A Flock Divided: Race, Religion, and Politics in Mexico, 1749-1857

by Matthew D. O'Hara

Catholicism, as it developed in colonial Mexico, helped to create a broad and remarkably inclusive community of Christian subjects, while it also divided that community into countless smaller flocks. Taking this contradiction as a starting point, Matthew D. O’Hara describes how religious thought and practice shaped Mexico’s popular politics. As he shows, religion facilitated the emergence of new social categories and modes of belonging in which individuals—initially subjects of the Spanish crown, but later citizens and other residents of republican Mexico—found both significant opportunities for improving their place in society and major constraints on their ways of thinking and behaving.O’Hara focuses on interactions between church authorities and parishioners from the late-colonial era into the early-national period, first in Mexico City and later in the surrounding countryside. Paying particular attention to disputes regarding caste status, the category of “Indian,” and the ownership of property, he demonstrates that religious collectivities from neighborhood parishes to informal devotions served as complex but effective means of political organization for plebeians and peasants. At the same time, longstanding religious practices and ideas made colonial social identities linger into the decades following independence, well after republican leaders formally abolished the caste system that classified individuals according to racial and ethnic criteria. These institutional and cultural legacies would be profound, since they raised fundamental questions about political inclusion and exclusion precisely when Mexico was trying to envision and realize new forms of political community. The modes of belonging and organizing created by colonialism provided openings for popular mobilization, but they were always stalked by their origins as tools of hierarchy and marginalization.

Genres: History, Religion

336 pages, Hardcover

First published November 2, 2009

Reviews

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book explores especially the relationship between "Spanish" and "Indian" as legal constructs, individual and communal identities, and religious categories in 18th and 19th century Mexico. The author examines how Indianness in particular evolved through the discourse of religious arguments - arguments over who owns temples and devotional property, over fees for rituals, over who can serve in different ministerial capacities, over parish records, over legal and contractual disputes, and a variety of conflicts and disputes over religious affairs.

What I found especially interesting was the extent to which segregation existed in Mexico City - for most of the colonial period, there were overlapping churches, one of which would serve Indians and one of which would serve Spaniards and castas. As the Bourbon reforms and later Independence removed some of the legal foundations for these divisions, the fundamental social reality of race still continued to affect religious society in New Mexico. The last two chapters explore the post-Independence period, and how various parties eclectically alternated between the language of liberalism and modernity and the language of tradition and past custom as it best suited their arguments.

If the title does NOT catch your attention, then you might want to pass on this. But if this seems interesting, then the author is a strong writer who weaves individual episodes into the broader thesis. I enjoyed this book, although I admit it is rather a niche interest.