–​34 Mesa Temple, 154–​55 Message International, The, 172 mestizaje, 207 challenges and reconfigurations, 212–​15 context of conversation, 207–​8 Cuban-​descent Catholics, 81–​82, 214–​15 difficulty in replacing terminology, 208 future potentialities and ethical implications, 215–​17 as heavily contested category, 207–​8 indigenous peoples, 296–​97, 299–​301, 303 LDS Church, 151 meanings ascribed to, 209

popular Catholicism, 300–​1 variety of utilizations and deployments, 209–​12 Virgen de Guadalupe, 209 Mestizo Worship, 211 mestizos/​as/​x, 27, 153–​54, 157, 176, 209, 210–​11, 212, 229–​30, 296–​98, 300, 302, 307–​8, 311 Methodists and Methodism, 47–​48 civil rights activism and politics, 268 ethnoracial identities, 336 history in southwest, 112 Puerto Rican Christianities, 56–​57 Methodists Associated Representing the Cause of Hispanic Americans (MARCHA), 268 Mexican American Catholic College (MACC; Mexican American Cultural Center), 26–​27 Mexican American People, The (McNamara), 195 Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), 25, 271 Mexican Constitution, 22–​23 Mexican Revolution, 15, 156–​57 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 15 arrival of Spanish Catholicism in US, 16 Bracero Program, 22–​23 Charismatic Renewal, 24 Chavez’s labor organization efforts, 27–​28 civil rights activism and politics, 25, 263 Civil War to World War II, 22–​23 colonial foundations, 16–​19 contesting policies and decisions of foreign clergy, 19, 20–​21 diocesan clergy, 17, 18–​19 Elizondo’s theology, 27 enduring communities of faith, 19–​22 established religious traditions, 23–​24 foreign clergy’s view of Mexican Catholics, 20 grassroots cultural religious expressions, 19 immigration, 22–​25, 28–​29 local faith-​based community organizations, 28 local-​church level, 25–​26 maintaining established religious traditions, 21–​22

366   Index Mexican-​descent Catholics (cont.) major eras, 15–​16 missions, 16–​19 national level, 26 national or ethnic parishes, 23 organizations promoting equality, 26 parish associations, 24 parishes and military chaplaincies, 18 Penitente brotherhoods, 22 persistent rejection by dominant society, 25 pilgrimage to El Santo Niño de Atocha, 246–​48 pilgrimage to San Toribio Romo, 249–​50 pilgrimage to Virgin of Guadalupe, 243–​46 popular Catholicism, 194–​95 post-​war US influence, 19–​20 pueblos, 17 resistance to US takeover and backlash, 20, 22 struggles for rights and justice, 25–​29 territorial parishes, 23–​24 training priests for staffing local churches, 18–​19 US Latino/​a theologies, 27 women, 21–​22, 26 México Profundo (Bonfil Batalla), 296–​97 Mieta, Victor, 158 migration, 166n.36 addressing social problems, 92 Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, 78 Arizona S.B. 1070, 161–​62 bonding vs. bridging, 90–​91 Central American immigration to US, 87 challenging US immigration policies, 92–​93 community building, 91–​92 concrete responses, 96 from Cuba to US, 31 Cuban-​descent Catholics, 31, 34–​41 cynicism, 95–​96 expectation of help, 97 hierarchy’s efforts, 92 hostile immigration policies, 88 immigrants’ views of the Church, 95–​98 impact on daily life, 96–​97 institutional response and actions, 92–​95 LDS Church, 164–​65, 167n.47 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 22–​25

