members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo who live there. La. Loma (pop. ..... Coleman, Kenneth M., Edwin Eloy Aguilar, José Miguel Sandoval, and.
Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico and Central America
Edited by
James W. Dow and Alan R. Sandstrom
Religion in the Age of Transformation Anson Shupe, Series Adviser
PDF edition
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Copyright © 2001 by James W. Dow and Alan R. Sandstrom
Contents
Tables and Figures
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Preface
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1
Protestantism in Mesoamerica: The Old within the New James W. Dow
2
Evangelicals in The Lower Mayo Valley Mary I. O’Connor
25
3
Religious Affiliation in Indian Mexico Carlos Garma
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4
Demographic Factors Affecting Protestant Conversions in Three Mexican Villages James W. Dow
73
5
Looking for a System of Order in Life: Jehovah’s Witnesses in Mexico Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola
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6
Godparenthood Ties Among Zapotec Women and the Effects of Protestant Conversion Nicole L. Sault
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7
The Maya Pentecost Garrett W. Cook
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1
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8
Reconsidering Protestant Growth in Guatemala, 1900–1995 Henri Gooren
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9
Making One Our Word: Protestant Q eqchi Mayas in Highland Guatemala Abigail E. Adams
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10 Pastors, Preachers, or Prophets? Cultural Conflict and Continuity in Maya Protestant Leadership David Scotchmer
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11 Conclusion: Anthropological Perspectives on Protestant Conversion in Mesoamerica Alan R. Sandstrom
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Index
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About the Contributors
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Tables and Figures
TABLES P1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.1 6.1 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4
Chapters and Cultures Mormon Growth in Mexico Estimates of the Number of Protestants in Mesoamerica Protestants in Mexico in 1970 and 1990 Percentage of Population Who Are Protestants Religious Change in the Mayo Valley, 1980–1990 Religious Affiliation, Etchoropo and Huítvores Ethnic Indicators, Etchoropo and Los Huítvores Occupations, La Loma del Etchoropo and Los Huítvores Religion in the Entire Nation of Mexico Religion in Indian Municipalities Religion in Indian Municipalities in Puebla Religion in the Municipio of Zapotitlán de Mendez Religion in the Municipio of Ixtepec Religion in the Municipio of Pahuatlán Religion in the Municipio of Zongozotla Four Largest Settlements in Municipio of Tenango de Doria Types of Sponsors Required for Zapotec Ceremonies Pastors of Large Churches Pastors of Small Churches Average Annual Growth Rates Statistics of Baptized Members Subtotals and Percentages Protestants as a Percentage in the Total Population vii
xiii 4 5 6 7 28 43 44 45 58 60 62 63 63 64 65 74 127 156 157 193 194 194 195
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Average Annual Growth Rates of all Protestant Churches New Church Organization in San Juan Ostuncalco Church Distribution by Membership Size Church Size Relative to Organization and Leadership Style Church Organization and Leadership Styles Non-Catholic Church/Sect Survey
196 238 240 240 258 260
FIGURES 1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1 10.1
Change in Protestants and Indians Change in Protestants and Poverty Change in Protestants and the Economy Map of the Mayo Area Distances between the Settlements Total Population in the Three Villages Ratio of Younger to Older Men in the Three Villages Number of Baptized Number of Congregations Total Attendance Publisher per Inhabitant A “Genealogy” of the Churches Church Membership of Key Pol Patrilineages circa 1980 Church Membership of Key Pol Patrilineages circa 1992 Church Affiliation of Males in the Pech Patrilineage, 1992 Analytical Framework for Church Growth in Guatemala Types of Ostuncalco Protestants
8 9 10 29 77 78 81 98 99 99 100 155 158 159 160 177 239
Preface
One of the most remarkable occurrences in Mesoamerica1 over the past several decades has been the rapid and largely unforseen turn to Protestantism by significant numbers of people in the region. Millions have abandoned their traditional affiliation with the Catholic Church and have embraced various forms of Protestantism, mostly originating in the United States. Protestantism is not new to Mesoamerica. It has been a presence there since at least the turn of the 20th century. What accounts for this recent unprecedented shift in religious affiliation and what are the social, political, and economic contexts that make conversion so attractive to so many people? Finding answers to these questions is not easy. One thing is certain. Social scientists who are searching for a valid simple explanation or a single cause are bound to be disappointed. But this disappointment should not lead to postmodern despair over the validity of applying the scientific method to increase our understanding of social change. Sensitive personal non-scientific explanations are important in any discussion of religion, and we also feel that the scientific method can provide an overall framework for coordinating views of religious change. Simple single-cause explanations do not embrace the complexity of the phenomena. As discussed in the concluding chapter of this volume, human social life is complex, and providing explanations for shifts in religious affiliation may implicate 1 We use “Mesoamerica” to label the region south of the U.S. border and north of Columbia, South America, instead of the phrase “Middle America,” which is usually used by anthropologists as a label for this region. Our reason is that “Middle America,” especially when coupled with Protestantism, immediately brings to mind the U.S. middle class and often the Midwestern United States where much of fundamentalist Protestantism has its home. “ Mesoamerica” is more commonly used by anthropologists to denote the smaller area within Middle America that was home to the great Pre-Columbian civilizations such as the Aztecs and the Maya (Dow 1996)
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dozens of variables. It is the task of social science to sort out and give weight to these variables and to develop explanations of observed phenomena despite the intricate nature of human behavior and the involuted symbolism that it may engender. The social sciences have been remarkably successful at clarifying social and cultural phenomena and there is no reason to suspect that they will fail in helping us better understand Protestantism in Mesoamerica. The primary goal of this book is to present empirical data on Protestantism in contemporary Mesoamerica and to offer a rich mix of theoretical explanations that can eventually be triangulated to build a more complete anthropological understanding of the role that Protestantism plays in the region. Most of the chapters in the volume are based upon ethnographic fieldwork. Exceptions are Chapter 1 by James Dow and Chapter 8 by Henri Gooren, both of whom use census data or other documentary evidence in their analyses. Each chapter reveals some of the multiple factors that lead people in the region to adopt the new religions and provides a sample of theoretical approaches currently being developed to explain ethnographic findings. Authors share a commitment to empirical research and to the development of increasingly sophisticated theories to explain their data. Taken together, the chapters help the reader both to grasp the scope of the Protestant revolution and to understand the implications of conversion for people’s lives at the local level. Mesoamerica is an economically developing multiethnic region. Perceptive readers will draw a connection between this circumstance and the situation in 16th-century Europe when Protestantism became a serious threat to the hegemony of the Catholic Church. Multiethnic Europe under the influence of developing capitalism chafed under political domination by the church. Are the situations parallel, and if so, can we gain insight into what is happening in Mesoamerica today through study of the Protestant revolution in Europe? In this context the work of Max Weber springs to mind and his theories about Protestantism are discussed and evaluated by several of the authors in this volume (see especially Dow, Chapter 1). As always in works of this type, hidden beneath the discussions lie profound philosophical issues. For example, the question arises about what the role and nature of scientific explanation is in the study of human behavior. Is science even an appropriate framework for studying human thoughts and actions? Do we have free will, or are our thoughts and actions the products of historical and social context? Should explanations be materialist or idealist? Earlier writers were often ambiguous on these and similar philosophical issues. The authors of the chapters in this volume are uniform in their reliance on empirical information and in their search for regularities in social life. These regularities show that people’s behavior is not random and that the goal of explaining social patterns is worth
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pursuing. Overall, the editors agree that the recent advance of Protestantism in Mesoamerica is systemically linked to the penetration into the region of global industrial capitalism. Protestant religions serve to overthrow orthodoxy rooted in the colonial past and provide people with a new identity as they enter into rapidly changing economic and political circumstances. It could also be argued that Protestantism represents a new and more subtle form of domination by the United States over its southern neighbors; however there are various opinions on this latter point. James Dow begins the collection with a chapter that clarifies many murky issues and misconceptions regarding Protestant religion in Mesoamerica. He provides a detailed discussion of the relation between Protestantism and the spread of capitalism and upgrades Weber’s theory relating these two phenomena. He examines several explanations for the rise of Protestantism with statistical measures. In Chapter 2, Mary O’Connor discusses her field research on Protestant conversion among Mayo peoples of southern Sonora. She examines church membership in two communities and stresses individual choice in the conversion process. In Chapter 3, Carlos Garma discusses his ethnographic research among Totonacs in the state of Puebla and develops a classification of indigenous communities based on their religious composition. He groups communities according to the proportions of people claiming Catholic, Protestant, and indigenous religious affiliation. In addition, he helps to correct misconceptions deriving from categories measuring religious affiliation in the Mexican national census. Dow returns in Chapter 4 with an analysis of population factors affecting conversion. In Chapter 5, Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola provides case studies of converts to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico. She sees conversion as a product of the search for order in rapidly changing Mexico. In Chapter 6, Nicole Sault uses her field data from the Zapotecs in the state of Oaxaca to examine the roles of women and godparenthood in Protestant conversion. She finds that, unlike many cases in the region, Zapotec women resist conversion because it disrupts ritual kinship ties that are important for their well-being. Garrett Cook, in Chapter 7, examines conversion among the Maya of Belize and finds that contrary to what one might expect, the turn to Protestantism reproduces traditional Maya social organization. Thus, he stresses continuity and the power of tradition to model responses to change. In Chapter 8, Henri Gooren examines growth patterns of Protestantism in Guatemala from the earlier part of the 20th century to the present. He is able to isolate several factors that correlate with increasing and decreasing rates of conversion. Abigail Adams, in Chapter 9, looks at Protestant conversion among the Maya in the Guatemalan municipio of San Juan Chamelco. She analyzes the complex interaction between Native American
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and Protestant beliefs and practices, particularly in relation to language. Finally, in Chapter 10, the late David Scotchmer reminds us that Protestantism is largely about political power and internal governance by analyzing Protestant conversion among Guatemalan Mayas. He develops a classification of different Protestant sects by how power is distributed and exercised within the group. In the concluding chapter, Alan Sandstrom examines Protestantism among Nahuas of northern Veracruz, Mexico, and discusses some of the key issues brought up by each of the authors whose work is assembled in the volume. Some contributors to the volume take an analytic objective approach to the subject, while others are more humanistic. On the more analytic objective side, many chapters contain extensive statistical data on Protestant religions in Mesoamerica, for example the contributions by Dow (Chapter 1), Gooren (Chapter 8), and Scotchmer (Chapter 10). On the humanities side, some chapters contain accounts of experiences and individuals’ search for meaning that can be read and interpreted as story or text. Fortuny’s informants recount their conversions in Chapter 5, and Adams narrates her own experiences as an anthropologist in Chapter 9. Scotchmer, in addition to his statistical analysis, illustrates his discussion of Maya leadership styles with some intimate portraits of his informants in Chapter 10. In the anthropological tradition, the book mixes humanistic perspectives derived from intimate knowledge of the lives of informants with more holistic perspectives derived from analytical, statistical, and survey results. This book does not offer a single framework for interpreting the data. Each chapter offers its own approach to explain the rise, very recent leveling off, and even decline of Protestantism in Mesoamerica. A summary and critical evaluation of different theoretical approaches appears in Dow’s Chapter 1 and in Sandstrom’s Chapter 11. Table P1 here in the preface shows the location of Sandstrom’s summaries. Between Dow’s introduction and Sandstrom’s conclusion, the chapters are presented in geographic order beginning with the north and proceeding to the south. Thus, the last three chapters deal with the rise of Protestantism in Guatemala. Table P1 also lists the cultures and regions covered by the contributors. The idea for this book began at the 1991 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association with a symposium organized by Dow entitled “Listening to the Word of God: The Impact of Modern Missionaries and Evangelists in Latin America.” In the papers presented in that session, the turn to Protestantism appeared to be wider and more complex than previously recognized. New information from the field was appearing, and much of it could not be accounted for by a single theoretical model. It became clear during the symposium that the phenomenon of large-scale Protestant conversion does not lend itself to easy development of explanatory theory. The anthropological solution was to return to the field data and try to isolate and identify patterns of conversion.
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Ch. No.
Title The Old
Culture
Region
Summary P.
Meso.
Meso.
280
1
Protestantism in Mesoamerica: Within the New
2
Evangelicals in The Lower Mayo Valley
Mayo
Sonora
280
3
Religious Affiliation In Indian Mexico
Indian
Puebla
281
4
Demographic Factors Affecting Protestant Conversions in Three Mexican Villages
Otomí
Hidalgo
282
5
Looking for a System of Order in Life: Jehovah’s Witnesses in Mexico
Urban
Jalisco
283
6
Godparenthood Ties Among Zapotec Women and the Effects of Protestant Conversion
Zapotec
Oaxaca
283
7
The Maya Pentecost
Yukateko
Belize
284
8
Reconsidering Protestant Growth in Guatemala, 1900–1995
Maya
Guatemala
284
9
Making One Our Word: Protestant Q eqchi Mayans in Highland Guatemala
Guatemala
285
10
Pastors, Preachers, or Prophets? Cultural Conflict and Continuity in Maya Protestant Leadership
Mam
Guatemala
286
11
Conclusion: Anthropological Perspectives on Protestant Conversion in Mesoamerica
Nahua
Meso.
Q eqchi
At that time, this collection was only dimly visualized. First, we needed to find out more about the problem of conversion. Sandstrom returned to the field and, as he explains in Chapter 11, he was shocked by what he found. Very traditional Nahua Indians were abandoning ancient beliefs and practices linked to balancing the forces of nature to embrace evangelical Protestantism. How could a field-worker account for such a profound transformation? When asked, the converts replied with answers supplied by the new religion. Suddenly, converts whom Sandstrom had known for many years were talking about their personal salvation or going to heaven, concerns completely foreign to their traditional religion. Sandstrom contacted Dow and suggested that they move ahead with a book to see if researchers who had participated in the first symposium would update and organize their field data to provide a better basis for understanding religious change. Although there were excellent papers on South America by David Knowlton and Rebecca Tolen presented in the original symposium, the editors decided that the book should focus on Mesoamerica, where
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most of the new research originated. Thus, the volume breaks new ground by concentrating attention on Protestant religious growth in Mesoamerica. Sandstrom contacted the participants in the original symposium and he and Dow talked to other researchers who had obtained new field data. Permission was obtained from David Scotchmer’s widow to edit and publish his contribution to the symposium. Unfortunately his untimely passing prevented him from updating his unique study. A colleague of Sandstrom, sociologist Anson Shupe, suggested that the book would make an excellent contribution to the Praeger series, Religion in the Age of Transformation, for which he is an adviser. The manuscript was submitted to Praeger in the summer of 2000. The editors wish to thank Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, Anson Shupe, Jan Scotchmer, Gary Shepherd, Gordon Shepherd, David Maines, and the contributors to this volume for their cooperation, patience, and forbearance. David Oberstar translated the contribution by Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola from Spanish into English. We also want to thank the editors at Greenwood Press for their forbearance. The many colleagues and colleague-informants who participated in the research leading to this volume are acknowledged within by the authors of the chapters. James Dow Alan Sandstrom REFERENCE Dow, James W. 1996 Mesoamerica. In Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. D. Levinson and M. Ember, eds. Pp. 770–776. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files and Henry Holt and Company.
Chapter 1
Protestantism in Mesoamerica: The Old within the New James W. Dow
INTRODUCTION In the last half of the twentieth century, many people in Mesoamerica turned to Protestantism as a new religion. In this chapter, I examine the scope of the turn and look at some of the many theories that explain why it happened. The remainder of this book deals with the details of the turn, and the last chapter, by Alan Sandstrom, offers a further analysis of the phenomenon. The scope of the increase in Protestantism was wide, involving both urban and rural cultures. The available statistics show that it was dramatic and made even more dramatic by the common idea that Latin America was solidly Catholic. Whether the increase is over or whether it will continue is very hard to say at the moment. Newer census data have not yet shown a clear trend for the future. Protestantism is often seen as opposing Catholicism. For example Fortuny (Chapter 5) writes how the Jehovah’s Witnesses challenge modern urban Mexican Catholicism; however, there are many types of Catholicism in Mesoamerica. When examined closely, traditional Indian Folk Catholicism usually has little resemblance to modern Roman Catholicism. Arguments have been made that these traditional religions are derived from pre-Columbian beliefs (Van Zantwijk 1967) and conversely that they are derived from Hispanic, non-pre-Columbian, traditions (Carrasco 1970, 1
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1976). There is a bit of truth in both points of view. Folk Catholicism has origins in both the pre-Columbian and the Catholic Colonial Periods, but it is clear that it is not modern post-Vatican-II Catholicism. Most of these Indian religions have achieved a comfortable accommodation with the Roman Catholic Church. One might call them “Catholic affiliates” rather than Catholic in the modern sense. When looked at closely, the Catholic elements seem somewhat superficial, and modern Catholic doctrine is conspicuous in its absence. Yet Protestantism opposes folk Catholicism as well. Thus Protestantism is opposing many different types of Catholicism, some of which aren’t very Catholic at all. Actually the Roman Catholic influence on native religion has been rather weak since the conquest, but the change to Protestantism has been recent, indicating that Protestantism is less a reaction to Catholicism than a new religious phenomenon. During the Reformation, Protestantism was a theological reaction to Catholicism, but today in Mesoamerica, Protestantism no longer opposes Catholicism in the same way as it did in Europe when it first started. Mesoamerican Protestantism today is a new religious awakening, much of it evangelical, that is in competition with all religions, including sects within Protestantism itself. The desire for religious change in Mesoamerica has not come from a dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church. Comfortable accommodations with the Catholic Church have existed for centuries. In many cases, what seems to be happening is: (1) There is a local need for religious change that manifests itself in a number of ways. (2) A Protestant organization that is sensitive to such manifestations supplies Bibles and other materials that allow a group of local religious thinkers to organize themselves. (3) The local Protestant group grows. (4) The Roman Catholic hierarchy perceives a loss of affiliation and may organize a competing group to recapture lost affiliation. Thus, Protestantism is not opposing Catholicism as much as it is catalyzing needed religious and social change. To understand what drives the movement toward Protestantism we need to understand that need for religious change, a need that may ultimately be met at the end of the period of change by an organized Protestant religious group, a new modernized Catholic group, some other Christian or non-Christian sect, or even a revitalized native religious group. Many explanations have been put forward to explain the growth of Protestantism in Mesoamerica. There seem to be almost as many as there are people writing about the phenomenon. Religious workers, particularly Evangelicals, tend to see it as the working of the Holy Spirit, which is at times mightily aided by the Bible (Cox 1994). Some see Protestantism as an imported religion. However, others have noted its local popular quality (Bastian 1993). A number of explanations are presented in this book. In Mexico, O’Connor (Chapter 2) sees the historical presence of Protestant churches as an important base on which modern Protestantism is
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building (p. 48). Fortuny (Chapter 5) sees Protestantism meeting a need for psychological security in a chaotic world (p. 112). Garma (Chapter 3) accounts for the success of Protestantism among Indians by noting its similarity to traditional supernatural curing (p. 59). I point out that the success of Protestantism is related to demographic changes (Chapter 4, p. 82). Sault (Chapter 6) proposes that Protestantism is succeeding because native people have been alienated from their traditional cultures (p. 137). Cook (Chapter 7) sees Mayan Pentecostalism succeeding because it is consistent both with traditional religious themes and traditional principles of social organization (p. 161). Gooren (Chapter 8) suggests that explanations are complex and that the study of the lives of people under stress will add a great deal to understanding what has caused the increase in the number of Protestants (p. 191). Economic change is mentioned in some explanations. For example, Adams (Chapter 9) links Protestantism to the rise of the market economy in rural areas (p. 228), and Scotchmer (Chapter 10) sees Protestantism as a way that people have of identifying with an economically successful social majority (p. 256). It is difficult to synthesize these and other explanations; therefore in this chapter, I will examine only two explanations that have appeared over an over again and for which there is some objective evidence. The first is that the success of Protestantism in Mesoamerica is linked in some way to its compatibility with native cultures. The most rapid growth of Protestantism has occurred in rural areas with large native populations. The second is that the turn toward Protestantism is linked to the rise of the market economy. Weber (1958) noted its appeal to a rising middle class. Now in Latin American, it is appealing to poorer classes, and we need to understand this new economic connection. MEASURING THE GROWTH OF PROTESTANTISM Although the growth of Protestantism in Mesoamerica is undeniable, there is still some difficulty in quantifying it. For example, Everett Wilson (1997), a historian, estimates that there were 835,000 Evangelical Protestants in Guatemala in 1993; whereas, Clifton Holland (1997), an evangelical social scientist, estimates that there were 2.8 million there in 1995. These figures are barely compatible, because the addition of 2 million Protestants in two years is difficult to imagine. In another example, Holland estimates that there were 5.5 million Protestants in Mexico in 1995; whereas the Mexican national census (INEGI 1992:96–97) recorded only 3.4 million in 1990. These estimates imply an annual growth rate of 10%, which is also hard to imagine. Some smaller Protestant denominations such as the Mormons have shown phenomenal growth rates for short pe-
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Table 1.1: Mormon Growth in Mexico Year
Adherents
Growth
Annual growth rate
1980 1985 1990 1995 1999
241,521 302,000 615,000 735,000 783,000
60,479 313,000 120,000 48,000
4.57% 15.29% 3.63% 1.59%
riods. For example, the Mormon growth rates shown in Table 1.1 are impressive during the five years between 1985 and 1990, but, before and after this, the growth rates were much smaller.1 Yet, the Mormons account for only around 1% of the Protestants in Mexico. Their growth between 1985 and 1990 was the result of an energetic proselytizing campaign directed by their headquarters in Utah and aimed primarily at lower-class urban areas (Shepherd and Shepherd 1998; Knowlton 1996). Although somewhat phenomenal in terms of growth rate, the Mormon sudden advance contributes only a small amount to the overall increase of Protestantism in Mexico and is confined mostly to urban areas. It shows that a church group can produce a short- term phenomenal growth rate by committing resources to missionary activity. As the numbers of any Protestant group increase, growth rates subside to form a less erratic pattern. Clifton Holland is concerned with a larger group of Protestants, the Evangelicals. His estimates are sponsored by, and published for the benefit of, Evangelical missionaries, and the numbers in this case seem to be slightly inflated.2 David Stoll explains how he and other evangelical advisors have made their estimates. To arrive at their figures, church-growth experts first added up the memberships reported by all the denominations in a country. Then they multiplied that figure by another number, to account for unbaptized children, converts attending services but not yet baptized, and so forth. The multiplier was usu1 Sources: Stark 1998, p. 17, Table: 1.3, “Two Years of Mormon Growth, 1978–80” as compiled by Hunter (2000); Deseret News (1996), p. 188–408. “Year-end 1995: Est. population” as compiled by Hunter (2000); Deseret News (1988) p. 114. Graphic: “Church growth: selected countries” as compiled by Hunter (2000); 1999 figures recorded by Hunter ( 2000) from news sources. The average annual growth rate was calculated from a model of exponential growth
at a constant rate between the intervening years:
2 Clifton Holland is Professor of Missiology for the IMDELA/School of World Mission in San Jose, Costa Rica and Director of Church Growth Studies Program for IDEA Ministries. He headed a number of projects to gather information on church growth in Latin America.
