Draft of October 10, 1997, a revised version of a chapter appearing in Frank Salamone and Walter Adams, eds. Explorations in Anthropology and Theology.
The classes of people affected by Protestantism changed between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Protestantism was adopted by the newly emerging middle classes in Europe and the United States. In the twentieth century, however, Protestantism began to spread among the rural lower classes in Latin America. The change in focus requires explanation. Why do rural populations now adopt religions that once served primarily the urban middle classes? As Martin (1990:206) points out, Latin American Protestantism is now more difficult to understand in terms of the theories of Max Weber, who saw it as a way in which a rising middle class could justify their wealth in theological terms.
Max Weber analyzes the relationship between Protestant theology and economic growth. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he explains how Protestant theology provides a new morality for entrepreneurial behavior. In another work, The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber focuses on the way in which Protestant sects in the United States support bourgeois capitalism. He sees this as a continuation of the asceticism of European sects, which, through their other-worldliness, could portray economic success as a sign of grace. Thus, he postulates a psychological link between Protestantism and capitalism.
In this psychological model Protestantism is able to morally legitimize new wealth by giving the hardworking middle class businessman a feeling that he is following a holy calling. This psychological model has also been the source of theorizing about how Protestantism overcomes barriers to development in underdeveloped countries.
However, in a later treatise, The Sociology of Religion, Weber suggests a second, sociopolitical link between Protestantism and capitalism (1963: 251). Here he looks at the social and political situations of Protestants versus Catholics after the Reformation. Catholics did not have the same economic freedom as Protestants. Their actions were constrained by papal injunctions. Their behavior was controlled by the clergy, whereas Protestants were free from these restrictions. Protestantism allowed people to pursue economic gain without ecclesiastical interference. Protestantism was a declaration of independence from church control of economic decision making. The Protestant desire for decision-making freedom was expressed in the liberal Protestant theologies that followed the Reformation. Perhaps I am giving too much credit to Weber when I note his brief suggestion that Protestantism was a means of avoiding ecclesiastical restrictions; however it is clear that the thrust of early Protestantism was to protest the power of the Church. The Protestant desire for freedom is echoed in the theologies of many Protestant churches today. For example, Pentecostals, the most rapidly expanding group in Latin America, feel themselves led directly by the Holy Spirit.
Most Evangelical Protestant sects do have church authorities, but their theologies still contain the revolutionary element that gave birth to the original sect. This element often subordinates earthly authority to the inspiration of The Bible and the Holy Spirit. Thus, Evangelical Protestant churches are generally equipped theologically to wage holy war against any religious authority that might question them.
In Latin America, where the Catholic Church is influential, one might expect Weber's sociopolitical model to apply. However, in Mexico, the Catholic Church has exerted little control over people's lives since laws in the last century deprived it of its economic and political functions. Yet I maintain that Weber's sociopolitical model is still correct. There are oppressive religious authorities blocking the growth of the capitalistic economy in rural Mexico. They are not Roman Catholic religions but cargo systems. Cargo systems spend wealth on rituals not on the family or new economic enterprises. Cargo system theology advocates the redistribution of wealth not its investment.
More general theories explain the rise of Protestantism in Mexico as part of a general rise in the whole of Latin America. Martin (1990) attributes the overall success of Pentecostal Protestantism in Latin America to a confluence of North American economic values and Catholic traditions. Martin thinks that Latin America has trouble with a secular solution to value conflicts created by economic change, so it has developed a native Protestantism that flourishes in the rents created by the pulls of the North American economy. According to Stoll (1990:317-321) the success of Pentecostal Protestantism over Catholic Liberation Theology is due to its ability (1) to speak directly to the poor in terms of magical power, (2) to organize groups, and (3) to remain relatively autonomous. Stoll underscores the connection with North American right-wing Protestants, but also acknowledges that such imperialist connections offer only a limited explanation. Bastian (1985), on the other hand, thinks that Pentecostal Protestantism is most often a local indigenous movement and not the product of North American imperialism. Regarding Protestantism first as a reaction to the power of caciques (1985), Bastian (1992a) now sees the Pentecostalism as a way of integrating the poor with new emerging power structures at the national level. Therefore, he opposes the ideas of Martin (1990) and Stoll (1990) that see Pentecostalism as more revolutionary.
