Journal articles on the topic 'Religion and culture – Mexico'

Social work educators need to understand students' beliefs about poverty if they are to foster a commitment to economic justice. A survey of ninety-six Mexican American social work students revealed that those who were Catholic, those who had consulted a curanderola, and those whose parents or grandparents had been born in Mexico were more likely to agree with structural (rather than individualistic) explanations for poverty. The findings suggest that the respondents' beliefs about poverty were influenced by both the communal values of Mexico and the dominant U.S. ideology of “rugged individualism.” Social work educators should provide opportunities for students of all ethnic and religious backgrounds to identify the cultural roots of their own beliefs about poverty and to resolve conflicts that impede their commitment to social and economic justice.

This study investigates and reflects upon the interpretations of (narco) folk saints on the Texas–Mexico border by analyzing their recent representations in local Texan and national U.S. print media. These articles portray the melding of religion and crime to promote anti-immigration ideas and politics in Texas. To understand the connection between culture and crime on the Texas–Mexico border, this essay first delves into each aspect individually, providing their origins and historical context. An analysis of U.S. and Mexican statistics illustrates that many of the societal issues spurring the creation and devotion of folk saints remain prevalent in borderland culture today, including governmental shortcomings, dissatisfaction with the Church, social conditions, and media prejudice. The ubiquity of these themes in borderland daily life continuously incites more (narco) folk saint devotees, and Texas print media further distort the relationship among religion, culture, and crime until they eventually become inseparably intertwined in popular public opinion.

The Holy Office of the Inquisition in colonial Mexico had as its purpose the defense of Spanish religion and Spanish-Catholic culture against individuals who held heretical views and people who showed lack of respect for religious principles. Inquisition trials of Indians suggest that a prime concern of the Mexican Church in the sixteenth century was recurrent idolatry and religious syncretism. During the remainder of the colonial period and until 1818, the Holy Office of the Inquisition continued to investigate Indian transgressions against orthodoxy as well as provide the modern researcher with unique documentation for the study of mixture of religious beliefs. The “procesos de indios” and other subsidiary documentation from Inquisition archives present crucial data for the ethnologist and ethnohistorian, preserving a view of native religion at the time of Spanish contact, eyewitness accounts of post-conquest idolatry and sacrifice, burial rites, native dances and ceremonies as well as data on genealogy, social organization, political intrigues, and cultural dislocation as the Iberian and Mesoamerican civilizations collided. As “culture shock” continued to reverberate across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Inquisition manuscripts reveal the extent of Indian resistance or accommodation to Spanish Catholic culture.

Since 1895, the Population and Housing Census of Mexico has included the variable ‘religious affiliation’, and this helped to affirm the monopoly of the Catholic religion. In the new millennium, the dynamics of religious diversification of recent decades required a change of design in order to capture the new situation, making religious minorities visible in a way that would propitiate a culture of pluralism. To this end, a team of researchers worked together to capture the diversity of religions in Mexico for the 2010 census. In this article we shall describe: a) the methodological strategies developed to improve the census classifier, and a critique of its achievements in capturing the diversity of religious affiliations and memberships in Mexico; b) the need to combine a quantitative approach to religious affiliation with qualitative approaches to religious self-identification in order to describe and analyze religious deinstitutionalization and individualization tendencies, applying questionnaires to representative samples of the population.

In recent years, an impressive effort has been made to supersede established interpretations of religious conflict in revolutionary Mexico that dismissed religious motivations as superstructural derivatives of “true” socio-economic and political factors. This has been accomplished by— pardon the cliché—“bringing religion back in” to the study of the Mexican Revolution. Yet while our post-secular understanding of Mexican religions and their impact has been vastly enhanced, the same cannot be said of revolutionary anticlericalism and irreligiosity, which have similarly been dismissed as mere tools in the hands of a cynical, Machiavellian revolutionary leadership intent on mystifying a credulous people.