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ally 2.5, 3, or 4, depending on “ sociological factors,” whatever those were construed to be. The result was supposed to be the total evangelical community (Stoll 1990:125). Although inflated somewhat toward the high end of possibility, the estimates published by Holland and other church-growth people are still worth looking at to understand the growth pattern and the percentage of the population that is Protestant. Table 1.2 shows Holland’s estimates for the year 1995 along with Stoll’s church-growth (1990:333) data for 1985, which he took from other evangelical researchers. Table 1.2: Estimates of the Number of Protestants in Mesoamerica (The population figures are given in millions)
Country Mexico Guatemala El Salvador Honduras Nicaragua Costa Rica Panama
Percent Protestant 1985a 4.0% 20.4% 14.0% 9.9% 9.3% 7.7% 11.8%
Percent Protestant 1995 5.9% 26.4% 15.9% 16.9% 10.0% 12.1% 15.2%
Change in Percent 1985–1995 + 1.9 + 6.0 + 1.9 + 7.0 + 0.7 + 4.4 + 3.4
Total Population 1995b 93.7 10.6 5.9 5.5 4.4 3.3 2.7
Protestant Population 1995b 5.50 2.80 0.94 0.93 0.44 0.40 0.41
a Source: Stoll (1990:333) from Johnstone (1986:498–499) b Source: Holland (1997)
This table shows that Guatemala had the largest percentage of Protestants. Next came the other Central American countries and, finally, Mexico. However, Mexico, being the largest country, still had the largest number of Protestants. The table also shows that Guatemala had the fastest growing Protestant population. This was probably due to the evangelization efforts noted by Stoll (1990:10–217) and a new Protestant identity for Indians suppressed by Catholic Ladinos for many years.3 Although some of this growth was in urban areas, the bulk of it was in the rural parts of Guatemala.4 One fact is clear from Table 1.2. The growth of Protestantism in Mesoamerica has been impressive. No matter how you look at the statistics, from an evangelist’s point of view or from an anthropologist’s point of view, you see clear evidence that Protestantism has grown rapidly there since 1970. 3 See
4 See
Scotchmer, Chapter 10 Gooren, Chapter 8, footnote 9
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Table 1.3: Protestants in Mexico in 1970 and 1990
State Aguascalientes Baja California Baja California Sur Campeche Chiapas Chihuahua Coahuila Colima Distrito Federal Durango Guanajuato Guerrero Hidalgo Jalisco México (state) Michoacán Morelos Nayarit Nuevo Leon Oaxaca Puebla Querétaro Quintana Roo San Luis Potosí Sinaloa Sonora Tabasco Tamaulipas Tlaxcala Veracruz Yucatan Zacatecas Mexico (nation)
1970 Population Protestant 5 and over a Population a 278,196 1,358 725,015 20,406 106,071 1,106 210,511 13,914 928,930 25,255 200,016 1,021 1,301,140 75,378 1,339,479 41,811 5,820,042 111,957 770,043 10,805 1,868,869 6,797 1,322,091 19,471 991,009 18,544 2,725,357 19,082 3,127,508 54,193 1,923,182 14,982 514,052 22,685 450,015 5,516 1,407,536 47,714 1,688,160 30,177 2,093,224 43,030 397,402 1,447 71,502 6,822 1,058,668 23,431 1,045,167 14,148 918,682 16,188 628,721 63,732 1,212,412 41,911 349,361 8,160 3,171,856 88,031 643,432 21,610 770,079 6,197 40,057,728
876,879
1990 Population Protestant 5 and over b Population b 619,401 6,198 1,425,801 74,873 275,985 7,104 456,452 61,725 1,730,829 107,149 371,876 7,175 2,710,283 440,520 2,118,557 117,593 7,373,239 226,350 1,169,332 38,935 3,396,283 33,845 2,228,077 91,637 1,628,542 75,661 4,584,728 61,066 8,563,538 303,180 3,037,340 52,291 1,048,065 76,624 711,691 13,897 2,750,624 161,858 2,602,479 190,459 3,565,924 153,439 898,199 12,487 412,868 50,428 1,723,605 75,967 1,923,515 45,681 1,596,063 59,788 1,288,222 193,493 1,974,755 152,644 662,426 21,689 5,424,172 404,607 1,188,433 110,377 1,100,898 18,767 70,562,202
3,447,507
a Source: Mexico (1972) Cuadro 17 Pp. 259–270 b Source: INEGI (1992) Cuadro 26 Pp. 299–315
The advance of Protestantism in Mexico has been more objectively documented by the Mexican national census. Table 1.3 shows the number of Protestants in the various Mexican states in 1970 and 1990 as tabulated by the Mexican national census for those years, and Table 1.4 shows the same data as percentages of the population five years old or older. These two tables also show that over this 20 year period there has been an impressive growth of Protestantism in Mexico. They also pinpoint the states in which the growth has occurred. The six states in which the number of Protestants
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Table 1.4: Percentage of Population 5 Years Old or Older Who Are Protestants State Aguascalientes Baja California Baja California Sur Campeche Chiapas Chihuahua Coahuila Colima Distrito Federal Durango Guanajuato Guerrero Hidalgo Jalisco México (state) Michoacán Morelos Nayarit Nuevo Leon Oaxaca Puebla Querétaro Quintana Roo San Luis Potosí Sinaloa Sonora Tabasco Tamaulipas Tlaxcala Veracruz Yucatan Zacatecas Mexico (nation)
Protestant Percentage of Population age 5 or older 1970 1990 0.5% 1.0% 2.8% 5.3% 1.0% 2.6% 6.6% 13.5% 2.7% 6.2% 0.5% 1.9% 5.8% 16.3% 3.1% 5.6% 1.9% 3.1% 1.4% 3.3% 0.4% 1.0% 1.5% 4.1% 1.9% 4.6% 0.7% 1.3% 1.7% 3.5% 0.8% 1.7% 4.4% 7.3% 1.2% 2.0% 3.4% 5.9% 1.8% 7.3% 2.1% 4.3% 0.4% 1.4% 9.5% 12.2% 2.2% 4.4% 1.4% 2.4% 1.8% 3.7% 10.1% 15.0% 3.5% 7.7% 2.3% 3.3% 2.8% 7.5% 3.4% 9.3% 0.8% 1.7% 2.2%
4.9%
Change in Percentage 1970 to 1990 +0.5 +2.4 +1.5 +6.9 +3.5 +1.4 +10.5 +2.4 +1.1 +1.9 +0.6 +2.6 +2.8 +0.6 +1.8 +0.9 +2.9 +0.7 +2.5 +5.5 +2.2 +1.0 +2.7 +2.2 +1.0 +2.0 +4.9 +4.3 +0.9 +4.7 +5.9 +0.9 +2.7
grew the most were Chiapas (by 365,142), Veracruz (by 316,576), México (by 248,987), Oaxaca ( by 160,282), Tabasco (by 129,761), and the Distrito Federal (by 114, 393). The percentage growth looks different. The six states which had the largest percentage growth in Protestants were Querétaro (763.0 %), Quintana Roo (639.2%), Colima (602.7%), Baja California Sur (542.3%), Oaxaca (531.1%), and Chiapas (484.4%). The lowest percentage change in the number of Protestants was in the Distrito Federal (102.2%), which still doubled the number. Two states with large Indian populations, Chiapas (22.1% Indian) and Oaxaca (40.1% Indian), appear in both of these lists of the highest quan-
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Figure 1.1: Mexican States, Change in Percentage Protestant between 1970 and 1990 vs. Percentage Indian in 1970
Change in Percentage of Protestants
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0
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Percentage Indian in 1970
tity and percentage increases. Protestantism has been particularly appealing to native people. The data from the states show a Pearson correlation of 0.550 between the percentage growth of Protestantism and the percentage of Indian population in 1970. Figure 1.1 shows the scattergram. However, an even stronger correlation can be found with economic measures. The rise in Protestantism is more highly correlated with levels of poverty. The Pearson product-moment correlation between the change in percent of Protestants and poverty, measured by the percent of working persons earning the minimum wage or less in 1990 was 0.626.5 The scattergram is shown in Figure 1.2 These correlations provide empirical confirmation of the two explanations mentioned before. The first is that Protestantism has grown because it has a particular affinity to Indian culture. The second is that Protestantism is growing because of economic pressures. Since the Indian populations are poor, it is possible that Protestantism is growing because of the presence of both. The higher correlation with poverty indicates that 5 The percentage of persons earning the minimum wage or less was computed from Cuadro No. 36, Pp. 518–544 in INEGI (1992).
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Figure 1.2: Mexican States, Change in Percentage Protestant between 1970 and 1990 vs. Percent of Persons Earning the Minimum Wage or Less in 1990
Change in Percentage of Protestants
12 10 8 6 4 2 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Percent of Working Persons Earning the Minimum Wage or Less in 1990
economics may be the strongest factor influencing Protestant growth, although Indian ethnicity still may reinforce the appeal of Protestantism. One should not confuse poverty with economic change. Protestantism is not highly correlated with economic change as shown in the low correlation of 0.225 between the change in the percentage of Protestants with the change in the percentage of economically active males.6 The relationship between these two variables is seen in Figure 1.3. A correlation was calculated a second time using absolute values of the economic change in order to see if any kind of change, positive or negative, would be correlated with a change in the percentage of Protestants. The resulting correlation (0.041) was even lower. These results hint at a need for a careful examination of hypotheses that the stresses produced by economic change are responsible for the growth of Protestantism, a popular idea (Annis 1987; Smith 1977). Pro6 Data for men between 20 and 24 years old were used to estimate the degree of economic change. The percents were computed from data in Cuadro 32, Pp. 569–586 in Mexico (1972) and in Cuadro 26, Pp. 299–315 in INEGI (1992).
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Change in the Percentage of Protestants
Figure 1.3: Mexican States, Change between 1970 and 1990 in Percentage Protestant vs. Percent of Men between 20 and 24 Years Old who are Economically Active
12 10 8 6 4 2 0 -10
0 5 -5 Change in the Percentage of Economically Active Males
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testantism is most appealing in the states with the most poverty but not in the states with the most economic change. In the Distrito Federal, for example, one finds great economic growth but the lowest percentage of Protestant growth. Apparently the extension of capitalism to the urban lower and middle classes is stimulating less Protestantism than its extension to the rural poor. Thus, Protestantism is not always functioning the same way as it did in Europe and the United States in previous centuries, when, according to Max Weber (1958), it offered a moral justification for the accumulation of middle-class wealth during periods of economic change. PROTESTANTISM AND NATIVE RELIGIONS Most of the Protestantism that flourishes in the native areas of Mesoamerica is Pentecostalism, a form of Christianity that emphasizes holiness climaxed by a spiritual endowment in which the recipient speaks in an “unknown tongue.” A number of observers such as Garma (Chapter 3) believe that Protestantism appeals because it is closer to native spiritual heal-
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ing traditions than Catholicism. He writes: “As I have shown in Garma (1987) and in Garma (1998), many Indians have understood the similarity between Pentecostal spiritual healing and traditional supernatural curing that invokes the aid of divine elements or entities” (p. 59). The Pentecostal ecstatic experience has parallels in native culture. Worship in traditional native religions often leads the participant, sometimes with the aid of hallucinogenic drugs, to experience a normally unseen vital reality. Garma and others draw a parallel between this and the Pentecostal experience. For example, Ñähñu people in the Sierra of Hidalgo perform rituals which they call costumbres or “flower ceremonies” (Dow 1986). Organized by shamans, these rites are encounters between supernaturals and humans. A costumbre begins with offerings of flowers and food. Later, according to them, the supernaturals arrive to partake of the food and to participate in the festivities. Within a costumbre, the faithful cross a frontier between the normal and the extra normal. They sense the presence of the supernaturals. This experience may appear to be similar to speaking in unknown tongues; however there are significant differences. During the costumbres Ñähñu shamans, and other adepts called zid ni, “flower women,” eat the sacred plant Santa Rosa, have visions, and speak in a trance state; however their speech is intelligible, and they speak about the lives of the people who are there. Their speech is a type of counseling that treats tensions within the community. These soliloquies are comments on the lives of the villagers who attend the ceremonies. The comments reveal tensions and behaviors that may be causing problems. The atmosphere in the costumbre is relaxed and non-threatening. It is open to emotions that often cannot be revealed in ordinary circumstances. As does speaking in tongues, the gift to see into the true lives of people gives the visionary a special sacred status. The parallel between speaking in tongues and native visionary experience is not perfect. One kind of speech is ecstatic and unintelligible, the other is more visionary and meaningful. Both occur in religious ritual and during an altered state of consciousness. One involves contact with the supernatural while the other involves communication with the supernatural. Both involve a belief in the accessibility of the supernatural through ritual. There are common features and there are differences. Protestantism is also successful in native communities because it is clearly anti-Catholic. This anti-Catholicism appeals to the natives themselves because it gives them a more independent identity. It also identifies them with a powerful group in and outside their country, the Americans, and it protects them from accusations that they have become involved in radical Catholic-supported antigovernment movements.