A common feature of rural Evangelical Protestantism reported by the investigators in Latin America is that it relieves people of economic burdens placed on them by cargo systems. O'Connor (1979:261) writes that Mayo Amerindians in Sonora, Mexico, became Protestants in order to avoid cargos in the traditional fiesta system. In Ecuador, Protestantism removed the social pressures for ceremonial consumption in a local cargo system (Muratorio 1981:525). In the Totonac area of Mexico, Protestants refused to participate in the cargo system (Garma 1984:130, 1987:163). In rural Guatemala Protestant families would not participate in a system that forced them to spend a quarter of their income on cargo rituals (Annis 1987:106).
The literature indicates that Protestantism, particularly Evangelical Pentecostalism, commonly relieves people of the economic burden of a local cargo system. I have found that opposition to cargo systems, is the primary reason for the spread of Protestantism in the three Otomí villages in Mexico. Thus, Weber's second sociopolitical model is a key to understanding the advance of Protestantism in rural Mexico. However, in applying Weber's model one must understand to what Protestantism is reacting. It is not reacting to the ecclesiastical controls of the Catholic Church. It is reacting to a local religious authority, a cargo system.
The rituals in the villages were highly organized. Ritual offices called cargos were assigned to men for periods of one or two years. A cargo holder had many ritual duties and many expenses for entertainment and feasts. After completing his service in a cargo, a man rose in prestige. The prestige accumulated and eventually led to his membership in a group of elders who constituted the supreme governing authority of the village. Such a system is called a civil-religious hierarchy (Carrasco 1961; Cancian 1967), a type of cargo system in which the prestige gained from holding cargos leads to formal political power. Other types of cargo systems do not have such political outcomes, although, always, a person who holds a religious cargo rises in influence. Cargo systems appear to be Catholic because the images of Catholic saints are displayed during the rituals.
There is a historical connection between the twentieth century cargo systems of Mesoamerica and the Catholicism of the sixteenth century brought to Mexico by the Spanish conquerors. The Spanish friars encouraged the formation of Indian cofradías which have a historical resemblance to the more modern cargo systems. However the modern cargo systems are neither part of the modern Catholic Church nor a copy of an earlier colonial Catholicism.
The growth of Protestantism in rural Mexico coincided with an economic boom that took place after World War Two. Measured in constant 1970 U.S. dollars, the per-capita gross domestic product of Mexico rose from 337 in 1940 to 874 in 1968. It continued to rise to 1217 in 1978, and it peaked at 1410 in 1981. A large part of the economic growth was around Mexico City, located about 100 kilometers southeast of the three villages. Although they were not sought at first for industrial work, rural people, often with an Indian background and practically no schooling, were welcomed as agricultural laborers on the outlying farms feeding the burgeoning urban masses. Migrating workers brought back money to their villages and invested in such things as television sets, pickup trucks, and better houses. Most of these items made a contribution to the productivity of the family through better education, health, and mobility.
The villages of San Nicolás, Santa Mónica, and San Pablo are the largest settlements in the municipio of Tenango de Doria outside the capital town, also called Tenango de Doria. I studied the villages during periods of field work between 1967 and 1990. All of these villages are in the same ecological zone and have very similar agricultural economies and migration patterns. The 1989 populations of the villages are shown in Table 1. Economically the villages differ very little from poor rural villages in other parts of Mexico.