This article explores the relationship between political revolution and antireligious violence in the interwar period through a comparison of Mexico, the Soviet Union and Spain. In all three cases antireligious violence was associated with revolution and the defeat of religion was seen either as a necessary condition for revolution or as an equally necessary result. All three revolutions were accompanied by violent ‘cultural revolutions’ targeting religion. The article engages in two levels of comparison. It explores similarities and dissimilarities among the events that took place in each of the three countries. At the same time, it juxtaposes the different explanatory models that have been offered of antireligious violence in each country, thereby initiating a dialogue between historiographical traditions that have developed in relative isolation from one another.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study ethics, values and cross-cultural differences in China, Mexico or the United States. Three distinct and unique nations, the USA, Mexico and China, have different political structures, historical backgrounds and economical systems. While each of these nations can be considered an integral part to the world economy, each nation has their own distinct ethics, values and culture which serve as the backbone of the particular region. To be successful in international business, knowledgeable as an expatriate and culturally or ethically aware of key nations in the global market, individuals need to have researched information pertaining to the ethics, cultures and values of the USA, Mexico or China to blend in and succeed with the foreign cultural environment. Design/methodology/approach – This research paper will focus extensively on the impact values, ethics and cultural differences (based majorly and solely on the Rokeach Values Survey, Forsyth Studies and Hofsteade’s Model) have on the societies of the USA, Mexico or China. A review of the empirical studies will demonstrate the importance values, ethics and culture have on individual life or business environment for the USA, Mexico or China. Findings – Culture can be a factor which heavily influences a region or nation’s ethics and values. Research limitations/implications – When discussing culture, there are many factors such as values, religion, societal norms, customs, beliefs or deeply rooted faiths which can impact a nation’s overall collective culture. As a result, cross-cultural differences among a variety of nations, countries, regions or sub-regions may vary when compared with one another. Through more empirical investigation, research or study of a nation’s cultural values may there be a more profound, detailed and legitimate basis for assessing a nation’s ethical constructs. Practical implications – Understanding the differences of ethics, values and culture of the USA, China or Mexico can impact an individual’s experience if serving as an expatriate at the particular location. Each nation has its own distinct and unique social, business and cultural environment. To successfully accomplish international business or to operate a multinational corporation in a global market, individuals need to have a prior understanding of varying cultures, ethical standards or values in a particular region. Originality/value – This research paper will present and deliver pertinent information to individuals interested in serving as an expatriate in the USA, China or Mexico. Individuals can also read this paper to understand, comprehend or consume more general knowledge of the ethics, values and culture of the researched locations.

Coercion in Mental Health is related to sociocultural contexts. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the uses and perceptions of covert coercion on the part of professionals from four Latin-culture countries (Spain, Italy, Mexico, and Chile) differ between them and from those described in the literature. We conducted a qualitative research, using focus groups with professionals, with targeted sampling and an iterative process for thematic analysis. Several differentiating categories were found: the use of alternative strategies of covert coercion (deception, emotional blackmail, and directiveness); the role of family and socioeconomic differences; and cultural aspects such as the unique role religion plays in Mexico, a relatively greater toleration of threat as a means of coercion.

Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing form of Protestant religion in rural and urban Mexico. Anthropological studies have shown that high church-formation rates are related to Pentecostal asceticism and organizational flexibility. Rural Pentecostal migrants in Mexican cities retain a worldview that is largely centered on the work ethic and proscriptions of costly worldly behaviors. A comparison of findings from urban and rural settings shows how Pentecostal ideology allows for a pragmatic stance toward prosperity and community structure. Thus, Mexican Pentecostalism has emerged as a promoter of autochthonous adaptations to diverse socioeconomic environments.

