The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-Catholicism in Houston (review)

Roberto R. Treviño's study provides an excellent schematic for understanding the role of the Catholic Church in the Mexican American community in Houston. In my own early studies of Mexicans in Houston and Chicago it became obvious that the Catholic institutions played a central role in the life of barrio dwellers in the United States. At best, however, my own work and those of others in the pioneering era of Chicano history during the 1970's, only scratched the surface of this process. Moreover, before the rise of modern Mexican-American studies, scholars viewed the Church and its functions in the Hispanic Southwest through the classic borderlands perspective which did not focus on immigrant communities.

Recently, scholars have started to look more closely at the Church's importance in twentieth-century Mexican-American communities. Even though most of these studies are anchored in folklore, anthropology, or religious studies, such scholars as David A. Badillo are paving the way for a historical perspective. He has recently published a book on Latinos and Catholics that assumes macro proportions. Few studies have viewed the impact of the Church by using a micro-methodology which yielded a much-needed understanding of United States Mexicans through a community study approach pioneered by the historians of the 1970's.

I am aware of the recent, unpublished works by Deborah Kanter and Gina Marie Pitti that take this approach (studying Chicago and San Jose respectively), but Treviño's is the first to publish his findings within such a genre. The author places Catholicism and Mexicans in Houston within the context of the various historical layers. Although Mexicans have been in the Houston area since the Spanish, Mexican, and Republic periods and after the town became part of the United States, it was not until the modern industrial period when Mexicans responded to labor needs in Texas in the early twentieth century that they appear in Houston in larger numbers. The vast majority being Catholic, they presented a challenge to the city's church officials that could not be ignored. Unfortunately, religious practices of the immigrants often clashed with the modern Catholicism that emerged in the United States in the nineteenth century. Many came from priest-scarce regions where rituals and even theology were maintained at the folk level. Consequently, ecclesiastical leaders dismissed the new arrivals as ignorant of Church teachings. Nonetheless, the Church accommodated Mexicans within an expanding structure of churches. Some like Our Lady of Guadalupe were new, while others became Mexican as previous parishioners abandoned buildings to the newcomers as they became the majority in central Houston congregations.

In spite of the tense relationship that existed between Mexicans and church officials, a solid Catholic structural foundation became established, serving as nexus for future secular, political, social, and cultural underpinnings as Mexican communities evolved in the course of the century. Thus Treviño continues to put the story within the context of community layering. For example, from the 1930's to the 1950's the Mexican church leaders also served as leaders in such political organizations as the League of United Latin American Citizens, serving to promote political Mexican Americanism (during an era when ethnic Mexican leaders in the United States sought constitutional rights as citizens), while at the same time providing a platform for acculturation, especially of the young, into American society.

The Church itself, at the national level, became an advocate for social reform, and by the time of the Chicano Movement of the 1960's, such organizations as PADRES (Mexican American Priests) and activist Hispanic nuns provided parallel support to secular Chicano Movement activism. Often church facilities served to house Chicano movement activities such as the school walkouts of the early 1970's. Even though the book is a micro study of Houston, it can serve as a paradigm that can be applied to this process elsewhere.