Enchantment, Ex-votos, and Pilgrimages in Modern Mexican Religious Culture

Mexican religious culture, strongly image-oriented since the colonial period, adapted to the significant political changes wrought by mid-nineteenth-century liberal reforms in creative and fundamentally modern ways. In the face of new legislation designed to curb the power of the Catholic church in Mexican society, both the institution and its adherents devised ways to circumvent what was seen as the state’s limitations on religious freedom by reorganizing the religious practices that defined them as Catholics. Paralleling the upsurge in the outpouring of Catholic devotion at shrines worldwide, Mexican shrines—mostly established in the colonial period, but declining in visits as well as funds during the early to mid-nineteenth century—experienced significant renewals of expressions of faith beginning in the 1880s. Aided by the heightened ease and safety of long-distance travel, the increased circulation of prints and other religious paraphernalia, and the encouragement of the clergy, devout Catholics began flocking to these holy sites in droves, bringing with them ex-votos testifying to the power of the saints who had appeared there.

The analysis of these religious phenomena—apparitionism, pilgrimages, and ex-voto production—provides a useful context to show some of the ways that Mexican Catholics accommodated modernizing changes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By coalescing around a cultural tradition of revering holy figures through performative and material actions of thanksgiving, Mexico’s Catholics reaffirmed their faith and ensured its continuity at both the institutional and popular levels. This groundswell of religious expression belies the conventional dichotomy that pits religion and tradition against the secular and modern; the persistence of Catholicism in Mexican mentalities indicates how much religion remained a crucial part of “modernity.”