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PROTESTANTISM AND THE EXPANDING MARKET ECONOMY It is clear that the advance of Protestantism coincides with a late period in the arrival of the industrialized market economy to Mesoamerica. The theoretical problem is to understand the causal connection between it and religious change. I use the term “ market economy” in the way that Karl Polanyi (1975) defined it. A market economy is one in which the social mechanisms necessary to maintain the economy are dominated by market exchange. Buying and selling in markets creates all wealth (Polanyi 1975). Everything necessary to maintain human beings is available on markets, and most people must sell something, primarily their labor, on a market to survive. Market economies have been important foundations of social life in Europe and the United States and they are spreading throughout the world. Capitalism is just one ideal form of a market economy. Most modern economies mix this form with varying degrees of socialism, another ideal form. However in Latin America and in many colonized parts of the world, other less marketized economic systems also exist. To connect with the powerful market economies of Europe and northern North America, the economies of Latin America are being reinstitutionalized. Values, customs, and institutions are being brought into line with a total commitment to markets as means of survival. Much of the pressure to reinstitutionalize is coming from the United States and Europe, where the extension of capitalism to the underdeveloped world is regarded as beneficial to everyone. Although Euro-American ideology proclaims that the “free market,” a euphemism for capitalism, is a benefit to all, there are many persons left out of, and suffering from, the process. Mesoamerica is very culturally diverse, and pressure to “ liberalize” the economic system produces different effects in different parts of the region (Otero 1996:3). The imposition of a market economy on poor people can be brutal, yet the poor themselves can also benefit from the new economy. Witness the massive migrations of laborers from Mexico to the United States. Protestantism has a role to play in the expansion of the market economy. The interesting thing is that it is now playing its role among the poor rather than among the wealthy middle-classes as it once did in Europe (Martin 1990). Today peasant religions are responding to the arrival of capitalism in dynamic ways. In the rural and poor areas of Latin America, Protestantism is prying loose economic and religious traditionalism and sending it downstream into the river of history. Max Weber (1958) was the first person to examine seriously the connection between Protestantism and economic change; however, the conditions that he looked at in Europe during the Protestant Reformation are not duplicated in most areas of Latin America today. The rural Indian peasants and the lower urban classes of Latin America now are in differ-
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ent economic circumstances than the middle classes of Europe who took to Protestantism as a way of integrating their social life with capitalism. Weber’s theories need some upgrading to make them applicable to Protestantism in 20th century Mesoamerica. Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958) explains how Protestant theology provided a new morality for entrepreneurial behavior in Europe after the Reformation. The enemy of capitalism was a traditional economic system in which people worked for their own comfort and for other ideals often given to them by the Catholic morals of the times. The idea of moneymaking as an end in itself to which people were bound as a calling was not included in these morals (Weber 1958:63). Something was necessary to provide the capitalist entrepreneur with a holy mandate that could overcome religious strictures against wealth accumulation. Protestantism portrayed the traditional idea of working only to satisfy one’s needs as a distraction from the pursuit of a righteous life (1958:157). Thus, Protestantism enjoined the individual to produce wealth as a calling and not to squander or enjoy it. This supported the necessary mandate that a successful capitalist should reinvest his profit. In another work, The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism (1946), Weber looks at the way in which Protestantism in the United States supported bourgeois capitalism. He sees this as a continuation of the asceticism of European sects, which could portray economic success as a sign of grace. This relationship to bourgeois capitalism solidified the dominant school of Weberian thought in sociology, which came to define the link between capitalism and Protestantism as primarily psychological. In this psychological model, Protestantism is seen as an ethic that morally legitimizes new wealth by giving the hardworking middle-class businessman a feeling that he is following a holy calling. This model does not consider political factors and is particularly applicable to the United States with few political barriers to capitalism. In this psychological model, entrepreneurial activity is affected primarily by one’s attitude toward life and not by the political and legal apparatus in which one lives. The psychological model has also been the source of theorizing about how Protestantism overcomes barriers to development in underdeveloped countries (McClelland 1961). Weber was interested in urban, merchant, bureaucratic, and noble classes and seems to have left peasants out of his theories of religiouseconomic change. Europe’s peasants lived outside the centers of economic development. Weber’s view of the peasantry was rather distant, romantic, and based primarily on the historical sources of his time. He referred to historical, and even biblical, accounts of peasant religions and saw them as tied to nature and concerned primarily with magical ritual. The lot of peasants is so strongly tied to nature, so depen-
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dent on organic processes and natural events, and economically so little oriented to rational systematization that in general the peasantry will become the carrier of religion only when it is threatened by enslavement or proletarianization, either by domestic forces (financial, agrarian, or seigniorial) or by some external political power. (Weber 1963:80) In other words, he saw them as far removed from the dynamics of the moral, religious messages of Protestantism. Although I stand in awe of Weber’s scholarship, I must disagree with his relegation of the peasantry to the undynamic religious status of traditionalists interested only in magical earth rituals. This view is out of line with what we now know about peasant societies. The century that has passed since Weber wrote his treatises has seen more insight into the nature of peasant cultures. Much more is known today about peasants and, in particular, about those of Latin America (Wolf 1955, 1966; Redfield 1956; Foster 1967; Cancian 1972; Halperin and Dow 1977; Ellis 1988). Modern peasants are still subsistence farmers, and many live in tight-knitted communities which encapsulate their social life. However, peasants have participated in religious movements not recognized by Weber, such as the Taiping rebellion in China, the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao movements in Viet Nam, and the Dukabours and Raskolniks in Russia. Even during the Protestant Reformation there was a peasant revolt in Swabia, Germany, that took its humanistic philosophy from Protestant religious ideas. Weber’s attitude toward peasants is difficult to explain. He was simply not interested in them and did not consider them capable of responding to religious change. He put them outside of his theoretical thinking although, as evidence now indicates, their cultures do respond to religious messages in a dynamic way. In The Sociology of Religion, Weber (1963) points out that a religion can be strongly attached to a political system. He calls Yahweh, the Hebrew god, a god of federation. Yahweh brought the tribes of Israel together and unified them (1963:16). Here, Weber was thinking in sociological terms that included both the psychology of the individual and the social institutions in which the individual lived. He recognized that religion can restrain institutions, particularly when the rights of an individual as a member of a polity are determined by the god he or she worships. Peasant people are strongly allied to political groups by their religions. This is particularly true in the Mediterranean region where the first civilizations arose and where “gods” led them in political conflicts. It was also true in the New World. Long before the first Europeans arrived, religious ritual strengthened allegiances to the village and nation in Mesoamerica. Protestantism also tries to free people from religious-political control. Such freedom can be necessary for economic change. During the Refor-
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mation, Catholics did not have the same freedom as Protestants. Their actions were constrained by papal injunctions. The clergy controlled their behavior, whereas Protestants were free from these restrictions ( Weber 1963:251). Protestantism allowed people to pursue economic gain without ecclesiastical interference. Protestantism was a declaration of independence from church control of economic decision making. The Protestant desire for freedom is still echoed in the theologies of many Protestant churches today. The history of the Reformation included many political upheavals, the disestablishment of the Pope, and the peasant revolt in 1525 in Swabia and the Rhineland, all of which should be considered by anyone looking at more modern appeals of Protestantism. There was a large humanistic element in the Protestant reformation. For example, the peasants of Swabia demanded the reexamination of their god- given rights (Göttliche Recht) in the light of the new interpretations of the holy writings.7 Many humanistic thinkers of that time attacked the feudal order supported by the Catholic Church, and they expressed their point of view in religious (Protestant) terms. However, the modern psychological Weberian point of view focuses more on the role that Protestantism plays in liberating individuals from guilt rather than on the way that it liberates them from institutional control, although the two processes go hand in hand. Protestantism can have political impacts without being overtly political. David Martin, who looks at Protestantism in Latin America with an eye to institutional changes, notes this characteristic of Protestantism: Methodism and Pentecostalism are sociologically consonant with democratic polities and provide part of the popular cultural base on which such polities might rest. But they are not themselves basically political, even though Wesley, for example might well produce projects for communitarian reform. (Martin 1990:22) Protestant movements always have had sophisticated interactions with political powers. By the time Methodism and Pentecostalism reached Latin America, they had developed a political style that was nonmilitant and politically apolitical. In other words, they had, and sought to have, political impacts, but they avoided confrontation with the state. This nonviolent, nonconfrontational approach can be seen in the George Fox’s encounter with Oliver Cromwell, the Protestant ruler of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1653 to 1658. Fox was the prophet leading the Protestant Quaker movement. He was a rabid preacher possessed 7 1525 - Bauernkrieg und Reformation, Historische Reßourcen zur Geschichte Bayerns (Bavarian State Ministry for Science, Research and Art), http://www.bayern.de /HDBG /keru02.htm
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by the Holy Spirit, but he promised a nervous Cromwell, the dictator of England at a time of considerable Protestant excitation, that he and his followers would never take up arms. Fox writes: “I did, in the presence of the Lord God, declare that I denied the wearing or drawing of a carnal sword, or any other outward weapon, against him or any man; and that I was sent of God to stand a witness against all violence, and against the works of darkness”(Fox 1903). Since then the Quakers have been pertinacious pacifists actively resisting all forms of warfare. In the United States there was greater freedom from religious oppression, and Protestantism affected the way in which the state and political systems developed. The United States became a country in which religious freedom was tolerated. As Martin (1990:41) notes, Protestant values in the United States supported a more freewheeling egalitarian democracy relative to Europe. Religion and politics are intertwined in the United States as they are elsewhere, but in the United States, religion is less co-opted by the state. Protestantism there often expresses its original rebellious roots. Martin (1990) divides Protestantism into three waves. The first wave was Calvinist Protestantism in the 16th and 17th centuries. The second was Methodist Protestantism in the 19th century, and the third was Pentecostal Protestantism in the 20th century. He is particularly cognizant of the way that Protestantism manifested itself in different parts of the globe, particularly in Europe. He notes that Evangelical Protestantism started in cultural centers and then moved to peripheral areas. It rebels against the center more than other types of Protestantism. In the United States, Evangelical Protestantism moved into the economically underdeveloped South and continues to move into Latin America, which can be seen as an extension of this continental underdeveloped region southward beyond the United States (Martin 1990:275–277). Two segments of this Latin American periphery are the rural poor and the urban migrants, who are in fact mostly the uprooted rural poor. Martin writes that they are vulnerable to Protestantism when the depth of Catholic coverage is shallow (1990:284). However, I have noted that the Catholic coverage has always been shallow there. What is new and what explains the movement of Protestantism into this region is that the institutionalization of the market economy is not yet complete there. In rural and impoverished areas, non-market reciprocal economic exchanges are often important, and ideologically supported political structures often restrict market freedom. Thus, economic factors can also explain the geographical movement of Evangelical Protestantism into the Latin American periphery, where it seems to be needed as a rebellious theology. Rural Protestantism in Mesoamerica looks like a peasant movement rebelling against a central authority. It breaks allegiances and asserts its independence in nonviolent forms. The central authority against which it reacts is sometimes state-supported, but it often reacts against locally sup-
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ported authorities, some of the most important of which are civil-religious hierarchies (Dow 1997; see Chapter 4, p. 4). For example, Jean Pierre Bastian notes that Protestantism in Mesoamerica is a means of offering political resistance to a “Catholic” system (1985). However, the systems to which he is referring, for example Chamula in Chiapas, are not Catholic in any doctrinal sense, as I have noted above. They are actually powerful civil-religious hierarchies, theological political structures that dominate Indian communities. They are Catholic only in the sense that their rituals include images of Catholic saints. Although, the presence of these images maintains a link to the modern Catholic Church without requiring submission to Catholic doctrine, the system has little to do with modern Catholicism, or even 16th-century Catholicism. A civil-religious hierarchy is a type of cargo system. In all cargo systems, families sponsor religious celebrations, usually for local deities represented by images of Catholic saints located in village churches or oratories (Carrasco 1963; Cancian 1965; Dow 1974; DeWalt 1975; Chance and Taylor 1985). Sponsorship can be quite expensive. The religious obligations taken on by the sponsors are typically called cargos, burdens. A family can spend over a year’s income on a celebration. In the less onerous cargo systems, the sponsors may be aided by contributions from other people. Taking and successfully carrying out the obligations of a cargo brings the family much status and prestige in the community. The most onerous cargo systems are civil- religious hierarchies, in which the performance of a cargo brings not only prestige but actual political power. Once a family has completed a number of significant cargos, the male head of the family receives official posts in the village government and eventually becomes an elder who makes important decisions for the village. Civil-religious hierarchies generate political power for wealthier members of a community. They allow them to achieve high status and political power by redistributing their wealth during the religious festivals. The cargo holders then rule the community in various political offices to which only they are appointed by the most senior members of the group the elders. A civil-religious hierarchy is anathema to capitalistic entrepreneurship. It focuses attention on the redistribution of wealth rather than on its productive investment. It allows families that have wealth, mainly in the form of land, to boost their political influence. It suppresses the accumulation of wealth by hard- working entrepreneurs and pushes them into redistributing what they manage to save. A civil-religious hierarchy blocks the local expansion of the market economy. The poorer members of a village cannot use markets to create and reorganize wealth. This would not be a problem if the economy remained subsistence-oriented, for then there would be no alternative investments; however, when markets do become available, especially a market for labor, the problems created by a civil-
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religious hierarchy can become serious. The greatest problems are that the political institutions of a village, not only the economic ones, are embedded in a religiously based hierarchy, and that the hierarchy can perpetuate itself through political coercion. A Protestant theological attack on the religious basis of the hierarchy undermines the system and allows economic change. When a civil-religious hierarchy is present, a village often undergoes a radical change to Protestantism. Protestantism can also react against kin-based power groups such as those mentioned by Cook (Chapter 7), and ethnic groups representing the dominant culture (Mestizo or Ladino) as often has been the case in Guatemala (see Scotchmer, Chapter 10, and Adams, Chapter 9). There are other political systems that interfere with the institutionalization of the market economy such as state-imposed one-party political structures, state-sponsored bureaucracies, and undemocratic unions and cooperatives. These systems do not have links to religion as clear as those of the civil-religious hierarchies; however, they are yielding to Protestantism as well. There have been cases, such as that of the truckers in Zinacantan , Chiapas, (Cancian 1992:199), in which entrepreneurs have successfully participated in a cargo system for a while. It is possible for them to use it to co-opt political power in a community. However, the stratification necessary for such a co-optation can break down under the pressures of the new market economy. Others in the community see the capitalistic accumulation of wealth and cannot continue to act as peasants in a redistributive economy. In Zinacantan, Protestantism was not used to unseat the co-opted hierarchy. Instead the people turned to modern political parties, which provided adequate ideological support (Cancian 1992). However, in nearby Chamula at the same time, Protestantism was being used, as an ideological tool to attack the hierarchy there. In rural areas of Mesoamerica, Protestants can support opposition to political authorities. When this is against a municipal or state government, the level of violence is limited, and the Protestants often point to religious grounds for their protests. At a municipal level, where there is some independence from higher authorities, localized violence can be greater. When Protestantism is used to overthrow very local civil-religious hierarchies, violent confrontations can occur, especially when the elders of a village have been in power for a long time. Often new Protestant ideas are brought back to a village by a person who has migrated to another area because he or she has been frustrated by changing economic conditions in the village or personal problems with other villagers. While away from the village, the person’s dilemmas are resolved by a new Protestant doctrine learned from other expatriates like himself or herself. The person acquires a new identity and finds a new understanding of his or her struggles. The individual is not only saved
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by the new wisdom, but believes that the whole village can be saved as well. When such a person returns, he or she often becomes a catalyst for religious change. CONCLUSION The political power of Protestantism comes from its ability to break links with oppressive ideologies. Firm in its conviction that the Bible provides the true source of moral wisdom, Protestantism can oppose authority. This is one of its most traditional functions. Over time it has adapted to prevailing power structures in ways that avoid violent confrontation. Protestantism in Mesoamerica is enabling people to release the ideological hold of civil-religious hierarchies and other ideologically supported political structures. This allows the institutionalization of economic behaviors compatible with the market economy. For example, fiestas can be supported by multiple contributions or abolished altogether, and people can use the money they gain from migrant labor on improving their standard of living. Everyone can accumulate some capital to make their lives secure and perhaps to invest in some small way. Most peasants of Mesoamerica are acting as minicapitalists trying to improve their standard of living through the accumulation of wealth, albeit a small amount of wealth. The ability to accumulate and manipulate that wealth is important to them. At the time of the Reformation, Protestantism opposed the Catholic Church in Europe. But today in Mesoamerica, the Catholic Church is no longer such a powerful political force. In Mexico, the doorway to Protestantism was opened by the anti- Catholic attitudes of the Reformation in the 19th century and the Revolution in the 20th. Now Protestantism in Mesoamerica is a tool that facilitates local political change. It enables people to overcome political barriers to the market economy, particularly in those peripheral areas where the market economy is not fully institutionalized. REFERENCES Annis, Sheldon 1987 God and Production in a Guatemalan Town. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bastian, Jean-Pierre 1985 Dissidence religieuse dans le milieu rural mexicain. Social Compass 32(2–3):245–260. 1993 The Metamorphosis of Latin American Protestant Groups. Latin
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American Research Review 28(2):33–61. Cancian, Frank 1965 Economics and Prestige in a Maya Community: The Religious Cargo System in Zinacantan. Stanford, Stanford University Press. 1972 Change and Uncertainty in a Peasant Economy: The Maya Corn Farmers of Zinacantan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1992 The Decline of Community in Zinacantan: Economy, Public Life, and Social Stratification, 1960–1987. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Carrasco, Pedro. 1963 The Civil-Religious Hierarchy in Mesoamerican Communities: Pre-Hispanic Background and Colonial Development. American Anthropologist 63:483–497. 1970 Tarascan Folk Religion: Christian or Pagan? In The Social Anthropology of Latin America, Essays in Honor of Ralph Leon Beals. Walter Goldschmidt and Harry Hoijer, eds. Los Angeles: Latin American Center, University of California. 1976 El Catolicismo Popular de los Tarascos. México, D.F.: SEP-Setentas. Chance, John K. and William B. Taylor 1985 Cofradias and Cargos: An Historical Perspective on the Mesoamerican civil-religious Hierarchy. American Ethnologist 12 (1): 1–26. Cox, Harvey 1994 Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Publishing Company. Deseret News 1996 1997–98 Church Almanac. Deseret News: Salt Lake City, UT. 1998 1999–2000 Church Almanac. Deseret News: Salt Lake City, UT. DeWalt, Billie R. 1975 Changes in the Cargo Systems of Mesoamerica. Anthropological Quarterly 43:87–105. Dow, James 1974 Santos y Supervivencias: Funciones de la Religión en una Comunidad Otomí, México. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista y Secretaría de Educación Pública. 1986 The Shaman’s Touch: Otomí Indian Symbolic Healing. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. 1996 Mesoamerica. In Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. D.
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Levinson and M. Ember, eds. Pp. 770–776. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files and Henry Holt and Company. 1997 The Theology of Change: Evangelical Protestantism and the Collapse of Native Religion in a Peasant Area of Mexico. In Explorations in Anthropology and Theology. Frank A. Salamone and Walter Randolph Adams, eds. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Ellis, Frank. 1988 Peasant Economics: Farm Households and Agrarian Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foster, George M. 1967 Tzintzuntzan: Mexican Peasants in a Changing World. Boston: Little, Brown Fox, George 1903 George Fox, an Autobiography. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Rufus M. Jones. Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach. Garma, Carlos 1984 Liderazgo Protestante en una lucha campesina de México. América Indígena 44(1):127–141. 1987 Protestantismo en una comunidad Totonaca de Puebla. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista. 1998 The Socialization of the Gifts of Tongues and Healing in Mexican Pentecostalism. Journal of Contemporary Religion 13(3):353–361. Halperin, Rhoda and James Dow, eds. 1977 Peasant Livelihood: Studies in Economic Anthropology. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Holland, Clifton L. 1997 Estimated Size of The Protestant Population in Spanish & Portuguese-Speaking Countries of The Americas. A Report Produced for Members of the Latin American Church Growth Task Force. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/4170 /lapop97.htm, downloaded Aug. 2, 1999. Hunter, Preston 2000 Adherents.com. Internet URL http://www.adherents.com /Na_127.html, downloaded Feb. 26, 2000 INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía, e Informática) 1992 Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Resumen General, XI Censo General de Población y Vivienda, 1990. Aguascalientes, Ags., México: INEGI.
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Johnstone, P. J. 1986 Operation World, 4th ed. Bromley, Kent, England: STL Books and WEC International. Knowlton, David Clark 1996 Mormonism in Latin America: Towards the Twenty-first Century. Dialogue 29(1):159–176. Martin, David 1990 Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. McClelland, David C. 1961 The Achieving Society. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand. Mexico (Estados Unidos Mexicanos), Dirección General de Estadística 1972 IX Censo General de Población, 1970, 28 de Enero de 1970, Resumen General. México, D.F.: Dirección General de Estadística, Secretaría de Industria y Comercio, Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Otero, Gerardo, ed. 1996 Neoliberal Reform and Politics in Mexico: An Overview. In Neoliberalism Revisited: Economic Restructuring and Mexico’s Political Future. Gerardo Otero, ed. Boulder, CO: Westview. Polanyi, Karl 1975 The Great Transformation. New York: Octagon Books. Redfield, Robert 1956 Peasant Society and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shepherd, Gary and Gordon Shepherd 1998 Mormon Passage, a Missionary Chronicle. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Smith, Waldemar R. 1977 The Fiesta System and Economic Change. New York: Columbia University Press. Stark, Rodney 1998 The Rise of a New World Faith. In Latter-Day Saint Social Life: Social Research on the LDS Church and Its Members, James T. Duke, ed. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center. Stoll, David 1990 Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press. Van Zantwijk, Rudolf A. M. 1967 Servants of the Saints: The Social and Cultural Identity of a Tarascan Community in Mexico. Assen: Van Gorcum.
