Fire in the Canyon

Religion, Migration, and the Mexican Dream

Leah M. Sarat

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780814770795
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The canyon in central Mexico was ablaze with torches as hundreds of people filed in. So palpable was their shared shock and grief, they later said, that neither pastor nor priest was needed. The event was a memorial service for one of their own who had died during an attempted border passage. Months later a survivor emerged from a coma to tell his story. The accident had provoked a near-death encounter with God that prompted his conversion to Pentecostalism. Today, over half of the local residents of El Alberto, a town in central Mexico, are Pentecostal. Submitting themselves to the authority of a God for whom there are no borders, these Pentecostals today both embrace migration as their right while also praying that their “Mexican Dream”—the dream of a Mexican future with ample employment for all—will one day become a reality. Fire in the Canyon provides one of the first in‑depth looks at the dynamic relationship between religion, migration, and ethnicity across the U.S.-Mexican border. Faced with the choice between life‑threatening danger at the border and life‑sapping poverty in Mexico, residents of El Alberto are drawing on both their religion and their indigenous heritage to demand not only the right to migrate, but also the right to stay home. If we wish to understand people's migration decisions, Sarat argues, we must take religion seriously. It is through religion that people formulate their ideas about life, death, and the limits of government authority.

PART I

1
Fire from Heaven

The word of God that came here—it changed us. This religion opened people’s eyes. Those who thought of today, now think of tomorrow. So then that sense of organization began, of working together.

—Hermano Tomás

After evangelicalism arrived, the people began to multiply. Children were born. They didn’t die anymore. … Now one can see the unity of the town.

—Hermano Roberto

A community study produced by El Alberto’s health clinic in 2008 opens with a story about the town’s past, describing it as a “savage town” where “nobody entered for fear of being killed.” But in 1960, a man who had been working as a bracero in the United States brought back evangelical Christianity, “and from that day forward the town allowed people to enter, and their evolution began.”¹ While the image of progression from savagery to civilization may appear extreme, the words echo a narrative of progress voiced, time and again, in interviews and informal conversations with the El Alberto’s Pentecostal residents. These residents recall a past of bitter poverty and social isolation followed by a period from the late 1950s through the late 1970s when circumstances began to change. At a time when Mexico was experiencing unprecedented growth, the government made a concentrated effort to bring education and development projects to the Valle del Mezquital. El Alberto’s first internal migrants traveled to Mexico City and beyond in search of work. As the town’s residents learned Spanish, they engaged in greater interaction with the outside world and thereby found ways to bring schools, electricity, roads, and irrigation into the community. It was during this time that Pentecostalism arose and flourished. While the reforms of Vatican II were taking effect, an undercover process of religious change that had begun in the early 1960s swept the town in a vigorous wave of conversion. The rise of Pentecostalism in El Alberto was thus tied to a process of development that began well before migration to the U.S. became commonplace.

This chapter explores the stories of Pentecostals in El Alberto who witnessed those crucial decades of development and religious change. While Catholics and Protestants alike recall a past of poverty and hardship, what sets evangelical accounts apart is the moral lens through which Pentecostals view their town’s transformation. Pentecostals do not recall a mere lack of resources in the past. They recall a profound, debilitating lack of harmony. They speak of drunken brawls that ended in murder and of acts of sorcery that caused children to waste away and die. For them, the poverty of the past was a crisis in which moral and material wellbeing were inseparably intertwined. By extension, Pentecostals view religious conversion as the single most important change that El Alberto witnessed during the period of intensive development. They claim that evangelicalism made people stop drinking. It made them stop fighting. It made people think of “tomorrow,” channeling their time and resources toward the common good. Even money from migration, many say, would have meant nothing had evangelicalism not given the people the sense to invest it well. Evangelicals state that once scarcely populated, the community has grown well into the thousands, with children and grandchildren on both sides of the border. Once a mere collection of cactus-walled huts, the town now contains scores of concrete houses and a thriving ecotourism business. I have been told, on more than one occasion, that El Alberto’s material prosperity is a sign that the town has been “blessed by God.”