Increasingly diverse cultural trends have significant implications for the educational needs of American youth. Learning about and valuing diverse cultures will help prepare youth to become better citizens in an ever-changing society. Cultures Around the World was developed to meet the educational needs of youth in the area of cultural diversity. The Cultures Around the World program brings to life exciting cultures and customs from countries all over the world. Countries are presented in a unique format by teaching youth (ages 10 to 18) a specific country’s history, culture, food, music, dance, language, religion, and current issues. The Cultures Around the World program can be used by any youth educator. The program comes in a ready to use CD containing presentations, handicraft instructions, language guides, and resource guides for nine different countries (Armenia, Australia, Ecuador, Egypt, England, France, Ghana, Slovakia and Mexico).

The article compares two pieces of literary reportage included in Jan Józef Szczepański’s Nasze nie nasze (about Greece, 1975, and Mexico, 1981). In Greece, Szczepański discovers a number of places perceived as alien. In turn, from his description of the expedition to Mexico, and of the encounters with several native tribes (such as religion, beliefs, or rituals), we can learn about an unknown face of Mesoamerica. The comparison of the cultures of Greece and Mexico shows that the categories of „familiar” and „unfamiliar” are interchangeable.

This essay presumes the baroque texture of colonial Mexico in its multiple styles, voices, and peoples differentiated by race, ethnicity, locale, culture, place of origin, position, wealth, and clientele. It also presumes, using Marina S. Brownlee's words, a “selfreflective and distorting” tendency of baroque societies to spin off countercurrents and transpositions of dominant culture. “Profusion of detail, hierarchy, and contrast,” Irving Leonard's well traveled characterization of the Mexican baroque, could not be confined easily to fixed orderings and orthodoxies. From the first, in fact, the project to order the colony created more rather than less diversity by “introduc[ing] new, upsetting influences.” These influences—new cultural valuations, “a new, exclusive religion, and new laws and procedures”— may have “unified a congeries of independent states and empires.” But they also combined in different ways, rates, and degrees with pre-existing and newly emerging political and cultural forms. Not as a uniform flood plain but as diverse sedimentations, the colony was formed by back-eddies and cross currents more than a single stream.

AbstractThis article analyzes the impact that religion had on the act of lynching and its legitimation in postrevolutionary Mexico. Basing its argument on the examination of several cases of lynching that took place after the religiously motivated Cristero War had ended, the article argues that the profanation of religious objects and precincts revered by Catholics, the propagation of conservative and reactionary ideologies among Catholic believers, and parish priests’ implicit or explicit endorsement of belligerent forms of Catholic activism all contributed to the perpetuation of lynching from the 1930s through the 1950s. Taking together, these three factors point at the relationship between violence and the material, symbolic, and political dimensions of Catholics’ religious experience in postrevolutionary Mexico. The fact that lynching continued well into the 1940s and 1950s, when Mexican authorities and the Catholic hierarchy reached a closer, even collaborative relationship, shows the modus vivendi between state and Church did not bring an end to religious violence in Mexico. This continuity in lynching also illuminates the centrality that popular – as opposed to official or institutional - strands of Catholicism had in construing the use of violence as a legitimate means to defend religious beliefs and symbols, and protect the social and political orders associated with Catholic religion at the local level. Victims of religiously motivated lynchings included blasphemous and anticlerical individuals, people that endorsed socialist and communist ideas, as well as people that professed Protestant beliefs and practices.

The expulsion of las Hermanas de la Caridad was a highly contentious battle in Mexico’s nineteenth-century war between Church and State. Las Hermanas—who staffed and administrated Mexico City’s hospitals for three decades (1844–1874)—are generally portrayed as the adventitious victims of President Lerdo de Tejada’s attacks on religion. Using records from Mexico City’s Secretary of Health archive, this article argues that public health officials were a major force behind the expulsion, and that the sisters were ultimately ousted not just because they symbolized the rising influence of Vincentians in Mexico, but also because their medical and administrative autonomy represented a threat to scientific and state authorities. En la guerra decimonónica mexicana entre la Iglesia y el Estado, la expulsión de las Hermanas de la Caridad generó una contienda sumamente disputada. Las Hermanas—que habían administrado y conformado el personal de los hospitales de la ciudad de México durante tres décadas (1844–1874)—suelen ser presentadas como las víctimas adventicias de los ataques del presidente Lerdo de Tejada contra la religión. Con base en registros del archivo de la Secretaría de Salud de la ciudad de México, este artículo sostiene que los funcionarios públicos del campo de la salud constituyeron una fuerza importante detrás de la expulsión y que, en última instancia, se echó a las Hermanas no sólo porque simbolizaban la influencia creciente de los vicentinos en México, sino también porque su autonomía médica y administrativa representaba una amenaza para las autoridades científicas y estatales.