parallels between the lives of immigrants and Christ, 93–​94 patron saints’ days, 91 Pentacostalism, 136, 144–​45 pilgrimage, 252–​54 political action, 89–​90 positivity, 95–​96 post-​detention support, 95 prearrival immigrants’ experiences, 89–​90 Prosperity Gospel, 324, 326–​27 psychological comfort, 88 Puerto Rican Christianities, 50–​54 sanctuaries and settlement assistance, 87–​88 shelters and training courses, 90 social engagement, 97 Temporary Protected Status, 92–​93 theological belief and Scripture for context, 93 “ 3Ds” of enforcement practices, 94 transnational ties, 98–​99 Trump’s toxic views, 285–​86 white nationalist resistance, 109–​10 military chaplaincies, 18 Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP) labor camps, 76–​77 Minority Ministries Council, 264, 268 Miranda, Jesse, 141–​42, 144–​45 Mirande, Alfredo, 281 Misión Cristiana Elim, 143 Mission San Gabriel, 18 Moctezuma, 309–​10 Mohamed, Yasien, 188n.34 Montejo, Esteban, 74–​75 Montúfar, Alfonso de, 244 Moody Bible Institute, 134 Moorish Science Temple in America, 171 Moorish Temple Society, 171 Moral Majority, 272 Morales, Harold, 173–​74, 175–​76 Morales, José de Los Santos, 198–​99 Moreno, Juan, 39, 45n.25 Mormonism: A Faith for All Cultures (Tullis), 159 Mormons. See LDS Church Morrison, Karen Y., 70 Mother Emanuel Church, 11n.8 Movimiento Familiar Cristiano, 36

Index   367 Muhammad, Elijah, 171 Mundelein, George, 23 Muslims and Islam conversions to, 171 Cuba, 77–​78 demographics, 174–​80 discrimination, 179–​80, 180t growth in, 176 history of, 171–​73 identity, 172–​73 literature and research about, 173–​74 motivations and influences, 173–​74, 177–​79, 178t number of, 175, 186–​87n.22 Reconquista of Iberian Peninsula, 32, 69 religious tolerance, 179 reversion discourse, 180–​84 social-​psychological stages of religious change, 173–​74 Sunni, Shia, Salafi, and Wahhabi traditions, 179

N Nabhan-​Warren, Kristy, 197 NAFTA, 140 Nahua, 243, 244, 299, 300, 306, 308–​9 Napolitano, Valentina, 250 Narváez, Pánfilo de, 16 Nation of Islam, 171 National Council of Churches, 263–​65 National Evangelical Latino Coalition (NELC), 144–​45 National Farm Workers Association (United Farm Workers [UFW]), 25, 27–​28, 199, 263–​64, 271 National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), 60, 144–​45, 344 National Immigration of Act (Hart-​Cellar Act), 112 National Latino Evangelical Coalition, 60 Native Science (Cajete), 306 Nava, Antonio, 132–​33, 135, 137 Navajo (Diné), 308–​9 Navarro, Ana Luisa, 55, 56f Navarro, Juan, 132, 133 NELC (National Evangelical Latino Coalition), 144–​45

Nephi, 153 New Thought Metaphysics, 320 NHCLC (National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference), 60, 144–​45, 344 Nocturnal Adoration Society (Adoración Nocturna), 24 Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the United States, 7 Nueva Esperanza, 141–​42 Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar, 16

O Obama, Barack, 29, 41–​42, 144–​45 Oblate Sisters of Providence, 76 Ocasio, Rahim, 171–​72 Ochoa, Victor, 192–​93 Odin, Jean Marie, 20 Ogden, Roger, 203n.8 Olazábal, Francisco, 133–​35, 138–​39, 235 Olivares, Luis, 270 Omar ibn Al-​Khattab masjid, 172–​73 Ometeotl, 308–​9 Onan, 53 Oñate, Juan de, 15 O’Neill, Kevin, 283 Oneness Pentecostals, 137–​38, 142 Operation Pedro Pan, 35–​36 Operation Wetback, 130 Oral Roberts University, 319 Ordelina (Honduran asylum seeker), 94–​95 orishas, 40, 41, 72–​73, 76, 80–​82, 233 Orozco Flores, Edward, 284–​85 Orsi, Robert, 52–​53 Ortega, Gregoria, 26 Ortega, Jaime, 42–​43 Ortiz, Fernando, 68, 70, 81 Oshún, 40 Otomí-​Chichimeca, 310 Our Claim on the Future (edited by Lara-​ Braud), 270–​7 1 Our Lady of Altagracia, 226–​27 Our Lady of Angels Cathedral, 249 “Our Lady of Controversy” (López), 6–​7 Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 201 Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine, 228 Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 21–​22

