Jessica Rimington on the Impact of Catholicism on the Religious History of Mexico

By: Jessica Rimington

April 14, 2008

Inside the cathedral the walls were white and the ceiling high. Every corner of anything—walls, table, door—was adorned in gold paint. Teenage boys sang words in unison, reading off music sheets in identical crisp folders. An elderly man shouted words, and people responded with "amen" or memorized statements of response. There was a defined audience and a separate defined set of leaders. On the walls old, beautiful oil paintings were mounted, most conveying some sort of chaos or visually depressing set of circumstances hovering around the theme of human shame. My soul felt intoxicated with the richness of time as I gazed up at the adorned dome. But, whose time? On whose calendar? I found myself sitting there, searching for meaning, for something to grasp onto. I looked at all the people around me and felt dizzy. My thoughts fell back to yesterday.


Yesterday I was wandering the exhibits of the anthropology museum of Mexico City, racing through years of indigenous history. Murals, pyramids, turquoise. Animals with humans. Humans with animals. People made of nature, to return to nature. Systems that were cyclical, from calendars to economies. Murals of birth as it is, vagina displayed—no shame—the bright colors of nature painted as shooting out through the chest of the woman. Dance, dance, and dance. Music vibrating through everything. Working as one part of earth rather than working to control and sequester it. No audiences—only participants. Shells, and trees, and stories where men were birds or goats or deer—and birds or goats or deer were men.

And what it all comes down to is: I feel cheated! I feel cheated by the inquisition. By the conquistadors with their moral justification for evangelism. Because that church, with those white walls of gold paint, where I sat and listened and responded when told—that church can't ever fill me. It can't ever heal me. It can't reconnect me when I have become detached. Because it itself is detached, grasping for a hold, reinforcing itself with confidence in the way that only the most insecure claim their power. Built on ancient stories of a place that we can't even put for sure on a map, built on close to unchanging order, separation, regimen, and faith in the intangible.

I want history to give me back the tangible. Give me back the roots—my roots—to a place that can actually be found, walked on, cultivated, lived with. I want history to give me back griots and a time when my body and life rhythm synced with earth without struggle. My ancient vocabulary that didn't know "nature" as separate from "man," that didn't give me words to describe my shame, my sin, my subordinate position—give it back. I want history to give it back to me, and my country, and to all of Mexico. How can it be that I can derive more spirituality from a museum exhibit of times passed then a living, breathing community welcoming me to their faith? How can it be that I can leave the Mayan section of the exhibit and feel refreshed and centered? What would it be like to walk through the real thing?

Sitting in that church, all I could think was: What would it be like today? What would it be like today if the Spanish with Catholicism never came? If the same story, with different characters, had not been repeated in my nation and others? What would it be like today if the Huichol or the Apache had had sufficient space, access, and time to develop in their own way throughout the past several centuries of history? What would it be like today? We will never know. And there is no one living to blame. Yet, I would not be living today had our history played out differently.

I, like most U.S. and Mexican citizens, am some form of mestizo. Indigenous and conqueror blood mixed generations back. It is the violence, the enforcement, the church, the spilled blood that made us. That church is part of our history—past and present—our politics and our economy. And yet, I feel no connection to it. I feel more connection to clay museum displays and painted murals. Am I alone? It seems not. Ninety-five percent of the young Mexicans I know here are agnostic or atheist—drawing from a relatively diverse sampling from two different cities. But even knowing that my existence is dependent on the Christian conquest of America, just once I still wish I could somehow walk through the halls of a different version of the present to see what might have been.
Opens in a new window