Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History

The role of religion has not received due attention in most histories of U.S. Latinos or Hispanics, the people living in the United States whose roots derive from the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. Most histories of American religion are still centered on Euroamerican traditions.

Mario T. García, a professor of Chicano studies and history at the University of California–Santa Barbara, aims to correct this deficiency by studying Catholicism within a subset of Latinos called Chicanos. The term Chicanos became very popular in the 1960s and 1970s for Mexican Americans who were self-conscious of their history and identity, and used that self-consciousness as part of a liberation movement from racist oppression.

The book consists of eight chapters, and the first focuses on Fray Angélico Chávez (1910–96), whose work García uses to "introduce the concept of oppositional historical narrative" (p. 29), which denotes a narrative opposed to a dominant sociohistorical narrative. Chavez, a prominent Catholic figure from New Mexico, sought to affirm the place of Hispanics in New Mexico in American religious history.

Chapter 2 links Catholic social doctrine and Mexican American political thought. In particular, García studies the influence of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno (1931), encyclicals that sought to alleviate the plight of workers. The ideas expressed in these encyclicals influenced Alonso Perales and Cleofas Calleros, two key figures in Mexican American civil rights between the 1930s and the 1950s.

A significant original contribution of the book is in chapter 3, where García examines archival materials from the Federal Writers' Project, which was part of a massive employment program established in the Great Depression. The records establish the presence of vibrant Catholic traditions (especially pertaining to music, healing, and local festivals) that often differed from official Catholic practices elsewhere in America. Chapter 4 centers on the World War II era and the struggle to preserve Mexican American versions of Catholicism within the larger Euroamerican Catholic establishment.

Chapters 5 through 8 center on the flourishing of the Chicano movement in the 1960s and 1970s. There are close studies of organizations such as Católicos por la Raza (Catholics for the People) and PADRES, a group of Chicano priests who sought to fulfill the promises of Vatican II and a nascent Liberation Theology. Biographical studies include that of Father Luis Olivares, a pioneer of the sanctuary movement, which sought to shelter undocumented immigrants, especially those fleeing conflicts in Central America. Olivares and other local priests often found themselves fighting the upper Catholic hierarchy. Chapter 8 and a final section called "Reflections" seek to summarize the foregoing chapters.

Despite the success in showing the important role of religion in Chicano politics and history, García overlooks some of the developments in Europe that may have affected the United States. In particular, Pope Pius XI's concordat with Germany (1933) expressly discouraged Catholic involvement in politics due to fear of persecution by Hitler's fascist regime. Thus, the American hierarchy may have adopted those timid or cautious attitudes toward political activism by local Chicano priests. García also leaves the impression that "oppositional historical narrative" is a new concept, when it is as old as history itself.

But, overall, García offers a solid contribution and offers hope that Latino religious history will become a prominent part of American religious history.