I argue that Pentecostal narratives of the past have key implications for understanding today’s migration dynamics. On the one hand, these narratives evoke the Protestant ethic described by Max Weber, in which this-worldly, material success is regarded as a sign of salvation. Pentecostals in El Alberto explain that the poverty their community once endured was a spiritual problem, and that the development process was divinely sanctioned. By extension, they imply that religious faith is an essential component of effective labor migration. We can also detect within these stories a hint of North American prosperity theology, or the “gospel of health and wealth” made infamous by scandal-prone televangelists who claim that God rewards the faithful with material goods. Yet we must be careful to avoid simplistic readings of the relationship between Protestantism and economic activity. Pentecostalism in El Alberto does bear some influence of prosperity theology, and the religion is intertwined with North American consumer capitalism in deep and at times disconcerting ways. But that is not the whole story. In order to fully understand the relationship between Pentecostalism, development, and migration in El Alberto, we must pay attention to indigenous motivations for conversion. A close look at conversion stories reveals something more basic than the desire for financial progress. Early conversions were rooted in a simple effort to overcome illness, restore harmony, and survive.

I draw here upon five formal conversion stories in addition to dozens of informal conversations gathered over the course of three summers in the town. Giving particular attention to the voice of El Alberto’s first Pentecostal pastor, I also draw upon a historical study produced by the Iglesia Cristiana Independiente Pentecostés, the religious movement to which El Alberto’s two evangelical churches trace their origins.

National Development in the Valle del Mezquital

In the classic Mexican anthropological literature, the Valle del Mezquital is a desert devoid of everything but cacti, mesquite trees, and indigenous people whose lives are fraught with tragedy.² Today, irrigation has transformed much of the landscape into lush farmland. Maize grows tall. Pomegranate trees line the roads, laden with fruit. But at the time when the stories from my interviews begin, in the mid-twentieth century, the situation in the Mezquital was dire.

The roots of poverty in the Valle del Mezquital date to before the Conquest. Early sources state that the hñähñu-speaking people of the region supported themselves by hunting and gathering. They lived in small, isolated groups, for the soil was too barren to support concentrated settlement.³ By the time of the Conquest, the Triple Alliance had conquered the hñähñu and divided their territory into tributary provinces. The hñähñu retreated to the most marginal lands of the Mezquital as they sought to maintain autonomy in the face of Mexican and later Spanish domination. After Mexican Independence, the rugged nature of the landscape kept hñähñu-speaking people largely isolated from non-indigenous society. Even the Catholic Church had only marginal success in penetrating the region. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical accounts are punctuated by tales of indigenous uprisings, most of them centered on efforts to defend territory against external encroachment. The situation began to change in the mid-twentieth century as the Mexican government made a systematic effort to develop and integrate the region.

From the 1940s to 1970s, Mexico underwent a period of unprecedented economic growth. The combined effects of high import tariffs along with national investment in agriculture, education, and transportation were so pronounced that the period is often referred to as the “Mexican Economic Miracle.” In 1951, in an effort to bring the Valle del Mezquital “up to stride” with the rest of the nation, President Miguel Alemán called for the creation of the Patrimonio Indígena del Valle de Mezquital, or PIVM (Indigenous Patrimony of the Mezquital Valley). The program brought irrigation to the region, along with agricultural products suited to an arid climate. A cadre of bilingual teachers was sent forth to teach the population to read, write, and speak Spanish. Efforts were made to battle illness and to bring drinking water to the most remote villages. The program’s efforts were momentarily slowed when the PIVM came under the control of local landed elites who did not have the best interests of the people in mind. By 1970, however, a change in leadership made it possible for the program to bring about genuine improvements in the lives of residents of the region.⁴

Early government documents outlining the development plan express a deep concern for the plight of the Mezquital’s population. Yet the documents also express an awareness of social difference that borders on disgust. The documents describe the residents of the region as not merely poor, but destitute, competing with “the very beasts” by “sharing with them puddles stinking with semi-putrid water.”⁵ One document speaks of a typhus epidemic that festers amidst “the filth, the rot, and the lice-infested rags that half-cover the scrawny flesh of almost all of the natives.”⁶ Children stare from black-and-white photos with miserable eyes. One shows a family outside their home; the caption reads, “the dwelling: caves and dark hovels that don’t even deserve to be called ‘huts,’ in which adults and children, people and animals are mixed together in revolting promiscuity.”⁷