Table 1:
Populations of the four villages in 1989
|
|
|
| Santa Mónica | 1084 |
| San Pablo | 992 |
| San Nicolás | 1471 |
The theology of the system created prestige for the cargo holders. As each mayordomo publicly appeared in the church and later at his house to sponsor a large feast for all people who came, he was recognized as a religious and generous person. The image of religious devotion to a public saint, which was regarded as a protector of the village, and the generous spending of hard-earned wealth led to respect and prestige for the person. In a subsistence-oriented economy, prestige was a better investment than the accumulation of goods or property. The image of generosity reduced envy that could flare into violence against a person.
The theological principles that backed up this system stated that humans were dependent on a capricious super-human world and that to survive one should always try to be on good terms with the super-humans. People believed that the saints watched over the people and protected them. The cargo holders were entrusted with the sacred duty of maintaining good relations with the saints. Any deviation from the advice of former cargo holders who had been close to the saints was regarded as dangerous.
In 1947, a small plane dropped Bible tracts on San Nicolás. One man, Miguel, wrote to an address on a tract and received a set of Bible lessons. Missionaries from Mexico City visited Miguel to help him with his studies. In 1948 a North American missionary-linguist from the Summer Institute of Linguistics settled in San Nicolás with the aim of translating the Bible into the native language. He was attracted by the reports that the people of the village were seeking to know Jesus through reading the Bible. Miguel was his closest informant. The missionary remained there with his family for two decades. After he left, the tale of his visit evolved into a local myth. One version states that he was sent by the President of the United States to bring peace to the village.
There was division in the village over Protestant ideas. To convince others that the old beliefs had no value, Miguel burned his family's saint images. Other converts followed by burning their family images or by giving them to children to play with; thereby they showed that they were not afraid of any supernatural punishment they might receive for carrying out these sacrilegious acts. As misfortune did not befall the burners, faith in the new religion was strengthened. Although the traditionalists were offended by the burning, they could not persuade the Mexican government to intervene because Article 24 of the Mexican Constitution prohibits the government from involving itself in religious matters. A Bible study group was formed. In 1962, the jailing of the recalcitrant cargo nominees stopped, and the judge was elected democratically from then on. The elders lost their power.
By 1990, ninety-three percent of the families in San Nicolás were Protestant. Most of them were members of the Pentecostal church. A more conservative Protestant church, the Church of God of the Seventh Day (Iglesia de Dios del Septimo Día), was established in 1965 by people who objected to moral laxness among the Pentecostals. The few remaining Catholic families maintained a fiesta of the patron saint, San Nicolás, and supported it with a collection of money amongst themselves. There were no individual cargo holders. The Catholics by then were calling themselves "brothers," as the Protestants did, and they were studying the Bible as well.
In the 1960s the young men of Santa Mónica began to grumble about having to spend money on religious rituals. In 1968 some talked of eliminating the cargos and of taking up a collection from the entire village to support the fiestas. The power to make this decision was in the hands of the elders. Elders discussed the issue at a meeting in 1968. They admitted that it was difficult for the mayordomos to make ends meet. However, they concluded that the fiestas were held in a spirit of good faith and that there should be joy in contributing to a happy fiesta. One elder said that the rituals were expensive but that the saints helped the people, so people should care for the saints. Furthermore he cautioned that if the village saints were neglected, misfortune might befall the village. The general consensus of the elders, who had themselves attained their statuses by participating in the cargo system, was that the men of the village should continue to take on the religious cargos and to make the necessary sacrifices. The elders concluded that the financial burdens could be eased by appointing more mayordomos.
In 1969 one man, Patricio, read the Bible and made up his own mind about the value of these rituals. In 1971 another man, Martín, returned to the village after resolving a feud that had forced him to leave. During his exile he had been converted to Pentecostal Protestantism. In 1972, Martín began to preach the Pentecostal religion in the village. The two men founded a Bible study group and rapidly gathered adherents to the new faith. With no choice offered them by the elders, younger men who did not want to become involved in the expensive cargo system joined the new Protestants, who, after consulting the Bible, declared that the cargo rituals were sinful idolatry. Protestants from neighboring San Nicolás helped the new group to grow and to organize a Pentecostal church.
