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Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 65–79, 2012

My Space/Mi Espacio: Evangelical Christianity and Identity Politics in Mexico AMALENDU MISRA Lancaster University, UK

This article analyses evangelical identity politics and more generally religious competition in contemporary Mexico through a specific focus on the construction, dissemination and imagination of space. The imagination and occupation of a particular space determines the specific identity of its followers. Since the identity–space construct is primarily anchored in the political, religious, economic and funerary contexts in most societies, these four rubrics are woven together to assess of the evangelical Christian space–identity construct. The paper furthers research on religious space creation, dissemination and demarcation amongst evangelical Christians in Mexico, and it emphasises the extent to which the strategies of spatial expansion can lead to rigorous intra-faith competition and conflict. Keywords: Catholics, conflict, evangelical Christianity, evangélicos, Mexico, space.

Men do not just house themselves: they also house their gods. (Smart, 1977) Those who share a space share an identity. (Mackenzie, 1978) Once a distinct mono-religious society, the Mexican religious context is now much more varied (Blancarte and Casillas, 1999). Although Roman Catholicism continues to be the predominant religion, there has been an exponential growth of evangelical Christianity across the country (Giménez, 1996; Dow, 2005; Ruz, 2005). While this is a countrywide development, in some provinces like Chiapas the number of evangelical Christians has increased from 2 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2010 (Coleman, 2007; Noticia Cristiana, 2008; Steigenga and Cleary, 2008). This rise is due primarily to conversion to various evangelical groups, but also to the presence of a sizeable number of second, and in some instances third generation believers (Bowen, 1996). There already exists a wealth of literature on Latin American Pentecostalism and evangelical Christianity in Mexico (Stoll, 1990; Bastian, 1994; Bowen, 1996; Dow, 2005). This study does not aim to retell the history of Pentecostalism in Mexico or its trials, tribulations and successes. What it seeks to highlight is the manner in which the followers of various evangelical Christian denominations imagine and implement their © 2011 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2011 Society for Latin American Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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Amalendu Misra own specific autonomous identity, or ‘space creation’. It is this particular focus on space that provides a new and original perspective on evangelical Christianity in Mexico. An intimate and evolving relationship exists between space and religion (Eliade, 1987; Lefebvre, 1992). Therefore, the best way to understand the dynamics of a religion or a religious community is thus to explore and examine: the way in which a set of issues relating to places (generally, concrete practices of occupation and management of spaces) takes its place in the belief system that organises the relations of a given religious community to its past and to its future. (Hervieu-Léger, 2002: 100) The notion of space can be very abstract, fluid and all encompassing (Lefebvre, 1992). In an analysis such as this, there is a natural tendency for one to instantly associate the question of space in a theological context. I will not discuss the theological divide between Catholic Christianity and other evangelical Christian denominations. Explaining the basis of the spiritual divide between Catholics and evangelists is not the objective of this study. Instead, I engage with the issue of space and territory as imagined, occupied and controlled by the Protestant evangelical Christians (evangélicos). I am primarily concerned with the conceptualisation of space in relation to socio-religious experience and imagination. It is, to borrow a phrase from Mircea Eliade, a non-homogenous religious space (Eliade, 1987: 17–33) that this study seeks to examine and explore. The spaces in this context encompass both ‘concrete physical spaces’ as well as ‘abstract imagined spaces’. Within the context of ‘concrete physical spaces’ this study includes specific sites constituted by architectural and liturgical means; such as places of worship for the collective performance of rituals or leisure. The other aspect of this examination is the ‘abstract imagined spaces’, such as the notion of group identity, the place of the collective in the larger socio-political process, and the very nature of the citizenry that inhabits these spaces. Since nonhomogenous religious space is a dynamic process and requires the management, spatial movement and behaviour of believers within that particular religion and in relation to others (Park, 2004: 2), this study also looks at ways through which this negotiation ` process takes place between evangelical Christians vis-a-vis their numerically superior Catholic counterparts. Since articulation of spatial identity resides at the heart of any self-defining community (Eliade, 1987), the choice of focus on identification, distribution and occupation of religious space allows us to explore what role religion has played in shaping particularised forms of identity. In a plural society marked by communal divisions, any demarcation of space between groups often proves problematic (Deshpande, 1998; Misra, 2004). While taking a spatial approach to conflict generation, this article evaluates the nature and character of current Catholic and evangelical communal divide and discord. This article draws on fieldwork (July to September 2009 and August to September 2010), among recent converts to various evangelical Protestant Christian faiths in Mexico. The research carried out in the summers of 2009 and 2010 used participant observation. The author conducted extensive lead interviews with evangelical Christians (60) belonging to several walks of life, from varied economic strata, and from across five Mexican provinces (Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Veracruz and Quintana Roo). Although the focus of this study was evangelical Christians’ imagination, interpretation and occupation of religious space, the investigation also took note of the Catholic populace’s overall reaction to its counterparts’ space creation.