Agentic self-enhancement consists of self-protective and self-advancing tendencies that can lead to aggression, especially when challenged. Because self-enhancers often endorse aggression to defend or enhance the self-concept, religious self-enhancement should lead to endorsing aggression to defend or enhance one’s religion. We recruited three samples ( N = 969) from Mechanical Turk ( n = 409), Iran ( n = 351), and the U.S.–Mexico border region ( n = 209). We found that religious (but not secular) self-enhancement in the form of religious overclaiming predicted support for, and willingness to engage in, religious aggression. In contrast, accuracy in religious knowledge had mostly negative associations with aggression-relevant outcomes. These results emerged across two separate religions (Christianity and Islam) and across three different cultures (the United States, Iran, and the U.S.–Mexico border region). Thus, religious overclaiming is a promising new direction for studying support for religious aggression and identifying those who may become aggressive in the name of God.

El propósito del trabajo es describir y analizar comparativamente dos expresiones contemporáneas de la religiosidad mexhica que se manifiestan en los grupos de danza conocidos como concheros o aztecas. La primera es la versión mexicanista, que se opone al sincretismo con la religión católica y la cultura occidental y que plantea la esencialización de lo “auténticamente” azteca promoviendo la restauración del Anáhuac en el presente; la segunda es una versión sincrética, conocida como neomexicanidad que, aceptando la base de la religiosidad sincrética entre el catolicismo y la cosmovisión indígena, se interconecta en una red mística espiritual Nueva Era. De dicha comparación se pretende calibrar la manera en que se dan las tensiones entre la identidad nacional basada en el pasado indígena que nutre la idea de la mexicanidad y la transversalización de movimientos y redes transnacionales que retoman retazos de “lo mexicano” como una sabiduría universal, capaz de compartir concepciones religiosas y filosóficas con otras culturas dispares.Abstract: This article presents a comparative analysis of two contemporary expressions of Mexhica religiosity performed by the dance groups known as danza de concheros or Aztec dancers. The first one is Mexicanist in essence and opposes any form of religious syncretism that draws on Catholicism or other Western religions, while privileging Aztec essentialism and authenticy, referring to Anahuac’s existence in the present. The second one is syncretic, generally known as Neomexican and stands for its acceptance of syncretic ties between Catholicism and indigenous cosmology.It is associated with spiritual mysticism and New Age religion. The comparison between the two enables us to assess the ways in which current tensions between the national identity (that claims ties to an indigenous past as foundation for Mexicanity) on the one hand, and transnational movements and networks (that take an what is viewed as “authentically Mexican” as a form of universal knowledge that related to other forms of religious and philosophical views of lost cultures) on the other, play out.Résumé : Cet article a pour objet de décrire et d’analyser comparativement deux expressions contemporaines de la religiosité mexhica qui se manifestent dans les groupes de danse connus comme concheros ou aztèques. La première est une version mexicaniste, qui s’oppose à toute forme de syncrétisme avec la religion catholique et la culture occidentale en prônant l’essencialisation de l’authentiquement aztèque, grâce à la restauration de l’Anahuac dans le présent. La seconde est une version syncrétique, connue sous le nom de néomexicanité, qui accepte l’ouverture entre le catholicisme et la cosmovision indienne et qui se trouve connectée avec le réseau spirituel mystique du New Age. Avec cette comparaison, on prétend mesurer la manière selon laquelle se nouent les tensions entre l’identité nationale fondée sur le passé indien –et dont se nourrit l’idéologie de la mexicanité– et la dimension transversale des mouvements et réseaux transnationaux qui reprennent des fragments de l’« authentiquement mexicain » comme un savoir universel, à même de partager les conceptions religieuses et philosophiques d’autres cultures disparues.