While government officials and development agents described the residents of the Valle del Mezquital as something less than human, a pitiable “other” to be uplifted, redeemed, and transformed, the hñähñu-speaking residents of the region had their own thoughts on the matter. In order to understand the conditions that spurred evangelical conversion and eventually drove residents of El Alberto to seek a better life in the United States, we must pay attention to their own stories about the past. As Cecilia Mariz claims, although poverty has large-scale, structural causes, we must look to the level of day-to-day experiences if we wish to understand what poverty means to people on the ground.⁸ Poverty lies close to the skin, worked out in the fabric of personal relationships. And it is through everyday, culturally embedded practices that people cope with poverty and carve out possibilities for the future.⁹

Pentecostal Stories of the Past

Inside accounts suggest that there was indeed some truth in the PIVM’s portrayal of life in the Mezquital. When asked about the past, El Alberto’s oldest residents state, quite simply, that life was difficult. The soil was poor and rains were sparse. The people had “no food, no clothes.” Children often died. The town had no electricity, no roads, and no schools. Scarcely anyone spoke Spanish. The people rarely ventured into Ixmiquilpan unless to sell the firewood they gathered or the baskets they wove from cactus fiber. Even the assertion that the people had to compete with “the very beasts” for survival is not far off the mark. Tomás, an evangelical man who now owns a landscaping company in Phoenix, recalls that as a child, his bed was a leveled-off cactus covered in boards, safe from the wild animals that roamed at night. Another man remembers being dressed as a child in clothes made of the rough cotton sacks that grain and sugar were sold in.

Although memories of extreme poverty are nearly universal among El Alberto’s older residents, Pentecostal narratives of the past bring an additional element to the table. Pentecostals recall something worse than a simple lack of resources. They recall a profound and debilitating lack of harmony. They state that the past was fraught with conflict, and that alcohol often lay at the root of the problem.

In the past, when water was so hard to come by, young and old alike regularly consumed pulque, a mildly alcoholic drink made from fermented agave nectar. For a desert population whose only water was obtained through great exertion, the agave plant with its sweet agua miel, or “honey water,” and strong, fibrous leaves was once, quite literally, a life-source. In small quantities the alcohol has little effect, but some people would drink up to twenty liters a day, the equivalent of more than fifteen pints of beer. While pulque consumption is an integral part of popular festivals in the region, Pentecostals reject the drink as they reject alcohol in general. Often Pentecostals describe Catholic saints’ days as little more than excuses to “toss back a few cups.” The trouble with drinking, they explain, is that it leads to conflict. While fiestas are supposed to foster harmony, Pentecostals state that in practice, they often have the opposite effect. As a Pentecostal man in his seventies put it, “[T]he thing about Catholic fiestas is that people would start drinking, and then they’d fight. Good friends, brother and brother, would start fighting.”

If the people did not kill one another with knives and guns, evangelicals recall, they killed each other through what evangelicals considered to be witchcraft and sorcery. As Tomás, the man who describes sleeping on a leveled-off cactus as a young child, remembers, “My dad was Catholic, but I didn’t know that Catholic church, no, no, no. … This town was drunk. Everyone, everyone used to kill one another. Lots of sorcery here.” Tomás recalls stumbling upon acts of sorcery while pasturing his family’s goats as a child. “‘Get out of the way, kid,’ they’d say, … and they’d have something here, carrying it, I don’t know what they’d have, but they’d leave it up on the hilltop so that it would kill other people.”