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© 2011 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2011 Society for Latin American Studies Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 31, No. 1

Evangelical Christianity and Identity Politics in Mexico The study investigated a wide range of questions on: a) the religious basis of space creation; b) imagination of that new space by followers of a given religion; c) situating the sense of the self within that context; d) the space, location and architecture of the new churches; e) the success behind evangelical Christianity’s spatial expansion; and f) the inter-communal divide over this new religious territorialisation.

Situating Religion in Mexico The Mexican state has had a complex take on religion. While the politics and the political process remained firmly grounded in the secular space, society, by contrast, seldom moved from the religious space it occupied. If anything, the society and citizenry resolutely refused to give up their religious space whenever the political process made such demands. The steadfastness of these two parties often created a tense, brutal and dramatic relationship (Metz, 1994: 61). Mexico moved to a state of civil war in the late 1920s when the two main actors (the state and the Catholic Church) tried to defend their own notion of public space in this bipartisan conflict. The Cristero War (1926–1929), as it is widely known, was an attempt by conservative Catholic forces to invalidate certain anti-religious laws included in the Constitution of 1917 (Krauze, 1998; Beezley and Meyer, 2010). The Constitution serves as a milestone in the study of religious/communal space demarcation in Mexico. Until this particular moment both State and Church exercised competing authority over the public space (Casillas, 1996). In fact, Article 130 of the Constitution, made it abundantly clear that the historic ‘principle of separation between State and Church is a directive’ under which ‘Churches and any other religious groups shall be subject to the Law’. Moreover, the said Article also specified, ‘only the Congress of the Union is empowered to legislate in matters of public worship, churches and religious groups’. (Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, 2010) Following the introduction of the 1917 Constitution, the Mexican state was able to appropriate the physical space (all the land and movable properties) held until now by the Catholic Church. Other areas of state encroachment into the space hitherto held and controlled by the Catholic Church included the state’s imposition of control over cultural and educational fields. Furthermore, under the provisions of this new constitution, the state assumed the right to provide secular and humanistic public education by replacing the earlier religious education. It prohibited the clergy from participation and occupation of the nation’s political space. This space demarcation implied that the clerics could not vote, contest for political office or occupy one. As a further step towards their complete disenfranchisement from the state-held public space, the Constitution made it illegal for Catholic priests, bishops or clergy to own any physical space (landed property). In its drive towards space demarcation, the state also made it punishable under law if the clergy were to appear in secular public spaces in their religious regalia. In sum, banishment of the religious from the public space was total under the provisions of this new constitution. While the 1917 Constitution firmly established a rigid separation of power and authority between the Church and the State, Mexican society nonetheless remained extremely religious. The majority of citizens in Mexico stayed committed to their own specific religious identity – while some remained confused over the boundary setting between State and Church, others simply ignored it. In 1992, following half a century of © 2011 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2011 Society for Latin American Studies Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 31, No. 1

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Amalendu Misra Table 1.

Religious Profile of Mexico, 2000 Census Religious groups

1 2 3 4 5

Roman Catholics Protestants No religion (agnostics/atheists) Other Unspecified

Percentage 76.5 6.3 3.0 0.3 13.8

´ ´ Source: INEGI 2000 (Institutio Nacional de Estadistica, Geografia, e Informatica, 2000) Catalogos de Codifacion. ´