368   Index Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal (Spanish Chapel; La Milagrosa), 54–​55, 57 Ozuna, Patricia, 28

P Pacific Institute for Community Organization (PICO; Faith in Action), 28 Padilla, Ana Maria, 197 Padilla, José, 179 PADRES (Padres Asociados por los Derechos Religiosos, Educativos, y Sociales), 26, 264, 268, 272–​73 Palm Sunday, 343–​44 Palo Monte, 72–​73, 74, 79–​80, 81, 233 Panama, 40, 136–​37 parochial schools, 53, 76–​77, 338–​39 Parolin, Pietro, 42–​43 Parrilla, Antulio, 199–​200 Partido Independiente de Color, 75–​76 Pastoral Maya, 92 Patrick, John L., 35–​36 Patriots Fire, 203n.8 patronal feast days, 21 Paul (Saul), 97, 182 Paz, Octavio, 280 PCUS (Presbyterian Church US), 271 Peale, Norman Vincent, 319, 320 Pearce, Russell, 161–​62 Pedraja, Luis, 212, 213–​14 Peña, Elaine, 245, 246 Pentecostals and Pentecostalism, 43, 116–​17, 130, 261–​62 AAFCJ, 132, 135–​37, 139–​40 affective contagion, 283, 284–​85 approximate figures, 143 Assemblies of God, 132, 133–​34, 135–​36, 137–​38, 140 Azusa Street Revival, 131–​32 beliefs of, 130–​31 CLADIC, 134–​36, 138–​39 claims of racial harmony, 131–​32 connecting with existing religious beliefs, 262 conversions to, 176–​77, 281–​82, 283–​84 current state of, 143–​45 defections, 133, 134 defined, 292n.12

development of, 136–​39 ethnoracial identities, 333, 337–​38, 340, 342–​43, 345 expansion of, 139–​43 foundation of, 131–​36 growth of, 234 healing traditions, 234–​35 hymnal, 136–​37 IAFCJ, 136, 137 immigration, 136, 144–​45 La Luz del Mundo, 133, 137–​38, 140 liturgical style, 120 machismo, 291–​92 meme theory, 284 number of, 281–​82 Oneness Pentecostals, 132–​33 political alignment, 119, 144–​45 professionalization of clergy, 137–​38, 141–​42 Prosperity Gospel, 317–​18, 319, 320–​21, 323, 325–​26 Puerto Rican Christianities, 53, 54, 135, 138, 140 religious autonomy, 262 second generation of Mexican Americans, 139 socioeconomic status, 114 Texas, 133–​35 Treaty of Unification, 136–​37 Victory Outreach, 141–​42 Vineyard Churches, 141 women, 142 women’s and youth auxiliaries, 136–​37 Word of Faith, 140–​41 Péres de Ribas, Andrés, 309–​10 Pérez, Brígido, 132 Pérez, Elizabeth, 59–​60 Pérez, Eulalia, 18 Pérez, Lisandro, 33–​34 Perez, Louis A., 73–​74 Peru, 70, 72, 91, 249–​50 Pescador, Juan Javier, 247 PEW, 5–​6, 174–​75, 281–​82 PICO (Pacific Institute for Community Organization; Faith in Action), 28 PIEDAD (la Propagación Islámica para la Educación de Ala el Divino), 172, 181 PiedadIslam.org, 181

