What Was The Role Of The Priest In El Indigenismo

In the years following the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the Mexican government, through its policy of indigenismo, established a series of programs which attempted to modernize and assimilate the indigenous population into the national community. This movement sought to create a new unified culture. Political elites felt threatened by the ethnic dichotomy between the mestizo majority and the different indigenous groups scattered throughout the Mexican state. Therefore, in an attempt to address the “Indian question,” the national government sought to create a national identity through the use of educational programs that pushed for anti-alcoholism, anti-clericalism, and community building.
Indigenismo is not like typical social movements where
For example, the priest is first encountered is during the middle of the consecration of the uolador, a pagan ceremony. Upon the arrival of the priest, the people stop their dancing and gather in front of the priest’s house for “there were many parents with children to baptize and many couples waiting to be married.” The Priest only came to the village once a year to perform certain duties a collect sums for the Church. Afterwards he left the Indian population to fend for themselves until the next year when the cycle would start anew. The indigenous population depended on the Church, and yet was effectively abandoned by their priest the majority of the year. When he arrives in the village, he instructs “the people to build churches.” Already they had been forced into the construction of a road that did not cross through the Rancheria and therefore did not benefit the Indians who worked on it. The priest did not even mention the road work. It was irrelevant to him. All he cared about was that the Church be built as soon as
While the priest in El Indio used fear tactics to force the Indigenous peoples of the Rancheria to succumb to their will and build a church and make pilgrimage in the middle of the harvest, the priest in Land showed little interest in the spiritual wellbeing of his parishioners whatsoever. As soon as he arrives in the village, the priest “ordered the women, with their babies in their arms, to form two lines leaving a narrow lane between” and starting from one end of the line “he baptized all the children at once.” The priest did not care to perform baptisms or marriage services. Instead of going one by one, the priest employed assembly line techniques, taking care of business in groups so not to waste any time. This process was dehumanizing. Baptisms and marriages should have been sacred ceremonies, but, instead, the natives became nameless and faceless bodies in the masses which gathered before the clergy. When they came to him asking to give confession, the priest replied, “Confession? What sin can you have committed?” He waved them away, telling them to “go in peace. If you have sinned, I give you absolution.” He didn’t have time for them. The Indians feared for the fate of their immortal souls and yet he dismissed their concerns, avoiding one of his major duties as a Catholic Priest. Confession is one of the seven sacraments upon which Catholicism is built. He was