Lecture 2 Outline

Enduring Communities of Faith in the Southwest 

1. Three ways that Hispanics became a part of the United States: incorporation through conquest, immigration, exile.
2. Elements of Conquest:
1. military
2. judicial
3. political
4. economic (e.g. confiscation of land)
5. demographic
6. cultural
7. religious (Catholic and Protestant)
8. linguistic (language
3. Resistance to Conquest
1. military
2. armed resistance
3. political
4. founding community organizations
5. language
6. conflict with clergy (from both Hispanic laity and priests)
7. writing memoirs and historical account
4. Other Responses to Conquest
1. “peace structure” – usually involving elite families, e.g. through intermarriage of daughters with Anglo-American newcomers
2. this option not usually available to the majority of working-class and/or poor Hispanics – but they too found it necessary to respond to the new social order, e.g. need for women and sometimes even children to work for wages shifted gender and generational relations – solidarity among extended family members
3. isolation/barrio enclaves (in some ways a form of resistance, or at least mutual survival and protection)
5. Enduring communities of faith: conquered and with little political, economic, or social capital, Hispanics nonetheless endured as distinct ethnic religious communities. Women often played a key role in leading and celebrating religious traditions. From a theological standpoint, these faith expressions became a core way in which practitioners defended their identity and their dignity as children of God. They were an “enacted theology.”
6. Theological Reflection
1. influence of rural/urban shift on meaning of ritual and devotion
2. ritual and devotion as “enacted theology”
3. faith and justice: symbolic language of resistance
4. centrality of popular religion as expression of ultimate identity and belonging
5. defense of dignity as children of God
6. mestizaje: connections between Elizondo’s reflections and the history related in chapter two of ¡Presente!.