Browsing by Subject "Mexican Americans -- Religion"

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    It Gives Us Pleasure, It Gives Us Peace: Mediating Relationships through Mexican-American Catholic Altars
    (2010) Estabrook, Kathryn; McGuire, Anne Marie
    Many Mexican-American Catholics, both men and women, mediate the experience of immigration and ensuing struggles and questions through domestic altars. I investigate this relationship through interviews with four Mexican-Americans in Philadelphia. These altaristas navigate between the sacred and the mundane, between their hogar (literally home or hearth) in Mexico and their new home in the United States, and within various relationships. In this way altaristas find comfort and support by coping with and celebrating the quotidian through their altars. Altaristas dedicate their altars to Mary and Jesus, often choosing to represent these figures through particular images such as la Virgen de Guadalupe. By communicating with Mary and Jesus altaristas develop relationships with these sacred figures as well as family and friends. They provide flowers and candles, as well as communication and adoration. In this way altaristas create a reciprocal relation with Mary and Jesus. However, the altar is not just a place in which altaristas develop relationships, but also one in which altaristas maintain bonds with their hogar and family and friends still in Mexico. On the altar, altaristas intermingle images of Mary and Jesus with images of their friends and family, as well as souvenirs and other representations of memories. Through the personifying process of creating relationships with sacred figures and the act of combining various images and figures that are not innately related, altars blur the categories of the sacred and the mundane. Culture, religion, and personal experience influence the altar tradition. Altaristas thus build and maintain their altars for an audience, whether that audience is other people, sacred figures, or cultural expectations. Altars, as a tradition culturally relevant to Mexico, create an enduring connection to the hogar despite the distance. Altaristas teach the altar tradition to their children because altars represent not only religious belief, but also enduring connection to cultural heritage. By continuing the altar tradition through generations, altaristas reinforce faith, traditions and identity. Though altaristas often attend church in addition to praying at their altars, they view these two spaces very differently. Altaristas communicate more intimate themes and petitions within the privacy of their homes. At their altars, altaristas exercise personal religious authority in ways that they cannot within the patriarchal institution of the Catholic Church. By personalizing the altar, they incorporate the themes most important to them: belief, culture, family and friends. Altars provide a space in which altaristas communicate with Mary, Jesus, friends, and family. Through this communication, altaristas find support, pleasure, and peace.