A Flock Divided

Matthew D. O’Hara cogently analyzes the intersection of popular Catholicism, Indian identity, community formation, and local politics in Mexico City and its environs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His work bridges many historiographical divides: urban and rural, colonial and early republican, religious and political. Because of this historiographical breadth and O’Hara’s thoughtful arguments and clear prose, this monograph will appeal to a broad audience.The book is divided into three sections. In the first, the author examines how Catholicism in New Spain shaped the concept “Indian” and how colonial subjects thus labeled manipulated Indianness. Working from the notion that Indians were “spiritual neophytes,” the Catholic Church instituted parish structures for Indians separate from those for Spanish and castas (people of mixed race). The Indian parishes, doctrinas, were administered by mendicant orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians), whereas the Spanish/casta parishes were run by the secular clergy. These different parish systems supported the division of colonial subjects into two republics — the república de indios and the república de españoles — each with its different sets of rights and obligations. Based on the premise of segregated residence, this race-based parish structure created much confusion in multiracial Mexico City. In the colony’s capital, the church had estab lished an overlapping system of four Spanish/casta parishes and seven Indian ones by 1700. O’Hara argues that individual indigenous inhabitants of Mexico City used this jurisdictional complexity to contest caste ascriptions, often attempting to join a Spanish/casta parish to avoid tribute obligations. On the other hand, he contends that community leaders regularly emphasized Indianness when advocating communal projects. This resort to Indian identity was evident in two eighteenth-century proposals: the failed attempt to found an indigenous seminary for the ordination of clergy to serve Indian parishes, and multiple successful bids to erect convents for Indian nuns.The book’s second section investigates late eighteenth-century religious reform and its implications for parish structure and religious practice in Mexico City. Inspired by new pious currents, elements of the episcopacy and royal bureaucracy sought to undermine collective and external forms of baroque piety and replace them with more interior and individual devotions. O’Hara insists that the project stemmed in part from the elite’s rhetorical conflation of baroque piety with Indianness. This resulted in the reformers’ attempt to Hispanicize popular piety. In New Spain in general, reform prompted the replacement of regular by secular clergy in Indian parishes because religious orders, which ministered to their flocks in indigenous languages, were deemed obstacles to Hispanicization. In Mexico City, the reform led in 1772 to the abolition of the race-based parish structure and the creation of new, multiracial parishes. In short, religious and civil authorities sought to dilute Indianness in the capital. O’Hara argues, however, that the reformers largely failed to instill “modern” pious practices and to inculcate strong parish connections among the faithful. Using litigation over the control of religious objects, such as images and chapels, spawned by the new parish division, the author demonstrates that Catholics in Mexico City formed microcommunities of the faithful that divided the flock among caste, occupational, and/or residential lines and that these local sodalities (sometimes officially recognized and sometimes not) successfully withstood parish reorganization and challenged religious reform. O’Hara further contends that these local sodalities, usually centered on a sacred item controlled by a “devotional entrepreneur” (p. 127), formed the basis of a robust collective and highly local Catholicism that has often escaped scholarly attention.O’Hara expands his gaze in the book’s last section, analyzing colonial Catholicism’s impact on local politics in the pueblos surrounding Mexico City in the early republican era. He argues that the organizational structures of parish and sodality shaped post-independence political institutions, particularly the ayuntamiento (town council). More important, despite the legal abolition of caste distinctions, republican ayuntamientos often resorted to the colonial Catholic rhetoric of Indianness and fused it with the new concept of citizenship to wrest control over religious property, pious practices, and sacramental fee schedules from their parish priests. In fact, O’Hara contends that the institutional weakness of the church and the burgeoning authority of town councils facilitated greater lay control over local religion in early republican Mexico.A Flock Divided is based on careful archival research and offers new insights into the often hidden practices of local Catholicism and the role of religion in identity formation. I only wish the author had devoted more attention to analyzing the religious content of the local practices he uncovered. He thoroughly explores the social and political functions of barrio sodalities and devotional entrepreneurs, but I wonder what local devotions might have meant to their practitioners on a religious level. Nonetheless, this is an impressive work that merits careful attention

Archaeology · Caste · Colonialism · CONTEST · Creole language · Ethnology · Genealogy · Historiography · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Race (biology) · Sociology · Theology · Vernacular · Gender Studies · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Latin American history and culture · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies

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