Special Feature
America's Religious
Awakening: The Enduring Spirituality Of Latinos And Immigrants
By Wayne Trujillo
The historically staid First United Methodist Church
in Aurora is an unlikely host to Hispanic
immigrants, but the denomination sheds its
inhibitions for a few hours every week and assumes a
Spanish accent. The message of God and a thumping
Latino beat power the proceedings while emotions and
upraised arms strain the rafters.
Mere yards from the stomping and shaking are a
kitchen and a dining area. Pots and pans replace
the pews. The people preparing the post-service
feast are no less animated than the worshippers
within the vestibule, but their passion simmers
rather than boil.
One worshipper, Moises Carranza-Reyes, moves around
the kitchen with a confidence and ease that
disguises his disability. It's difficult for the
casual observer to notice that he is missing an
ankle and foot. A prosthetic and a prayer are
equally responsible for Carranza-Reyes' easy gait.
He's inclined to credit his recovery to faith more
than any medical procedure.
The faithful rent their parcel of heaven on earth in
increments, typically a three-hour haven from
drudgery, danger and instability. Despite the
constant clouds hanging over their lives in America,
their most potent defense --- and weapon --- is faith.
And there is an abundance of it in the First United
Methodist Church.
Faces, both stoic and smiling, reflect the faith ---
faith that their decisions to abandon native
countries will prove fruitful, and faith that steps
taken to cross both borders and proprietary
Americans will deliver them to the Promised Land.
Most striking, along with the rays of optimism that
stubbornly streak through the immigrants' shadowy
and overcast existence, is a preternatural faith
that God and family will weather the inevitable
storms.
For those illegal immigrants who dare follow the
American Dream, the road is rough. The path to
relative prosperity, if not earned citizenshi p,
frequently dead-ends in treacherous terrain. Some
lose their lives. Carranza-Reyes was lucky. He only
lost a limb. But there is a common denominator that
links --- some say enchains --- the newly-arrived
Latinos.
Observers suggest that the very religion that
sustains also shackles, disrupting Latinos' upward
mobility. A conservative disdain of birth control,
let alone abortion, can give birth to families with
members sometimes numbering in the double digits.
Then there are extended families that occupy the
same household. It takes the faith of Job and Noah
combined to remain afloat in a flood of political
impotency and Minutemen invective drowning out
realistic discussion on the illegal immigration
issue.
Perhaps most troublesome for Latino leaders is the
future. The children, many scions of stigma and
poverty, struggle with an environment that
counterpoints American suburbia. Confronted by
roadblocks to the American Dream, including detours
around Main Street America, are a language barrier,
widespread anger over border anarchy and a consensus
that Latinos' arrival on the national scene is
flaunting American culture, laws and public
services.
Indeed, no discourse of Latino religiosity can
ignore the illegal immigration commotion that has
shell shocked politicians into disquieted indecision
or vehement umbrage. Add to this conundrum the
Latino subsets that defy simple categorization of
who and what constitutes membership in the ethnic
group. Religion, especially Catholicism, along with
the Spanish language, is the sturdiest tangible of
the slippery definition popularized by U.S. Census
Bureau --- Hispanic. Consider that Latin and South
American countries continue to be the Vatican's
strongest foothold in the Western Hemisphere.
Against a backdrop of diverging denominations,
circumstances and monikers, the Latino condition is
difficult to discern. Some prefer the universal
"Hispanic" title, which generally connects the
ethnic group to Spain and its language, while others
favor the more Western Hemispheric identification,
"Latino." The Latino population isn't homogeneous
nor does the group, despite the current uproar,
consist exclusively of immigrants. Many are
political refugees who arrived in past decades while
others have resided on American soil since before
the Mayflower docked at Plymouth Rock.
In a profile of actor Esai Morales that I wrote for
Latino SUAVE magazine, I noted that Latino New York
City has traditionally been a distant cousin to Los
Angeles' Chicano population, with the cities being
bicoastal bookends to the Hispanic-American
experience. Shaded by Caribbean Latinos hailing from
the palm-swept islands of Puerto Rico, Dominican
Republic and, to a lesser extent, Cuba, New York
City's ethnic enclaves spoke Spanish alongside a
cacophony of international syntax with nearly the
frequency of English.
Those same Big Apple streets have famously directed
foreigners to the American mainstream, and the city
celebrates the Statu e of Liberty, a symbol that is
both an immigration mascot and doorstep into
American society. Agitated opponents of illegal
immigration consider Lady Liberty's iconic embrace
of immigrants as being reduced to something
resembling a doormat rather than a doorstep, a
cherished institution that the undocumented walk
over roughshod, wiping their feet on U.S. customs
(not to mention border enforcement) in the process.