The Catholic clergy and the military have played crucial roles in Mexican history yet have been largely ignored in recent twentieth-cenury scholarship. The military received some attention in the early post-revolutionary period because it was intertwined with political leadership, but religious elites and the Catholic Church, which were separate from the state and suppressed by it, have not been analyzed. As a rule, cohesive leadership groups in Mexico with values differing from politicians, strong institutional structures, and autonomy from the state have rarely been examined, especially in relationship to the state and politics in general. Conversely, the greater a group's ties to the Mexican political establishment, as measured by exchanges between leadership, the more scholars have learned about that group. Whereas intellectuals, entrepreneurs, military officers, and even opposition politicians share some ties with the state, the Catholic Church has no direct links, and its contemporary leaders, goals, and institutional structures remain relatively unknown and little understood.

On 16 April 1938, the school teacher of the Mixtec village of San Andrés Dinicuiti reported that the Easter week procession had taken place, despite government regulations prohibiting public displays of worship. During the event, the faithful had marched through the streets shouting “Long live religion, death to bad government, death to the state governor, death to the president of the republic.” When they arrived at the local school, they yelled “Death to the masons, long live religion” before denigrating the teacher's parentage. During the 1920s and 1930s, devout Catholic peasants throughout Mexico repeatedly denounced the presumed link between government, school teachers, anticlericalism, and the masons. The popular condemnation obviously emanated in part from the ecclesiastical hierarchy's frequent anti-masonic pronouncements. The Apostolic Delegate's charge that masons were “the cause of our persecution and almost all our national misfortunes” was reiterated in countless bulletins, manifestos, and pastoral letters throughout the country. In 1934, the Bishop of Huajuapam de León, which controlled the parish of San Andrés Dinicuiti, reminded local priests that they were to refuse to accept masons and members of the government party as godparents for baptisms, confirmations, or marriages. A year later, Mexican Catholic Action argued that government policies of socialist education andagrarismowere the “impious work of anti-Christian masons.” However, despite this popular cross-class conviction, there is little historical work on the actual role of the masons in modern Mexico. By examining the archives of the Grand Lodge of Oaxaca, this article posits that Masonic lodges were key to the process of post-revolutionary state formation. As the state sought to assert control over a divided country, freemasonry's anticlericalism not only offered a model for cultural practice, masons also formed a vanguard of willing political emissaries. However, the institution's influence should not be overstressed. It was often curtailed by internecine disputes, political infighting, and an essentially conservative leadership.

This article outlines the missionary methods of the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún, his interaction with Nahua communities in central Mexico, and the production of a text called the Florentine Codex. This article argues that the philosophical problem of universals, whether “common natures” existed and whether they existed across all cultures, influenced iconoclastic arguments about Nahua gods and idolatry. Focusing on the Florentine Codex Book 1 and its Appendix, containing a description of Nahua gods and their refutation, the article establishes how Sahagún and his team contended with the concept of universals as shaped by Nahua history and religion. This article presents the Florentine Codex Book 1 as a case study that points to larger patterns in the Christian religion, its need for mission, and its construal of true and false religion.

