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En Pocas Palabras V The Virgin of Guadalupe: Admittance in Question Maríaelena D. Jefferds and Ann V. Millard In Mapleville, Michigan, a Catholic mass has been conducted in Spanish on Sundays since 1995. In 1997 a struggle began between the Spanish-speaking and the Anglo congregations at the church. The focus of the controversy was a carving of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a Mexican image of the Virgin Mary widely revered as a religious—and sometimes political—symbol among Mexican Americans. The Latino congregation members wanted the image inside the parish church. They described her as “our Virgin,” and the carving at issue was by a parishioner. A group of Anglo parishioners, however, rejected it. They argued publicly that only one Virgin was allowed in a Catholic church, but they privately also asserted that the carving lacks a style that would fit with the rest of the imagery in the church. Anglos repeatedly removed the statue. One Latino said, “The Anglos get their way because they are wealthier.” Anglos provided the primary funds for the parish, because most Latino members were low-income workers who could not make substantial donations . The struggle over the Virgin of Guadalupe was a focus of growing tension that magnified Anglo-Latino differences. A number of other Catholic churches in the region, however, contain an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, including an upper-middle-class church in a resort town with no significant Latino membership. The dispute in Mapleville continued unresolved for years, and Latinos were hurt and worried. Some went so far as to attend two masses on Sunday, one in their local church and another an hour’s drive away at a church housing an image of the Virgin. They felt it necessary to attend the two masses, and they complained that doing so was a burden. A number of Anglos in this study commented that Latinos preferred to socialize separately from them, and they pointed to Latino attendance at church services in Spanish. Some Anglos supported this pattern, saying, “It is important that they have the opportunity to be together.” Other Anglos argued that separating Latinos and Anglos reinforced distinctions be- N L 169 169 07-T3109 169 07-T3109 169 9/29/04 6:55:33 AM 9/29/04 6:55:33 AM tween “us” and “them.” The situation with the Virgin of Guadalupe shows that Latinos often were not welcome in Anglo congregations, however, especially when they tried to practice their own traditions in ways they saw as appropriate. Culturally specific expressions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans are often seen by Anglos as inappropriate infusions into local practice, even though Anglos have long incorporated German, Belgian, Italian, and other European traditions. I’ve never been assigned to an area as religious as this. I’ve never served such a small town with so many churches. Father Joseph, a middle-aged Catholic priest Fox and Mapleville, Michigan, each have over 15 churches, even though they only have populations of 4,000 and 1,700, respectively (figures from 1998 for the two townships, published in the local paper, August 1999). Latinos and Anglos agree that attending church is the main social activity of Latinos, aside from home life. Churches with growing Latino populations in Fox and Mapleville include the Catholic Church, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Church services are often directed to Anglo congregations, but there are a few churches that offer separate services for Latinos in Spanish. Those in Spanish are culturally contoured for Mexican and Mexican American members. There are no bilingual services, and we heard of none throughout our community studies. The effect of separating services by language is to divide church membership into an Anglo, English-speaking congregation and a Latino, Spanishspeaking congregation, and the separation allows mutual incomprehension to continue. With the controversy over the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Catholic church in Mapleville became a site of struggle between Anglos and Latinos over iconography appropriate for their place of worship. The churches in Fox and Mapleville generally give Latinos second-class status by welcoming them as long as they do not make their presence felt by requesting changes in the practices and appearance of the church. Although not discussed in these terms, the struggle over the Virgin of Guadalupe also addressed the character of the church and the broader community regarding ethnicity, class, transnationalism, and the acceptability of Latinos to the local Anglo community. N L...

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