Traditional hñähñu religion recognizes a variety of ritual specialists, ranging from herbal healers to bonesetters to practitioners of shamanic healing. The nuances of these categories are largely lost within Pentecostalism due to a general distrust of traditional religion. Pentecostals use the terms brujo/bruja (witch) and hechicero (sorcerer) interchangeably to refer to healers and malevolent religious practitioners alike. They state that the town once contained many witches who were responsible for the deaths of infants and children. Due to the constant machinations of these malevolent beings, the town’s population remained low. In the words of Don Cipriano, the “town was totally disorganized. Pure fighting. Here in El Dexthi [a neighborhood of El Alberto] there were just six people. Here in El Centro, there were seven houses. And in El Toxi, four little houses, that’s all. In El Camino, there were just four houses, as well.” Today children live and thrive, whether in El Alberto or in the town’s immigrant settlements in the United States. While improved nutrition and medical care have much to do with today’s lower child mortality rate, Pentecostals explain that deaths have declined because the arrival of evangelicalism has reduced the presence of witchcraft.

Don Cipriano was one of El Alberto’s first converts and served as the first Pentecostal pastor in the town. In his view, drunkenness, sorcery, and internal conflict were not the only problems plaguing El Alberto in the past. Cipriano recalls that the town was once bound in submission to external, non-indigenous authorities. In his understanding, the Catholic fiesta system played a key role in the people’s subjugation.

When Cipriano was a young child in the late 1940s, El Alberto’s four neighborhoods functioned more independently than they do today. Each had a mayordomo, or Catholic festival sponsor, who was responsible for making a contribution to the town’s fiestas. One supplied the music; another, the mass; and another, the carved wax decorations. The fourth would provide the “castle,” an elaborate tower frame wired with colorful explosives. Such castles, or castillos, are in common use today, a high point of the entertainment during Catholic festivals. Fireworks shoot from the top and sides or spin out in wheels, sending thunderous booms across the night to neighboring towns.

“But the saddest thing about it,” Cipriano remembers, “is that there was pure injustice. If someone–for example I’m a mayordomo. For lack of money, if I don’t fulfill what the town calls me to do … the authorities would have to come and tie me up!” If the person in charge of the castillo failed to generate the necessary funds, he would be tied to a tree all night in punishment. And if the person in charge of the music failed to provide it, he would be tied near the castillo. When the fireworks began to explode, the unfortunate individual’s family members would lay a wet cloth on him to protect his skin from the sparks.

While Catholic fiestas are often explained as means of generating communitas,¹⁰ in Cipriano’s memory, a central symbol of the fiesta—the colorful and celebratory castle—was a torture device. While speaking of the fiesta, Cipriano recalls not conviviality but coercion, not voluntary sacrifice but enforced compliance to repressive ritual obligations. Interestingly, he remembers the external, secular government as the driving force behind the punishment. Cipriano states that in those days, the municipal government based in Ixmiquilpan was not concerned with indigenous people’s needs. “Just traditional fiestas, just traditional fiestas,” he recalls, “and so this community—we didn’t even have a road. Or light. Or water. Or—or a school!”

When public education finally arrived in El Alberto, the teachers did not hesitate to use physical punishment. If one didn’t write what the teacher told one to write on the board, Cipriano continues, “the teacher would take out a knife, saying ‘bring a stick from outside.’” And they’d hit you, “and órale! Until there was nothing left of the stick.” Another punishment was to kneel on the ground until recess, holding a stone in each hand. “If you let a hand down, they’d knock you over.”

The realm of the market was no gentler than that of the school. Before the arrival of irrigation, it was nearly impossible to grow enough food to support a family. People in El Alberto worked by collecting and selling firewood, or by making baskets and extracting agave fiber for rope and coarsely woven cloth. They would leave before dawn to carry a load of goods three hours or so over rough terrain to Ixmiquilpan to sell, and would return late at night with corn and other staples. Municipal authorities demanded a tax on every load of items sold in Ixmiquilpan. Those who did not pay risked having their wares confiscated, and those who complained were thrown in jail. “And it was hardest for the family,” Cipriano remembers. “Waiting and waiting, when will the man or woman come back home; well, how are they going to come home if they’re imprisoned? So the people [at home] were dying of hunger.”

Cipriano recalls Catholicism as an integral part of the structural injustices of the past. As alcohol kept people’s minds fogged, the fiesta system kept their energies bound in needless activity, preventing them for pressing for material change. Indeed, anti-Catholic sentiment among e...