Although the term “ethnic group” (EG) is often used in social studies, its definition differs among researchers. Moreover, little is known about ordinary people’s subjective understanding of this term, even though it is often used in social discourse. We examined this issue in a cross-sectional study of 273 American, British, Mexican, and Polish students using an open-ended questions approach. Results revealed cultural differences in patterns of “ethnic group” definitions across the four countries. U.S. respondents predominantly connected EG to “race”; British participants frequently related it to “race,” but more often to “common culture” and “customs/traditions.” Both latter categories were overwhelmingly dominant in Mexico and Poland. However, “nation,” “shared history,” “religion,” “language,” and “territory” were also very popular as EG understandings in Poland. Although most participants used the newer definition of EG (referring to all groups in a society, including minority and majority groups), a few in each country used the term only to refer to minorities and people different from themselves (an older, “minus one” definition). Unexpected definitions of EG also appeared (e.g., people having similar hobbies, having similar work goals, or living in the same city). The results also indicate that for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Mexico, “ethnic group” was more a subgroup within a nation, whereas in Poland, they represented the same level of categorization. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

Animist cultures around the world are based on interactions among humans and other-than-human beings. Humans are active agents in this process and often establish alliances with other-than-human beings to accomplish a variety of goals. The means of establishing these alliances is an emerging area of interest in studies of animist ontologies. We demonstrate here that these allies are often object-persons specifically made or modified by humans to have desired spiritual and physical properties. Examples of common object-persons range from domestic residences to shamanic drums to sacred bundles used for ritual activities. We further establish that object-persons go through a life cycle typically starting with a process that activates and modifies latent agency. We demonstrate this process using case studies from the North American Southwest, especially during the Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) occupation of the Casas Grandes region of northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Our primary examples are the creation of three Mesoamerican-style ballcourts and a water reservoir at Paquimé, which is the ceremonial and political center of the Medio period world. These examples reflect the underlying animistic ontology of this culture and provide a case study of the relationship between material religion and ritual practice that frames animistic religious practices.

The questions of whether religion can contribute toward resolving and preventingconflict, and to what extent a modern nation can balance culture,politics, and tradition, were raised at the one-day conference on “Dialoguesof Peace in Islam” hosted by the UNESCO Chair for Human Rights, Peaceand Democracy at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University.The conference provided interaction with the seven-member delegationof Muslim American scholars of Islam and conflict resolution who traveledin Iran for ten days during October 2007. They met with Iranian experts tobetter understand their approaches to peacemaking, conflict prevention, dialogue,and conflict resolution. They also met with lawyers, human rightsexperts, nongovernmental organizations, academicians, university students,social scientists, senior religious leaders, and theologians.Ayse Kadayifci (professor of conflict resolution studies,American University),and Amr Abdalla (professor and vice rector for academic affairs,University for Peace in Costa Rica) presented various western and Islamicmodels of conflict assessment and areas where thesemodelsmay ormay notconverge. The Iranian academicians focused on religion’s role in defendinghuman rights, democracy, and promoting equality. Abdul Hayy Weinman(professor, University of New Mexico) spoke about the Sunni-Shi`ah dialogues,areas for reconciliation, and effective practices in dialogic ...

Political scientists who have conducted research abroad experience excitement as well as great disappointment. Meeting and utilizing the help of knowledgeable, responsive interviewees can be exhilarating; yet a cancelled interview, illness, and lack of funds dampens the social scientific enterprise. In this symposium, we discuss the nuts and bolts of field research and we explore the constraints and opportunities that arise from the interaction of researchers' personal identities (gender, race, class, religion, nationality, and age) and their research context. We contend that most training received before fieldwork focuses little, if at all, on the personal consequences of leaving one's home for a year, trying to integrate into another culture, and facing (mis)perceptions based on one's identity. As the quotations above indicate, the symposium hopes to demonstrate how a researcher can be gutsy in the uncharted waters of fieldwork, especially with interactions pertaining to one's identities. Although we acknowledge that no preparation will entirely eradicate disappointing days in the field and misperceptions of identity, we encourage new field researchers and graduate students to be aware that the process of accessing data abroad is an intensely personal one. The symposium contributors are comparativists, mainly at the career stages of assistant professor and recently tenured professor, who have researched in Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, India, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, Poland, Russia, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