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Weber, Max 1946 The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism. In From Max Weber. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. London: Routledge. 1958 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. by Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1963 The Sociology of Religion, tr. by Ephriam Fischoff. Boston: Beacon Press. Wilson, Everett 1997 Guatemalan Pentecostals: Something of Their Own. In Pentecostals in Latin America. Edward L. Cleary and Hanna W. Stewart-Gambino, eds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press Wolf, Eric 1955 Types of Latin-American Peasantry: A Preliminary Discussion. American Anthropologist 57:452–471 1966 Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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Chapter 2
Evangelicals in The Lower Mayo Valley Mary I. O’Connor
INTRODUCTION Since 1990, there has been a flood of reports on the growth of Protestantism in Latin America (e.g., Stoll 1990; Martin 1990; Miller 1994; Cook 1994). Although Protestant groups have been making converts since the nineteenth century (Bastian 1989:41–44), a growth spurt in the rate of conversion appears to have coincided with the series of economic crises that have racked the region since 1982. In response to these reports, many researchers have conducted fieldwork on the topic of conversion to Protestantism in Latin America. Some (e.g., Míguez Bonino 1997; Escobar 1994) have looked for a global paradigm that would explain all of the sudden changes at once. Others (e.g., Brusco 1995; De la Torre 1995; Chesnut 1997) have sought to explain these changes in terms of the cultural contexts and socioeconomic forces that characterize specific cultural areas rather than trying to generalize to the region as a whole. My own work in the Mayo valley has been of the latter type. In my earlier work, I had identified distinctions in patterns of socioeconomic change from one community of the valley to another, and my recent research builds on these findings. Essentially, my theoretical position is that individuals make choices about how to behave by responding to their personal experiences and those of their families to the historical, cultural, and socioeconomic patterns of their communities and ecological subregions, and to the broader social contexts of the valley as a whole. As an integrated part of the national and international economic and political sys25
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tems, this area is subject to the opportunities and constraints that impinge on it from beyond the valley. The behaviors of individuals add in turn to the emerging historical, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts within their communities. The ongoing interplay among all these levels of analysis creates the social reality that the anthropologist observes. The whole system is fluid and constantly changing, so that what I offer is a series of snapshots taken over a period of 20 years and more. PROTESTANTISM IN MEXICO The most prevalent form of Protestantism in Mexico by far today is universally known as Evangelical Protestantism; in fact, the term evangélicos is often used to refer to all Protestants (Stoll 1990:4). The belief systems of the disparate evangelical groups throughout the country all derive essentially from the Wesleyan “Great Awakening” movement of the early 19th century in England and the United States (Deiros 1991:149, 151). This complex of beliefs is remarkably stable across a wide range of denominational boundaries: Evangelical Protestants are characterized by their emphasis on the authority of the Bible in all matters of faith and practice, on personal conversion as a distinct experience of faith in Christ as Lord and Savior, and on the practice of evangelization as the fundamental dimension of the Christian faith (Deiros 1991:150). A corollary to these elements is the ideal of an egalitarian relationship between leaders and followers, because all are seen as equally close to the Bible, and each person’s faith is based on a personal relationship with Christ rather than on the intercession of religious specialists (cf. Coleman et al. 1993:113). Evangelical groups, whose home congregations are usually smaller than 40 members, also emphasize the importance of frequent gatherings for prayers, singing, giving witness, and other activities in the church or in the homes of church members; in addition, their evangelization activities are for the most part carried out in groups or pairs. The combination of shared religious beliefs, small group size, and frequency of interaction establishes the basis of social predictability and the conditions of commitment demonstrated by Erasmus (1977: 43–71; 135–143) as essential to community life in any human context. Also characteristic among the Evangelicals is an emphasis on the active participation by members of the congregation during the services; these activities range from reciting prayers and singing hymns to miraculous healing, giving testimony, and speaking in tongues (Deiros 1991:161). Furthermore, the members of Evangelical groups, be they in urban or rural settings, are generally from
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the lower socio-economic classes (Deiros 1991:161; Stoll 1994:101). Within the category of Evangelicals are the Pentecostals. The essential doctrinal difference between Pentecostals and other Evangelicals is that Pentecostals seek the experience of speaking in tongues, which they interpret as baptism of the Holy Spirit such as that reported by the apostles on Pentecost Sunday (Acts 2:4). Pentecostals now far outnumber nonPentecostal Evangelicals in Mexico as well as in the Mayo valley. I first became interested in Protestantism in the Mayo area during my initial research there from 1976 to 1979. At that time there were only a few Protestant churches in the area, and only one of the villages I worked in had any. My research focused on the interaction between economic change and ethnic change. As the majority of people undergoing ethnic change were folk-Catholic Mayos, my research on Protestants was limited. However, I did get an idea of the role of Protestantism in the one village where I was doing research (see O’Connor 1979). Between 1979 and 1994, the number of Evangelical Protestants in Mexico increased at a rate much higher than it had in the previous 100 years. The 1990 census shows that the percentage of Evangelicals increased from 2% to 5% of the population, and reports since then show that this growth is continuing. In Sonora, the percentage of Protestants grew from 2.6% to 3.2%, and the rate of religious change in the Mayo valley parallels this growth (see Table 2.1) In 1995 I returned to focus on the causes and consequences of conversion to Protestantism in the Mayo area. My interest is still in the relationship between economic and ethnic factors, with religious behavior as a symbolic means of expressing both economic and ethnic change. The field research I conducted from 1995 to 1996 included two villages in the lower Mayo valley. I conducted participant observation at church services and in the homes of church members. I interviewed the pastors of the churches and conducted life history interviews with selected church members. Finally, I conducted a household survey in each village.1 THE MAYO VALLEY OF SONORA The Mayo valley is at the southern edge of Sonora, which itself borders on the U.S. state of Arizona. The natural environment, known as thorn forest, is quite arid, with temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit regularly during the summer. Before it was developed into a large irrigation district, the area along the Mayo River was farmed by the Mayo Indians in the age-old way: Silt was deposited by the river each year, and 1 My
research was funded in part by the University of California MEXUS program and in part by a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Training Grant. Subsequently, I wrote much of this chapter while a researcher at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
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Table 2.1: Religious Change in the Mayo Valley, 1980–1990 Location
Year
Population 1,513,731 1,823,606
% Protestant 2.6% 3.2%
% No Religiona 3.6% 3.2%
Sonora
1980 1990
Mayo Valley
1980 1990
226,176 265,771
2.3% 3.0%
5.1% 4.1%
Municipios Etchojoa
1980 1990
66,156 73,689
1.5% 4.1%
7.4% 6.3%
Huatabampo
1980 1990
60,399 70,027
1.7% 2.3%
4.1% 3.4%
Navojoa
1980 1990
99,621 122,061
1.9% 2.7%
4.1% 3.2%
a Statistics for 1980 may be problematic, because the census did not have a specific category for “not specified” as does the 1990. It is possible that the 1980 figure includes both statistics for no religion and for not specified, but as the 1980 category is specifically “no religion” I will assume that it is simply that.
here the people planted the subsistence crops of corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, and chilies. Although they were converted to Catholicism by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, the Mayos successfully resisted incursions by settlers from outside the valley until the late 19th century. At that time, the policies of the Liberal Reform movement, as implemented by President Porfirio Díaz, called for Indian lands to be expropriated and sold to wealthy investors, some of them Europeans, in the hope that the land would be farmed more efficiently. The lands of the Mayos were thus opened to exploitation for the first time to non-Mayos. When the outsiders arrived, they established haciendas on Mayo lands, and hired the now landless Indians as farm workers. This development engendered hostility on the part of the Mayos, who later were active participants in the Revolution, as soldiers under the command of General Alvaro Obregón. From the 1890s to the 1950s, ethnic identity in the area was quite clear. Mayos were the original inhabitants of the valley; they spoke Mayo and participated in their particular traditional religious fiestas. They were also very poor. The Mestizos spoke only Spanish and maintained a rigid ethnic
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boundary between themselves and the indios, whom they saw as inferior to themselves, albeit potentially given to violent uprisings. The lower Mayo River valley is generally considered to be the area to the west and southwest of Huatabampo (see Figure 2.1). This was the Figure 2.1: Map of the Mayo Area
core of the aboriginal habitat, and today it still has the largest number of Mayo speakers (INEGI 1997a:28; b:26; c:27). Ethnic conflict is endemic in this area and dates from the period when Mestizos first carved haciendas out of Indian land in the valley. It is here that Miguel Totoliguoqui, the last Mayo rebel, was hanged by Mestizos in 1913. During the 1930s, when Sonoran Governor Rodolfo Calles ordered the closure of all churches (Molina 1983:44), the Mestizos of the lower Mayo used the occasion as a pretext to burn the folk-Catholic saints in the Mayo churches in an attempt to destroy the religious basis of the Indians’ life. Such events have established on-going ethnic cleavages in many of the communities along the lower Mayo (see O’Connor 1989b). For example, in Los Huítvores,2 one of the villages in my study, a Mestiza woman in her 2 The spelling of this name is problematic. Officially it is spelled Los Buítbores. That is how the Mestizo residents spell it and how it appears in the Mexican census. However, residents
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forties told me that she could show me the exact tree where Totoliguoqui was hanged. When she was a child, her grandfather had always pointed it out to her as they passed it. This sort of knowledge, passed down through generations of families in both ethnic categories, serves to maintain ethnic boundaries long after the actual conflicts have passed into history for people in other parts of the valley. During the 1950s, the Mexican government implemented an economic development program that dammed the Mayo River and created a vast irrigation district. People seeking irrigated farmland poured into the valley, and by 1960 the Mestizos far outnumbered the Mayos. In the peak years of the development program, the valley experienced spectacular levels of economic growth (O’Connor 1989a:38–39). Not everyone benefited from the effects of this program equally, however. Those who were more able to take advantage of new opportunities did better than others, while those least capable of responding to change did least well. In ethnic terms, this mobility translated into an opening up of the ethnic landscape and a move from two strictly defined ethnic groups to a cultural continuum from mostMayo to most-Mestizo, with situational factors contributing to the expression and interpretation of ethnicity (see O’Connor 1989a:66–67). During the period of rapid development, upward mobility in these villages generally led to ethnic change as well. That is, people from the Mayo side of the cultural continuum who prospered as a consequence of economic growth in the valley tended to become Mestizos. One of the most important methods of ethnic change was religious, and Mayos who wanted to be Mestizos openly rejected traditional folk-Catholicism in favor of orthodox Catholicism (see O’Connor 1989b). During the first few decades of the development program, such ethnic change was fairly common. However, since the end of the 1970s it has been rare for anyone to prosper in these villages, so that divisions based on ethnicity have had a chance to jell. Ethnic labeling in the Mayo area varies according to the point of view of the person doing the labeling. Those at the Mestizo extreme of the cultural continuum refer to themselves as gente de razón, or “people of reason.” They use the label indio, a pejorative term, to refer to those at the Mayo extreme of the continuum. The Mayo refer to those who do not share their identity as yoris, also a pejorative term. The Mayo language term yoreme, meaning “human,” is used to refer to those who see themselves as members of that group. Adding to this complex labeling system is the fact that people move from one category to another depending on their life experiences, the social situations they find themselves in from of the village agree that it is the name of a plant that grows wild in the area. Mayo and ethnobotanical dictionaries spell this plant’s name Huívores or Huítbores. In daily parlance, pronunciation varies. I have chosen the spelling closest to what I consider the original Mayo pronunciation.
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day to day, and the people who are observing them. For the sake of simplicity, I use here the least value-laden terms, Mayo and Mestizo, although my own interpretation of even these words can vary situationally. In addition, I use the word “Indian” interchangeably with “Mayo,” as this term is used by anthropologists to refer to indigenous peoples of the Americas. If development could have been eternal, it is quite possible that all of the Mayos would eventually have become Mestizos. However, economic growth stalled in the 1970s and has declined steadily since then. Today, the number of Mayo speakers in the valley is actually increasing. According to statistics from the Instituto de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, the number of Mayo speakers in Sonora increased from 27,556 in 1990 (INI 1994:21) to 29,263 in 1995 (INEGI 1997a: 28). The Mayo folk-Catholic traditions, also expected to disappear in the wake of development, continue to be practiced. This is true in spite of the increase in the number of Evangelical Protestants. Today there are 29,263 people who speak Mayo, a member of the UtoAztecan language family. Mayo is very similar to Yaqui and traditional Mayo culture is similar to Yaqui culture. Of the total number of Mayo speakers, 92% live in the three municipios that make up the Mayo valley. The remainder live in the Fuerte River valley in the state of Sinaloa, directly to the south of Sonora. Of the Mayo speakers 98% are bilingual in Spanish (INEGI 1997a:28). It is tempting to equate Mayo language ability with ethnic identity, but ethnicity cannot be reduced to a single characteristic in an area that has been undergoing dramatic socioeconomic change for 50 years. Some people who know how to speak Mayo do not speak it in everyday contexts. Some deny that they even understand Mayo, let alone know how to speak it. Ethnicity in the valley is fluid, and ethnic expression often depends on social context. ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS BEHAVIOR Mayo ethnic identity today is based on several discrete, sometimes interlocking symbols. The most important of these are speaking Mayo and participating extensively in the Mayo folk-Catholic system. Also included in the cluster are having a Mayo rather than Spanish surname and having a house built in the Mayo construction style. Mayo houses are made of wattle and daub or adobe, and consist of two or more separate rooms connected by a ramada, an area covered only by a roof. The kitchens are also ramadas, with traditional wood-burning stoves of adobe. The roof beams that support the thatched roofs are slotted into yokes of tree-trunks that are the house-posts that support the adobe or wattle and daub. The floors are packed dirt, and the windows have wooden shutters and no glass. Mestizo construction style is brick, sometimes stuccoed and painted, and
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cement floors. The rooms are adjacent to each other with doors leading from one to the other. The kitchens are indoors with gas stoves. Windows are made of glass and have wrought iron frames. Individuals who speak Mayo fluently (rather than only understanding it or knowing the language but never speaking it), have a Mayo surname, have major promises to participate in the folk-Catholic system, live in houses built in the Mayo construction style, and are at the most-Mayo side of the cultural continuum. Individuals who have Spanish surnames, do not speak or understand Mayo, have no promises to participate in the folk-Catholic system, and live in houses that are completely in the Mestizo construction style are at the most-Mestizo end of the cultural continuum. There are economic traits which coincide with the symbolic behavior of some families. Those at the Mayo extreme are all poor. However, it would be inaccurate to assume that all families on the Mestizo extreme are relatively better off than those on the other side of the continuum. Families who moved to the Mayo valley from elsewhere might be on the Mestizo extreme of the continuum, but they are not necessarily wealthier than those on the Mayo extreme. They may simply be poor Mestizos. As such, they would not participate in major ways in the folk-Catholic system of the Mayos. In a context of rapid economic change and some opportunities for upward mobility, Mayos who prospered abandoned their expression of Mayo ethnicity to the extent that they could. They stopped participating in the Mayo religious system and began participating in the Mestizo orthodox Catholic system, or they simply stopped going to any church. They stopped speaking Mayo, and they added Mestizo-style rooms and appliances to their houses. The desire to be seen as Mestizos stems from the negative view of Mayos by the Mestizos. All the pejorative epithets used to describe ethnic minorities by members of dominant ethnic categories are found in the Mayo area: the indios are lazy, dirty, and stupid; drink too much alcohol; have too many children; spend what little money they have to participate in barbarous religious ceremonies; and so forth. It is not surprising that those who begin to prosper would wish to distance themselves from people seen in this light and would want to be included in the category of gente de razón. Not all those who began to prosper during the boom have been able to continue their upward mobility, however, so that there are individuals whose behavior runs along the full range of the cultural spectrum from most-Mayo to most-Mestizo. This spectrum can also have a generational aspect, in that the older generation may be more toward the Mayo extreme and the younger one more toward the Mestizo side. The range of possible behaviors makes for quite a variety of cultural expression, some of which is ethnic in nature. The behavior an individual expresses will depend on social situations in everyday interac-
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tion. These situations can vary from one community to another as well as from one time of year to another (see O’Connor 1989a:84–89; 96–99; 116– 118). In the Mayo valley generally, each community’s history contributes to the ways that ethnicity and religious behavior are expressed and interpreted. In communities where there is a strong tradition of folk-Catholic behavior, there are more situations which elicit Mayo behavior such as speaking Mayo and participating in the religious fiestas. In communities where there is no Mayo church and not much history of folk-religious activities, there are fewer opportunities to express Mayo ethnicity. At the same time, in communities with long histories of conflict between people in the two ethnic categories, the behavior of individuals tends to be interpreted more often in ethnic terms than in villages where ethnic conflict has been minor. Like ethnicity, Catholic behavior can be seen as comprising a continuum from folk to orthodox. The most orthodox—that is, the most-Mestizo— go to clearly orthodox churches where Mayo fiestas are never held. They never attend folk-Catholic churches. Those at the Mayo extreme of the cultural continuum participate extensively in the folk system and never go to Mestizo churches, except to have their children baptized by a priest. Between these extremes are a broad spectrum of behaviors, including going to both types of churches for different ceremonies, and participating in minor ways in the rituals of both systems, which themselves overlap, as both are Catholic. Mayo religious ceremonies allow for participation by large numbers of people, ranging from children to the aged. The basis of the system is the voluntary making of vows by individuals and the carrying out of specific ritual activities as a completion of the vows. Unlike the Mesoamerican cargo systems, no specific social position goes with the completion of specific ritual responsibilities; contracts between individual humans and a saint or God are at the heart of the ritual system. Baptism is the only ritual that requires a priest. The remaining ceremonies are directed by a mae to, a ritual specialist within the Mayo system. In contrast, the orthodox Catholic system features much less participation by the congregation in its ceremonies and features hierarchical relationships between participants and priests. Priests officiate in the majority of the rituals conducted in the orthodox system. In the Mayo area, participation in the folk-Catholic system indicates Mayo ethnicity and lowerclass status. The orthodox system is an indicator of Mestizo ethnicity but not any particular class status. I must point out, however, that affiliation with orthodox Catholicism in the Mayo region, as in much of rural Mexico, is characterized by a very low level of actual participation on a regular basis in religious activities. Most orthodox Catholics are baptized, married, and buried in a church
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without attending any other ceremonies except the baptisms, weddings, and funerals of relatives and fictive kin, and the annual fiesta of the community’s patron saint. An understanding of church doctrine, regular attendance at Mass, and participation in the other sacraments of the church are limited to a small number of Catholics, most of them in urban areas. Thus, the bulk of the nominally orthodox Catholic population in the Mayo area, as in Mexico as a whole, does not participate in religious life even to the extent allowed by orthodox Catholicism. The fact that Mayo ethnicity is often expressed by participating in the folk-Catholic system is problematic for someone trying to ascertain whether or not Mayos become Protestants. If Mayo identity is expressed by participation in folk-Catholic ceremonies, how is it possible to convert to Protestantism and not change ethnic identity as well? The cult of the saints, the importance of consumption of large amounts of alcohol in the ceremonial dance ramadas, and the secular dances and games of chance, all integral parts of the fiestas, are also contrary to the most cherished beliefs of the Evangelicals. Nevertheless, as participation in the folk-Catholic system is central to traditional Mayo ethnicity, such participation must be included in any survey of the ethnic behavior in villages in the lower Mayo valley. Thus, in my survey questionnaire I included questions designed to elicit information on the extent to which each household’s members participate or had participated in the folk-Catholic system as well as in the orthodox Catholic system. In this process, those who do not participate in either are also identified. People who have participated extensively in either system in the past can be considered as toward the extremes of the cultural continuum. Those who have not participated in either system and are not Protestants usually still consider themselves Catholic but no muy católicos, “not very Catholic.” They are on the Mestizo side of the continuum because Mayo identity is importantly tied to the folk-Catholic system. SOCIOECONOMIC CHANGE IN THE MAYO VALLEY In general, the government-sponsored development program of the 1950s led, at least at first, to major economic growth and upward social mobility in the region. This growth was unfortunately short-lived. Since 1980, a series of economic crises has reversed the gains of the previous 30 years. The international debt crisis of 1982 took a heavy toll on all of the economies of Latin America and much of the Third World. The banking institutions of the core countries imposed strict conditions on the debtor nations of the periphery. Mexico, one of the most heavily debt-laden countries on Earth, accepted conditions designed to stop inflation, such as eliminating many social programs aimed at helping the poor, and also began
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privatizing some government-owned companies. After the inauguration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari as president of Mexico in 1988, many more government enterprises were privatized or eliminated. Foreign investment was once again welcomed in Mexico, where foreign ownership of productive capital had been heavily restricted by the 1917 Constitution. The result of these policies was in many ways a re-creation of the conditions that characterized Mexico a hundred years ago and gave rise to the Revolution. The gap between the rich and poor grew, real wages fell (Barkin 1990:102), and the unemployment rate soared after the imposition of austerity measures. Despite these problems, President Salinas created on paper the image of a “Mexican Miracle,” a country so changed by the introduction of free market forces that it was about to become a First World nation. The illusory nature of this image became clear when the new president, Ernesto Zedillo, found it necessary in January of 1995 to devalue the peso and let it float. The immediate result was that the peso lost about 30% of its value; by the end of the year it had lost more than half. The Mexican Gross Domestic Product fell by 6.9% in 1995 (El Imparcial 1996). Although recent official economic figures appear to document a turnaround in the economy, Barkin and Rosen (1997) and Pastor and Wise (1997) demonstrate in fact that a growing disparity in incomes and the loss of real wages continue to plague the majority of Mexicans. These problems, created by the government’s continued implementation of neoliberal reforms, are more pronounced in the rural areas than in the cities (Pastor and Wise 1997:154). In 1999, income disparities continued to grow in Mexico (Smith 1999). In the Mayo valley, the economic situation in 1999 was grim. In the once-prosperous towns, businesses were going under at a rapid rate, and for-sale and for-rent signs were found on an increasing number of stores in the downtown areas. Beggars and people scavenging in garbage cans, unheard of in the 1970s, were common sights on the streets of Huatabampo. The end of government credit support of the ejido system created a situation where all ejido land in the valley was rented out, and ejidatarios found themselves earning day wages as farm workers on their own parcels. The vaunted benefits of the free market in agricultural production had yet to materialize, and the economic reality for most of the residents of the valley was one of reduced income as well as reduced prospects for future economic growth. Such was the case for most of the people in Latin America at that time. Some writers (e.g., Gill 1993:186; Stoll 1993:5) link this economic disaster with the emergence of as an important religious force, implying that the one explains the other. The relationship between economic and religious change is, of course, a subject that has been argued over since at least Weber’s 1904 classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber
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1958). Indeed, there seems little doubt that there is a relationship, but its nature is the subject of contention. I am certainly willing to argue that the economic debacle is related to the growth of the number of Protestants in the Mayo valley, but I must point out that the relationship between the two processes is too complex to be reduced to a single line of causality. In the lower Mayo valley alone, for example, several Evangelical churches with disparate agendas vie for the souls of prospective converts. EVANGELICALS IN THE MAYO AREA Existing literature on Protestants in Latin America has tended to group the Evangelical congregations together because of the many traits they share. In addition to those cited above, all the Evangelical churches in the Mayo area also ban alcohol, tobacco, popular secular music and dancing, and going to movie theaters. These churches also have similar patterns to their services, which feature alternating prayers, hymns, and opportunities for individuals to request prayers for specific reasons or to report events in their lives for which they call on the congregations to give thanks to God. The services, which are all approximately two hours in length, also include at least one sermon by the pastor of the congregation, or a visiting minister, or both. The members of the congregations all refer to each other and to the ministers as “brother” (hermano) or “sister,” (hermana) thereby implying egalitarian kin-like relationships among people who conceivably might be unequal in social or economic status. While acknowledging these similarities among the denominations, the members of each cite clear distinctions between themselves and other Evangelicals. Some of these are details of belief, practice, and dress; some derive from the denominations’ different histories in the area; and some are based at least in part on levels of relative wealth and poverty. Of course, poverty and wealth are themselves defined differently in different contexts; wealth in the rural communities of Sonora would be considered poverty by the elites of the cities. Still, there are easily discernible economic distinctions among the Evangelical congregations in the communities in my study. The diverse economic and ethnic histories of each community also contribute to variations in the processes of religious change. In the two communities of the lower Mayo where I worked, there are three Evangelical churches: the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo, the Iglesia de Jesucristo Unida, and the Iglesia Bautista Shalom. Each has a history as a distinct religious entity, and each has specific ways of distinguishing itself from other congregations.
