Postcolonial studies came into prominence in the late 70’s and decolonial studies in 2000, after the publication of Aníbal Quijano’s article, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America.” Elena Ruíz describes this article as arguing “that the conventional historical association between enlightened, development and modernity is a part of a larger cultural strategy of power and domination by western Europe that is managed by imported/invented categories of racial hierarchies based on white supremacy.” In other words, Quijano was saying that what is generally thought of and taught to be normal, what is said to be advanced, intelligent, and beautiful is not something that is “natural” to human cultures, regardless of their origin. Rather, these ideals are consciously promoted as normative by the political, economic, and intellectual powers in the West in order to sustain the supremacy of modern, white culture and standards. Decolonial studies continued to grow throughout the early 00s, but the term and ideas percolated quickly through society after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Now, seven years later, most people have at least heard this word if not become familiar with it and a series of other related words (eg. deconstruction, critical race theory, etc.) If my use of words like “decolonial” and “white supremacy” make you hesitant to read this post, I ask you to stick with it, because I think (hope) I might surprise you with something good.
The election of Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the Christian community in the Unites States and reverberated around the world. What to some seemed like the only obvious choice for Christians confused, if not appalled, many other Christians. Trump’s rhetoric about and treatment of women, people with disabilities, and Black and Brown people surprised people day after day. This all started, not during his presidency, but his campaign. There is a lot to say, but I am going to focus for only a moment on how he spoke of immigrants coming through the southern border. In 2015, Trump said to a gathering of his supporters, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best, they’re not sending you… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”1 I’m not sure what the actual flash point of popular decolonialism was, but that seems like a good guess. At least it was for me.
We want the “border issue” to be simple, with clear boundaries between what is right and wrong, but it’s not. It is this desired simplicity that gives the ability for people to call those crossing the border without papers “illegals.” When Trump paints a blanket statement of Mexican migrants as drug addicts, criminals, and rapists, it’s easy for conservatives to believe because immigrants have to break the law in order to be in the US. Though I am more friendly to the idea of an open border, I’m not actually convinced that this opposite-end simple answer is a good solution either.
After this, and in increasing measure over the last few years, the injustices perpetuated by the United States against Mexicans and South Americans were told again and again via social media. The word “decolonize” became commonplace and many people of many non-white, non-European ethnicities began to question and deconstruct the ideas that were handed to them by the political, economic, and educational powers of the United States. Though the ideas of decoloniality have spread wide, they still have yet to penetrate the psyche of the nation as a whole. As anecdotal evidence of this, it’s interesting to note that neither Google nor Apple have included “decolonial” or “decoloniality” in their dictionaries, which are used to spell check while you type. If you have not added them to your dictionary, you will get the squiggly red line underneath saying, “This word is wrong!”
By the end of May 2020, riots had erupted all around the nation in response to the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Meanwhile, Trump’s racist rhetoric was emboldening racists and white supremacists. The combination of these and other factors began to make many, many Christians of color, especially younger millennial and Gen Z Christians, wonder whether or not Christianity and the church was a place where they belonged. Many left the church and renounced their faith in Jesus. And post after post on various social media platforms began to call indigenous peoples, which included Mexicans, Mexican immigrants, and Mexican-Americans, to reject Jesus because Jesus was the God of the Europeans. Those people crossed our boundaries and killed our ancestors along with our ancestral knowledge and way of life, forcing European lifeways, including Christianity and its God, Jesus Christ, on us. While understanding that the algorithm catered to my interests, I saw people impersonating Mesoamerican gods, praying to them, and all but demanding I do the same.
This is Where I Come In
At first, I wasn’t troubled by any of this. I found it sad that people were abandoning their faith, but I wasn’t personally shaken. Then I started to do my own decolonial work. I began to recount and remember all the ways racism had impacted me over the years. I began to reckon with my own internalized racism (which I write about here) and see how I capitulated to the pressure to become white in order to succeed in ministry. I read The Christian Imagination and After Whiteness by Willie James Jennings, Mañana by Justo Gonzalez, Hispanic/Latino Theology edited by Ada María Isasi-Diaz and Fernando Segovia. I had already read A Chicano Theology by Andrés G. Guerrero, where I first learned that to be Chicano is to be indigenous and saw someone grapple with the ever-present betweenness—neither fully accepted by Mexico or the United States, but shaped by both cultures and places—of being Chicano.
As I grappled with all this, I grew confused. I still believed in Jesus, I still wanted to serve and follow Jesus, but with so many other people, I couldn’t figure out if the church was a place where I belonged. I would not abandon Jesus and I could not pray to or worship the gods of my ancestors. I was being told Christianity was the white man’s religion, but I knew it wasn’t. I had taken a class prior to all this that covered the history of the spread of Christianity and the ancient church in the non-western world. Christianity grew in Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia, Syria, India, and even China apart from European, either Greek or Roman, oversight. I could appreciate that, but none of those churches brought the Gospel to Anáhuac (the region commonly known as Mesoamerica). Instead, it was the Spaniards, whose advent in Anáhuac brought disease, death, and destruction along with Roman Catholic Christianity. There were a few moments through 2020 and 2021 when I seriously wondered if Christianity would remain an option for me, at least if I was going find my own indigeneity.
