Catholicism, Protestantism, and Mexicanness on the US–Mexico border: discourses, narrative identities, habits, and affect

ABSTRACT

In Mexico, Catholicism and national identity are deeply intertwined through what we call a process of articulation. Thus, not surprisingly, despite the recent impressive growth of Protestantism in the nation, most people still believe that being Mexican and being Catholic are almost synonymous. Additionally, because the two identifications do not ‘cross each other’ (as the metaphor of intersectionality posits) but, instead, enter a very complex process of articulation in which each modifies the other, there is a particular way in which many Mexicans experience and perform their Catholicism, in the same vein that there is a particular way in which Catholics experience and perform their Mexicanness. Simultaneously, because neither nationality nor religion is narrated and/or performed in isolation to other forms of identification (e.g. race, ethnicity, region, gender) other possible identifications are also articulated or co-inform (in different ways) nationality and religion in the identitarian encounters that occur on the border. In the way people build their identifications around religion, narratives, practices, habits, affect, and emotions are continuously interrelated. We show that having an altar outside one’s house or making the sign of the cross on one’s body is both (depending on the unfolding of the social interactions and their patterns of relations) a non-linguistic discourse and a habit. We also show that their mere presence (in the case of altars) or performance (in the case of the sign of the cross) affect the people around the site or the performance, triggering complex emotions. That altar and sign of the cross can potentially be all these things simultaneously highlights their importance as ‘affective conductors’—stressing their significance as central objects in the intensification of relations that give new capacities to the entities involved in the patterns of relationship at play in the identitarian encounter at stake.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholicism
• Protestantism
• US–Mexico border
• affect theory
• identitarian articulations
• affective conductors

Acknowledgments

Pablo Vila wants to thank Temple University, Philadelphia, for granting him a sabbatical in Spring 2017 that allowed him to concentrate on the final writing of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

CORRESPONDENCE: Pablo Vila, Temple University, 730 Gladfelter Hall, 1115 Polett Walk. Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA.

Notes

1. Vila’s original work was done several years ago. While realities on the US–Mexico border have changed since then, it remains the case that the identifications mentioned here are still central to border identifications, as can be seen in Sarat (2013) and Williams, Steigenga, and Vásquez (2009). The generic ‘southerners’ of the 1990s have been replaced by the much more specific jarochos (migrants from Veracruz) in the 2000s and violence has modified many habits in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but many of the profound processes Vila found in the 1990s remain unchanged. In addition, for the purposes of this article, our examples are still pertinent to the theoretical concepts we develop.

2. Developed by feminist scholars seeking to capture better the complex ways in which oppression functions, intersectionality theory posits that responses to subjugation fail to account for subjects’ lived experiences of oppression rarely being representred by a single identity (e.g. gender, race, class). Instead, these theorists propose that different identities ‘intersect’ to produce the individual’s or group’s oppressive experience. Originally intended as a criticism of legal approaches to dealing with discrimination in the workplace, the theory has also been used to understand identity. Contemporarily, affect theorists have argued that intersectionality too often reproduces the very singularity and unity of identity that the theory sought to dismantle.

3. The empirical material used for this article comes from Vila‘s fieldwork which he conducted while living and working in El Paso/Ciudad Juarez between 1991 and 1997. The fieldwork mixed different methods: observation, interviews, oral stories, analysis of documents and, most prominently, an extensive series of small group interviews, using photographs of the region, distributed across class, gender, age, nationality, ethnicity, and time of migration. The small photo interviewing groups extended from September 1991 to June 1996.

4. During Vila’s research on the US–Mexico border he found that ‘White Americans’ were generally referred to as ‘Anglos’.

5. All the testimonies quoted in this article come from the over 200 small group interviews Vila conducted at both sides of the US–Mexico border from September 1991 to June 1996. All the quotes were translated from Spanish to English by Vila and all the names of the interviewees are pseudonyms.

6. Sarat’s pathbreaking research can also be read through the lens of affect theory. In her work in El Alberto, Mexico, she found what we would call ‘affective conductors’ operating in the bodies of return migrants from the undocumented journey across the border. A fascinating case is that of Alejandro, whose paralyzed body (which resulted from him trying to cross the border) works to “represent to his friends and family the possibility of salvation through faith. His body was both an affective conductor for religious faith and a discursive tool, as well as an object about which stories were habitually told.” (Sarat 2013, 139)

7. In his research on processes of identification on the US–Mexico border, Vila (1997, 2000, 2003, 2005) found a widespread discourse used as a narrative plot by many people in the region: ‘All poverty is Mexican.’

8. In the same way that Catholic rituals and symbols are tinted by a Spaniard tradition in Mexico, the same rituals are tinted by an Irish tradition in the US. The Irish were the most important Catholics for many years and Irish priests occupied the most important echelons of the Catholic hierarchy of the country, greatly influencing the religious practices of the US.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pablo Vila

Pablo Vila is Professor at Temple University, Philadelphia. His research focuses on the social construction of identities on the US–Mexico border and in Argentina. He has researched issues of national, regional, racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and class identities on the US-Mexico border. In his work on Argentina, he has researched how different social actors use popular music to understand who they are and act accordingly. Several articles and books have resulted from the work on these topics.

Edward Avery-Natale

Edward Avery-Natale completed his PhD in Sociology at Temple University, Philadelphia, in 2012. He is an Assistant Professor at the Liberal Arts Department at Mercer County Community College, West Windsor Township, NJ. His teaching and research expertise is in identifications, social movements, and popular culture.