The corpus of research on the religious traditions of Mexican and Mexican American populations is extensive, encompassing some of the earliest studies by professional folklorists, as well as recent analyses by Mexican American theologians. Historian Roberto R. Treviño’s The Church in the Barrio fills a conspicuous void in this corpus by providing a detailed account of Mexican American Catholic traditions in Houston, Texas. Scholars have conducted very few studies of Chicano communities “that are rooted in the twentieth century, not in the Spanish colonial and Mexican eras” (7). The Church in the Barrio describes the formation of “new” Chicano communities in Houston and the important role of Catholic practices and institutions in this process.
Treviño’s account is concerned primarily with the years 1911-1972. By the turn of the twentieth century, Mexican immigrants had begun to settle in Houston’s Second Ward, and by 1911, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate began the first ministries specifically for Mexican immigrants in the area. Chapter One provides details on the growth of the Mexican American population in Houston, from 2,000 in 1910 to more than 150,000 in 1970. Treviño ends his account in 1972, when the Church hosted the first Encuentro, a national congress in which pastors and lay leaders addressed the concerns of Latino Catholics.
In Chapter Two, Treviño presents the familial and communal traditions that are the core of Mexican American “ethno-Catholicism,” a term that he uses to refer to the distinct Mexican American ways of being Catholic. He describes, among other practices, devotions to Our Lady of Guadalupe, enactments of posadas and pastorelas in the Christmas season, quinceañeras , and the construction of home altars. The second half of Chapter Two considers instances in which these traditions coincided with and became part of parish-based activities. Parish societies dedicated to particular devotional exercises, such as the Guadalupanas, allowed one means of negotiating between the aims of the church and communal traditions.
Chapter Three is concerned with the ways in which church representatives have perceived Mexican immigrants. Before the 1940s, the priests who worked most closely with Mexican immigrants, including the Missionary Oblates, often claimed that Mexicans were children who were deficient in intelligence and initiative. These racist perceptions existed in tension, however, with a growing awareness among clerics of the adverse social and economic conditions that Mexican Americans faced, and by the 1970s, the racist paternalism of priests and other church representatives had diminished.
In Chapter Four, Treviño traces the establishment and growth of “national” parishes that served Mexican immigrants in Houston. National parishes were consistent with other kinds of segregation in Houston and throughout the US; they served to “minimize interethnic conflict” and, at the same time, to transform Mexicans into “good Americans” (121). Treviño reveals that the expansion of these parishes occurred through the initiative and enormous contributions of the Mexican American communities. Chapter Five depicts the different and creative means through which Mexican Americans procured resources for their parishes. It offers rich and colorful descriptions of communal fairs, often called jamaicas , that in addition to generating funds for churches and parish schools, fostered greater ethnic solidarity.
Chapter Five also recounts a bitter conflict between diocesan authorities and some Mexican American parishioners that lasted from 1966 to 1971. This conflict began when the diocese forced a shrinking Anglo parish to merge with a growing Mexican American parish, and vividly reveals the kinds of interactions that sustained an ethnoreligious consciousness among Mexican Americans. As a result of their determined resistance, Mexican American parishioners convinced the diocese to undo the merger.
Chapters Six and Seven are concerned with the commitments and initiatives of church representatives in Houston. Chapter Six describes the evolution of social action, from “piecemeal charity” to a more organized struggle for social justice (171). As Chapter Seven illustrates, local church representatives became involved in aspects of the Chicano Movement, including protests on behalf of farm workers. By the 1960s, there were increasing numbers of Mexican American priests and nuns among church representatives who worked with and advocated for Mexican Americans.
As The Church in the Barrio shows, Houston has been the site of dramatic demographic changes. It has one of the largest urban concentrations of Mexican Americans in the US, and continues to receive immigrants from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. The research that Treviño presents provides valuable historical insight into this development. In the epilogue, he offers an assessment of the ongoing growth and changes in Houston since the 1970s, including the diversification of the Latino population and the success of evangelical Protestantism among Latinos.
The Church in the Barrio , however, does not attend to the transnational and regional networks that have sustained the growth of Mexican American communities and shaped Catholic practices in Houston. Treviño does not adequately address, for example, where Mexican immigrants came from and by which paths they arrived in Houston. Furthermore, he mentions some connections that existed between Mexican American communities of Houston and Tejano communities of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, but the significance of these connections is left unexplored.
Other shortcomings in The Church in the Barrio are its treatments of ethno-Catholicism and use of oral histories. Treviño proposes the term ethno-Catholicism in order to account for the “interactive relationships” between lay initiatives and Catholic institutions (5), but the book provides only a few examples of these interactions. Chapter Two confirms the uniqueness and continuing importance of certain Catholic traditions in Mexican American communities, yet gives little consideration to the ways in which these traditions changed over time and responded to the environments in which they were practiced. Throughout the book, Treviño cites oral informants; however, he does not describe who these informants are or how their oral histories might provide a better understanding of events described in the book. Greater, systematic attention to oral histories could yield a better appreciation of the course of religious change in Mexican American Catholic communities.
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[Review length: 983 words • Review posted on January 12, 2007]