Subaltern Status

The societal structure in the United States dictates that only one particular perspective can be correct and in this case that would be the Euro-American perspective. If one were to analyze the reason for the subaltern status of Latinos, the answer would be quite simple. Latinos lie within what is considered to be a subaltern status because Anglo colonizers put them in that position. In this case subaltern status refers to living outside of the circle of hegemony. Stereotyping is often a useful tool during the process of putting down a whole people. Stereotyping dehumanizes people, thus achieving cultural hegemony. In turn they gain a justification for the mistreatment that they inflict on the minorities, which in this case are the Latino people.
Popular Catholicism refers to the type of Catholicism that most Mexicans practiced and still practice. It involves things such as saint devotion and pilgrimages and leans away from the need to physically go to a church in order to worship God. As described by Sanchez-Walsh popular Catholicism is about a person’s individual devotion, rather than the institution itself (Sanchez-Walsh, 13). This kind of worship was problematic to the Catholic Church because they deemed it incorrect. They believed it was necessary to go to church in order to be able to correctly worship and make contact with God. Another problem was the fact that those who practiced Popular Catholicism often had a whole array of saints that weren’t sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and even more problematic was the fact that people were praying directly to them, rather than to God. The array of saints that came into the existence resulted out of a need to identify with the religion that they were practicing. La Virgen de Guadalupe for example was described as a darker skinned, indigenous women who was a mother like figure. Since the Catholic institution believed that a majority of the Mexican peoples were worshipping incorrectly, Mexicans began feeling a sense of disconnectedness that caused them to stray away from the church. This in essence means that more
In his work Espin explains how he believes that Popular Catholicism has in a sense began hindering Latinos and reinforcing the status quo, yet there is a certain rebellious nature about it that in a way challenges the status quo. Since there is a cultural context for all experiences, including religious ones, Latinos are going to define their divine experiences in alignment with their subaltern status (Espin, 94). Since the realities of the hegemonic group are very different than that of the subaltern, their divine experiences are going to greatly differ. The problem in this case isn’t that their experiences differ, but that the experiences of the subaltern group are considered inferior in contrast with the experiences of the hegemonic group. The hegemonic group has done an immaculate job at legitimizing themselves both culturally and religiously. The unfortunate aspect of their legitimization has been that they’ve utilized religion as a means of doing so as described by Espin, therefore this is the role that religion took in terms of the context of the Euro-American reality. The hegemonic group used the justification that their superior status was established by God himself as a means of devaluing others and keeping them in their place (Espin, 97). In turn