Index   369 pilgrimage and embodiment, 21, 242 El Santo Niño de Atocha, 246–​48 El Señor de los Milagros, 249–​50 San Toribio Romo, 250–​52 transnational identities, 252–​54 Virgin of Guadalupe, 243–​46 Piltzintecuhtli, 310–​11 Piñeda Brisuela, Fredy Lindolofo, 94–​95 Pius IX, 262–​63 Pius XII, 25–​26 Platt Amendment, 36–​37 political engagement. See religious politics Poor People’s Campaign, 272–​73 Poor People’s Coalition, 266 Popé (spiritual leader), 16–​17 Popkin, Eric, 98–​99 popular Catholicism, 192 Chicano Park, 192–​94 early research, 194–​95 establishment of, 194–​95 expressions of as resistance, 198–​200 as indigenous religion, 300–​3 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 194–​95 new vistas for, 200–​2 place-​based religious expression, 195–​97 Puerto Rico, 198–​99 Posadas Sin Fronteras, 250–​51 positive radical flank effect, 275n.31 Power Evangelism (Wimber), 141 Power of Positive Thinking, The (Peale), 320 Poyo, Gerald E., 35–​36 Pratt, Rey L., 156 Presbyterian Church US (PCUS), 271 Presbyterian Pan American School, 270–​7 1 Presbyterians and Presbyterianism, 47–​48 civil rights activism and politics, 263–​66, 268, 270–​7 1 ethnoracial identities, 336 history in southwest, 112 liturgical style, 120 socioeconomic status, 114 Project Downtown, 172 promesas (mandas), 244, 245, 248, 251 Prophet Muhamad, 182–​83 Proposition 187, 166n.36 Prosperity Gospel, 316 adaptation, 322

American Dream, 318–​19, 321, 324, 325–​27, 330 in daily life, 327–​31 distinctive beliefs, 321–​22 family life, 328 formula for, 319–​21 individualism, 326–​27 in Latino communities, 323–​25 miraculous meritocracy, 320–​21, 327 number of believers, 318 origins of, 318–​19, 321 theodicies, 318 Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Herberg), 87 Protestants and Protestantism Afro-​Cubans, 73–​74, 75 congregational life among, 119–​21 conversion among, 115–​17 conversions to Islam, 177 Cuba and Cuban diaspora, 33–​35, 43 demographics of, 114–​15 diversity among, 109–​10 establishment of new racial and capitalist order in Southwest, 261–​62 growing conspicuousness, 110 growth of, 109–​10 history of, 111–​14 immigration, 109–​10 Latino Protestants in America, 109 LDS Church, 151 liberation theology, 264–​65 Pentecostalism, 130 Puerto Rican Christianities, 47–​48, 48f, 49, 52–​53, 55–​57, 58, 60–​61 religiosity and identity, 117–​19 Spanish Inquisition, 70 view of US expansion, 20 Public Affairs Council, 270–​7 1 pueblos, 17 Puerto Rican Christianities, 46, 59, 61 academic studies, 52–​53 adoption and adaptation of colonial belief systems, 49 agreement of 1899, 47–​48, 48f Christian imagery and projections, 50–​51 civil rights activism and politics, 58 coalition building, 58 dynamic and charismatic movements, 49

370   Index Puerto Rican Christianities (cont.) between empires, 46–​49 immigration, 50, 55, 59 informal organizations becoming permanent fixtures, 57–​58 intersections, 52–​53 missionaries and Americanization, 47–​48, 49 natural disasters, 60–​61 Pentecostalism, 54 Philadelphia churches, 54–​57 popular Catholicism, 198–​99 recent approaches and times, 59–​61 social activities and community building, 57 socioeconomic mobility, 56–​57 under Spanish rule, 47 Spanish-​American war, 46 studies of lived religion, 59–​60 transition to US rule, 47–​48 twentieth-​century memoirs, 50–​52 US citizenship, 46–​47 Pulido, Alberto, 247–​48

Q queer people. See LGBTQAI +​communities Quica Project, 250–​51 quinceañeras, 119 Qur’an, 172–​73

R Ramadan, 172–​73 Rambo, Lewis R., 173–​74 Ramírez, Julie, 65–​66n.45 Rámirez, Virginia, 28 Ramírez Johnson, Johnny, 56–​57 Ramón (Salvadoran immigrant), 97–​98 Ramos, Aida I., 340–​41 Ramos, Miguel “Willie,” 81 Reconquista of Iberian Peninsula, 32, 69, 243–​44 Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, 69–​7 1 Red Medicine (Gonzales), 306 Red Power movement, 307 Reformation of Machismo, The (Brusco), 282 Reformed churches, 268 reglas de congo, 72–​73, 75, 78, 79–​81 Reidland Church of Christ, 61f

