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Followers of the popular folk saint El Niño Fidencio gather regularly in the small northern Mexican desert town of Espinazo, Nuevo León, for curing rituals. Although this famous healer died in 1938, they believe that his spirit continues to manifest itself there through trance mediums. The ¤dencista movement is based on the appropriation and manipulation of sacred places within the town and the surrounding area whose sacrality is de¤ned by past events in El Niño Fidencio’s life. The survival of the movement depends on the preservation of these places, yet it also requires a continuing rede¤nition of their physical appearance that will ful¤ll the expectations of pilgrims. In this chapter, I cover some changes that have taken place in these de¤nitions during the past 25 years, a time when the last living links to the historic person of Fidencio have disappeared from the scene and the movement has adapted to new conditions in Mexican society. FIDENCISMO AND SAINTHOOD The Mexican healer José Fidencio de Jesús Síntora Constantino (1898–1938), better known as El Niño Fidencio (Fidencio the Child), is probably closer to the traditional Christian saint than any other ¤gure considered in this volume. There is little doubt that he believed he was “chosen by God” for his healing mission, and both his followers and detractors measure his personal traits and healing acts in terms of Christian sainthood. The Roman Catholic Church’s emphatic rejection of that attribution places him in a special category. This antagonism focuses attention precisely on the attributes of sainthood and the signi¤cance of of¤cial rejection. In anthropological terms, Macklin (1974b, 1988) identi¤es Fidencio as a “folk” saint, although from the Church’s view, perhaps “anti-saint” is a more appropriate term. Looking at the of¤cial Christian saints, she identi¤es some (the “pious”) who are recognized for their 7 Spirits of a Holy Land Place and Time in a Modern Mexican Religious Movement William Breen Murray contributions to the Church itself, while others (the “popular”) achieve sainthood through the fame of their acts and their acclaim among the faithful. Folk saints, like El Niño Fidencio and others (Macklin and Crumrine 1973), often share the attributes and charisma of popular Christian saints such as San Martín de Porres, but their appearance beyond the pale of the Church resists orthodox classi¤cation and of¤cial incorporation. Even during his lifetime, Fidencio manifested many saintly attributes. His image in a famous historic photograph makes this identi¤cation quite explicit. The tunic he wears recalls the vestments of the itinerant friars who ¤rst evangelized the northern desert frontier of New Spain in the 17th and 18th centuries. The photo shows him barefooted and kneeling with a heavy wooden cross on his shoulder in a replication of the Christian Passion. Fidencista oral tradition (Heliodoro y Fabiola 1997:59) recounts that in these Holy Week representations , Fidencio took the role of Christ, and this scene may be a photographic testimonial of one such event. Other saintly attributes are suggested indirectly. The male chastity implied by his popular name “El Niño” (the Child) replicates the religious vow of celibacy. In Fidencio’s case, it was clearly ful¤lled (although not necessarily for the same reasons as those of an ordained priest). Fidencista oral tradition also identi¤es speci¤c consecrating events in which El Niño was visited by Christ and received his spiritual mission as a healer (cf. Berlanga et al. 1999:14ff; Garza Quirós 1980:41; Heliodoro y Fabiola 1997:14). Photographs show that in life, Fidencio received the personal veneration accorded a “saint” from his followers (Terán Lira 1980). Even the desert landscape around Espinazo, Nuevo León, where Fidencio lived and worked as a healer seems to recreate the world of Jesus of Nazareth. For one part of the ¤dencista movement today, the “Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana ” (Fidencista Christian Church), Fidencio is simply a modern saint unrecognized by the Church. Its adherents plainly identify themselves as Catholics and freely incorporate popular Mexican Catholic religious symbols into ¤dencista practices. Yet in 1993 when federal legislation required of¤cial registration of religious groups, the Iglesia Fidencista Cristiana was incorporated as a separate and distinct “religious association.” Fidencismo thus became northeast Mexico’s only of¤cially sanctioned “native” religion, reaf¤rming its “otherness” from both the Roman Catholic Church and any other identi¤ably Christian denomination. One can only assume that this...

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