In the end, I decided I still wanted to follow Jesus, but there is no returning from that place. I entered la frontera, the border, between a Christianity empowered by whiteness2 and the injustice against my ancestors and my people that continues to this day. Wandering la frontera changes you forever. There is no easy way to disentangle the Christianity me and so many of my people practice and the brutality and greed practiced by the Spaniards of the colonial period or of the United States government today. In fact, it would be an injustice to try and do so. People say things like, “That’s not Christianity, those people (Spaniards, the English, etc.) weren’t Christians!” but that’s just not true. What we have seen perpetuated over the last 500 years is Christianity. Perhaps not everything Christianity is or has been represents the way of Jesus well, but to deny that colonization was a Christian endeavor is to ignore the complexity of the problem and the complexity of the people who came from Spain to the islands and lands of Anáhuac, Ayiti (Carribean), and Tahuantinsuyu (South America).3
The Border is a Blurred Line
Bartolomé de las Casas was a Spanish monk who is widely known and famous for his outcry to the Spanish crown on behalf of the indigenous people, asking for them simply to be treated as human beings. He had marginal success, but his legacy lives on. Before his “conversion,” while a priest and slaveholder, he was given an encomienda, which is akin to the plantation of the United States. The Holy Spirit convicted him in 1514, and he gave all this up and sought to help the indigenous cause. Yet, in 1516 and 1518, he advocated for bringing African slaves to New Spain in order to ease the burden on the natives. De las Casas would later recant on his statements about slavery,4 but my intention is to demonstrate that even the best of Spanish missionaries were still part of the colonial endeavor. One of my favorite Christian mystics, St. John of the Cross, whose poetry has lifted me and guided my prayer life, was a Spanish monk who lived during the colonial period.
It is easy, especially now, to idealize and romanticize the indigenous peoples of Anáhuac, but in our endeavor to decolonize, we cannot forget that the Mexica (Aztecs), along with the other Mesoamerican empires were all warlike people.5 The Mexica empire was made up of the so-called Triple Alliance between three powerful but independent city-states: Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan. These cities had influence over a large section of Anáhuac and they exacted tribute from the regions over which they ruled.6 The Mexica, as is well known, practiced human sacrifice, and while this was considered an honor in some cases, since one could offer themself in sacrifice, many if not most sacrifices were made from prisoners of war.7 A smaller empire, that of the Tlaxcalans, lay to the south of the Triple Alliance, but was surrounded by peoples submitted to the Mexica. It seems like the only reason the Mexica did not envelope them as well was so they could wage ceremonial wars against them and take captives for human sacrifice.8 When the Spaniards were plotting against the Mexica, it was the Tlaxcalans who allied with them and gave the Spaniards a military advantage.9
While the Spanish treatment of the Mexica and many other indigenous peoples from the present day United States, South America, and the Carribean was horrific, it would be an injustice to ignore the sins of the Mexica and other war making people of Anáhuac. As far as the issue of relevance goes, the empire making of the ancient peoples of the Mexica are a thing of the past, wiped out by the invaders, but the legacy of European colonialism, and not just Spanish, lives on. We cannot know know what the world would have been like if things had gone differently, if perhaps the Spaniards had succumbed to disease or if Christian missionaries came to the American continents peacefully. We know well the negative impact of colonialism on indigenous peoples and on the earth. And, when we’re honest, we know the positive impact the West has had in regard to the definition of human rights, if not always the implementation or honoring of those same rights.
La Frontera
For better or for worse, my indigenous ancestors became Christians. More accurately said, they converted for better and for worse. Many conversions were coerced, but not all. Tenochtitlan, capital of the Mexica, fell on August 13, 1521, and the missionary endeavors afterwards were not exciting. Naturally, there was much resistance, and even those indigenous who did convert secretly practiced their native religion in secret. Ten years later, on December 9, 1531, a native Mexica man named Juan Diego saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. He had two more visitations by the Blessed Mother of Jesus, who appeared to him as a Mexica women and spoke to him in his native Nahuatl (NAH-wahtł). In the seven years following these visitations, and perhaps because she appeared in their skin and spoke their language,10 around eight million indigenous people came to the faith.11
Christianity has permeated what is now called Latin America,12 and as of 2020 most Mexicans (i.e. citizens of Mexico) identify as Christian, largely Roman Catholic (77.7%), but there is also growing contingent of Protestants, particularly Pentecostals (11.2%).13 I imagine with the proliferation of decolonization, those numbers have shifted, with more Gen Z leaving Christianity, but the numbers are still staggering. I cannot find a number specifically for Chicanos (Mexican-Americans), but for Latin@s generally, as of 2022, 43% identify as Catholic, 21% as Protestant and/or Evangelical, and a growing 30% as unaffiliated with a religion.14 That’s up from 10% in 2010, and while that number disturbs me, I am not surprised.
