Guarded by Two Jaguars

A Catholic Parish Divided by Language and Faith

Eric Hoenes del Pinal

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780816556564
  9780816547029
• eBook ISBN:
  9780816547036
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

In communities in and around Cobán, Guatemala, a small but steadily growing number of members of the Q'eqchi' Maya Roman Catholic parish of San Felipe began self-identifying as members of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Their communities dramatically split as mainstream and charismatic Catholic parishioners who had been co-congregants came to view each other as religiously distinct and problematic "others."

In Guarded by Two Jaguars, Eric Hoenes del Pinal tells the story of this dramatic split and in so doing addresses the role that language and gesture have played in the construction of religious identity. Drawing on a range of methods from linguistic and cultural anthropology, the author examines how the introduction of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement in the parish produced a series of debates between parishioners that illustrate the fundamentally polyvocal nature of Catholic Christianity. This work examines how intergroup differences are produced through dialogue, contestation, and critique. It shows how people's religious affiliations are articulated not in isolation but through interaction with each other.

Although members of these two congregations are otherwise socially similar, their distinct interpretations of how to be a "good Catholic" led them to adopt significantly different norms of verbal and nonverbal communication. These differences became the idiom through which the two groups contested the meaning of being Catholic and Indigenous in contemporary Guatemala, addressing larger questions about social and religious change.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Catholicism as Heteroglossia
• 1. Por las calles de Cobán: Place, People, and the Dynamics of Conflict
• 2. Contested Catholicisms: Social Movements and Catholic Theologies in Parish Life
• 3. Catequistas y Predicadores: Constructing Religious Authority
• 4. Están listos para cantar en Q’eqchi’? Ma nekeeraj xninqehinkil sa’ Q’eqchi’?: Marking Ritual through Code Choice
• 5. The Politics of Audibility: Language, Music, and Pious Noise
• 6. Lo siento en mis manos, lo siento en mis pies: Embodying Piety
• 7. Bearing the Collective Cross: The Body in Public Piety
• Conclusion: Leaving, Returning, and the Dialectics of Change
• Works Cited
• Index