Afro-Mexican Saintly Devotion in a Mexico City Alley
Afro-Mexican Saintly Devotion in a Mexico City Alley
This chapter examines Afro-Mexicans' level of involvement in colonial society and religious life as well as their desires to gain social power as defined by colonial authorities. An important form of Christian practice for Africans in the Diaspora came through membership in Catholic confraternities, lay groups that were organized around venerating saints and often served as mutual aid societies for their members. This chapter considers the case of a group of black men and women who performed clandestine religious ceremonies in the alleys of late seventeenth-century Mexico City and claimed to be religiosos (clerics) and religiosas (nuns) of Saint Iphigenia. In particular, it analyzes the possible meanings such gatherings held for the congregants. The case demonstrates how Afro-Mexicans asserted their right to worship as Christians on their own terms, deployed their understandings of Christianity around the prescribed tenets of religious orthodoxy, and interpreted the language of hierarchy and power embodied in religious objects and rituals.
Keywords: religious life, Afro-Mexicans, social power, religious ceremonies, Mexico City, religiosos, religiosas, Christianity, power, religious objects
Illinois Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