Being Mexican American, being Chicano, puts a person right into the center of this cultural, philosophical, and religious storm. If there is an eye to this storm, I have yet to find it. It’s all but a truism that being Mexican American is a hard existence to live. Edward James Olmos, playing Selena’s father, said it well:
Listen, being Mexican American is tough. Anglos jump all over you if you don’t speak English perfectly. Mexicans jump all over you if you don’t speak Spanish perfectly. We gotta be twice as perfect as everybody else… Our family has been here for centuries, and yet they treat us as if we just swam across the Rio Grande. I mean, we gotta know about John Wayne and Pedro Infante. We gotta know about Frank Sinatra and Agustín Lara. We gotta know about Oprah and Cristina. Anglo food is too bland, and yet when we go to Mexico we get the runs. Now, that to me is embarrassing. Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, German Americans, their homeland is on the other side of the ocean. Ours is right next door, right over there. And we gotta prove to the Mexicans how Mexican we are, and we got to prove to the Americans how American we are. We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans both at the same time. It’s exhausting! Man, nobody knows how tough it is to be a Mexican American.15
In these days of decolonialism, we’re not even just trying to be American enough and Mexican enough, we also have to prove how indigenous we are as well. And when a person, as often happens because of the ubiquity, as they start their journey into indigeneity, claims to be Aztec, the gatekeepers are there to make sure you’re actually Aztec, since there are many, many indigenous groups throughout Mexico. For a third-generation (more or less), “no sabo” kid like myself, this can be quite discouraging. How do you make headway when everywhere you turn people are ready to say, “You’re not one of us?” The temptation to give into assimilation is real, but I’ve tried that and I grew depressed and far from my family. While I know this is a bit simplistic, I imagine that assimilation is the reason we have groups like “Latinos for Trump,” but I digress.
I will be the first to admit that navigating la frontera is difficult,16 but it is a land I will not leave. I will navigate the way between (European) Christianity and the spirituality of my ancestors, between whiteness and brownness, between faithfulness and decolonization. I found out very recently that at a large portion of my ancestry were indigenous peoples, probably Coahuilteca or Chichimeca, or both, were plains people who wandered the lands between the Apache to the north and the Mexica to the south, influenced and oppressed by both. Navigating la frontera is deep in my blood and history, which may be why I am able to navigate it so well.
I will continue to follow Christ. I will write about why I chose that path in the next post, but for now, suffice it to say that Jesus of Nazareth, a frontera town in Galilee of the Gentiles, caught between the elite pure-bloods of Jerusalem and the European17 powers of Rome has something to say to me. I come from a long line of indigenous peoples who extend from the grasslands of Mexico to the depths of Michoacan. Yet, somewhere along those lines, people became Christians, and though it was likely under unsavory circumstances, Jesus met my ancestors in spite of the kind of Christianity brought to our traditional lands by the Spanish. By the time my grandmother was helping my parents raise me, a true and living faith had permeated my people, and Jesus had shown that he loved us as much as any Spaniard. He was showing that he was faithful to us. And, as I said above, there were Spaniards like Sts. John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, and Teresa of Avila who loved God and whose faith has shaped mine deeply. I am a frontera person, and I will follow Jesus as he leads me through this place.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/06/16/trump_mexico_not_sending_us_their_best_criminals_drug_dealers_and_rapists_are_crossing_border.html
Or is it a whiteness empowered by Christianity?
I learned these names from Oscar García-Johnson in his essay, “Faith Seeking for Land,” found in Yeo, Khiok-Khng, and Gene L. Green, eds. Theologies of Land: Contested Land, Spatial Justice, and identity. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021.
Romero, Robert Chao. Brown Church: Five centuries of latina/o social justice, theology, and identity. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2020.
Carrasco, David, and Scott Sessions. Daily life of the Aztecs. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011.
Carrasco, David. The Aztecs: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Ibid.
https://indigenousmexico.org/tlaxcala/indigenous-tlaxcala-the-allies-of-the-spaniards/
Carrasco, David. The Aztecs: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Romero, Robert Chao. Brown Church: Five centuries of latina/o social justice, theology, and identity. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2020.
Guerrero, Andrés Gonzales. A Chicano theology. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008.
I understand this title is problematic, and I also find it so, but for lack of a better term to call the lands colonized by Spain, I am asking my readers to bear patiently with the use of the term.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/mexico-2020-census-protestant-pentecostal-growth-catholic.html
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/04/13/among-u-s-latinos-catholicism-continues-to-decline-but-is-still-the-largest-faith/
Selena. USA: Warner Brothers , 1997.
I also want to acknowledge that I have never had to immigrate, documented or not, from Mexico to the United States, and I have no idea what that is like, and that many, many people from Central and South America have hard and difficult lives I cannot imagine. I pray for their strength, grace, safety, and that God would grant them justice.
I admit this title is anachronistic.