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The Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo The Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo is by far the oldest, largest, wealthiest, and best-organized of all of the Evangelical churches in the Mayo valley. The initial inspiration for the church came from Mrs. María Atkinson, née Rivera, who was born in Alamos, Sonora, in 1879. She came from a wealthy family whose prosperity was based on silver mining. During the Revolution she moved to Douglas, Arizona, where she married Mark Atkinson, a U.S. citizen. She was converted to Protestantism in 1924, after experiencing what she believed to be a miraculous cure of her cancer. She originally attended the Assembly of God church in Douglas, and in 1926 returned to Mexico as a missionary. She established groups of converts in Nogales, Santa Ana, Hermosillo, and Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. J. H. Ingram, a minister of the Church of God from the United States, formalized the Obregón congregation as the first Church of God in Mexico in 1932. The Obregón church became a center for the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo in Sonora. Mrs. Atkinson established the patterns for the services, the process of missionizing, and vocational training for ministers. She also stressed the importance of the respectability of church members: Much of her activity was. . . a socialization in middle-class standards of conduct, dress, personal care, and similar norms of general deportment. (Elliott 1971:107) She taught members to read, for reading of the Bible is an essential aspect of conversion and of church life. She insisted that all members be missionaries, and taught them the communication skills necessary to the evangelization process. She helped to establish a training institute for ministers in Obregón in 1948. Students traveled from Obregón to the Mayo villages of Chucarit and Etchojoa, their expenses being paid by church members in these communities. The school was eventually moved to Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora (Elliott 1971:105–109). Though the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo is clearly the creation of Mexicans, and is administratively independent of the Church of God, it is still affiliated with the U.S. church, whose members visit Mayo valley churches regularly. The Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo now has congregations in other parts of Mexico, but the bulk of the members are still in Sonora. In the process of fissioning so characteristic of Evangelical groups, there have appeared other denominations in Mexico named Iglesia de Dios, but they have distinguishing surnames such as De La Profesía, En La República Mexicana, and such. From its inception, the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo stressed the importance of middle-class standards, and this emphasis continues today. The church is also tightly organized, with pastors being assigned to
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congregations by central authorities. Pastors are frequently moved from one area to another, which helps to maintain allegiance to the hierarchy over allegiances to local congregations. The methods of recruitment of new members, the process of fissioning of growing congregations, and the organization of statewide conferences are also determined by the church hierarchy. The pastors live in church-owned houses and receive salaries. This level of organization, and the middle-class lifestyles encouraged for members, are made possible by the fact that members tithe; that is, they donate 10% of their income to the church. This practice allows for the support of pastors and members of the hierarchy. It also selects for members who are already relatively wealthy; the very poor cannot afford to donate 10% of their incomes to support a church, and even if they could be persuaded to do so, 10% of very small incomes would not sustain the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo in the style it enjoys in Sonora today. The tithe is strictly enforced, with accounts kept for the amount of money donated each week by each member. The responsibility for these accounts is delegated to church members, who urge the hermanos to give to God “what is His,” that is, the donations required to maintain an individual’s membership in the church. Beyond paying for full-time pastors, these funds make possible the building of new churches, purchases of Bibles to distribute to new recruits, and other expenses associated with missionary activity. Like all the Evangelical churches in the valley, the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo has grown since the beginning of the economic crises in 1980. However, it was already growing in the 1950s, when the region was undergoing economic growth as well. In fact, the church has grown steadily since 1940 (Elliott 1971:151; McGavran et al. 1963:22). This would seem to cast doubt on the validity of economic decline as an explanation for the increase in numbers, at least of the membership of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. The Iglesia de Jesucristo Unida The Iglesia de Jesucristo Unida provides a strong contrast to the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. Members of the Iglesia de Jesucristo see members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo as far too worldly to become part of the Elect. In addition to the proscriptions found in all of the Evangelical congregations, the Iglesia de Jesucristo requires that women wear ankle-length skirts, blouses buttoned to the neck and wrist, and head-scarves that completely cover their hair. Men must keep their hair very short and wear shirts buttoned to the neck and wrist. The Iglesia de Jesucristo places a great emphasis on equality, in contrast to the tightly organized and structured Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. However, within the egalitarian framework can be found an authoritarian element:
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every member is equal to the point of effacing individual identity. Members may not have photographs of themselves, for this is an example of personal vanity. Members may not give taped interviews, because this would be an expression of individual identity. Even the experience of conversion, commonly the basis of personal testifying in other churches, is not to be described, because it is an account of an individual’s life. The pastor of the congregation I encountered in the lower Mayo had evidently become leader by virtue of being the founder of the congregation in 1984. Today, the pastor must be consulted on every issue of behavior having to do with non-hermanos. In the words of one hermano, “the pastor is the only one with authority. He is like a father and must be obeyed. Everything must be done with permission from the pastor.” Unlike the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo, whose members are very open about the structure of the church and the organization of the congregations, members of the Iglesia de Jesucristo are very secretive about the workings of their group. From the sermons, it is clear that the church is one of the many congregations of the Jesus’ Name movement (see K. Gill 1994:13–25), which opposes the position of the Iglesia de Dios on the wording of the baptismal ritual.3 Beyond this, information from the members as well as the pastor is not available. The pastor told me he did not know how many members there were in the church, and, as far as I could discern, there is no requirement for members to donate money. Through participant observation at services and in members’ homes, however, I became aware of the economic status of the members. The members of the Iglesia de Jesucristo, who are scattered all over the area, are for the most part among the poorest people in the region. They are daylaborers or unemployed. They live in tiny wattle and daub houses, and they come from families on the Mayo extreme of the cultural continuum. They dress very poorly; many have no shoes, and, even in the bitter cold of winter nights, many wear no warm clothes at the services, most of which are held outside. On more than one occasion, members of this congregation told me that they and/or others were Mayos, in some cases former participants in the Mayo folk-Catholic system. Perhaps the most striking difference between the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo and the Iglesia de Jesucristo Unida is the thrust of the sermons at the services. While all Evangelical denominations are somewhat millenarian, the emphasis placed on the coming of the Apocalypse varies. Sermons in the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo focus more on how to live in the world rather than on Armageddon. The sermons at the Iglesia de Jesucristo, however, strongly emphasize the Second Coming, an event which is seen as imminent and central to the members’ attitudes about 3 The use of the titles of the Holy Trinity, as opposed to the use of the name of Jesus only during baptism, has been a subject of great contention among Evangelicals from the earliest days. For a detailed account of this debate, see K. Gill 1994:119–175.
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the future as well as their continued obedience to their pastor. As I was told repeatedly, those who do not repent and join the Iglesia de Jesucristo will be cast into hell forever, while those who have given up all worldly concerns will be rewarded by God with a thousand-year-long period of wealth and material happiness. While the sinners, including the members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo as well as myself, burn in hell, the hermanos of the Iglesia de Jesucristo will inherit the Earth. Such a future is bright indeed for adherents of this belief system. They willingly accept the present-day constraints on their behavior, because otherwise the future is too bleak to be borne. If the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo has the wealthiest members, the Iglesia de Jesucristo has the poorest. The upward mobility of the 1950s and 1960s is merely an unfinished dream to these people. Their experiences have been a constant diminution in wealth and an end to opportunities for advancement; indeed, they are poorer now than they were two years ago. The world holds out no help or hope for them. By investing their energies in behaving according to their pastor’s interpretations of the Bible, they are working toward the only goal that seems feasible: deliverance from this vale of tears into the Kingdom of God on Earth. The Iglesia Bautista Shalom Both the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo and the Iglesia de Jesucristo are Pentecostal churches; that is, they recognize and encourage the baptism of the Holy Spirit and “speaking in other languages,” or glossolalia. The Iglesia Bautista Shalom is not specifically Pentecostal, in that it is affiliated with the Iglesia Bautista Bethel that recognizes but does not encourage speaking in tongues. The officials and pastors of this church are elected by the congregation, in contrast to the policy of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. Each congregation has control of its own income, and there are monthly statements of accounts which are approved by the members. There is no requirement to tithe, as each member contributes money according to a personal agreement with God. There are collections at all the services, which are held twice a week. In churches with small congregations, the pastor receives small amounts of money each month for expenses; he is not paid a salary. Although there are no specific rules about dress, jewelry, or makeup, the female members of this church adhere to the general custom among Evangelicals in the region. Like the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo, the Iglesia Bautista baptizes its new members in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this matter, both churches differ from the Iglesia de Jesucristo, which baptizes in the name of Jesus Christ only. The Second Coming of Christ, so frequently a topic of the sermons of the Iglesia de Jesucristo, is also often referred to in the sermons of the Iglesia Bautista.
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In 1996, when I told the pastor that I might return to the valley in 1998, he said that Jesus would have returned by then. Clearly, belief in the imminence of the Apocalypse organizes the lives of the members of the church. Although many of the members of the Iglesia Bautista are poor, none is as poor as the majority of the members of the Iglesia de Jesucristo. ETHNICITY AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE In theory, there are three possible patterns of religious change in the Mayo valley as a whole. One is conversion from orthodox Catholicism to Protestantism. This does not involve ethnic change, as orthodox Catholics are all Mestizos. Another conversion possibility is from Mayo folkCatholicism to orthodox Catholicism. This involves ethnic change as well, and is usually accompanied by both cultural change and an increase in wealth. For a Mayo to become a Mestizo, it is not enough merely to stop participating in the traditional fiesta system. One must demonstrate a rise in social status as well (see O’Connor 1989b). This is the main pattern of change that took place during the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s. The third possibility of social change is from Mayo folk-Catholicism to Protestantism. This is the most extreme form of change, for it includes ethnic change as well as a fundamental rearrangement of religious beliefs and behavior that is much more difficult than the change from folk to orthodox Catholicism. Because of the history of ethnic conflict in the lower Mayo valley, religious change, like economic mobility, is interpreted in ethnic terms. Unlike other areas of the valley, to become an Evangelical here generally involves either remaining or becoming a Mestizo. The rate at which religious change is occurring, however, varies from one village to another. Within each village, economic and historical factors also help to determine which Evangelical congregation any particular convert might join. TWO VILLAGES IN THE LOWER MAYO VALLEY About 10 miles southwest of the large town of Huatabampo is the village of Etchoropo. Upon arriving, the visitor sees one village bisected by the paved highway. However, on further examination it becomes clear that there are actually two villages, Etchoropo and La Loma del Etchoropo, and the highway is the dividing line between them. Etchoropo, the village to the northwest of the highway, is clearly wealthier than La Loma: most of the houses are made of brick and painted, as is the Catholic Church. There are no Protestant churches in Etchoropo, although there are some members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo who live there. La Loma (pop. 1,800 in 1990) has houses mostly made of adobe, or wattle and
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daub, mostly unpainted or only whitewashed. The Catholic Church in La Loma is part of the Mayo folk-Catholic system. It holds Mayo Lenten and Holy Week ceremonies in which Mayos participate in large numbers; it also has a traditional annual fiesta which is conducted by Mayo fiesteros and attended by Mayos from the area surrounding the village. Mayos also maintain the church building and preside over the ceremonies. There are no Mayo ceremonies in the Etchoropo Catholic Church. Residents of La Loma say that Etchoropo is where the rich people live. While each community has a primary school, only Etchoropo has a secondary school. There is also a Protestant church in La Loma, the Iglesia Bautista Shalom. The congregation was founded in 1991 when a missionary from a nearby village converted the current pastor. The church building, which was begun in 1994, was made of woven mats on a foundation of cement in 1995. The brick and cement church was finished in the fall of 1996. The congregation in La Loma has 22 members. The pastor lives next door to the church along with his wife and their children and his parents. No one in the family speaks Mayo, and it comprises a continuum of economic statuses from poor to relatively wealthy; for example, the brother of the pastor owns a store and has a four-room brick house, while the pastor is a daylaborer and lives in a one-room adobe house. Although the family members were all born in the lower Mayo area, they are clearly not Mayo: they identify themselves by their behavior as Mestizos. There are no Mayo members of the church. There are rarely more than seven people at any of the services, which feature hymns but no musical instruments and no electronic amplification. Two blocks away from the Iglesia Bautista live a family whose house is the site of weekly services conducted by members of the Iglesia de Jesucristo Unida. This church has only one building, in the town of Yavaros, where it holds services twice a week. On the remaining days, services are held in the yards of private homes in villages throughout the lower Mayo area. The services in La Loma, like all the services of the Iglesia de Jesucristo, are attended by from 20 to 50 people. The hosts of the services in La Loma are at the Mayo end of the cultural continuum: They know how to speak Mayo and they live in a one-room house of mixed adobe and wattle and daub in the traditional Mayo construction style. On one occasion, the pastor said that he was tempted to preach in Mayo as there were so many Mayo speakers in attendance. However, he spoke only in Spanish. He does know Mayo—he has spoken to me in Mayo—and claims to speak it on some occasions in order to make converts and prospective converts feel more at ease. The services of the Iglesia de Jesucristo are much more visible and audible than those of the Iglesia Bautista. They feature amplified guitar music, hymns, and sermons. The electronic speakers face the street so as to make the music and the words as audible as possible to the entire village. The pastor frequently addresses the village as a whole,
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admonishing them to repent before it is too late. The Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) compiled statistics for the state of Sonora based on the 1990 Mexican census; this compilation was published by the INI in 1994. In it, La Loma is characterized as one of the communities of which 30% to 69% of the residents speak Mayo. The INI report also characterizes La Loma as among the poorest communities in the area. I conducted a 10% household survey in La Loma in 1996, and collected information on 54 individuals over the age of 15 in 15 households (See Table 2.2). Of these, all were Catholic, none was in the process of religious Table 2.2: Religious Affiliation, La Loma del Etchoropo and Huítvores Religion
Catholics Protestants Changing to Protestantism Leaving Protestantism No religion
La Loma del Etchoropo
Los Huítvores
(n=54) 54 0 0 0 0
(n=48) 31 5 5 1 6
change of any kind, and none reported having no religion (See Table 2.3). Thirty of these individuals (55%) understand Mayo, and 22 (40%) speak it. Mayo is the language of the folk-Catholic ceremonies, so it is heard frequently in the Catholic Church in La Loma. Household construction style and participation in the folk-Catholic Mayo ceremonial system, other indicators of ethnicity, suggest that the people in the survey comprise a cultural continuum, with a slant toward the Mayo side. Of the 54 individuals in the survey, 25 (46%) have major promises to participate in the Mayo ceremonial system, while 16 (30%) participate in minor ways in both the folk and orthodox systems. Thirty-three (61%) attend Mass regularly, a behavior considered Mestizo. However, of these, 19 (35% of the whole survey population) also have major promises in the Mayo system. Such overlaps are indicators of the cultural continuum at work. Only one household reported that its members did not participate in any Catholic services; they still consider themselves Catholic, however. Of the 15 households, six had exclusively Mayo style construction, three had a mixture of Mayo and Mestizo construction, and six were entirely Mestizo. Half of the individuals are daylaborers, the lowest-paid occu-
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Table 2.3: Ethnic Indicators, La Loma del Etchoropo and Los Huítvores Ethnic Indicators
La Loma del Etchoropo
Los Huítvores
Folk vs. Orthodox religious behavior (Catholic)a Folk extreme Intermediate Orthodox extreme
(n=54) 25 29 33
(n=48) 14 19 16
Mayo language behavior/knowledge Speak and understand Mayo Understand Mayo Monolingual in Spanish
21 31 2
9 23 16
House construction style All Mayo Mixed Mayo and Mestizo All Mestizo
(n=15) 6 3 6
(n=14) 1 12 1
a Individuals at the folk extreme of Catholic behavior are those who have participated in major ways in the folk-Mayo religious system. Such participants may include fiesteros, fariseos, velación hosts, pascolas, deer dancers, fiesta musicians, and matachines. On the orthodox extreme are those who do not participate at all in the folk-Mayo religious system, who go to Mass regularly in a Mestizo church, or who go to a Mestizo church during Semana Santa. People in the intermediate category are those who have participated in minor ways in either the folk or the orthodox system or in both. Because some individuals participate in all three categories of behavior, the number of cases is larger than the number of people in the survey.
pation in the valley; 3.7% (two individuals) are small farmers; and 11% are skilled or white-collar workers or own small businesses such as shops. The remainder are housewives and students (See Table 2.4). At the edge of the Etchoropo/La Loma communities, the paved highway gives way to dirt. Here, near the mouth of the river, there are no paved roads of any kind. Most of the roads are actually flattened piles of soil that were left after the irrigation canals and drains were excavated in the 1950s. In this maze of canals and irrigated fields, about 2 miles from La Loma, lies the village of Los Huítvores (pop. 400 in 1990). Although it is in an area where most of the people are very poor, many of them at the Mayo
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Table 2.4: Occupations, La Loma del Etchoropo and Los Huítvores Occupationa
La Loma del Etchoropo
Los Huítvores
25
16
Fishermen/Ejidatarios
2
15
Business Owners/ White-Collar Workers
6
4
Housewives/Students
20
9
1
4
Jornaleros
Unemployed
a Jornaleros, day laborers, earned the minimum wage of $4 US per day in 1996, and many did not work every day. Fishermen and ejidatarios earned more than jornaleros, generally, though their income depended on factors such as rainfall or availability of fish. Business owners and white-collar workers were more prosperous than people in the other two categories. Housewives and students presumably live in households that do not require them to bring in outside money.