this uneasy relationship, the Mexican state was compelled to revisit the issue of division and demarcation of space between the Church and the State. The Constitutional Reform of 1992, initiated by President Salinas de Gortari, is a watershed in the politics of religion in Mexico (Gill, 1999a: 761–762). As a part of this root and branch reform undertaking, the 1992 Constitutional Reform granted all religions and those professing it, equal legal status, and paved the way for religious institutions to limited property rights, lifted the restrictions on the number of priests in the country, and did not prosecute priests for wearing their religious regalia in public. This new recognition of the religions and subsequent space creation (albeit limited) for them was at once revolutionary as well as groundbreaking. It not only brought the mainstream Catholic Christianity into the public space, but also facilitated all Protestant evangelical faiths to claim autonomous spaces within the Constitution as well as in public life. Subsequently the federal government made provisions for listing separate faiths and the position they occupy in the 2000 census (see Table 1). The identification of groups around the question of religious affiliation suggests the space-allocation policy of the Mexican government. It allowed the citizens to officially claim their own specific religious identity. This mode of affirmation, one could argue, further consolidated the religious space recognition initiative: in terms of assessing the religious profile of the citizenry as well as the percentage of the total population which each group occupied. Such religion-identity and space-territorialisation markers, as I will explain later, has been fundamental in coalescing Protestant evangelical Christians, and has proved instrumental in their space creation drive more than for any other religious group. If anything, the constitutional guarantees of their right to a specific identity has led them to define, introduce and claim various forms of space, both in the spiritual as well as in the physical realm.

Conversion of the Self Any sustained examination of the question of evangelical Christian religious space must start with the nature and character of that space acquisition. In contemporary Mexico, an overwhelming number of evangelical Christians acquire that identity through religious conversion. Very often it is a horizontal process whereby the faith is transmitted from person to person (Dow, 2005: 829). Although a bilateral undertaking, the decision to convert is based very much on individual choice. Yet, questions such as ‘What motivates this flight towards a new religious space?’ and ‘What are the underlying push and pull factors that govern such decision making process?’ are fundamental to this discussion.

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Evangelical Christianity and Identity Politics in Mexico In an overwhelmingly religious society the nature and character of a given faith may prove to be both emancipatory as well as destructive (Steigenga and Cleary, 2008). An individual would carry on practicing, believing or simply go on living with his/her life if the religion that surrounds his/her everyday life is positive and not stifling (Durkheim, 1976). However the desire to seek out a new religious self (in societies with long established religions and religious systems that permeate all walks of an individual’s social life) is inherently linked to that given individual’s dissatisfaction with the overall question of identity that this particular religion addresses. This lack of self-fulfilment and sense of being incomplete, it is often argued by social psychology, is the root cause of such identity changing desires and decisions (Bloom, 1990; Brown, 2000). The decision to convert to a new religion then may be motivated by a profound desire to achieve a brand new identity (Giménez, 1996; Le Bot, 1999; Steigenga and Cleary, 2008). There are very few opportunities available to bring about a complete transformation in a given individual’s personal identity. An overwhelming number of my respondents, in this study, revealed that their resolve to leave the Catholic fold and join the evangelical Christians was undertaken as a means to achieve a new fulfilling communal spiritual and personal identity. For those embracing this new identity, evangelical Christianity was a powerful medium for self-transformation in the sense that although it did not allow external physical transformation of the self, it nonetheless facilitated the chances for an evangélico to reach out and interact with a societal order where he/she felt anchored and developed a sense of communal bond and belonging. New converts often declare their ability to achieve a sense of self-actualisation, heightened self-esteem, positive sense of the self and an overarching sense of belonging within that new religion. As many social psychologists would suggest, it is the wish to regard themselves favourably (Goffman, 1963; Eiser and Smith, 1972), that motivates them towards seeking a new religious identity. Assessed in the context of space, such spatial moves towards a new religion can be argued as ‘attempts at articulating the physical-material and mental-imaginative aspects of a new social space’ (Deshpande,1998). Consequently, such articulation, one can argue, is very much reflected in an evangélico’s religious space identification and demarcation process interpreted as axis mundi or ‘our world’. This new form of identification can be manifested in various contexts and situations. However, it is most potent and amply mirrored in that person’s interpretation of religious symbols, naming of separate religious markers and subsequently an innate desire to occupy that particular space as against another available religious space. This form of exploration of new identity: very often occurs within one’s own religion; and very often one branches out into the insights and customs of other when one’s own traditions seems to be in some way lacking. (Smart, 1977: 293)

Architecture and Identity Religious movements have tried to reach out to their adherents through the creation of certain physical spaces. Their ‘greatness’ is often expressed in grand designs and monumental buildings. Popular imagination has focused around the belief that the greater the physical structure of the church, gurudwara, mosque, stupa, synagogue or temple, the greater is the power of that religion. These grand temples of worship © 2011 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2011 Society for Latin American Studies Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 31, No. 1