Religion in the Kitchen (Pérez), 59–​60 Religious History of American Women, The (Brekus), 3 religious politics, 258 Catholics, 262–​63, 264, 267–​68, 344 Católicos march on St. Basil’s Church, 258–​59, 269, 270 defined, 261 liberation theology, 264–​65 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 25, 263 occupations and disruptions, 265–​67 Pentecostals, 261–​62, 268, 344 Prosperity Gospel, 329–​30 Protestants, 268 Puerto Rican Catholics, 58 religious radicals, 267–​72 Requena, Gisele M., 38 retablos, 227–​28 reversion discourse, 180–​84 accusations of incompatible identities, 183 concept of fitrah, 182–​83 essentializing identities, 183–​84 problems with, 183–​84 reversions stories, 180–​81 terminology, 181–​82 websites, 181 Rico, David, 192 Ríos, Gadiel, 60 Risco, Eliezar, 265–​66 Rivera, Julie, 289–​90 Rivera, Khadijah, 3–​4, 172, 181 Rivera, Orlando, 159–​60, 164 Roberts, Oral, 319, 320–​21 Robledo, Gil, 192 Rodriguez, Baldemar, 139–​40 Rodríguez, Edmundo, 28 Rodríguez, Enrique, 55 Rodriguez, George, 201 Rodríguez, Jeanette, 211 Rodríguez, Rubén Rosario, 210, 213 Rodriguez, Samuel, 144–​45, 344 Rodriguez Medina, José, 198–​99 Rojas, Wilfredo, 58 Román, Agustín A., 41 Romano V, Octavio, 230–​31 romerías, 251 Romero, Óscar, 89–​90, 270–​7 1

Index   371 Romney, Mitt, 166n.11 Romo González, Toribio, 251 Roof, Dylann, 203n.8 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 262–​63 Rosado Rousseau, Leoncia, 138–​39 Rosario, Nahum, 143 Ruíz, Jean-​Pierre, 214 Run, Baby Run (Cruz), 287

S Sacred Heart in the Rio Grande Valley, 95 Sahagun, Bernardino de, 243–​44, 309–​10 Salazar, Lorenzo, 139–​40 Salguero, Gabriel, 144–​45 Salsa TV channel, 324 Salvadoran Misión Cristiana Elim, 142 Samaritan’s Purse, 60–​61 San Diego City College, 192 San Francisco State University, 203n.9 San Toribio Romo, 250–​52 Sánchez, Ezéquiel, 23 Sánchez, Samantha, 172 Sánchez-​Walsh, Arlene, 235, 262, 275n.23 Sandoval, Chela, 211, 216 Santa de Cabora (Urrea, Teresa), 135, 227, 231, 305 Santería (Lucumí; La Regla de Ocha), 40, 43, 59–​60, 72–​73, 74, 75, 76, 77–​78, 79–​80, 81, 82, 233 Santo Nombre (Holy Name Society), 24 santos folk paintings, 227–​28 Santuario de Chimayó, 228 Sarabia, Andrés, 28 Saul (Paul), 97, 182 Savior of the World (El Salvador del Mundo), 92 S.B. 1070, 161–​62 Scheper Hughes, Jennifer, 242 SCOP (South Central Organizing Project), 269–​70 Second Cuban War for Independence, 74 Second Vatican Council, 25 Secularism. See Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism Seek the Peace of the City (Solivan), 141–​42 Segovia, Fernando, 213–​14 Segurá, Andres, 305 Sells, Heather, 60 SEPI (South Eastern Pastoral Institute), 36