extreme of the cultural continuum, Los Huítvores has several large houses made of brick and cement, indicating both Mestizo identity and comparative wealth. These houses are all on one side of the village near the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo building. This church, which has been in this community since 1951, is the only religious congregation of any kind that has a building in Los Huítvores. This church has 22 members, all except one of whom live in the village. All of the members from Los Huítvores are well over to the Mestizo extreme of the cultural continuum; most of them live in the large brick houses near the church building. Three families belong to the Iglesia de Jesucristo; in a community of 400, this is a relatively large number of converts, and the village is regarded as a mission, implying that at some point a church building will be built there. Members of one of the families (an extended family with two households) who belong to the Iglesia de Jesucristo were formerly members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo in Los Huítvores. This family includes the wealthiest members by far of the Iglesia de Jesucristo in the lower Mayo area. They provide an impressive contrast to the majority of the members of the Iglesia de Jesucristo. These converts live in large houses of brick
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and cement, and they dress well, like the members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo, although they obey the dress code of the Iglesia de Jesucristo. They host a service at their home every week, after which they serve a meal to the hermanos. They neither speak nor understand Mayo, although they claim to be long-time residents of the valley. It is a member of this family who claims to know the exact tree where Totoliguoqui was hanged in 1913. Another Los Huítvores family has one member of the Iglesia de Jesucristo; this person is from outside the valley though she converted in Los Huítvores. The remaining family which belongs the Iglesia de Jesucristo is much more representative of the whole: they live in a one-room tin shack in the yard of their extended family, the rest of whom participate in the folkCatholic Mayo religious system. The husband of this Pentecostal family works as a fisherman hired by the owner of a boat, and he speaks Spanish with a Mayo accent. This family epitomizes the population of the valley that has suffered the most economic hardship since the crisis began in 1980. I conducted a 16% household survey in Los Huítvores in 1996, collecting information on 48 individuals over the age of 15 in 14 households. Of these, 31, or 64%, are Catholics and 5 (10.4%) are members of Protestant churches (see Table 2.2). Another five individuals are in the process of changing religious affiliation to Protestantism. Of these, two individuals live in households where some members participate in the Mayo folk-Catholic system, two come from a household whose other members profess no religion, and one lives in a household with another individual who is a practicing member of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. One person is in the process of leaving the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. Of the remaining four individuals over age 15 in this person’s household, two are non-practicing Catholics, one participates in the Mayo folk-Catholic system and one is a participating member of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. Six individuals in the survey (12.5%) have no religion; all of these live in households where the remaining residents are Protestants. This religious diversity is accompanied by a broad ethnic continuum (see Table 2.3 on page 44). Of the Catholics, 29% are major participants in the folk-Catholic system, 33% are minor participants in both Mayo and Mestizo ceremonies, and 33% participate only in the orthodox Catholic system. Five individuals (10%) go to Mass as well as participating in major ways in the folk system. None of the converts to Protestantism had previously participated in the Mayo religious system, although two of the five individuals currently in the process of conversion had minor promises in a Mayo church. Twenty-four (50%) of the villagers surveyed understand Mayo, but only seven (14.5%) actually know how to speak it. Of these, one is Protestant. One of the five people in the process of conversion under-
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stands Mayo and one speaks and understands it. Two of the six people with no religion understand Mayo, but neither speaks it. Household construction also varies along the complete cultural continuum: one house is of all Mayo construction, one of all Mestizo construction, and the remaining houses (86%) are of mixed Mayo and Mestizo construction. Sixteen of the people in the survey, or 33%, are daylaborers, 8% are unemployed, and 8% are skilled or white-collar laborers or own small businesses (see Table 2.4). Twelve (25%) are members of a fishing cooperative whose fortunes rise and fall depending on the fishermen’s level of work and the availability of fish. Generally, fishermen in cooperatives, as opposed to those who are hired by boat-owners, are better off than daylaborers but not significantly so. Small farmers make up 6% of the survey sample and the rest are housewives and students. When economic variables are measured against religious behavior, a clear association is revealed: all of the daylaborers are Catholic while the Protestants are either business owners, white-collar or skilled workers, or fishermen. DISCUSSION Economically, La Loma and Los Huítvores are not really very different from each other. More daylaborers in La Loma are counterbalanced somewhat by the larger percentage of fishermen and the smaller percentages of small business owners and skilled or white-collar workers in Los Huítvores. This is not surprising given the proximity of the two villages and the basic similarity in economic opportunities available in the rural communities of the lower Mayo. What stand out as distinguishing characteristics are ethnicity and religious behavior. La Loma is more Mayo and more Catholic, while Los Huítvores is more Mestizo and more Protestant. Although, on the whole, the two communities are similar economically, economic differences within Los Huítvores indicate religious differences: the Protestants are wealthier than the Catholics. Only one individual in the survey belongs to the Iglesia de Jesucristo; she is one of the few exceptions to the rule regarding the poverty of this congregation. The other Protestants are members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. Here is a clear demonstration of the generalization that Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo members are overall wealthier than their Catholic neighbors. There is greater religious diversity in Los Huítvores as well. A sizable percentage of the people in the survey are in the process of religious change: either converting to Protestantism or becoming nonreligious. In La Loma, there are baptized Protestants as well as people who are in the process of religious change; they are a small minority of the population. The two villages are also distinct ethnically: Los Huítvores residents are found all along the cultural continuum from most-Mayo to most-Mestizo,
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while those of La Loma are largely toward the Mayo side of the spectrum. How can we account for such religious and ethnic distinctions? It seems clear that no one overarching theoretical framework can account for the patterns of economic, ethnic, and religious behavior in this study. Weber’s analyses focuses specifically on how Protestantism and capitalism developed historically, and he notes that, the development of capitalism now complete, the individual is born into a context of capitalism that necessarily defines his life no matter what his religion or his occupation (Weber 1958:53–55). This is certainly true for the people in the lower Mayo valley; they cannot escape the harsh effects of the globalization process that is capitalism today. On the other hand, Weber’s linking of the Protestant ethic—hard work and very few worldly pleasures—with the accumulation of wealth does account for the economic status of members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo. Members themselves attribute their relative wealth specifically to these factors. Weber’s analysis does not account for the Iglesia de Jesucristo, however. In this case, theories of relative deprivation as applied to the emergence of millenarian movements in the context of severe inequality are more to the point (e.g., Aberle 1966:329–333). Indeed, Bastian (1993:45, 53–54) points out that this sort of movement is to be found within what he calls a “patchwork” of religious diversity in Latin America generally. The Iglesia Bautista Shalom can be viewed as another patch, more millenarian than the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo but less devoid of hope for the immediate future than the Iglesia de Jesucristo. It is worthy of note that, while the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo has been in the Lower Mayo since 1951, the beginning of the period of rapid development, the Iglesia de Jesucristo and the Iglesia Bautista in La Loma were both founded, in 1984 and 1991 respectively, after the beginning of the economic crisis. In his study of U.S. Pentecostals, Gerlach (1974:678–685) suggests that the participants in these movements might be usefully seen as constituting a continuum between those who use religious behavior to move into the middle class and those who are expressing hopelessness because of their economic and political marginalization within the larger society. This certainly applies to the Evangelical churches in La Loma and Los Huítvores. The question of why there are more Mestizo Protestants in Los Huítvores and more Mayo folk-Catholics in La Loma remains problematic. I believe the explanation lies in the fact that there has been a Protestant church building in Los Huítvores since 1951 and there has never been a Catholic Church building of any sort there. At the same time, the Mayo Catholic Church in La Loma has been there for as long as anyone can remember, and it is a major ceremonial center in the Mayo system. Its adherents participate in the elaborate system of ceremonial exchange among the villages in the Lower Mayo valley. There are numerous occasions through-
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out the year for people to express Mayo identity in a positive context. The annual fiesta and the Lenten and Easter ceremonies draw hundreds of participants and onlookers, and are the means of continuing the ancient Mayo traditions as well as the language itself. On the other hand, the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo in Los Huítvores provides several opportunities every week for people to participate in its services. The hymns and prayers attract observers even if only because there are few other forms of entertainment in the village. The absence of a folk-Mayo church also contributes to the draw of the Protestant one. The mere presence of one type of church or the other clearly has an important impact on religious change versus religious continuity. The greater percentage of people toward the Mayo extreme of the cultural continuum in La Loma serves to point up the ethnic pattern in the Lower Mayo generally, which is that Protestants are Mestizo. The Iglesia Bautista has been active in La Loma only since 1991, and the building is quite new. All of its members are on the Mestizo extreme of the cultural continuum. The Iglesia de Jesucristo, which has adherents in both villages as well as in many tiny hamlets in the vicinity, is in some ways the most interesting in terms of the intersection of ethnicity, economic status, and religion. Many of the members of this church come from the Mayo extreme of the cultural continuum, and many of their relatives still participate in the Mayo religious system. While acknowledging their Mayo status previous to conversion, they are quick to point out that in order to become members of the church, they must denounce the religious aspects of Mayo identity as the work of the devil. It was the pastor of this church who was most concerned about the fact that I observed some of the folk-Catholic ceremonies in the area. He told me that these situations were extremely dangerous because the devil was in charge of the ceremonies. Such a clear rejection of Mayo religiosity indicates a felt need for members of the Iglesia de Jesucristo to avoid all situations eliciting specifically Mayo behavior. They have chosen to abandon Mayo identity even though they have not become wealthier, the main basis for ethnic mobility in the past. This is indeed a major change in social processes in the region, and is directly attributable to the economic crisis, itself the creation of globalization. CONCLUSION In the 1950s, policies recommended and funded by international agencies brought about tremendous social and economic changes in the Mayo valley. Many people benefited from these policies, and the area grew economically prosperous. Some of those who experienced upward mobility became members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo, which had missionaries in the valley since the 1940s (Molina 1983:55). By separating
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themselves from the world and following the restrictions of the Evangelical church, these people tended to prosper; church members and pastors alike attribute their worldly possessions to their religious behavior. By focusing on their hermanos and eliminating non-Protestants substantially from their social networks, the members of the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo have continued to prosper despite the economic problems that have plagued the valley since the 1970s. In response to these problems, multinational banking entities and the core nations imposed neoliberal policies. Thus the country has been opened to the processes of globalization, which have had dire economic consequences in the Mayo valley. Those who have been most affected by these consequences are the poorest people in the area, and many of them come from families that consider themselves Mayo. Some of these people have begun to join Evangelical churches which have themselves only had representatives in the valley since the 1980s. These churches, unlike the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo, do not require members to donate specific amounts of money, so that the poor can afford to be members. The Iglesia de Jesucristo Unida has the poorest members of any Protestant church in the lower Mayo. Unlike the Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo, this church does not consider worldly success to be an indication of holiness. Rather, its members concentrate their efforts on preparing for the Apocalypse, as they see no other possibility for deliverance from the abject poverty into which economic processes beyond their control have plunged them. Economic history does not account entirely for events in the region, however. Historical events have shaped the ways that economic consequences have been felt in different parts of the valley. Long-standing ethnic conflicts have led the inhabitants of the lower Mayo to interpret behavior in ethnic terms. As Mayo ethnicity is tied closely to participation in the folk-Catholic system, all those who convert to Protestantism are automatically seen as Mestizo. Given the voluntary nature of participating in the folk-Catholic system, however, a change to Protestantism does not represent such a challenge to traditional authority as it does in the areas where civil-religious hierarchies, with their mandatory participation, deny economic rights to converts to Protestantism. Participation in the folk-Mayo system depends on vows made by individuals rather than on pressure from community authorities. For this reason, the folk-Catholic system has not been rejected by entire communities as has been the case in Hidalgo (Dow 1997), nor have Protestants been expelled from their villages by traditional leaders as has happened in Chiapas (Collier and Quaratiello 1994:56–58). Because of the continued viability of Mayo folk-Catholicism in the valley, the rate of conversion to Protestantism depends, at least in part, on whether a community has a long-standing tradition of participation in the
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Mayo system. La Loma del Etchoropo is an important village in the Mayo ritual exchange system. There is a large, old Mayo Catholic church in the village, where weekly rituals bring people from outlying hamlets to fulfill their vows. The yearly fiesta and Lenten ceremonials all serve to demonstrate and reinforce the continuation of the traditions. Although there are Evangelicals in the village, they are a small minority which up until now have not been able to compete successfully with the strong Mayo tradition. The value placed on speaking and understanding Mayo, as expressed in the large percentage of Mayo speakers, is another indication that the villagers adhere to folk-Catholic traditions, which require that participants at least understand Mayo, the language of the religious ceremonies. Thus, this community encourages poor Mayos to remain Mayos rather than convert to a millenarian Evangelical church such as the Iglesia de Jesucristo. The obverse is true of Los Huítvores: there is no Mayo church there, and there are very few situations in daily life which elicit Mayo behavior of any kind. The Mayo language is not required for any event in the village, and the percentage of residents who participate in major ways in the folkCatholic system is much smaller than in La Loma. In addition, there has been a Protestant church in the village for many years. The only kind of religious activity in the village is Protestant, and the Protestants are among the wealthiest residents of the community. All of these factors contribute to the larger percentage of Protestants in Los Huítvores. Individuals growing up in these two villages have much in common. Both villages are fairly poor, and both have felt the effects of the boom and the recent economic crises. In both communities, Protestantism is associated strongly with Mestizo identity; this is a consequence of the ethnic history in the lower Mayo. The extent of conversion to Evangelical Protestantism is what distinguishes the two villages. This distinction is caused by the relative importance of the Mayo folk-Catholic traditions in one and the presence of a prosperous Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo congregation in the other. Many of these factors are taken into consideration by individuals in their decisions about religious and social behavior. The outcomes of these decisions, in turn, contribute to the ongoing social process in the lower Mayo, in the valley as a whole, and in Mexico as a member of the family of nations. REFERENCES Aberle, David F. 1966 The Peyote Religion among the Navajo. Chicago: Aldine. Barkin, David 1990 Distorted Development: Mexico in the World Economy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
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Barkin, David and Fred Rosen 1997 Why the Recovery is not a Recovery. Report on Mexico, North American Council on Latin America 30(4):24–25, January/Febsruary. 1989 Los disidentes: sociedades protestantes y revolución en México. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica. 1993 The Metamorphosis of Latin American Protestant Groups: A Sociohistorical Perspective. Latin American Research Review 28(2):33–61. 1995 The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press. Chesnut, R. Andrew 1997 Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Coleman, Kenneth M., Edwin Eloy Aguilar, José Miguel Sandoval, and Timothy J. Steigenga 1993 Protestantism in El Salvador: Conventional Wisdom versus the Survey Evidence. In Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America. Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll, eds. Pp. 111–142. Philadelphia:Temple University Press. Collier, George A. and Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello 1994 Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas. Oakland, CA.: The Institute for Food and Development Policy. Cook, Guillermo, ed. 1994 New Face of the Church in Latin America: Between Tradition and Change. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Deiros, Pablo A. 1991 Protestant Fundamentalism in Latin America. In Fundamentalisms Observed, vol. 1. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds. Pp. 142–196. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. De la Torre, Renée 1995 Los hijos de la luz: Discurso, identidad y poder en la Luz del Mundo. Guadalajara: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social. Dow, James W. 1997 The Theology of Change: Evangelical Protestantism and the Collapse of Native Religion in a Peasant Area of Mexico. In Explorations in Anthropology and Theology, Frank A. Salamone and Walter Randolph Adams, eds. Pp. 113–123. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
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Elliott, William W. 1971 Sociocultural Change in a Pentecostal Group: A Case Study in Education and Culture of the Church of God in Sonora, Mexico. Ph.D. Dissertation, Education and Religion, University of Tennessee. Erasmus, Charles J. 1977 In Search of the Common Good: Utopian Experiments Past and Future. New York: The Free Press. Escobar, J. Samuel 1994 The Promise and Precariousness of Latin American Protestantism. In Coming of Age: Protestantism in Contemporary Latin America. Daniel R. Miller, ed. Pp. 3–35. Lanham, MD: Calvin Center Series. Gerlach, Luther 1974 Pentecostalism: Revolution or Counter-Revolution? In Religious Movements in Contemporary America. Irving I. Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone, eds. Pp. 669–699. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gill, Kenneth D. 1994 Toward a Contextualized Theology for the Third World: The Emergence and Development of Jesus’ Name Pentecostalism in Mexico. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Gill, Lesley 1993 Religious Mobility and the Many Words of God in La Paz, Bolivia. In Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America. Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll, eds. Pp. 180–198. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Imparcial, El (Hermosillo, Son.) 1996 Registra PIB baja del 6.9% en 1995. 17 de enero, p. 1/A. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI) 1997a Cuadernos Estadísticos Municipales: Navojoa, Estado de Sonora. 1997b Cuadernos Estadísticos Municipales: Huatabampo, Estado de Sonora. 1997c Cuadernos Estadísticos Municipales: Etchojoa, Estado de Sonora. Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) 1994 Sonora: Indicadores Socioeconómicos de los pueblos indígenas por Centro Coordinador Indigenista, Lengua principal y Localidades eminentemente indígenas. México, D.F., March.
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Martin, David 1990 Tongues of Fire: the Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. McGavran, Donald A., John Huegel, and Jack Taylor 1963 Church Growth in Mexico. Church Growth Series, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Míguez Bonino, José 1997 Faces of Latin American Protestantism. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Miller, Daniel R. 1994 Introduction. In Coming of Age: Protestantism in Contemporary Latin America. Daniel R. Miller, ed. Pp. xiii-xix. Lanham, MD: Calvin Center Series. Molina, Philander 1983 Historia de la Iglesia de Dios (Evangelio Completo) en México; Orígenes en Sonora, 1930–1950. B.A. Thesis, Seminario Bautista de México, Hermosillo, Sonora. O’Connor, Mary I. 1979 Two Kinds of Religious Movements Among the Mayo Indians of Sonora, Mexico. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 18(3):260–268. 1989a Descendants of Totoliguoqui: Ethnicity and Economics in the Mayo Valley. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1989b The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Economics of Symbolic Behavior. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28(2):105–119. Pastor, Manuel and Carol Wise 1997 State Policy, Distribution and Neoliberal Reform in Mexico. Journal of Latin American Studies 29:419–456. Smith, James F. 1999 Sweeping Changes of Last Decade Translate into a Tale of 2 Economies. Los Angeles Times 10 January. Pp. C-1, C-4, C-16. 1990 Is Latin America Turning Protestant?—The Politics of Evangelical Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1993 Introduction. In Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America. Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll, eds. Pp. 1–19. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1994 Jesus is Lord of Guatemala: Evangelical Reform in a DeathSquad State. In Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds. Pp. 99–123. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Weber, Max 1958 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. by Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
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Chapter 3
Religious Affiliation in Indian Mexico Carlos Garma
INTRODUCTION The importance of religion for the Indian population of Mexico and Latin America in general has been noted in much of the ethnographic literature on the country and the region. Religion affects political alignments, social stratification, and cultural identity (Stephen and Dow 1990). Religion is a dynamic element in native communities. The relation between the Zapatista rebellion and the Theology of Liberation in the Mayan villages of the state of Chiapas is only one case among many that could be given (Marroquín 1989, Juárez 1995). These events now raise the possibility of a general secularization in rural Indian Mexico. There have been various approaches to clarifying the complexity of Indian religions of Mexico. One approach is to emphasize how religious beliefs and practices retain many features of the Prehispanic cultures of the region (López Austin 1988; Bonfil 1987). Another more extreme approach can be found in studies that consider Mexican Indian religion to be for the most part a reformulation of Mediterranean popular Catholicism (Carrasco 1976, Friedlander 1975) INDIAN RELIGION IN CENSUS FIGURES Data from the general census of population in Mexico carried out in 1990 can be used to analyze religion in municipalities (municipios) with a large Indian population. The census recorded the religion of all per57
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sons over five years of age. The locations that are considered to be ethnically Indian are the ones in which more than 70% of the population speaks an Amerindian language. By concentrating on these localities, it is possible to understand the specific religious characteristics of the native ethnic groups.1 Table 3.1 shows the religions reported in the Mexican census of 1990. Table 3.1: The National 1990 Census Figures of Religion in the Entire Nation of Mexico
Catholic Protestant Jewish Other None Not Specified
Percentage of Population age 5 and over 89.7 4.9 0.1 1.4 3.2 0.7
Number of Persons 63,285,027 3,447,507 57,918 1,021,326 2,288,234 462,190
The use of census data for religious studies has been limited by the lack of precision in the categories used. These are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Other, None, and Not Specified. Many religious groups do not fit easily into these categories, for example Spiritism, esoteric cults, and others. It is clear that the categories in the census should be refined to provide more meaningful information. However, it is possible to analyze the current situation by combining the quantitative census data with ethnographic studies. When possible, direct contact with the community is the best source of information, but published ethnographic accounts are also very useful. Ethnographic data obtained by careful study at a local level can be used to interpret the quantitative data that are otherwise obscure or uncertain. Ethnographic research is absolutely crucial for the study of religion in Mexico when one 1 The basic census information appears in the XI Censo General de Población y Vivienda, Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, México 1993. More general information and a discussion on the localities with an important percentage of Indian population may be found in Embriz (1994) and Oehmichen (1994). Both mention that it is very likely that there are persons who consider themselves to be of Indian descent although they do not speak an Amerindian language. It is difficult to estimate the size of this additional population. According to the census information, the total percentage of the Mexican population that speaks an Amerindian language is 7.89% (Oehmichen 1994). However, Embriz (1994) considers that the real Indian population is larger. This problem is still being debated.
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tries to interpret the census data. Catholicism remains the most prevalent religious option in most Indian communities. It is highly syncretistic and emphasizes the role of patron saints and their images along with popular communal celebrations and pilgrimages. The Catholic Church is tolerant of popular religion, but it is attempting to lead Indians to more standard forms of worship. The Theology of Liberation is promulgated in various dioceses with a high Indian population in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas; though it should be noted that most Catholic bishops in the country are very critical of the socialism that this “religious option for the poor” encourages. Other dioceses favor pastoral activities oriented to a “reevangelization” of Indian cultures that are closer to the conservative policies favored by the Vatican. During the papal visits to Mexico in 1990 and 1993, various references were made in speeches by Karol Wojtyla about the need to implement pastoral policies for Indian Catholics in order to keep them away from sectas. The pastoral programs of “reevangelization” are based on the opinion that Catholics in Indian communities must be reoriented toward more active religious participation while under the guidance of priests, nuns, and catechists. The syncretic religious autonomy of popular Indian religiosity is frequently criticized by Catholic clergy as “uncultivated and simplistic” belief which needs to be corrected in order to withstand the onslaught of Protestant and Pentecostal proselytization.2 Protestantism has grown rapidly in Indian communities over the last 20 years, but this growth is most noteworthy in certain regions of the country. The largest numbers of Protestants are located in southeastern states such as Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, and Quintana Roo, where nearly a third of the population no longer considers itself to be Catholic according the most recent census figures. This region of the country also has a very large Indian population. In Indian communities, Pentecostalism has had the strongest impact because of its emphasis on faith healing and miracles. As I have shown in Garma (1987) and in Garma (1998), many Indians have understood the similarity between Pentecostal spiritual healing and traditional supernatural curing that invokes the aid of divine elements or entities. It is possible for them to accept that “healing by the Holy Spirit” is the correct way to achieve salvation, although this means renouncing their previous beliefs and practices. Pentecostal preachers and pastors are chosen from local congregations. This allows religious services to be held in the local Indian languages. Other important Protestant groups are Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witness are not considered to be Evangelical churches by Mexican Protestants and have a much weaker presence in Indian regions than the religious de2 A fine review of the current tendencies of Catholic reevangelization in Mexican Indian communities may be found in Marroquin (1989).
