Protestant Missionaries and Religious Conflict among Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, 1920–79

The predominately indigenous southern state of Oaxaca has the highest growth rate of Protestantism in Mexico. My paper is a chapter from my broader doctoral dissertation on Protestantism in indigenous communities of southern Mexico. I ask the following questions:  How did Protestantism develop in isolated, monolingual communities which adhere to a strict civil-religious hierarchy? How did indigenous communities use the language of autonomy, cultural imperialism, and self-determination to reject Protestant missionary movements?  Tracing the historical interactions between North American missionaries, indigenous converts, government officials, and the Catholic Church hierarchy from the post-revolutionary period to the expulsion of foreign missionaries from Oaxaca in 1979, I analyze how Protestants, particularly women, blended their new religious practices with syncretistic customs.  I argue that religious plurality challenged collective identity in Mixtec and Zapotec villages, leading to competing conceptualizations of tradition and ritual.  My paper contributes new insights into the complex relationship between popular worship, ethnic identity, and social movements in Mexico.  Using a combination of field interviews, North American missionary literature, pastoral letters, petitions, and religious conflict cases documented in Oaxaca’s state and local archives, my project is the first major historical study to focus primarily on Protestantism in rural Oaxaca and its impact on indigenous identities. My research shares recent approaches in the discipline of history to recognize oral histories as an important methodological foundation. I privilege the perspective of indigenous peoples who are often invisible in the current historiography.