To the average Latino illegal immigrant, the
complexities of the national dialogue register on a
primordial level --- namely fear, survival and
endurance. Reliance on divine intervention, absent
intercession by labor boards and pricey lawyers, is
natural. But that religiosity isn't unique to recent
Latino arrivals. Since 1598, my ancestors stubbornly
clung to their diminishing New Mexico plots with the
same death-grip that they held onto superstitions
and the Rosary. They prostrated before weary and
weathered Santos and the Virgin Mary long after the
industrial revolutions sent the rest of America on a
space-age trajectory miles and millenniums removed
from an agrarian anachronism that persists today in
patches of northern New Mexico and southern
Colorado.
Catholicism overlaps generations and geography. Our
Lady of Guadalupe is only the most celebrated Marian
image among Latinos. While she remains the public
face of Latino devotion to Americans, and is present
in all aspects of Latino life as she smiles from
church altars, billboards and even kitchen
appliances, another icon approaches her stature
in certain circles. Santa Fe's gothic shrine, St.
Francis Cathedral, houses the most definitive
portrait of Mother Mary in New Mexican history. La Conquistadora is a wooden statue of the Blessed
Virgin that accompanied Spanish settlers to the
region in the early 17th Century. La Conquistadora
has had some face and body reconstruction over the
years, not to mention a new wardrobe (highlighted by
a papal coronation; according to santafefiesta.org,
"she was crowned in 1954 by Cardinal Francis
Spellman and again in 1960 by an apostolic
representative of Pope John XXIII").
Catholicism's influence in Latin America extends to
America, but the considerable ethnic group's faith
is increasingly being "reborn." The charismatic
evangelical churches that promise a reawakening to
spirituality have viscerally connected with Latinos
of all origins and generations. According to
FASTNET, an Internet news organization,
approximately 23 percent of Latinos in the U.S.
consider themselves Protestants, and even a
considerable number of those remaining faithful to
the Catholic Church report being evangelical or
"born-again."
Rebirth is the American way. where immigrants and
citizens alike redefine their futures, both
terrestrial and eternal. Using data published in
Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United
States, Bruce Murray of FASNET quoted the
book's editor, Gaston Espinosa, as saying, "To put
these numbers in national perspective, there are
more Latino Protestants in the United States than
American Jews, Muslims, Episcopalians or
Presbyterians."
Still, Catholicism dominates. Murray reminds us that
a Latino-American plurality, some 70 percent, claims
the Catholic Church as the spiritual steward. And
recent reports revealing the migration of Latinos to
Protestant denominations isn't the thunder and
lightning revelation that it appears at first blush.
New Mexican Latinos experimented with Pentecostal
churches decades ago, with a substantial number so
overcome by spirits speaking in tongues and the
acrobatic testaments that, thereafter, their raised
hands grasped air rather than rosaries and holy
rolling replaced holy water as the most sanctified
blessing. Then there were the Presbyterian
missionaries who traveled to remote New Mexican
villages, teaching and encouraging generations of
disadvantaged New Mexican children. Their successes
included numerous first-generation college
graduates. Of course, there were those like my
grandmother who held steadfast to the Roman Catholic
Church until her last breath.
Musical pews has historically been a popular game
played by all immigrants to America, but even their
American-born descendents typically sample various
sects, denominations and congregations before
settling doubts as to what works and what doesn't.
For secular concerns, the rhetoric doesn't matter,
only the results.
Latino immigrants are reviving moribund
congregations and resurrecting hopes that organized
religion will retreat from the lucrative political arena back into depressed communities.
Headlines reporting an upsurge in Latino gang
activity around the nation aren't breaking news;
rather they are 21st century updates to the Los
Angeles Zoot Suit Riots culture of the 1940s.
Already, Catholic and Protestant organizations are
responding to crises in destitute enclaves
historically populated by Latinos. Gangs, drugs and
general mayhem have capsized generations of Latino
youth. The churches are offering an alternative
through faith-based programs. The success rate isn't
overwhelming, but impressive numbers of youth that
had seemed destined for prison or early death are
finding refuge in church organizations, and later,
colleges.
The debate over whether tradition, values and
religion helps or hinders Latino success and
assimilation in American society continues.
Particularly fascinating is the influence of
religion. Does it enslave or deliver Latinos,
particularly immigrants? And if it is capable of
deliverance, what and where is the Promised Land?
There are no easy answers or clear assessments, but
there is no doubt that religion is often the only
asset that impoverished Latinos possess.
Native-born Americans are concerned that fealty to
traditions, intertwined with religion and culture,
will bind immigrants to their homeland,
psychologically if not physically, making it nearly
impossible to assimilate. But theologians have no
doubt that faith will carry illegal immigrants
safely over both the Rio Grande and the River
Jordan. The multi-purpose, multi-dimensional salve
of spirituality soothes adversity on both sides of
the border.
After all, to people of faith, boundaries between
nations and realms are a state of mind rather than a
law of man or nature.
******
.jpg)