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Table 3.2: Religion in Municipalities throughout Mexico with 70% or More Indian Population
Catholic Protestant Jewish Other None Not Specified
Percentage of Population age 5 and over 82.08 9.89 0.06 0.88 5.43 1.66
Number of Persons 3,759,616 453,029 2,823 40,139 248,859 76,082
nominations previously mentioned. This is because they do not have a strong emphasis on spiritual healing, which has proven to be so important to Indian Pentecostal conversions. Pentecostal churches also have more Indian clergy.3 Ethnographic studies in Indian communities have shown the presence of persons following traditional belief systems that emphasize Amerindian elements. Among these persons are native healers, shamans, and village elders. Competition among religious institutions has affected these persons. Protestants condemn their activity and call it “pagan worship.” Because of reevangelizing efforts, Catholic priests are now much less tolerant of these persons. As a result, Indians who maintain highly traditional beliefs are no longer certain whether they are still Christians. The author has noted cases in Indian localities in the state of Puebla where native healers were no longer permitted to carry out rituals that had previously been held in Catholic churches. The clergy and their assistants who are trying to orient believers toward a religious devotion more centered on the teachings of Christ now consider such practices superstitions. Similar situations have been reported in other Indian regions.4 The national census figures for religious affiliation in municipalities which have 70% or more of Indian population appear in Table 3.2. When compared to the figures for the entire national population in Table 3.1, these data reveal some interesting facts. It is evident that the percentage 3 Information on Protestant churches in Mexico taken from the official registration figures made by the government can be found in Lamadrid (1994). According to Mexican law, all religious associations must be an officially registered (See the Ley Federal de Asociaciones Religiosas y Culto Público, the federal law of 1992 regulating religious associations and public worship) [México 1992]). 4 Various studies on Indian communities in Chiapas report a similar situation. See Rostas (1989), Medina (1973, 1991), Lisboa (1991), and Hernández (1992).
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of persons who consider themselves to be Catholic is lower in the municipalities with a large Indian population. The percentage of persons who were registered as Protestant is double the figure for the general population. Thus, the Catholic clergy has a good reason to be worried about the loss of followers and the growth of Protestantism in Indian communities.5 However, the exact nature of the other figures and categories remains unclear. There is a very small Jewish population. I know of no ethnographic reference on Jews in any Mexican Indian community. These are most likely to be non Indian “Mestizos". It is also possible that members of some religious associations such as Jehovah’s Witnesses may have been placed here by error or through ignorance of the census takers. It is difficult to understand who belongs to the categories, Other, None, and Not Specified. Percentages for both None and Not Specified are larger in these communities when compared to the general population. By using ethnographic information from the localities with a significant Indian population, it is possible to understand this situation better. RELIGION IN THE INDIAN MUNICIPALITIES OF THE STATE OF PUEBLA In the following paragraphs, I examine the state of Puebla, where I have carried out extensive ethnographic studies. My first studies of Protestantism were from 1982 to 1987 in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. Since 1987, I have studied urban Pentecostals in Mexico City, often encountering Indian migrants among the followers in the churches I visited. A comparative analysis of rural and urban Pentecostals is published in Garma (1992). I have also made short return visits to Puebla since my initial period of field research. The Puebla municipalities with a high density of Indian population are located in the region known as the Sierra Norte de Puebla. It is a multiethnic area inhabited by Totonac, Nahuat, and Otomí Amerindian groups, as well as by a minority of non-Indian Mestizos. A popular syncretistic Catholicism was established beginning in the third decade of the 16th century by Franciscan missionaries (Masferrer 1986). Nonconfrontational pastoral policies have long been characteristic of the Catholic Church in the state of Puebla. Until recently, the presence of priests in the isolated regions was sporadic, although, currently, some communities are objects of the new programs of reevangelization. The distribution of religions within the Indian communities in the State of Puebla in 1990 are shown in Table 3.3. One of the reasons for the new emphasis on Catholic social activity is the growth of Protestantism in the region. The first Protestant churches 5 Some 13% of all Mexican Protestants live in the municipalities considered in Table 3.2. Bastian (1983) is a important reference for understanding Protestantism in Mexico.
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Table 3.3: Religion in Municipalities of the State of Puebla with 70% or More of Indian Population
Catholic Protestant Jewish Other None Not Specified
Percentage of Population age 5 and over 88.89 5.85 0.04 0.51 3.36 1.35
Number of Persons 375,085 24,691 168 2,166 14,170 5,690
were founded by Methodists at the end of the 20th century. Despite the efforts of both Mexican and foreign (basically U.S.) pastors and missionaries, converts were not numerous. Methodist missionaries were more concerned with creating an educated middle class among the working class and had no program for converting rural ethnic populations (Espejel and Ruíz 1995). Even when married, missionary couples lived in the towns. The cultural basis of denominational Protestantism was still too foreign to the Indian peoples. The sustained growth of Pentecostalism in various communities during the last three decades drastically changed the religious situation in the region. The resurgence of traditionalist groups at this moment is limited to few localities. In the following section I examine the census data and the ethnographic situation in four Puebla municipalities in which 70% or more of the population speaks an Amerindian language. Zapotitlán The municipality of Zapotitlán (See Table 3.4) presents a predominance of Catholic affiliation. The majority of the population consists of Totonac Indians. Communal festivities and ceremonies are maintained in the Totonac villages of the municipality. In the center of the municipality, non-Indian Mestizos practice a more institutional form of Catholicism. There are very few traditional specialists left, but they have rarely had any conflicts with the Catholic priests who reside there, because the latter are more oriented toward the needs of the non-Indian Mestizos. A program to train Indian catechists who will visit long-neglected villages has been a recent change. Under the clergy’s supervision, they will hold Bible readings and baptize people when priests are not present. There are a small number of Indian converts to Protestant churches in Zapotitlán, despite the fact that a missionary from the United States
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Table 3.4: Religion in the Municipio of Zapotitlán de Mendez
Catholic Protestant Jewish Other None Not Specified
Percentage of Population age 5 and over 91.19 4.95 0.00 0.07 2.40 1.39
Number of Persons 3,683 200 0 3 97 56
lived in the municipality for several years a few decades ago. There is a Pentecostal church called Iglesia Evangélica Jesucristo, El Hijo del Dios Viviente (The Evangelical Church of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God).6 Ixtepec A larger number and percentage of Protestants appear in the municipality of Ixtepec, shown in Table 3.5. There are three different Pentecostal Table 3.5: Religion in the Municipio of Ixtepec
Catholic Protestant Jewish Other None Not Specified
Percentage of Population age 5 and over 83.61 13.32 0.05 0.00 2.43 0.60
Number of Persons 3,652 582 2 0 106 26
groups and a small Methodist Church, which was the first Protestant insti6 Additional information on this municipality
and on the Sierra Norte de Puebla in general may be found in Masferrer (1983, 1986). In contrast to the Methodist and Baptist churches in Puebla, the Pentecostal churches in the communities have more interesting names, which are worth mentioning.
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tution to be established in this locality over 30 years ago. The Pentecostal churches are named Iglesia Agua Viva (Church of Living Water), Centro de Fe, Esperanza, y Amor (Center of Faith, Hope, and Love), and Iglesia Unidad Cristiana de Avivamiento Monte de Getsemaní (Church of Christian Unity of Revival Mount Gethsemane). These churches have grown due to the conversion of Totonac Indians, despite struggles and threats which originally came from the Catholic majority. This locality has never had a permanent priest assigned to its massive colonial church. Protestants have played an important role in social protest movements. A young Totonac Pentecostal preacher was a leader of a coffee grower’s union and cooperative that defied the interests of the politically and economically powerful non-Indian Mestizo minority. The communal festivities of popular Catholicism are diminishing due to the growing costs they entail for impoverished peasant families who must confront many economic hardships. Protestant converts are slightly better off than the Catholic Indians, but their economic gain still does not approach that of the Mestizo elite.7 Pahuatlán The municipality of Pahuatlán, whose statistics are shown in Table 3.6, has a population which consists of Nahuat and Otomí Indians. This localTable 3.6: Religion in the Municipio of Pahuatlán
Catholic Protestant Jewish Other None Not Specified
Percentage of Population age 5 and over 87.12 2.59 0.03 0.24 8.14 1.87
Number of Persons 12,176 362 4 34 1,138 262
ity is the home of a large number of persons who claim to have no religion according census figures. The municipality is famed for the production of traditional shamanic figures cut from paper made locally from the 7 Additional information on this municipality may be found in Garma (1984, 1987, 1995). Stephens and Dow (1990) have also shown how Protestant conversions in Indian communities may be influenced by the rising costs of the traditional cargo system.
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bark of the amate tree. These images represent syncretic deities originally used by Otomí shamans for healing and crop fertility ceremonies. Many Amerindian elements are present in their iconography. The production of papel de brujo (witch’s, or shaman’s, paper, as I have heard it called in other communities) has become commercialized and is now an important handicraft for various local families. This situation has favored a group of persons who are faithful to traditional religious customs, known as the costumbre, that are independent of all the Christian churches with ties to Western ecclesiastical organizations. Ceremonial activities in Pahuatlán are numerous and varied. There have not been many Protestant conversions, despite the presence of missionaries from the United States, who lived here a few decades ago. There is a Pentecostal church named Iglesia La Puerta al Cielo (Church of the Door to Heaven).8 Zongozotla The municipality of Zongozotla, whose statistics are shown in Table 3.7 has the highest percentage of Protestants in the entire state of Puebla. It Table 3.7: Religion in the Municipio of Zongozotla
Catholic Protestant Jewish Other None Not Specified
Percentage of Population age 5 and over 41.28 38.58 0.30 2.97 15.44 1.42
Number of Persons 1,222 1,142 9 88 457 42
is a prosperous locality of coffee growers and is the only municipality of the four considered here that has electricity and drinking water in all the homes within its limits. The first Indian pastor of the Sierra founded a Baptist church in Zongozotla in 1949. Currently, there are also various Pentecostal churches, which have the majority of the Protestant followers. The largest church is named Iglesia Evangélica Cristo es el Señor (Evangelical 8 Pahuatlán
has been the object of various ethnographic studies. The most recent is Díaz(1988). Otomí religious beliefs, with emphasis on traditional healing practices, have been studied by Dow (1982, 1986), and by Galinier (1990), who includes data from Pahuatlán.
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Church Christ Is the Lord). The Protestants have actively participated in local politics, but there have been no violent struggles due to this. As could be expected, Protestants in Zongozotla claim that the prosperity there is a sign of the triumph of the true religion (la religión verdadera) over superstition, and this may affect some conversions. The municipality presents a significant percentage of persons who were placed under No Religion in the census. Protestant leaders told the author that “before the coming of the Protestant religion there was a great deal of witchcraft (brujería) here.” It is likely that there are still followers of the traditional religious practices in some areas of the community. There are also persons who have left Protestantism, but who do not wish to return to the Catholic faith. There are no communal festivals and there is no permanent Catholic priest assigned to Zongozotla.9 COMPARISONS Some comparative observations on the four municipalities may now be made. Zapotitlán shows a percentage of Catholics which is slightly above the national average, while the figure for Protestants is virtually the same as the national percentage. Zongozotla has the largest number and percentage of Protestants of all four, and also the lowest percentage of Catholics. It also has the highest percentage of persons who were registered under None. It is interesting that Pahuatlán has the lowest percentage of Protestants of the four locations, but it also has the highest number of persons who reported None for religion. The number and percentage of persons who were registered under None are very similar in Zapotitlán and Ixtepec. In both Ixtepec and Zongozotla, the absence of a Catholic priest in residence is evident. This coincides with the notable development of Protestantism in these municipalities. There are at least five preachers or pastors of Indian origin in the two municipalities just mentioned. On the other hand, Zapotitlán and Pahuatlán both have a relatively high percentage of Catholics, although American Evangelical missionaries worked in both areas only about three decades ago. The success of the Indian pastor who promoted Protestantism in Zongozotla may be noted in comparison. It is clear that cultural and ethnic factors have an important role in religious change, and the presence of a “native” clergy is indispensable in this aspect.10 9 More information on Zongozotla may be found in Garma (1987). It is interesting to note that this is one of the few municipalities in all of Mexico where Catholics are now actually a minority. 10 It is important to remember that Pentecostalism was first introduced into Mexico by a Mexican, Romana Valenzuela, who lived in the state of Chihuahua in 1914. Though she was converted at the famous Asuza Street Mission in Los Angeles (Cox 1994) two years before, all
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The use of Max Weber’s (1958) model in understanding the relation between Protestantism and capitalist economic gain in Mexico is still debated (Bowen 1996). It is not my intention to participate in this debate here, but some brief observations may be made. Protestants have made some economic progress in Ixtepec, but in Zongozotla their material success is most evident. However political factors also intervene. In Zongozotla, formation of a growing Indian middle class did not threaten Mestizo families as it did in Ixtepec. Thus, interethnic relations have also affected social stratification and religious change in these communities. However, the formation of an Indian middle class is not limited to Protestants. In Pahuatlán, economic stability has been gained by the families of craftspersons and artisans who specialize in the elaboration of Indian handicrafts. As mentioned before, these domestic groups maintain a traditional Indian religiosity. A typology of religious change in Indian communities may be derived from the cases given above. There are four basic categories. 1. A strong Catholic majority with limited presence of religious minorities. Zapotitlán is the example. 2. A Catholic majority with a substantial presence of Protestants. Ixtepec is the example. 3. A Catholic majority with a substantial presence of persons who are not affiliated with an institutional or denominational religion. Pahuatlán is the example. 4. A Catholic minority with a substantial presence of both Protestants and persons not affiliated to a institutional or denominational religion. Zongozotla is the example. It is possible that in other regions different configurations could appear, which could be added to the model. CONCLUSIONS Both David Martin (1990) and David Stoll (1990) have stated that the competition between Pentecostalism and the Theology of Liberation will mark the future of popular religion in Latin America. This prediction, however, is not accurate for the Indian municipalities which have been Mexican Pentecostals consider her to be “the instrument of God who brought the Holy Spirit to Mexico.” She established the Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús (Apostolic Church of the Faith in Jesus Christ), the oldest Pentecostal association in the country. Because of her actions, Mexican Pentecostals see Pentecostalism as a Mexican religion established in Mexico by Mexicans (Bowen 1996).
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considered here. The most prevalent form of Catholicism is still expressed in popular and folk manifestations. Catholic priests have introduced various pastoral programs that do not always emphasize the “base communities,” which are characteristic of the Theology of Liberation. Pentecostalism Protestantism has had the strongest impact on Indian communities of all the various non-Catholic sects. This has been seen in many other Indian communities. Bastian (1993) and Garma (1992) include a comprehensive bibliography of Pentecostalism in Indian communities as do Martin (1990) and Stoll (1990). Religious affiliation in other Indian communities in Central America is similar to the situation described here. There is an interaction between Catholicism, Protestantism, and traditional Indian belief systems (Stephen and Dow 1990). In Latin American communities with no Indian population, the role of the institutional churches is very different. Ethnographic studies by De la Peña and De la Torre (1990) and Arizpe (1989), among others, illustrate this point. Any general overview of religion in Latin America should take this ethnic factor into consideration. This is why conclusions about religious change in countries where Indian populations are not significant, such as Brazil and Chile, should only be extended to Mexico or Central America with the greatest caution.11 The persistence of religious systems that emphasize traditional Amerindian beliefs has not always been considered in the analysis of religious change. As shown above, traditional beliefs are not always recognized as “religion” because of the way they have been treated by more institutional religious structures. This is especially evident when a census is carried out in an Indian community without a category for native Amerindian beliefs. This clearly is the situation in Mexico. Under these circumstances, many persons state that they have “no religion” because they are unable to place their beliefs and rites in the officially listed categories. This situation of intercultural contact during the census may be understood as a problem of different forms of discourse that are interacting during a communicative event (Hamel 1984). The categories of the census are written in the standard Spanish used in most of México. In this discourse, “religion” implies affiliation with a specific institution. The options are limited. However, religious behavior is not limited to an affiliation with a specific institution or association. It should also be noted that some people change their religion more than once. A Indian person may find it difficult to understand the categories of the census. Not to have a religion may simply mean not to agree with the norms and values that the local religious authorities uphold. It is difficult to express this in terms of the foreign discourse that takes place during the census. 11 For example, Parker (1994) considers how Latin American research on religion has been affected by ethnic factors. See also Garma 1997
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Amerindian populations are not passive receivers of religious messages. While this fact may seem obvious, it is not always considered by clergy who visit Indian communities. The people have no absolute loyalty to religious institutions or their representatives, whose actions they judge critically. If a person’s beliefs are challenged, the possibility of new transformations of worldview are alternatives, as is the case of conversions to Protestantism. Yet another problem is the maintenance of traditional ritual practice, very often at the family level, in rites of passage and healing that are separated from worship in institutional churches. For a growing number of persons who belong to religious minorities in these communities, affiliation with a specific religion can be understood as a matter of choice that takes into consideration different factors that have been mentioned: spiritual healing, economic benefit, relationships to the clergy, loyalty to the community, individual prosperity, and so on. All personal actions are due to a complex of feelings that are not easy to express. Religion remains one of the most difficult to understand complexes of emotion and sentiment that a human being can have. This chapter has dealt with some of the problems of communicating what religion means to people of different cultures, creeds, and institutions. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 1994. I wish to thank Cristina Oehmichen and Arnulfo Embriz for their help in obtaining material at the central offices of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista in México, D.F., and to Miguel Leatham, Maria Eugenia Olavarria, Elio Masferrer, and Mariana Portal for useful comments. REFERENCES Arizpe, Lourdes 1989 Cultura y Desarrollo: Una Etnografía de las Creencias de una Comunidad Mexicana, México, D.F.: Editorial Porrua. Bastian, Jean Pierre 1983 Protestantismo y Sociedad en México. México, D.F.: Casa Unida de Publicaciones. 1993 The Metamorphosis of Latin American Protestant Groups: A Sociohistorical Perspective. Latin American Research Review 28(2):33–62.
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Bonfil, Guillermo 1987 México Profundo. México, D.F. SEP-CIESAS. Bowen, Kurt 1996 Evangelism and Apostasy: The Evolution and Impact of Evangelism in Modern Mexico. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Carrasco, Pedro 1976 El Catolicismo Popular de los Tarascos. México, D.F., SEP-Setentas. Cox, Harvey 1994 Fire from Heaven, The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty First Century. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Publishing Company. De la Peña, Guillermo and René de la Torre 1990 Religión y Política en los Barrios Populares de Guadalajara. Estudios Sociológicos de El Colegio de México 8(24):571–603. Díaz, Areli M. 1988 Sistema de creencias mágico-religiosos de los otomis de San Pablito, Pahuatlán. La Palabra y el Hombre, Revista de la Universidad Veracruzana 68:38–44. Dow, James W. 1982 Las figuras de papel amate y el concepto de alma entre los otomis de la Sierra. América Indígena 42(4):629–650. 1986 The Shaman’s Touch: Otomí Indian Symbolic Healing. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Embriz, Arnulfo 1994 Indicadores Socioeconómicos de los Pueblos Indígenas de México. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista. Espejel, Laura, and Ruben Ruíz 1995 El Protestantismo en México (1850–1940). La Iglesia Metodista Episcopal. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Friedlander, Judith 1975 Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Galinier, Jacques 1990 La Mitad del Mundo; Cuerpo y Cosmos en los Rituales Otomies. México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, Instituto Nacional Indigenista.
