CHAPTER 14 THE RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF MESOAMERICA 525affirm that the Chamula Tzotzil people crucified a young man on Good Friday, 1869,
claiming that only a newly martyred Indian Sun-Christ was worthy of their homage
and respect. The national Catholic establishment was irrelevant to them, as was the
political authority of Mexico.
Although this movement, like many others in Mexico and Guatemala, was ef-
fectively suppressed by state military intervention, it expressed in powerful terms
that Mesoamerica had a hidden minority—the Indian community—that was excluded
from economic opportunity, political expression, and religious freedom. Far from
being passive and unconscious of their oppressed situation, they recognized their
circumstances and, in seeking autonomy, created an Indian political consciousness
that was bound inextricably with local religious symbols. This is a pattern that re-
mains clearly visible in our time.
New Tutelage: Indigenismo and Foreign Missionization
Still another internal phenomenon that has contributed, albeit indirectly, to in-
creasing religious diversity has been indigenismo(see the discussion on indigenist
“development” in Chapter 8). Typically associated with periods of secular political re-
form at the national level (particularly Mexico since the 1930s and Guatemala be-
tween 1944 and 1954), indigenismo is a body of public policy aimed at addressing the
educational, economic, health, and social needs of long-ignored Indian communi-
ties. Although the agenda is ostensibly one of providing social and economic op-
portunities for Indians, the “subtext” is aimed at accelerated assimilation of Indian
communities into the mainstream of national culture. Indigenismo has produced
mixed results, the most important of them being the following: (l) the expected ten-
dency of acculturation of Indians into the rural and mestizo mainstream of the re-
spective nations; (2) the resistance to acculturation, as expressed in ideological and
religious separatism as discussed before; and (3) the open-door policy extended to
the activities of European and U.S. missionaries.
Missionary activity, it is argued, must necessarily be tolerated under the premise
of freedom of religious affiliation that is guaranteed by most Latin American con-
stitutions, including those of the modern nations of Mesoamerica. Thus, as early as
the mid–nineteenth century, U.S. Protestant missionaries began their labors in the
area, particularly in Guatemala. In an ironic twist that brings the policy template of
indigenismo in the twentieth century together with accelerated missionary activity in
our time, governments have perceived that foreign missionary work typically shares
the goals of indigenismo: teaching of literacy in Spanish, providing better health
care, advocacy of development and “progress,” and integration of isolated commu-
nities into national cultures and economies. In this manner, national “goals” are
achieved at little or no cost to the governments themselves. Thus, beginning in the
mid–nineteenth century, foreign missionaries have been tolerated, even encouraged
by cash-strapped national governments, in that they are thought to bring foreign-
financed “community development,” the goals of which mesh with those of the nation.
The policy link between various government policies aimed at rural and urban de-
velopment, on the one hand, and the tolerance and encouragement of missionary