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Abstract
Within Latin American contemporary studies, the ties between religion and politics seem to be informed by certain presuppositions: religion is tied either to the question of poverty or to the weakening of the State, bringing with it the possibility of supplanting politics with religion. However, during the last 15 years, many “classical” and non-religious Latin American social movements such as land takeovers and peasant movements in Brazil, Paraguay, or Mexico have incorporated religious dimensions in their repertories of collective action. In order to assess whether these new religious aspects affect socio-political dimensions and practices in these traditionally non-overtly religious social movements, this article examines the case of Mexican land takeovers (invasiones) that have been occurring since 1998 in various regions suffering from extreme poverty. Through discourse analysis of interviews and life stories, and analysis of new religious practices, this article shows the existence of a collective miracle phenomenon, present in all of the cases of land takeovers that were observed in Mexico. It seeks to determine whether this collective miracle discourse and new religious practices interfere with more socio-political dimensions and what the result is on collective action in Mexico, taking into account the particular historical background of religion and politics in this country.
Au sein de nombreuses études contemporaines, les liens entre religieux et politique en Amérique latine apparaissent souvent présupposés; soit parce qu’on y lie l’existence de la religion à celle de la pauvreté, soit parce qu’on y pose que le religieux prospère lorsque l’État s’affaiblit, entraînant le risque d’un remplacement du politique par le religieux. Toutefois, depuis une quinzaine d’années, plusieurs mouvements sociaux traditionnels latino-américains, tels les mouvements d’occupation de terres ou les mouvements paysans au Brésil, Paraguay et Mexique, ont incorporé des dimensions religieuses au sein de leurs répertoires d’action collective. Afin de voir si ces nouveaux aspects religieux transforment ou affectent les dimensions et pratiques socio-politiques dans ces mouvements traditionnellement non-religieux, cet article examine le cas d’occupation de terrain (invasiones) qui ont lieu depuis 1998 dans plusieurs secteurs de grande pauvreté au Mexique. Par une analyse du discours appliquée aux entretiens et récits de vie recueillis auprès des participants, ainsi que par l’analyse des nouvelles pratiques religieuses dans ces mouvements, cet article documente l’existence d’un phénomène du « miracle collectif », qui est rapporté dans tous les cas d’occupations de terrain analysés. L’analyse de ce discours du miracle collectif conduit à déterminer si ce discours du miracle collectif et les nouvelles pratiques religieuses dans les mouvements d’occupation de terrain interfèrent avec les dimensions plus socio-politiques.
Acknowledgements
I remain very grateful to the late Professor Ronald F. Thiemann of Harvard Divinity School for his most generous insights and suggestions on this article and about my research on human rights and religion at Harvard.
Notes
1. Paul Freston, renowned specialist of Pentecostalism, notes with humor: “But, where the poor are the vast majority, that is not saying much” (Freston Citation1998, 341).
2. The term, which means “parachutist”, is used popularly to indicate people who set about occupying or taking over land in order to obtain it by purchase or self-urbanization mechanisms.
3. The variables taken into account were: (1) participation (or not) in an organized group; (2) participation or not in a religious group; (3) gender; (4) age between 16 and 81; (5) participation or not in a land take-over; (6) different levels of poverty, from people living in self-constructed concrete houses to people living up to 10 in a precarious shack made of material they can find on the streets (cardboard, wood), and people living in self-constructed houses without any floors, directly on the earth (in rural zones).
4. According to XII Censo General de Población y Vivienda, México D.F., 2000, 87.99% of respondents were Catholic; 5.2% “protestant or evangelical”, 2.07% were of a “non-evangelical biblical” religion, while 3.52% were of “no religion”.
5. The Virgen de Guadalupe is a representation of the Blessed Virgin Mary with dark skin and physical characteristics that make her similar to Mexican Indians. As tradition tells, she is said to have appeared to an Indian converted to Christianity, Juan Diego, in 1531, just 11 years after the Conquest of Mexico by Spain. The apparitions gave way to a great devotion among indigenous people, but were initially fought against by Spanish religious authorities, for almost a century. From the very beginning of the cult, there have been constant popular and indigenous re-appropriations of what is considered now by many as a founding myth of the Mexican nation, and in particular indigenous people, who take from the message given by the Virgen to Juan Diego that she is Mother of all poor and indigenous people. For a detailed account of the importance of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexican History, see Lafaye (Citation1974).