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Garma, Carlos 1984 Liderazgo Protestante en una lucha campesina de México, América Indígena, 44(1):127–141. 1987 Protestantismo en una Comunidad Totonaca de Puebla, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, México, D.F. 1992 Pentecostisme rural et urbain au Mexique. Social Compass 39(3): 389–400. 1995 Totonac In Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 8. James W. Dow, ed. New York: Macmillan. 1997 Perspectivas en la Investigación de la Religión en México. Nueva Antropología 51:105–118. 1998 The Socialization of the Gifts of Tongues and Healing in Mexican Pentecostalism. Journal of Contemporary Religion 13(3):353–361. Hamel, Rainer Enrique 1984 Sociocultural Conflict and Bilingual Education: The Case of the Otomí Indians in México. International Social Science Journal 99: 113–128. Hernández, Rosalva Afda 1992 Entre la victimización y la resistencia étnica: Revisión crítica de la bibliografía sobre Protestantismo en Chiapas. In Anuario Pp. 165–187: Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Instituto Chiapaneco de Cultura. Juárez, Elizabeth 1995 De la Secta a la Denominación, la Iglesia Presbiteriana en Yajalón, Chiapas. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Lamadrid, José Luis 1994 La larga marcha a la modernidad en materia religiosa. México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Lisboa, Miguel 1991 Religión en Ocotepec, Chiapas. In Anuario, 37–74. Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Instituto Chiapaneco de Cultura. López Austin, Alfredo 1988 The Human Body and Ideology, Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Marroquín, Enrique 1989 El Campo religioso en las Comunidades Indígenas de Oaxaca. Cristianismo y Sociedad 101:59–71. Martin, David 1990 Tongues of Fire, the Explosion of Protestantism in Latin Amer-
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ica. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Masferrer, Elio 1983 Simbolismo y ritual en la Semana Santa de Santiago Nanacatlán (totonacas de la Sierra Norte de Puebla). In Religión Popular: Hegemonía y Resistencia, Pp. 13–38. México, D.F. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. 1986 Religión y Política en la Sierra Norte de Puebla. América Indígena 44(3):531–544. Medina, Andrés 1973 Notas Etnográficas sobre los Mames de Chiapas. Anales de Antropología 10:141–220. 1991 Tenejapa: Familia y Tradición en un Pueblo Tzeltal. Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas: Instituto Chiapaneco de Cultura. México 1992 Ley de Asociaciones Religiosas y Culto Público. Diario Oficial, July 15, 1992. Oehmichen, Cristina 1994 Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1989–1994. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista. Parker, Christian 1994 The Sociology of Religion in Latin America. Social Compass 41(3):334–350. Rostas, Susanna 1989 Protestant Conversions in a Traditional Community of Chiapas. II Coloquio Internacional de Mayistas, Pp. 921–940. México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Sandstrom, Alan 1991 Corn Is Our Blood, Culture and Ethnicity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Stephen, Lynn and James Dow 1990 Class, Politics and Popular Religion in Mexico and Central America. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, Society for Latin American Anthropology. Stoll, David 1990 Is Latin America Turning Protestant? : The Politics of Evangelical Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1958 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. by Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Chapter 4
Demographic Factors Affecting Protestant Conversions in Three Mexican Villages James W. Dow
INTRODUCTION Although the main focus of this chapter is on the spread of Protestantism in rural Mexico, its conclusions have a wider significance. It is one example of how the material conditions of life affect religious change. The data presented in this chapter show that religion in Mexico responds to variations in demographic growth. Demographic patterns, although barely perceived in people’s minds, have exerted one of the strongest influences on the timing of Protestant conversions in rural Mexico. The data come from an ethnographic study of a municipio, Tenango de Doria, in the eastern sierra of Hidalgo, Mexico. Fieldwork was carried out between 1967 and 1990 in ten visits totalling 53 months. This long period of study enabled me to examine the changes in religion that took place during this period. The most significant change was the spread of Evangelical Protestantism, in this case Pentecostal Protestantism introduced by the Unión de Iglesias Evangélicas, an organization founded by Ñähñu (Otomí) Indians. Although the church is predominantly Ñähñu, it had its origins in another indigenous area, the Valley of Mezquital (Barrett 1982: 492). The four largest settlements in the municipio are the capital town, Tenango, and three Ñähñu Indian villages (pueblos), San Nicolás, Santa Mónica, and San Pablo. Protestantism flourished in these villages, but had only 73
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a minor impact on the capital town. The villages are ethnically Ñähñu, whereas the town contains a mixed population of Indians and rural Spanish speakers. The 1990 populations of the villages and the capital town are shown in Table 4.1. The municipio also contains another small village, smaller rancherías, and even smaller ranchos. Table 4.1: Names and 1990 Population of the Four Largest Settlements in the Municipio of Tenango de Doria Type of Settlement Capital town Village Village Village
Name Tenango de Doria San Nicolás Santa Mónica San Pablo
1990 Population 1628 1456 1169 883
RELIGIOUS CHANGE Protestantism did not advance in the municipal capital where the expanding market economy had the earliest influence, but it did advance in the villages where a traditional peasant way of life based on subsistence agriculture was practiced. This fact negates any theory that would claim that Protestantism in Mexico results from a simple acculturation to modern economic values, although I will show that Protestantism is intimately related to the spread of the market economy in more complex ways. Protestantism had great appeal in the villages because it opposed local religious authority, in this case the native authority of civil-religious hierarchies (Dow 1997). The ideological appeal of Evangelical Protestantism was that it recognized authority directly from God as revealed in the Bible and not from established earthly systems. This was the original message of Protestantism in Europe, and it is still a crucial message in rural areas of Latin America today. Various other sophisticated theories explaining the advance of Protestantism in Latin America have been proposed. Martin (1990) attributes the overall success of Pentecostal Protestantism in Latin America to a confluence of North American economic values and Catholic traditions. Stoll (1990) underscores the U.S. origins of modern Evangelical Protestantism, but also acknowledges that such imperialist connections offer only a limited explanation. According to Stoll (1990:317–321) the success of Pentecostal Protestantism over Catholic Liberation Theology is due to its ability
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to speak directly to the poor in terms of magical power. Bastian (1985) first regarded Pentecostal Protestantism as a reaction to the power of caciques, now he sees it as a way of integrating the poor with new emerging power structures at the national level (1992). Therefore, he opposes the ideas of Martin and Stoll that see Pentecostalism as more revolutionary. I have noted (Dow 1997) that these theories often overlook a rock-bottom essence of Evangelical Protestantism: its attack on religiously based authority. Freedom from authority is a very fundamental element in Protestant theology, which Weber (1963:251) suggested was a means of overcoming impediments to the growth of a capitalistic economy. Thus I also see Evangelical Protestantism as a lever to pry loose theocratic impediments to local economic change at a time of growing prosperity. The other theories have value as varying macro-level summaries of this widespread phenomena. The religious authority against which Tenango Protestantism is reacting is not the Catholic Church. It is the authority of traditional civilreligious hierarchies. Under the government of civil-religious hierarchies, young men in the villages are required to spend all their income on the sponsorship of religious rituals. If they refused, the elders will jail them. Such hierarchies ruled all three villages after the Mexican Revolution. A civil-religious hierarchy receives its authority from a cargo system that consists of ranked religious offices taken on by men and their wives for a year or two. The most prestigious religious offices in the three villages were those of padrino and mayordomo. Men and their wives gained authority by performing the duties, largely ritual, required by the religious offices. A religious office holder had to spend a great deal of wealth sponsoring relatively lavish celebrations, fiestas. The amount of wealth spent could be in excess of the annual earnings of a household. For this reason, cargo systems, found throughout Mesoamerica, were called leveling systems because they tended to make the rich poorer by requiring them to redistribute their wealth in the fiestas. However, cargo systems hardly ever eliminate all wealth differences. They are actually systems that exchange wealth for prestige and authority (Dow 1977; Monaghan 1990). Later, having acquired the requisite authority in religious offices, a man will serve for a while as a civil official in the village government. Some cargo systems support complete village governments, others often called fiesta systems do not support local governments, because they cannot produce enough prestige to dominate the political process. When a cargo system controls the village government, the civil offices and the religious offices are integrated into a religiously based government usually called a civil-religious hierarchy. A civil-religious hierarchy can govern a village or even an entire municipio (Carrasco 1961; Cancian 1965). Performance in religious offices legitimizes the authority of the men in civil office. Supreme political power
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is vested in a council of elders composed of the men who have terminated their careers as religious officials by taking on the most exalted and expensive offices in the community. They maintain the system by appointing people to serve in the lesser civil and religious offices. Many variations on this pattern have existed in Mesoamerica (DeWalt 1975). The native culture has a patina of male political dominance. Women participate in a cargo system as helpers of their husbands or as representatives of their families. Women contribute food and other forms of wealth to the fiestas and are recognized as holders of ritual offices, often complementary to their husbands. However, in the traditional civil-religious hierarchies, women are very seldom appointed by the elders to hold civil offices. Practically all governing bodies of elders of which I am aware contain only men. A civil-religious hierarchy may look undemocratic; however, compared to the earlier systems of peonage and rule by caciques that existed in the Ñähñu sierra, the civil-religious hierarchies of the municipio of Tenango de Doria looked fairly democratic. The poorer families of the community received food and entertainment during the fiestas. The generosity and public service of the cargo holders were emphasized. The civil-religious hierarchies were democratic improvements over the oppressive cacicazgo that developed during the Mexican Revolution. They were instituted after local revolts drove local caciques from power. In the civil-religious hierarchies, each male head of household had a chance to achieve power and influence in the village by sponsoring the fiestas. Eventually, after decades of service to the saints, a man could become an elder. The system was still stratified. Only the wealthy could afford the lavish expenses of being a top religious official, but they had to pay the rest of the community for the power and prestige they received. Evangelical Protestantism was a means of destroying the political power of the civil-religious hierarchies. The extremely powerful fundamental tenant of Protestantism, that the Bible is the primary source of religious authority, allowed a successful opposition to the power of the hierarchies and caused their demise. Pentecostal Protestantism was a particularly sophisticated ideological tool for unseating the hierarchies. Because cargo system ideology was strong and ingrained, the theological battles between it and Evangelical Protestantism were long and complex. These religious conflicts involved much argument, emotion, and also true faith. However, there is no doubt that the need for political revolt lead to the success of Evangelical Protestantism.
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THE TIMING OF THE CHANGE TO PROTESTANTISM Although the three large villages were geographically close, economically similar, and culturally identical, they responded to the appeal of Protestantism at different times. For example, there was a 15-year delay between the abandonment of the cargo system in San Nicolás and that in Santa Mónica, although the villages are separated from each other only by 3.9 kilometers (see Figure 4.1). Figure 4.1: Distances in Kilometers between the Settlements in the Municipio of Tenango de Doria
San Nicolás was the first village to lose its civil-religious hierarchy. In 1962, the jailing of the recalcitrant cargo nominees stopped, and the judge was elected democratically from then on. Santa Mónica changed 15 years later, around 1977, the year in which the last mayordomo served. The San
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Pablo civil-religious hierarchy was still operating in 1990. Its cargo system was resisting the impact of Protestantism by making its rituals less onerous and ritual service completely voluntary. Thus it was capturing the younger members of the community who were enjoying the rituals. Whether or not Protestantism can be fully resisted there has yet to be seen. In 1999 the Protestants had grown in numbers, but had not reached a majority of the families. The villages have the same culture, language, natural environment, and peasant economic system. The people are primarily subsistence farmers in a medium-altitude mountainous ecosystem. They all have the same technology, the same types of land to cultivate, and the same opportunities in the growing economy. However their patterns of demographic growth were different and are correlated with the adoption of Protestantism. Figure 4.2 shows the populations of the three villages between 1910 and 1990. Figure 4.2: Total Population in the Three Villages
One can see postwar prosperity reflected in rising populations. San Nicolás was first to experience the rise. Twenty years afterward, the decennial census shows a rise of population in Santa Mónica. San Pablo shows a population increase in 1940, but its population went into a decline by 1960, and then did not rise as fast as that of Santa Mónica. The time difference between the population low in San Nicolás and the population low in Santa Mónica is about the same as the time difference
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between their adoptions of Protestantism, although the adoption of Protestantism occurs another twenty years after the population low. Demographic pressures seem to be influencing the timing of religious change. Since the disputations over the new Evangelical Protestantism were controversies between older men with power and younger men without it, I considered the possibility that the population changes were having their effects on religion by changing the ratio of younger men to older men. Unfortunately, the relationship between the patterns of total growth and changes in the ratio of younger people to older people is not simple. People come into the population through birth, grow older, and face different probabilities of survival as the years roll on. Thus people advance through age brackets with a varying probability of death, or perhaps outmigration. The age-specific population distribution varies from group to group. Finding an underlying age-specific population dynamics that accounts for a total population change is not easy. POPULATION DYNAMICS The easiest way of determining the ratio of younger men to older men in the villages would have been to obtain detailed age-specific censuses for the years between 1910 and 1990. Such tabulations would have to include the number of men in each age category. Unfortunately this type of detailed data has seldom been tabulated or published by the Mexican national census, particularly in the years before 1980. An alternative to having the age-specific population counts is to run a computer simulation of the population dynamics to fit whatever data is known. To do this one needs some census information on the age-specific populations in order to characterize the demographic patterns of the villages. Fortunately raw census data for several years between 1970 and 1990 were found that allowed a mathematical model to be created to estimate age-specific populations for other years between 1910 and 1990. The simulations were run with a microcomputer spreadsheet and followed these steps: 1. A total census of each village was selected from the set of raw censuses that were taken between 1970 and 1990. 2. A tabulation of the populations of males vs. their ages was made. 3. A forth-order polynomial was fitted to the age distribution of the male population to produce a smoothed age distribution of male population. 4. The smoothed distribution was used to calculate a steady state change rate, , for each age ! . This change rate gave the proba-
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bility of death or out-migration for each age while maintaining the same age-specific distribution in the population. 5. Missing total male population figures were linearly interpolated for all years between 1910 and 1990 for which there were no census data available. 6. The simulation started with the 1910 population and assumed a the smoothed distribution of male population in that year. 7. For subsequent years the total male population was changed by splitting in half the required annual change between births and deaths. The changes in deaths were distributed across the age groups by means of a single annual multiplier of each steady-state change rate. The mathematics of the simulation cannot be precisely described in words, therefore a mathematical description is included in an Appendix to this chapter. The raw census data had been collected by teachers working for the Secretaría de Educación Pública as part of their regular duties and were graciously made available. The following complete censuses were used: Santa Mónica, 1988; San Nicolás, 1989; and San Pablo 1989. Only the male population was investigated, because males manipulated the politics of religious change. The primary intergenerational conflict was between males. These simulations do not pretend to give the precise age-specific male populations for each year between 1910 and 1990. The actual age-specific populations would probably show more variations than the simulations. Furthermore, the assumption of a similar pattern of death and outmigration that changes only by a constant annual multiplier over the years of the simulation is unrealistic. Outmigration could have responded to economic conditions and introduced non-linear changes. Nevertheless, in the absence of precise data, simulations are necessary. The simulations are essentially efforts at understanding the dynamic relationship between total male population change and the ratios of younger to older men. For example, there is an important delay between the time that an increasing birth rate begins to take a population up and the time that these new individuals mature to the point where they take part in the religious life of the village. Such delays could account for the delay between the upward growth of population and the abandonment of the civil-religious hierarchy. Fifteen was taken as the most probable age at which men traditionally begin to participate in the civil-religious hierarchy, and 35 was chosen as the most probable age at which they begin to acquire prestige and power in it. The simulation results in Figure 4.3 show interesting variations in the ratio of men 15 to 34, the younger group, to men 35 and older, the older
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group. They make it clear how the changes in population were probably affecting the age ratios. Figure 4.3: Ratio of Younger to Older Men in the Three Villages
The ratio of younger men to older men in San Nicolás reaches its lowest point of 1.10 in 1956, six years before the jailing of recalcitrant cargo nominees stops. The age dynamics there are different than in Santa Mónica, which reaches its lowest ratio, 0.95, in 1975, two years before the last mayordomo, serves. Although there is much imprecision due to the absence of data, the simulation shows that a village will turn to Protestantism after a time of declining ratios between younger and older men. The ratio curve for San Pablo shows two low points, but San Pablo still had a reduced civilreligious hierarchy in 1990. San Pablo had a more rapid recovery from its first dip, and perhaps that is why its turn to Protestantism was delayed. The process is complex, but the correlations with the age ratios are revealing. Above all, they explain why similar villages will accept Protestantism at very different times. ANALYSIS Many factors are involved in a rural peasant village adopting Pentecostal Protestantism; however, these cases show that population dynamics can determine when the adoption takes place. Apparently it is the declin-
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ing ratio of younger men to older men that pressures the system. The older generation wants to perpetuate the civil-religious hierarchy that has given them prestige and power. They look for new recruits for the lower posts in the system. If there is an abundance of young men, they can find them, but if the number of young men is in decline, the older men have difficulty filling the lower tiers of the hierarchy. Furthermore, members of the younger generation feel resentful. They cannot handle the increased burden of filling the lower levels. They search for new ideologies. The civil-religious hierarchy then collapses because the cargo system supporting it cannot be maintianed. The new economy motivates capital saving and investment, and redistribution looses favor as an “investment.” However, a voluntary cargo or fiesta system may reemerge as younger men become more numerous again, because redistribution still can produce prestige and influence; however its days as a producer of primary political power are gone. Politics then shifts toward democratic action and party participation. San Pablo was the most complex case. It suffered pressure to abandon the system in 1955 when its young/old male ratio reached a low of 0.82. However the pressure backed off rapidly and didn’t start to develop again until 1975. In 1990 it had adapted to the frustrations created by the second dip in the ratio of younger to older men by allowing the younger generation to take on some of the top mayordomo positions in the hierarchy previously reserved for the older generation. The younger generation was doing well economically because it had been successful in exploiting opportunities for wage-labor migration. It is interesting to note that the people of Santa Mónica told me that they were having trouble finding young mayordomos for the lower levels of the cargo system when I first started my fieldwork there. However, how was I as an anthropologist to interpret this? Was this because the young men had developed different values and did not want to serve? Was this a normal situation and relatively unimportant to the survival of the civilreligious hierarchy? Was this an excuse for some political agenda that the elders were hiding from everyone? Pure emic fieldwork alone, no matter how important it is in revealing the meanings of local cultural symbols, cannot completely describe the dynamics of a cultural system. Alone, it cannot reveal how culture adapts to environmental change. I was not able to accept these simple direct explanations for what was happening, although they were fundamentally correct, because they seemed too simple in a symbolic context. They could only be accepted over other explanations after a more objective analysis of the demographic processes was made. This chapter has shown that religion can respond to population changes. Shifts in the age-specific population of men led to the adoption of a new religion by an entire community. The new religion contributed to a greater investment in living standards which have, so far, increased the
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growth of population. Other religious and ideological movements may also be very sensitive to population changes and may in turn affect human reproduction. The results of this case suggest that it is useful to look at population changes when studying religious change. Thereby one might get a better understanding of how religion adapts human populations to their environments. Although it deals in mythical worlds and concepts of the supernatural, religion is intimately related to the welfare and survival of human beings. Changes in religion can be, and probably mostly are, the results of changes in the human material environment. APPENDIX: SIMULATION OF AGE-SPECIFIC MALE POPULATION A fourth-order polynomial " is fitted to an age distribution of a censused male population. In the cases discussed in this chapter, I used the censused male population of one of the villages at a time the population was relatively steady. Ages range from # to an upper limit of $&% , which should be chosen high enough so that there will be no persons living at that age. ' )( * is the simulated age-specific populations of age group ! in year + . The age-0 group, numbering ', )-/.0( * persons in any year + , contains infants of less than one year of age, the recently born. The polynomial smoothed population " is evaluated for all age ranges !213#5404046$&% to give the initial age-specific populations, '.0( .7404048'9:;( . . A steady-state age-specific death rate is calculated from this initial population as follows. =1
' )?A@B( .DCE' )( . ' )( .
The overall steady-state birth rate is F
1 G
' .0( . 9 : )-/. ' )( .
The simulation matches a sequence of total annual populations,
' HI.7404048' H6J , by splitting the annual changes, *31K' HL*?A@MCN' HL+ , between F births, * , and deaths, * , which is normally negative. The total change F between year + and +PORQ is *S1T *UON =* . F The proportion of the annual change assigned to births is V , a parameter of the simulation which was set at #,W X in the simulations done for this F F chapter. *Y13V 0* . The change is added or subtracted from the steadyF F state births; thus, '.0( *?A@D1Z' HL*