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Amalendu Misra are edifices ‘intended for a spectator: they are meant for another man’s [sic] eyes and mind’ (Bazin, 1958: 427). The architecture of the Catholic Church, according to some critics, represents an elaborate system of customs and institutions (Jordan, 1979: 128). Many converts to evangelical Christianity in Mexico affirm this view. An elaboration of the church architecture and a dim view towards the faith (that it stands for) is again confirmed by those who are conscious of the history of the Catholic Church and its overall relationship with the laity in the country. According to great many evangélicos, ‘the Catholic Church building instead of projecting a welcoming space does something to the contrary; it represents the summation of orthodoxy, corruption and militancy of Catholicism’ (Jordan, 1979: 128). This particular view becomes apparent when one compares the spatial nature of the Catholic church building and that of its evangelical Christian counterparts (Lehmann, 1996; Coleman, 2007). Physically, at least, the contrast could not be any starker. Often situated between rows of houses in the barrios, evangelical Christian church buildings are inconspicuous because of their simple, austere and welcoming architectural design. They are everything that the Catholic church buildings are not. They are indeed conspicuous by the very absence of any heavy religious memorabilia. From an external visual perspective they rarely exude overwhelming religious symbolism. The design of the new evangelical churches, in most instances, is in direct contrast to the existing Catholic church buildings. In the ruins of Mitla, Oaxaca, is an old and imposing Catholic church (16th century Church of San Pablo) built by early Spanish conquistador on top of a razed Indian pyramid. This physical space is at once representative of the triumph of Catholic Christianity as well as vanquished Indian belief. I travelled to the place in the company of a Mexican family (consisting of a highly educated mother and equally educated daughter) (Interview with Violetta Hernandez Granja, 2009). The mother happened to be a recent convert to the Church of the Latter-day Saints. The daughter, though born and brought up in a Catholic environment, did not have any particular religious preferences. Given that the Catholic church building occupied a central position in that particular archaeological site, I thought the family would join me in going into the church. While the daughter did not have any objection to entering that space, the mother steadfastly refused to join us, and instead sat outside under a blazing midday sun. Asked later, as to why she (the mother) did not join us, she went on to describe her inability to come to terms with the oppressive architecture of the Catholic Church and all the wrong things it represented through its appropriation of other religious spaces (Interview with Violetta Hernandez Granja, 2009). It was a sentiment uncannily similar to that highlighted by Georges Bataille in his interpretation of such architecture, when he suggested that ‘it is always representation at its most dictatorial ideological idealism; the covering of the site of a crime with a pile of rocks, the hiding and folding of death in discrete monuments, temples, and churches’. (Hollier, 1989: 31) Quizzed as to how her own church differed from this recently visited structure, she invited me to the church of the Latter-day Saints she attended in Oaxaca City. The church in question was situated between rows of small businesses – flanked by a tobacconist on the left and a travel agent on the right. The church building in its previous incarnation was a business premise. The space it now occupied did not have any heavy religious identity. The only way one could distinguish it from other business houses was a small neon sign that declared its identity as a church of the Latter-day Saints. The religious socialisation that I encountered within its physical space was both startling and revealing. The priest in this church was obese, so was his wife and his

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Evangelical Christianity and Identity Politics in Mexico two teenage children. He wore ordinary dress and had no religious regalia. He kept drinking copious glasses of a soft drink and munched mouthfuls of potato crisps while talking about the Bible and the way to a righteous life. Those in the congregation sat on tin chairs and stood in the corners, and alternately burst out laughing and raised their voice in praise of the oration as the situation demanded. It was an open and relaxed space. This religious congregation could easily have been a weekend party. Later I was to witness a similar informal atmosphere in many evangelical church services I attended across the five provinces, identified at the beginning. It would appear that the congregation was not conditioned by the rules of sacred space that one is expected to follow while entering a Catholic church building. There was no overt emphasis on following any particular decorum. One need not cleanse and prepare oneself beforehand (as with the Catholic church), in order to enter its premises. Why such apparent disregard for the traditional notions of religious space? While certain ‘rituals seek to shape identities through bids for compliance and/or identification’ (Seul, 1999: 562), it is the absence of these specific sets of rules in another belief system which can prove critical in the facilitation and formation of a particular identity (Dow and Sandstrom, 2001). If we were to stretch this argument further, it would become apparent that it is through the non-observance of any fixed guidelines or strict framework of interaction (as is the case with Catholicism) within that given space that the congregation was affirming its particularised form of identity. Although it appeared informal, it is the very informality of that surrounding physical space and unceremonious conduct, which affirmed a specific autonomous identity among its participants.