6. In that they do not present any similarity with other reported contemporary apparitions of the Virgin Mary, such as Medjugorge’s (Yugoslavia 1970–present), where apocalyptic secrets are revealed only to privileged viewers. I am grateful to Professor Harvey Cox for this comparative perspective.
7. All translated excerpts take into account the forms of language used in shanty town, where Spanish is often mixed with other native indigenous tongues.
8. The word “capilla”, here translated as “shrine”, may refer in Latin America to very humble constructions, often made by the people themselves to state their devotion.. The building of these shrines is an important part of popular religious culture.
9. See ‘La imposición de coadjutores afecta la colegialidad episcopal’, La Jornada (Mexico, D.F.), 19/10/1998, page 16.
10. According to Henry Dumery, the miracle can be characterized in the following way: “The prodigious is only miraculous insofar as it attests to the unconditional nature of the numinous, its gratuitous nature, that by which it is unfathomable and inalienable, impossible to tame”. Dumery distinguishes different kinds of miracles and the gift-miracle, which escapes the reciprocal logic of asking and thanking, stands out: “In this way the test-miracle, the demonstrative-miracle, arises from a different spirit than the gift-miracle. In a word, it is not miraculous; it is adventurous, it tries God” (Dumery Citation1997).
11. From the perspective of theories of enunciation, “the origin of the enunciation is not conceived of as a subject (determining the meaning) but as an enunciative position, a place, for which speakers can be substituted” (Maingueneau Citation1991, 107–151, translated by author).
12. This expression was also widely used in the Zapatista discourse, as of 1994 and the “insurrection” of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN or Zapatist Army of National Liberation).
13. These perspectives come from the field of pragmatics, a perspective founded by John L. Austin, How to do Things with Words (New York, Oxford University Press, 1970) and John R. Searle, Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics, which reveal power mechanisms as perlocutionary; that is, generating effects on the addressees of the discourse.
14. In Mexican Spanish, the expresión “órale” is used in a familiar sense to say “come on folks”, “ok now”, or “come on now”.
15. The presence of legitimating authorities varies in every different discourse, and thus gives important indications as to the position of the enunciator towards others and the society in general.
16. All names are fictitious.
17. In Spanish, “ratero” is derived from the word “rat” and implies a lot of contempt.
18. “What began as devotion to Guadalupe, finished as Jesuit martyrs to the Guadalupan faith, and this work of time and circumstance was the Mexican homeland itself” (De La Maza Citation1953, 179, liberal translation).
19. The weak growth of Liberation Theology in Mexico contrasts with the situation in other countries. Not a single Mexican writer figures among the Latin American theologians generally associated with this current, such as G. Guttiérez (Peru), J.-L. Segundo (Uruguay), the brothers L. and C. Boff (Brazil), and J. Sobrino (El Salvador). While some claim that liberation theology was important to the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mgr Ruiz, the Bishop of the Diocese of San Cristobal at the time of the uprising, has always very explicitly maintained a clear distance from Liberation Theology, instead advocating a teología india (Indian theology), quite different in that it does not attempt to make an equivalence between social movements and the idea of Christian liberation. (Interview with Mgr Ruiz, « No hay teología de la violencia », Proceso, 1127, 7 June 1998: 7–14.) Another factor is that the development of local ecclesiastical communities, an important vehicle of liberation theology (Löwy Citation1998, 121–137), is still obstructed in the majority of Mexican states by dictates outlawing their existence (Anonymous interview with a national leader of grassroots ecclesiastic communities, carried out in Mexico, 23 August 1998). Moreover, the Mexican episcopate clearly distanced itself from the rest of Latin America in 1969 by founding the Mexican Theological Society, where the entire hierarchy (with the exception of Mgr Méndez Arceo, who was arrested several times for having attended Latin American gatherings about liberation theology), came together at the first Congress of Mexican Theology, displaying public disapproval for the conclusions of the Medellín Conference (see Acta de la Asamblea Episcopal of Mexico, 21–23 August 1969).