This article presents new research on Jesuit visual culture in northern New Spain, situating Santa María de las Parras (founded 1598) as an important site where the Jesuits and secular landowners became involved in the lucrative business of winemaking. Viticulture in Parras helped transform this mission settlement into a thriving center of consumption. The Jesuits fostered alliances with Spanish and Tlaxcalan Indians to serve their religious and temporal interests, as these patrons donated funds to decorate chapels in the Jesuit church of San Ignacio. This financial support allowed the Society to purchase paintings by prominent artists in Mexico City and import them to Parras. The Jesuits arranged their chapels in a carefully ordered sequencing of images that promoted Ignatian spirituality and echoed iconographic decoration programs in Mexico City and Rome.

Las culturas seculares también evolucionan a escala local, a veces de manera rápida; esta perspectiva a menudo es olvidada porque se ha privilegiado la atención a las influencias transnacionales. Ese es el caso de dos fundamentos culturales de América Latina: la pertenencia indígena heredada de los pueblos amerindios, y la religión católica, que si bien desde la Conquista adquirió un monopolio casi absoluto, desde los años sesenta ha disminuido su influencia frente a las iglesias evangelistas. La dinámica de estos rasgos culturales, por difusión o dilución, tiene un componente que interesa al demógrafo: la migración de las personas. El presente trabajo describe la dimensión espacial de tres movimientos en México durante los años noventa, con base en microdatos censales y con ayuda de modelos simples de coeficientes variables.En una división fina del espacio, la comparación de los perfiles demoeconómicos de 1990 y de 2000 muestra una difusión del poblamiento indígena fuera de sus tierras tradicionales. Las migraciones indígenas no se modifican por disposiciones culturales –al menos estas no son aparentes estadísticamente–, sino por la voluntad de apartarse de una discriminación doble y de la falta de recursos propia de sus territorios ancestrales.Las migraciones les permiten a los indígenas reapropiarse del territorio nacional. En cuanto a los protestantes evangelistas, no se encontraron fundamentos demoeconómicos en su aptitud migratoria, por lo que esta si puede calificarse como cultural; su inclinación migratoria les sirve para difundir la iglesia evangelista, en particular en las regiones de tradición más colonial que se resisten más a la dilución del catolicismo. No se trata solo de difusión espacial sino también social, ya que los modelos estadísticos muestran que los vectores de la difusión‑dilución son las mujeres, los indígenas y los pobres.Esto confirma los alcances del proselitismo protestante en estos grupos objetivo así como su éxito en los lugares donde la teología de la liberación ha fracasado: los protestantes promueven una religión popular que difunde un mensaje de avance social; tienen además prácticas migratorias más intensas.AbstractSecular cultures also evolve on a local scale, sometimes quickly. This perspective is often overlooked since attention has focused on transnational influences. This is the case of two cultural features of Latin America: indigeneity, inherited from the Amerindian peoples and the Catholic religion. Although Catholicism acquired a virtually total monopoly from the time of the Conquest, since the 1960s, its influence has decreased due to the evangelical churches. The dynamics of these cultural traits, due to dissemination or dilution, has a component that interests demographers: the migration of people. This article describes the spatial dimension of three movements in Mexico during the 1990s, on the basis of census data and with the help of simple models with variable coefficients. In a fine division of space, the comparison of the demo-economic profiles of 1990 and 2000 show the dissemination of the indigenous population outside their traditional lands. Indigenous migrations are not modified due to cultural rules -or at least these are not statistically apparent- but due to the will to escape a dual form of discrimination and the lack of resources characteristic of their ancestral land. Migrations enable indigenous people to re-appropriate the national territory. As for evangelical Protestants, no demo-economic bases were found in their migratory capacity, meaning that it can be classified as cultural. Their inclination to migrate helps them spread the evangelical church, particularly in regions with a more colonial tradition, which are more resistant to the dilution of Catholicism. This involves social as well as spatial dissemination, since statistical models show that the vectors for dissemination and dilution are women, indigenous people and the poor. This confirms the scope of Protestant proselytism in these target groups as well as their success in the places where Liberation Theology has failed: Protestants promote a popular religion that spreads a message of social progress as well as engaging in more intense migratory practices.

