Latine religion has a storied history of faith and political activism in the US-Mexico borderlands. In this panel, we examine over a century of these practices starting in the 1870s to the 1980s. We situate Southern California as a prominent site for its significance in understanding how Latines have remapped these borderlands as a space and place to reflect their political priorities. In doing so, we also argue for the necessity of transnational approaches to borderlands studies due to interconnected histories on both sides of the boundary and its historical porosity. From radical Catholics to zealous Protestants, this panel explores three distinct Latine Christian histories that center around resistance to hegemonic power structures in the Southern California borderlands. Whether it be in contrast to institutional Catholic norms or state militarization of the US-Mexico border, Latine Christians have been spurred by their faith to create space for themselves and their communities.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization, is important in the history of immigrant rights activism in San Diego because of their U.S.-Mexico Border Program’s documentation of human rights abuses against migrants and Latinx people committed by law enforcement. This paper particularly focuses on Roberto Martinez, an understudied local immigrant rights leader strongly mobilized by his Catholic faith who won international awards for his work as the director of the AFSC’s Border Program in San Diego (a position he held from 1982-2003). Martinez and the AFSC combined often secular methods of activism, such as organizing protests and testifying of abuses on a local and federal level, but also organized religious events at the San Diego-Tijuana Border in defiance of the state’s militarization of this space. Sometimes overt but oftentimes subtle, Martinez’s faith was influential and integrated into his work countering state violence and militarization.
The Catholic, anti-communist, and Mexican nationalist Unión Nacional Sinarquista (UNS or National Synarchist Union) formed in 1937 to counteract the power of the left-leaning postrevolutionary Mexican state, which embodied anti-clericalism, a strict separation between church and state, secular education, and land reform. While most scholars focus on the UNS within the borders of Mexico, this paper emphasizes the transnational dimensions of the organization in Southern California in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Los Angeles regional sinarquista committee not only established a presence in the city, but established new chapters throughout Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura counties. This paper argues that the organization established a foothold among conservative Catholic Mexicans across Southern California, utilizing their collective power to attempt to transform the religious and political situation in Mexico from afar.
In this paper, I argue Mexico underwent a religious awakening in the late nineteenth century fueled by borderlands capitalism. I define this 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. With Southern California entrepreneurs leading the way, Mexico experienced drastic changes when Angelino boosters and capitalists profited from investments south of the border. Capitalist formulations in the borderlands negatively impacted Mexicans, inspiring progressives in Mexico to revolt against the state and ignite the Mexican Revolution. My intervention examines the radical religious dimension that contributed to this uprising. I argue liberal Mexican Christians reoriented space in the borderlands to reflect populist priorities. By appealing to cultural memory, progressive Christians combatted the state capitalist project by remapping economic, political, and religious space.