´ Catolicos or Evangélicos? Evangelical Christianity in Mexico, to many, is a barrio religion. Very often its spatial identity is intimately linked to low-income neighbourhoods. This, of course, creates tensions in one’s thinking, for ‘we tend to imagine of a slum as an excrescence, a community of people living on the edges of the social margin in perpetual misery’ (Mehta, 2005: 61). By the use of the same yardstick, one consigns those who inhabit this space as footloose, transient and vagrant. In Mexico, a great majority of those living in the barrios share a history of displacement. Their assembly in the barrio is a product of accidents. Once secure in their space, whether it was a rancho (a homestead) or a pueblo (village), their assembly in the barrio has stripped them of their secure sense of the self. If so, being in the barrio is a challenge. How do they relate to this new space? How do they establish the old and secure networks of their pueblos and ranchos in this new and often violent melange? Paradoxically, it is this peculiar geography of the barrio, this marginal existence, and the informal space that helps evangelical Christianity to introduce a separate area for these disparate selves. Very often it is the symbolic as well as physical association to the Evangelical Church that anchors them to a secure spatial identity. The place that unites them could be a corrugated iron roofed congregation room; often no different from another house in the slum. Yet such is the longing to belong, to recreate networks, to find a common language, a common space, that the band of evangélicos proves irresistible to some. Unsurprisingly, it is the non-homogenous religious space of evangelical Christianity in the deprived barrios ‘and among the poverty-stricken indigenous communities across the country’, which ‘gives them an immediacy of hope’ they find lacking in the Catholic Church (Rostas, 1999; Chestnut, 2003). © 2011 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2011 Society for Latin American Studies Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 31, No. 1

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Amalendu Misra While in Mexico the evangelists have literally exploited the old saying that ‘build the church (as a place of assemblage) and people will come’, the Catholic Church has failed to exploit this homily fully owing to various economic, practical and logistical constraints. Many Catholic clergy in the country are exasperated at the lack of progress in facilitating space creation in such locations – often citing the obdurate Catholic Church bureaucracy. Therefore, the Evangelical Church’s presence in the barrio, one could argue, is due to the very absence of the Catholic Church as a provider of a physical–spiritual space. This radical new approach to informal religious space creation by evangelical Christianity has allowed it to poach many erstwhile Catholics seeking a new identity. Using the Lefebreian distinction between ‘representational’ space and ‘representation’ of space (Lefebvre, 1992: 42–44), one could argue that while the Catholic Church building predominantly serves as the ‘representation’ of a religious space, by contrast, for evangélicos, their church doubles as social space to connect (not to be found in Catholic Church buildings owing to innate conservatism across Latin America). It is a ‘representational’ space that is lived. It is the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’ (Lefebvre, 1992: 44). Creation of representational religious space as something cheap and cheerful as well as informal is often lost on the ears of the Catholic Church. For it (the Catholic Church administration), ‘everything has to be grand and magnanimous and therefore initiatives at space creation in the barrios or even in the cities in the form of new church buildings is abysmally low’, lamented one Catholic bishop in the southern province of Tabasco, during the course of an interview (Anonymous Interview, 2010).

Political Economy of Evangelism Empirical evidence and statistical data suggest that Mexico, unlike its other Latin American counterparts (bar Argentina), had no major decisive influence of evangelical Christianity (Gill, 1999: 18) for a greater part of its history. This comparative immunity, however, started to erode from the 1940s onwards and evangelical Christianity slowly consolidated itself over the next four decades. Following on from that consolidation, it is in this current generation that evangelical Christianity has become a decisive force, fast acquiring new converts and new space. The appearance of evangelical churches and the ensuing competition and contest over spaces, according to some observers, is akin to competition over markets (Chestnut, 2003; Ruz, 2005). It becomes apparent if one focuses on the strategy and activism of both Catholic and Evangelical Churches (Bowen, 1996; Steigenga and Cleary, 2008). Many mornings there will be groups of smart young men in black trousers, white shirt and tie, and a bag full of religious literature, waiting for the local buses to take them to the interior; to spread the words of their specific evangelical faith. While this competition over soul and space was initially lost on the Catholic Church in Mexico, it is now fast appreciating the volatility of the religious market space. As with other Latin American Catholic congregations, the Catholic priests in Mexico now include anti-evangélico diatribe in their Sunday sermons. Many of the congregations I attended devoted substantial amounts of time on ways to combat the competitive forces of the Evangelical Church. Apart from usual negative homilies aimed at evangélicos, the priest often prescribed the faithful to openly display their Catholic identity badge (a crucifix or emblem of Maria de Guadalupe). In addition he demanded that the Catholic congregation should spot and ostracise the social space occupied by the evangélicos in their respective