Behold here the motives of that mysterious likeness which give merit to a comparison with Jesus in the work the Supreme Author confided to [Hidalgo]: to save the American people, the continent of Anáhuac!So spoke Padre Antonio Jose Martinez in 1832 in praise of Miguel Hidalgo on the tenth anniversary of the independence of the Republic of Mexico. That same year, Francis Gray extolled George Washington, the hero of another independence movement. Washington was the “Special instrument of divine providence for working out our political salvation, the cloud by day and pillar of fire by night which led us out of bondage.” Two new North American nations attempted to create a national identity and a useable mythology, side by side, if independent of each other. In this essay, I present a North American view of what could loosely be called civil religion.

RESUMENLa historia del cristianismo no se entiende sin el complejo fenómeno mariano. El culto mariano ha afianzado la construcción de identidades colectivas, pero también individuales. La figura de la Virgen María estableció un modelo de conducta desde cada contexto histórico-cultural, remarcando especialmente los ideales de maternidad y virginidad. Dentro del imaginario católico, la Europa contemporánea ha estado marcada por la formación de una cultura aparicionista que se ha generadoa partir de diversas apariciones marianas que han establecido un canon y un marco de interpretación que ha alimentado las guerras culturales entre secularismo y catolicismo.PALABRAS CLAVE: catolicismo, Virgen María, cultura aparicionista, Lourdes, guerras culturales.ABSTRACTThe history of Christianity cannot be understood without the complex Marian phenomenon. Marian devotion has reinforced the construction of collective, but also of individual identities. The figure of the Virgin Mary established a model of conduct through each historical-cultural context, emphasizing in particular the ideals of maternity and virginity. Within the Catholic imaginary, contemporary Europe has been marked by the formation of an apparitionist culture generated by various Marian apparitions that have established a canon and a framework of interpretation that has fuelled the cultural wars between secularism and Catholicism.KEY WORDS: Catholicism, Virgin Mary, apparicionist culture, Lourdes, culture wars. BIBLIOGRAFÍAAlbert Llorca, M., “Les apparitions et leur histoire”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des religions, 116 (2001), pp. 53-66.Albert, J.-P. y Rozenberg G., “Des expériences du surnaturel”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 145 (2009), pp. 9-14.Amanat A. y Bernhardsson, M. T. (eds.), Imagining the End. Visions of Apocalypsis from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2002.Angelier, F. y Langlois, C. 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Abstract Nineteenth-Century American Activist Rhetorics (2021), edited by Patricia Bizzell and Lisa Zimmerelli, and Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas (2021), edited by Adriana Angel, Michael L. Butterworth, and Nancy R. Gómez, both examine the complex relationship between rhetoric and democracy. In terms of their immediate scholarly objectives, these volumes clearly succeed. Nineteenth-Century American Activist Rhetorics, a 24-essay collection that employs a broad range of rhetorical approaches both classical and contemporary, provides a more comprehensive overview of rhetorical activism during that period in US history than any book published to date. Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas, with its 11 essays written by scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and the US, who write not only about conditions in those countries but also in Cuba, Guatemala, and Venezuela, contains a range of perspectives in one volume that, to my knowledge, does not exist anywhere else. Taken together, both collections also provide compelling insights into the democratic erosion currently taking place around the world by illustrating how the intersection of violence, white supremacy, and religion pose an existential threat to democracy, particularly in the US.Taken together, both collections analyze rhetoric in vastly different times and places to identify and illuminate how the intersection of violence, white supremacy, and religion pose an existential threat to democracy, particularly in the US.