Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present (review)

In recent decades, ethnographers, historians, theologians, novelists, essayists, poets, and artists have produced a rich, steady, and sometimes contentious stream of work on the Virgin of Guadalupe. Guadalupe and Her Faithful is a key addition to the existing literature. Written by Timothy Matovina, professor of theology and the director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, the book explores the development of Guadalupan devotion in the vibrant faith community of the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas. Ever since Guadalupe, a mestiza likeness of the Virgin Mary, was said to have appeared to Juan Diego on the Hill of Tepeyac in 1531, clerics and scholars have debated the authenticity of the apparition. This book is not so much about the veracity of the original apparition as it is about the reality of a single faith community's ongoing relationship with Guadalupe. Following Durkheim, Matovina highlights the ways in which adherents of Guadalupe are made stronger so as to feel within themselves "more force, either to endure the trials of existence, or to conquer them" (20).

Significantly, this is the first study to examine Guadalupan devotion in a single faith community from Spanish colonial times to the present. This focus proves to be one of the book's greatest strengths, for it enables Matovina to show in an intimate way just how multi-layered and, at times, paradoxical Guadalupan devotion can be. As the first volume in the Johns Hopkins "Lived Religion" series, Guadalupe and Her Faithful approaches rituals, devotions, and pious practices as contested zones of contact. Informed, in part, by the work of Catherine Bell and Robert Orsi, Matovina illustrates how devotion to Guadalupe may yield ambiguous and, oftentimes, contradictory meanings and appropriations. On the one hand, the author notes that Guadalupe has been for many not only a source of divine intervention, but also a source of cultural pride. As such, his readings of Guadalupan devotion attempt to "illuminate the beauty, strength, and multiple meaning of Guadalupan devotion." On the other hand, however, Matovina respectfully shows that while Guadalupan devotion has proven liberating for some, it has also "failed to reflect its practitioners' proud affirmations of Guadalupe's liberating, unifying, and life-giving potential" (xi). Devotees have, for instance, often appropriated Guadalupe to affirm their own national or ethnic identities, but have fallen short of a more universal and inclusive appropriation of the symbol. The devotion "does not usually induce self-critique about inequalities and double-standards within the faith community itself;" Matovina notes, "nor does it provoke critical analysis and action to transform the social structures that perpetuate the affliction and second-class citizenship of many ethnic Mexicans" (19–20). Throughout the book, Matovina remains especially attuned to the ways in which devotional practices may re-inscribe problematic gender and class divisions. By and large, however, the book remains sympathetic to the ways in which devotion to Guadalupe helps—rather than hinders—her adherents.

The book is structured in such a way that the middle chapters (2–4) provide a solid historical grounding for the bookend chapters (1 and 5), the latter of which probe presents present-day Guadalupan devotion at the cathedral. In chapter 1, Matovina offers one of the best firsthand accounts of Latino Catholic worship that I have read. The chapter centers on the cathedral's Guadalupe serenata, which takes place every year on December 12, the feast day of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Matovina has longstanding scholarly and personal ties to the cathedral, and his intimate knowledge of the community helps him to capture well some of the defining characteristics of this faith community—the sights, smells, and sounds of devotion; the sense of ownership expressed by the laity; the prominence of public ritual; a committed and pastoral leadership; the cathedral's openness to syncretic and transcultural practices (such as the incorporation...