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Evangelical Christianity and Identity Politics in Mexico ranchos and pueblos. As a result, across many villages in the area of focus, one can find signs of hogar Catolica ‘(Catholic household/home)’, often displayed alongside another line of stickers that announces the family’s support for a given political party: amiga de PRI (friends of PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party]), Casa de PAN (House of PAN [National Action Party]), and so on. While this space demarcation discourages religious poaching, it has also come to serve as an important tool to assess the market space. If the fate of religious organisations in occupying and controlling a given market space, in a free-market economy, is dependent on their ‘marketing, sales representative and organisational structure’ (Chestnut, 2003: 14), both Catolicos and Evangélicos would appear to be closely following the rules of that market. They are often even competing to outdo each other in order to establish strategic control over that market. The accidental death of an aquaintance in a remote Veracruz village in September 2010 illustrates the role of the ‘market’. During his lifetime the man did not inhabit any religious space. He was a confirmed non-believer who died shortly after a bar room brawl. But as the Mexican custom demands (a direct influence of the Catholic Church), the family, friends and the immediate neighbours have to keep a vigil on the dead soul for nine days; this, among other things, involves evening prayers in the physical space that the deceased had left behind (in this case the dead person’s room/house) and regular visits by the clergy as well as the laity to that location. In this particular case, given that the man had no faith, no such funeral ceremony would have taken place (the man had a civil burial and the family did not want to engage in the traditional novenario [funeral ceremony]). However, both Catholics and evangelists of the village regularly kept visiting the house while keeping separate time schedules. They not only forced their particularised versions of funerary homilies on the grief-stricken family, but also terrorised them to side with that particular group and demanded that they prevent the other group from coming into the house. This continued for nine days and on the last day both groups fought openly on the village main street. As one critic argues, ‘if the control of the market space is guaranteed by the state, the religious monopolist, like its commercial counterpart, is under no pressure to supply a quality and competitive product’ (Chestnut, 2003: 9). But if the state does not provide any such guarantees, then even a religion with a traditional market monopoly is forced to employ new tactics to retain its monopoly. The competition to occupy the space left behind by the dead then highlights the Catholic Church’s nervousness at losing the market monopoly in the face of stiff competition from its evangelical adversary.

Territorialisation However monopolised or competitive the market space might be, and however hard the market forces try to control it, the complete control of that space eludes whosever tries to monopolise it. Even with the best of conditions no religion can claim complete coverage of the religious, political and cultural spaces in a given society (Hervieu-Léger, 2002: 101). While the followers of any given faith are acutely aware of it they nonetheless never give up their attempt at occupying that space. For a new belief system, faith or religion to establish itself it has to take on new converts; often at the cost of the existing religion. Crudely put, it is a form of poaching that sits ill at ease with the existing faith. This unveils a new process, a whole new area of inter-faith interaction, which can be defined in terms of territorialisation, spatial expansion, and displacement. As, Hervieu-Léger remarks: © 2011 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2011 Society for Latin American Studies Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 31, No. 1

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Amalendu Misra throughout human history, religious groups have been wrenched out of territory by the political or the symbolic balance of power, imposing exile or even forcing them to wander from place to place. (Hervieu-Léger, 2002: 102) The outcomes that Hervieu-Léger has highlighted are amply demonstrated in various inter-religious rivalries in our times. But how prevalent is such rivalry within a single religion? More specifically, do we have something similar occurring within Christianity? A recent study by the World Council of Churches has confirmed that globally intraChristian rows are on the rise and are now an almost everyday affair (The Economist, 2010: 77). If that were so, how is this intra-Christian rivalry played out in contemporary Mexico? The ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinction that often dominates the discourse in highly charged religious divides is fast gaining prominence in the country. The common currency to describe one’s identity in Mexico now resides in the twin phrase of Catolico ´ o Evangélico. ‘Eres un Catolico o Evangélico’ (‘Are you a Catholic or an evangelical ´ Christian’) is now an often heard medium of greeting. While it may appear innocuous in a general day-to-day conversation, the question and the resulting labelling has a deeper underlying message for both parties, as the question tries to situate the space that the other occupies in the overall societal order. Instead of a ‘space sharing’ experience, such introductory greetings result in the establishment of ‘competing spaces’. Consequently, conferring of friendship or hostility is accorded to the other while evaluating this primary religious identity marker. To many Mexicans the presence of and affiliation to a separate belief system within Christianity has little to do with ‘space sharing’ and more to do with the making of ‘counter spaces’ that inherently undermines the pre-eminence of their ‘own space’, i.e. Catholic Christianity.

