CHAPTER 14 THE RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF MESOAMERICA 523earth deities, constituted an area in which precontact customs could continue in rel-
ative isolation from the vigilance of Crown authorities.
It is helpful, therefore, to consider the myriad syncretic forms that evolved in
the colonial era as expressing both prescribed uniformity in the structure (if not
content and practice) of public devotion and relatively unmonitored particularity
of domestic and individual religious practice, much of which was veiled discreetly
from church vigilance. The many expressions of this public-domestic mix of spiritual
beliefs and practices are further multiplied by the fact that the linguistic and cul-
tural mosaic of colonial Mesoamerica was, as it is today, enormously diverse.INTO THE MODERN ERA
If the diverse cultural geography of Mesoamerica—mestizo, Amerindian, European,
and Afro-American—was already forged at the time of the independence movements
of the early nineteenth century, this pattern of cultural and religious diversity has be-
come more rather than less complex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
reasons for this outcome involved both internal and external forces.Local Communities under Secular States
Much of the impetus leading to Mesoamerica’s increasing religious pluralism came
from the detachment of the new nations of the region from the centralized political
and religious institutions of Europe. These new nations were avowedly secular and
“progressive” in their self-definition. In most of the national constitutions, based as
they were on French and U.S. models, the Church was disestablished juridically (if
not always in practice). This event meant that political authority (once one-and-the-
same with the Church) no longer had responsibility for the spiritual nurture and
protection of Indian communities. This fundamental change, combined with “liberal”
land reform legislation that encouraged private as opposed to communal ownership
of land, led to massive encroachment of mestizos and creoles on traditional com-
munal landholdings. Whether by legal or illegal means, this erosion of the land and
economic base of Indian communities forced large-scale displacement of Indian
populations.
Many Indian communities were forced into the paradoxical situation of becom-
ing more demographically and socially isolated—their truncated landholdings being
in marginal areas deemed undesirable for cattle ranching, commercial agriculture,
and mining—just as they were increasingly forced to become migrant laborers in
mestizo- and creole-owned ranching and farming operations. Often, economic cir-
cumstances forced whole families to abandon their home communities altogether to
become debt-slaves on cattle ranches and plantations (see Chapter 7).
One route of escape from this situation—one that continues unabated in certain
parts of Mexico and Guatemala even today—was massive migration to urban areas,
where better economic opportunities were thought to exist. Urban migration has
typically led to assimilation of Indians into the national culture, usually at the lower
end of the socioeconomic spectrum (see Chapter 8). As members of the town and