Sepúlveda Treviño, Leonardo, 136–​37 Serrano, Andrea J., 201 Seventh Day Adventists, 56–​57, 176–​77 Seymour, William, 131, 133 Shellnutt, Kate, 60 Shining Path (El Sendero Luminoso), 249–​50 shoe stores (zapaterias), 245 Silva Gotay, Samuel, 47–​48 Simón (Maximón) (saint), 231 Síntora, Fidencio Constantino (El Niño Fidencio), 135, 227, 231 Sisters of Mercy, 94 slavery Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, 69–​71, 73–​74, 80–​82 Catholic Church and, 32–​34 Cuba, 32–​34, 36–​37, 39–​40, 68, 69–​7 1, 72, 73–​75, 79–​80 healing traditions, 233 Protestantism, 117–​18 US, 50, 164–​65 Smith, George A., 157 Smith, Joseph, 164–​65 Smith, T. L., 87 So Far From God (Castillo), 305 social contagion theory, 285 Social Gospel, 262 Social Justice and the Latin Churches (translated by Lara-​Braud), 270–​7 1 Society of the Third Order of St. Francis, 198 Sojourners, 270–​7 1 Soldado, Juan, 227 Solis, Mario, 192 Solivan, Samuel, 141–​42 Sonny (Arguinzoni), 289–​90 South Central Organizing Project (SCOP), 269–​70 South Eastern Pastoral Institute (SEPI), 36 Soviet Power, The (Dean of Canterbury), 51–​52 Soviet Union, 31 Spanish Chapel (Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal; ; La Milagrosa), 54–​55, 57 Spanish Inquisition, 70, 183 Spanish missions, 15–​19 Hispanicization, 17 indigenous resentment and rebellion, 16–​17 secularization of, 17 women, 18

372   Index Spanish-​American Outreach, 265–​66 Spanish-​American war (War of 1898), 36–​37, 46, 47, 54, 74–​75 SpearIt Maldonado, Edward, 173 Spinoza, Baruch, 283 Spirit, Pathos and Liberation (Solivan), 141–​42 Spiritism (Espritismo), 43, 47, 73–​74, 77–​78, 79–​80, 81, 287 Spiritualists and Spiritualism, 52, 135 St. Augustine Presbyterian Church, 265 St. Basil’s Cathedral, 199 St. Basil’s Church, 258, 269 Stalin, Joseph, 51–​52 Stavans, Ilan, 280, 291 Stevens-​Arroyo, Anthony, 259–​60, 299–​300 Strenski, Ivan, 187–​88n.27 Suarez, Tony, 144–​45 Swaggart, Jimmy, 323

T Talamantez, Josephine, 192 Tañon, Ricardo, 138, 141–​42 Taylor, William, 251 TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network), 322, 323–​24 technology of the self, 187–​88n.27 Ted (LDS elder), 161–​62 Teen Challenge outreach, 141, 287, 290 Telemundo, 324 Temazcal Tonantzin, 307–​8 Temple University, 56–​57 Templo Espiritualista, 201–​2 Templo Fe, 65–​66n.45 Ten Years’ War, 74 Tenayuca, Emma, 263, 275n.23 Texas Council of Churches, 270–​7 1 Theology Today, 270–​7 1 Third Convention, 157 Third World Strike, 203n.9 Thornton, John, 80–​81 Time magazine, 110, 130–​31, 144–​45, 265, 281–​82 Tinker, George, 49 Tlaxcala, 310 Tonantzin, 244 Tonatiuh, 310–​11 Torres, Camilo, 199–​200

Torres, Cheo, 303–​4 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 19, 36–​37, 111, 155–​56 Treviño, Roberto, 260 Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), 322, 323–​24 Trinity College, 114–​15 Trump, Donald, 4–​5, 29, 95, 109–​10, 144–​45, 261, 272–​73, 285–​86, 329–​30 Tullis, F. LaMond, 157, 159–​60 Tweed, Thomas, 38, 40–​41

U UCKG (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God; Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus), 143, 324, 337–​38 UCLA (University of California–​Los Angeles), 172–​73 UMAP (Military Units to Aid Production) labor camps, 76–​77 Umbanda, 233 Unaccompanied Children’s Program, 35–​36 Union Theological Seminary, 141–​42 United Farm Workers (UFW; National Farm Workers Association), 25, 27–​28, 199, 263–​64, 271 United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), 269–​70 United Presbyterian Church USA (UPCUSA), 265, 271 Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, 143 Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG; Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus), 143, 324, 337–​38 University of Arizona, 160–​61 University of California–​Los Angeles (UCLA), 172–​73 University of California–​Riverside, 172–​73 University of New Mexico, 303–​4 University of Southern California (USC), 172–​73 Univision, 324 UNO (United Neighborhood Organization), 269–​70 UPCUSA (United Presbyterian Church USA), 265, 271 Urrea, Teresa (Santa de Cabora), 135, 227, 231, 305 US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 94–​95, 286