Geopolitics of the Religious Evangelical Protestant Christianity, as noted earlier, has a long established history in Mexico. A major part of that history is a history of adaptation with the mainstream. Similarly, the majority of Catholics on their part have been largely accommodating towards various non-Catholic Christian faiths. This traditional attitude of accommodation, however, has undergone dramatic change in recent years. Once a tolerant community, Catholics, it is suggested, are turning hostile in their attitude and relations with the evangelical Christians (Blancarte and Casillas, 1999; Bonner, 1999). The evangelical Christians’ complaint of immense intolerance on the part of their Catholic counterparts has assumed an everyday occurrence across the length and breadth of the country. While this intolerance can manifest itself in a wide range of contexts and situations, it is very often expressed in relation to the evangélicos’ demand for separate entitlement to actual physical space. In rural Mexico, where traditional communal landholding is a norm, an evangélico seeking his own separate physical space in terms of agricultural land can be a potentially explosive situation. A case in point is Chamula – a small village in the southern province of Chiapas. An overwhelmingly indigenous village, nearly half of its population of 60,000 converted to evangelical Christianity in the 1990s. This new belief system not only introduced a new religious space by way of construction of new evangelical churches in an erstwhile Catholic-dominated socio-religious space, but also gave momentum to the evangélicos’

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Evangelical Christianity and Identity Politics in Mexico demand for separation from the communally held agricultural land. For the Catholics, the disintegration of the socio-religious space as well as the demand for division of communal agricultural space was a step too far. To counter this contest over space, the local Catholic authorities ostracised the evangélicos and expelled them from the village. Denial of separate space and eviction from the traditionally held space eventually forced the evangélicos to seek out an alternative space. In spite of the intervention by the administration of Pablo Salazar Mendicuchia (the first elected evangelical governor in Mexico) for a possible compromise, the catolicos persisted with their demands for the evangélicos’ return to the Catholic fold. The latter steadfastly refused the catolicos’ demand and eventually created a counter space by way of setting up a new community in the outskirts of the second largest city in Chiapas, San Cristobal Las Casas, where they remain to this day. Such faith-based discrimination in communally-held space is assuming widespread currency, especially in the southern half of the country. If anything, eviction of evangélicos from their traditional space by their numerically powerful Catholic counterparts across Mexico, has become a new mode of interaction. The anti-evangélico drive usually follows a familiar pattern. It starts with disinheriting them from communal crop-land rights (under the traditional ejido [space-sharing] system), denying them governmental assistance, prevention of their children from attending school and so on. According to many of the victims of this inter-faith discord interviewed by the author, evangélicos are often physically threatened to renounce their new faith by their Catholic counterparts; if the individual, family or group refused to comply with such demands, they were forced out of their homes, ranchos, and pueblos, often by violent means, and, in some instances, the physical elimination of the adversary. Given this catalogue of persecutions, one wonders what is the basis of such intolerance on part of a particular group of citizenry towards their own countrymen and co-religionists? That space is central to evangelical Christianity, and that it is primarily expansionist in nature, and therefore a threat to Catholicism in Latin America as well as Mexico was clearly spelled out by the head of the Catholic Church way back in 1992. In his address to the Fourth General Conference of Latin American Bishops in Santo Domingo in 1992, Pope John Paul II referred to evangélicos as predatory: Like the Good Shepherd you [Catholics bishops of Latin America] are to feed the flock entrusted to you and defend it from rapacious wolves. A source of division and discord in our ecclesial communities are – as you well know – the sects and ‘pseudo-spiritual’ movements whose aggressiveness and expansion must be faced. (Quoted in Gill, 1999: 18–19) Exactly fifteen years later, walking in the footsteps of Pope Paul II, the new Pope Benedict XVI echoed a similar sentiment. According to Pope Benedict XVI: These new movements and community of Pentecostal Churches in Latin America not only had no tradition and no doctrine for human development but they were only interested in aggressive expansionism, which must be confronted. (Pope Benedict XVI; quoted in Noticia Cristiana, 2007) While both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI would appear to have outlined the expansionist threat of evangelical Christianity, some of their followers, one could argue, have taken on the responsibility of preventing this space accumulation – by using every possible means. © 2011 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2011 Society for Latin American Studies Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 31, No. 1