Protestant opposition to the cargo system grew. The last mayordomo in Santa Mónica served in 1977. After that, the elders made no effort to maintain the cargo system. The images of the village saints were moved to a small dark room in the church where they are now ignored. After the village ceased to name mayordomos and celebrate the cargo rituals, the continuing alliance of families with the Pentecostal Church was halted by a new Catholic movement that also rejected the cargo system. Aided by the municipal priest and some Catholic missionaries, the new Catholic group reinstated some of the old village rituals. However, the expenses were now paid by equal contributions from the entire Catholic group. In 1990 the village families were divided approximately in half between the Pentecostal Protestants and the new Catholics.
In 1987, the Pentecostals softened somewhat toward the old village rituals. They joined the new Catholics in a Christmas posada ritual. They even put up piñatas in their church. This "idolatry" and other backsliding behavior gave impetus to a second, Biblically-pure, Protestant movement sponsored by The Church of God of the Seventh Day. By 1990 they had attracted eight out of the 183 families in the village.
The San Pablo cargo system was changing in 1990, but it had not collapsed. The Protestants in San Pablo, were few, but the threat of a Protestant revolt against the cargo system was manifest. In response, the elders had made cargo service entirely voluntary. If no volunteer came forward to take a particular cargo, the rituals were performed by an appointee of the judge and supported by a contribution from all the Catholic families. Thus no one was forced into costly cargo service as they had been in the other two villages.
In 1990, the First Mayordomo of San Pablo was only 31 years old. He was a young man who had earned money while working outside the village. One of the Second Mayordomos was a bit older, but the others were younger. The musicians playing the sacred traditional music were only teenagers. The young wives went right up to the altar and worked beside their mayordomo husbands. This rather assertive female behavior was never seen several decades before when their mothers stayed respectfully behind the altar rail and passed the offerings over the rail to their cargo-holding husbands.
The San Pablo cargo system is resisting the impact of Protestantism by making its rituals less onerous and ritual service completely voluntary. Thus it is capturing the younger members of the community who are enjoying the rituals. The new theology that supports this change holds that the traditional fiestas should be enjoyable and that the saints should be happy. The new cargo theology emphasizing the enjoyment of the fiestas is a challenge to the Pentecostals from the other villages who are regarded as stodgy.
The redistributive rationale of a cargo system fades as new opportunities of investing wealth appear. Eventually a cargo system can become a serious obstacle to economic change. However, it is supported by a religious ideology that cannot be easily abandoned. Thus it needs to be attacked theologically. Protestantism challenges the supernatural power of the saints and the authority of the elders. Evangelical Protestant doctrine states that people have the freedom to worship as the Bible directs them. They can reject the elders. They can reject cargo service. They can deny the power of the saints. Protestantism is not the only way of rejecting a cargo system on theological grounds, but it is one of the more mature and successful ways. For example, O'Connor (1979) shows that Protestantism in northern Mexico did better in this regard than native millenarianism.
The development of a lower class under capitalism requires special social institutions. Protestantism in Latin America is facilitating the spread of wealth to a lower class. It is still connected to capitalism, but now it is connected to a lower class not a middle class. Latin American peasants want to funnel new wealth into higher standards of living so that they can enter new labor markets. Evangelical Protestantism in peasant areas of Latin America is simply what Protestantism has always been, a theological reaction against religiously sanctioned authorities. Weber's psychological model of wealth-legitimizing Protestantism, that worked so well with the American middle class, cannot fully explain this rise of Protestantism. However, a sociopolitical model of Protestantism overthrowing ecclesiastical authorities explains very well what is happening in poor rural Mexico. In parts of rural Latin America religious hierarchies of authority are blocking economic change, and Protestantism is providing the theology needed to overthrow them.
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