Index   373 US Census Bureau, 5–​6 US Civil War, 22–​23, 50 US Conference of Catholic Bishops, 29, 92–​93 USC (University of Southern California), 172–​73 US-​Mexico War, 15–​16, 19, 111, 230

Virgin of Tepeyac, 209. See also Virgin of Guadalupe Vizcarra, Manuel, 139–​40 VO (Victory Outreach), 140–​42, 143, 235, 284–​ 85, 289–​90, 341–​42 Vodou (Vodú), 79, 80–​81, 233

V

W

Valdez, Adolfo C., 132, 234 Vallejo, Jody Agius, 346 Valverde, Efrain, 139 Varela, Felix, 33 Vargas, Daisy, 247–​48 Vargas, Nylka, 172 Vargas Vila, José María, 50–​51 Vasconcelos, José, 209, 212–​13 Vásquez, Manuel, 213, 248, 284 Vatican II, 42, 199–​200, 263–​65 Vega, Antonio, 50 Vega, Bernardo, 50–​51, 52 Veintiuna Divisiones, 233 Verde Islam, 172–​73 Vesey, Denmark, 203n.8 Via Crucis (Way of the Cross), 23–​24, 196–​97, 337 Viceroy gang, 289–​90 Victory Outreach (VO), 140–​42, 143, 235, 284–​ 85, 289–​90, 341–​42 Victoryknoll Sisters, 26 Vietnam war, 258–​59 Villafañe, Eldín, 141–​42, 210 Vineyard Churches, 140–​41 Virgen de Regla, 76 Virgin of Chiquinquirá, 226–​27 Virgin of Guadalupe, 3–​4, 5, 6–​7 Antorcha Guadalupana, 246 Conchero dance tradition, 310 ethnoracial identities, 342–​43 healing traditions, 226–​27 machismo and, 280–​81 mestizaje, 209 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 20, 21–​22, 23–​ 24, 27–​29, 153 pilgrimage, 243–​46, 252–​53 popular Catholicism, 196–​97, 201–​2 Protestants, 116 religious imagination theory, 300

Walsh, Brian, 35–​36 Wanzer-​Serrano, Darryl, 58 War of 1898 (Spanish-​American war), 36–​37, 46, 47, 54 Way of the Cross (Via Crucis), 23–​24, 196–​97, 337 Weber, Max, 318 Welfare Reform Act, 92–​93 Wenski, Thomas, 42–​43 Weyler, Valeriano, 74 Whalen, Carmen Teresa, 54–​55 “What Is La Raza?” (Lara-​Braud), 271 Wilkerson, David, 287, 288, 289, 291 Williams, Philip J., 90–​91 Wimber, John, 141 “witch crazes,” 75 witchcraft (brujeria), 72, 76, 80, 232, 287, 296 Woman Who Glows in the Dark (Avila), 305 women, 3–​4 Afro-​Cuban Catholicisms, 72, 83 Communities Organized for Public Service, 28 curanderismo, 230–​31 internal politics of participation, 345 Islam, 176, 177, 187n.25 Las Hermanas, 26 LDS Church, 151–​52 leadership among Mexican-​descent Catholics, 18, 21–​22 machismo and, 279, 280–​81, 282–​83 mestizaje, 210, 211, 216 Mexican-​descent Catholics, 21–​22, 26 Pentecostalism, 142, 147n.47 place-​based religious expression, 197 popular Catholicism, 197, 201–​2 Prosperity Gospel, 329 Puerto Rican Christianities, 55–​57 Spanish missions, 18 sustaining Afro-​Cuban devotions, 83 Yaqui mythology, 301–​2

374   Index Word of Faith, 120, 140–​41, 235 World War II, 22–​23, 24

X X, Malcolm, 171

Y Yaqui, 301–​2, 307 Ybarra, María de Jesús, 26 Yoido Full Gospel Church, 143

Young, Brigham, 154, 155–​56 Young Lords, 58, 266, 272–​73

Z Zaid, Saraji Umm, 172 zapaterias (shoe stores), 245 Zavela, Martha, 157–​58 Zumarraga, Juan de, 244 Zúñiga, María, 28–​29