Borderlands Religion: Space, Memory, and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo mandated the cession of Mexico’s northern holdings (which included present-day states California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona, Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming) to the United States. These annexed territories not only reshaped physical landscapes but also intertwined the histories of both countries. In the wake of the treaty, American entrepreneurs reimagined physical borderlands and seized new commerce opportunities that had once been separated by borders. While a wave of Americans flocked to the region to establish new business and capitalize on economic opportunities, numerous Mexicans abandoned the area since they could not compete financially. Geographical changes marked profound transformations for both countries. By the 1860s, Mexico had ceded 55 percent of its territory to the United States, forcing Mexicans to grapple with their new status as second-class citizens in their former territories.

Apart from geographical changes, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo complicated life for Mexicans in other ways as well. While the agreement granted Mexicans living in the United States citizenship, it also exposed the prevalence of racialized space-making practices. For example, Mexicans perceived to have “Indian” and “barbarous” physical characteristics were compelled to deny their heritage to become US citizens. Additionally, widespread anti-Catholic sentiments provoked Americans to attack churches and demonize Mexicans. Spatial imaginaries infused with racialized logics contributed to the creation of new hegemonic borderlands. Consequently, the process of racial formation in the borderlands became intricately linked to the construction of space, mobility, and power. This legacy left enduring consequences for Mexico’s relationship with the United States.

In this paper, I argue Mexico underwent a religious awakening in the late nineteenth century fueled by borderlands capitalism. I define borderlands capitalism as the transnational economic project by which Mexico and the United States melded the cultural flow of ideological imaginaries and commerce to produce the Mexico-US borderlands in the wake of the Mexican-American War. During the 1860s, Benito Juárez embraced the United States’ involvement in domestic affairs, seeing American capitalists as catalysts for modernization. This attracted a wave of US investors eager to further their economic agendas in Mexico. Foreign business ventures quickened social revolutions on the horizon and ignited drastic societal changes. Religion was no exception.

Juárez’s vision for expanding Mexico’s economy included legalizing non-Catholic religions, arguing Protestants were a model of progress and success. He enacted Reform Laws, which severely limited the church’s influence by maintaining a distinct role between the church and the state. The modern constitution banned clergy from holding public office and limited the fees that priests could charge for administering the sacraments. Additionally, the government gave itself the ability to intervene “in matters of religious worship and outward ecclesiastical forms.” While progressives strove to uphold the new constitution, the Catholic Church responded through myriad publications defending its role and authority in the nation. In time, liberals issued decrees ordering the suppression of religious orders, the complete separation of the church and the state, the prohibition against Catholic ceremonies and the wearing of religious garb in public, and the nationalization of all the church’s property in the country. With the Catholic Church’s capacity greatly curtailed, religion in Mexico was quickly changing.

Progressive Mexican Christians soon engaged in a project to reconstruct Catholicism by transforming its sacred space. Radical Catholics dreamed of a Christianity not ruled by Rome, but instead governed locally. I argue religious dissenters disrupted the hierarchy of Catholicism by reimagining the borderlands to reflect populist spatial priorities. That is, they reimagined the state’s capitalist project with their own political ideals. While the Juárez administration was engaged in efforts to boost the nation’s economy, rebellious Christians were embracing radical ideas to reimagine Catholicism. Consequently, the genesis of Mexico’s religious evolution was spurred through borderlands capitalism. Progressives in Mexico received, rejected, and reconstructed the transnational flow of American religion, capitalist principles, and white cultural mores south of the border by reconstructing spatial imaginaries to sanctify new Christian spaces. Thus, borderlands history between Mexico and the United States in the mid nineteenth century is best situated as a transnational affair in which both groups fought to create and preserve different memories.

Ultimately, I argue the borderlands became a geography of empire—spatially and ideologically. For Mexicans, borderlands were intimately tied to knowledge and memory. In the absence of native topographies and economies that laid claim to their histories, identities, and cultures, Mexicans constructed new imaginaries by reoriented politicized space. Consequently, Mexicans and Americans labored simultaneously to reimagine transformed geographical boundaries. For US entrepreneurs, they toiled to transform space and place to redefine identity through hegemonic geographical boundaries. Concurrently, displaced Mexicans reimagined profane space to remember their histories, rituals, and myths.