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Amalendu Misra From a Catholic power perspective, space sharing with evangelical Christians is not an accepted method of interaction. For the bulk of the Catholic populace, evangelical Christianity is not only a counter force that undermines the mainstream Catholic religion, it is also deeply problematic owing to its potential to break up the socio-cultural and economic space (Dow, 2005: 836). While Mexico is a secular state with no state religion, a lot of Mexicans associate their state’s primary identity with Catholicism. That default position, in recent years, has been used to prepare a discourse that not only denies any space to non-Catholics (read evangélicos) but also surreptitiously tries to catholicise it. For instance, the Mexican Catholic Church is vigorously pursuing a public discourse that portrays evangelical Christians as de-nationalisers, propagators of an alien faith, and destroyers of national values and civic duties (Gill, 1999: 19). Such negative portrayal is often anchored in both the spiritual as well as the physical context. For the Catholics, by opposing and denying the supremacy of Catholic Church and its spirituality, the evangélicos have naturally sided with the ‘evil forces’ and consequently inhabit an evil space. Voicing their concern against the contamination and abuse of the religious space, many bodies have even called for legal action against some of these sects/faiths. A case in point is the demand of the anti-cult group, The Christian Institute of Mexico, for stripping of Millenarian La Luz Del Mundo of its legal status as a religion (Garma Navarro, 2004). In spite of these accusations, evangelical Christianity has revitalised the Mexican political space (Fortuny Loret de Mola, 1989), promoting political freedom without appearing overtly political. Seen in that framework, it keeps the traditional power holders from reproducing the redistributive system that gave them their power (Dow, 2005: 842). Some two decades ago, a study stressed evangelical Protestantism’s potential to promote political transformation in Latin America (Martin, 1990). The most clear evidence of this can now be found in the context of electoral politics and religiously – inspired blocking vote patterns.

Conclusion Territorialisation and spatial expansion are common to all faiths and religions. This article examined ways in which a specific religious group relates to, defines, and symbolically constructs and appropriates physical and abstract spiritual spaces. It also argued that in societies with a dominant religion there is often a tendency towards monopolistic occupation and control of the social and cultural space. Given this predisposition, the development of new religions or belief systems naturally leads to competition and conflict over such spaces. While not all expressions of religious identity inevitably lead to religious conflict (Seul, 1999: 563), emergence of new identity formations in a society with a dominant majoritarian belief system can pave the way for the fraying of social cohesion. In situations and contexts where the private and public space is often conflated (as is the case in Mexico), intra-faith rivalry assumes inevitability. The imagined and the actual spaces occupied by the evangélicos in Mexico has attracted widespread bewilderment, resentment and rejection from among immediate co-religionists. Consequently, the inter-communal relationship between Catholics and evangelical Christians is often marked by certain incommensurability. Hence one encounters steady countrywide attempts to segregate evangélicos from the mainstream,

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Evangelical Christianity and Identity Politics in Mexico wholesale condemnation of their beliefs, and open expression of intolerance in a multitude of forms. In one of its studies conducted in 2006, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life argued that Latin America is perhaps the last bastion of a serious Catholic–Protestant divide in our time (Pew Forum, 2006). So far, the Catolico–Evangélico divide over space has contributed primarily to forms of localised violence. However, the majority’s failure to appreciate the plurality of faiths and consequent acceptance of division of socio-religious space may lead to an affirmation of the dour prognosis above.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank A. Dawson, M. Dillon, O. Alekseeva-Carnevali and J. J. Eufracio for their extremely helpful comments and suggestions.

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Interviews Anon (2010) A Bishop of the Province of Tabasco, 23 August, Frontera, Tabasco. Hernandez Granja, V. (2009) Member of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, 18 September, Oaxaca City.


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