Política y Fé: Faith, Activism, and Agency in the Southern California Borderlands

In consideration of this year’s AAR taking place in San Diego, this panel focuses on Latine histories of Christianity in the southern borderlands. Latine religion in the US-Mexico borderlands has a rich history of intertwinement with political activism. We focus on this thread of religion and political activism in the Southern California borderlands region and explore how Latine people have remapped these borderlands as a space and a place to reflect their political priorities. While the panel emphasizes Southern California history, the participating scholars are committed to approaching these histories through a transnational lens to more accurately reflect the binational development and movement of ideas, collaborations, and ideologies. This panel explores a variety of faith traditions, from radical Catholics to devout Protestants, throughout the “long twentieth century” (roughly around the later half of the nineteenth century into the early 2000s). The panel is comprised of three early-career scholars eager to share new research and approaches to these histories. This session also includes a respondent and a chair who have both graciously agreed to participate, and who have published award-winning books on religion and resistance in the US-Mexico borderlands. William Calvo-Quiros, author of Undocumented Saints: The Politics of Migration, serves as a respondent and Jennifer Koshatka Seman, author of Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedro Jaramillo, as chair. We believe that this lineup will provide an insightful and productive conversation about the panelists’ research.  

Presenter 1 examines religion and capitalism in the late nineteenth century borderlands. They argue that Mexico underwent a religious awakening in the late 1800s fueled by borderlands capitalism. Presenter 1 sees this as a transnational economic project where Mexico and the United States blended ideological imaginaries and commerce to create the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. Entrepreneurs in Los Angeles led the way with Angelino boosters and capitalists profiting from investments in Mexico. These capitalist formulations in the borderlands perversely affected Mexicans, leading to Mexican progressives revolting against the state with the Mexican Revolution. Presenter 1's intervention details the radical religious dimension that added to this uprising. Presenter 1 argues that liberal Mexican Christians redefined space in the borderlands to represent populist goals. Progressive Catholics and Protestants opposed the capitalist project by reorienting religious, economic, and political space.

Presenter 2 presents on the Catholic, anti-communist, and Mexican nationalist Unión Nacional Sinarquista (UNS or National Synarchist Union) in the context of Southern California. The organization was formed in 1937 in Mexico to oppose the postrevolutionary Mexican state, which embodied anti-clericalism, a strict separation between church and state, secular education, and land reform. Instead, the UNS proposed a Mexico where Church and state would be intricately intertwined, bringing about order and morals to the country.  Whereas most academics highlight the UNS within the confines of Mexico's borders, Presenter 2's paper demonstrates the transnational dimensions of the group in Southern California between the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Los Angeles regional sinarquista committee not only established a presence in the city, but established new chapters in Azusa, Claremont, La Verne, Ontario, Oxnard, Pacoima, Pomona, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Fernando, San Gabriel, Santa Paula, Van Nuys, and Watts. Presenter 2 argues that the organization established a foothold among conservative Catholic Mexicans across Southern California, utilizing their collective power to transform the religious and political situation in Mexico from afar.

Presenter 3 draws from their current dissertation project on the history of religion and immigrant rights activism in the San Diego-Tijuana region from the 1970s to the early 2020s. Their presentation focuses on one of their primary case studies: the late local activist Roberto Martinez, whose work was internationally recognized by the Human Rights Watch as well as the Mexican Government. Martinez, a devout Catholic, served as the director of the American Friends Service Committee’s US-Mexico Border Program’s San Diego branch from 1982-2003. He used his position to collect accounts of and speak out against human rights abuses committed against immigrants and Latine people by law enforcement such as the United States Border Patrol and the San Diego Police Department. Although Martinez was not commonly recognized as a faith-based activist by the media, he was driven by his faith to serve his community. Martinez co-founded religious activist events that continue to this day, including the Ecumenical Migrant Outreach Project and the Posada Sin Fronteras in San Diego and Tijuana’s Friendship Park (a binational recreational ground along the San Diego-Tijuana border that is now a frequent stage for religious and secular acts of resistance against border militarization). Presenter 3 asserts that Martinez’s occasionally-subtle integration of his faith in his activism, not to mention the Quaker and ecumenical religiosity of the American Friends Service Committee, ought to be understood as a performance of religion in defiance of the U.S. government and its militarization of the US-Mexico border.

These three papers all recount histories of Latine religions and resistance to hegemonic power structures. The application and formation of the various iterations of Christianity that played pivotal roles in these histories have undeniably been shaped by the US-Mexico border. While the work in this panel is directly of interest to scholars interested in the history of modern Christianity, particularly those who are interested in religious history of the American southwest, it also appeals to those who are interested in religion and its intersection with politics, secularism, spatial studies, and borders. The scholars on this panel look forward to engaging with AAR colleagues not only to share perspectives on the history of religion in the borderlands, but to converse with others about this incredibly relevant topic, especially during an election year.