Common wisdom holds that Latin America is a uniformly Roman Catholic continent and Protestant churches only entered as a result of British or U.S. expansionism following the Spanish-American independence movements. Closer inspection, however, reveals a far different and more exciting reality. As The Mexican Reformation reveals, the Catholic Church in the colonial era was far from monolithic, exhibiting a diversity of expressions and perspectives that interacted with and were sometimes at odds with one another. In the mid-nineteenth century, one such group sought to reform the Catholic Church in line with some of the policies set forth by the government of Benito Juarez. This movement, eventually known as the Iglesia de Jesus, would lay the foundation for the emergence of Protestant churches in Mexico. Its roots in the worldview of the baroque and in the challenges of the Catholic Enlightenment provide an insight into the evolution of a distinctly Mexican Protestantism within its social and political contexts as well as a window into the processes underlying the development of religious expressions in Latin America.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Focusing on cemetery burials in late-eighteenth-century Mexico, Alone Before God provides a window onto the contested origins of modernity in Mexico. By investigating the religious and political debates surrounding the initiative to transfer the burials of prominent citizens from urban to suburban cemeteries, Pamela Voekel challenges the characterization of Catholicism in Mexico as an intractable and monolithic institution that had to be forcibly dragged into the modern world. Drawing on the archival research of wills, public documents, and other texts from late-colonial and early-republican Mexico, Voekel describes the marked scaling-down of the pomp and display that had characterized baroque Catholic burials and the various devices through which citizens sought to safeguard their souls in the afterlife. In lieu of these baroque practices, the new enlightened Catholics, claims Voekel, expressed a spiritually and hygienically motivated preference for extremely simple burial ceremonies, for burial outside the confines of the church building, and for leaving their earthly goods to charity. Claiming that these changes mirrored a larger shift from an external, corporate Catholicism to a more interior piety, she demonstrates how this new form of Catholicism helped to initiate a cultural and epistemic shift that placed the individual at the center of knowledge. Breaking with the traditional historiography to argue that Mexican liberalism had deeply religious roots, Alone Before God will be of interest to specialists in Latin American history, modernity, and religion.

In 1908 Franciso I. Madero wrote to arouse his people to free themselves from the domination of the Diaz Administration by taking advantage of the opportunity afforded in the scheduled elections of 1910. His program voiced the rationale for the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1917: Effective suffrage, No re-election. Now in a precise translation one may read the true story of Madero's political program - a milestone in Mexican History."

"Mexican Protestantism was born in the encounter between Mexican Catholics and Anglo American Protestants, after the United States ventured into the Southwest and wrested territory from Mexico in the early nineteenth century. In Sea la Luz, Juan Francisco Martinez traces the birth and initial development of this ethno-religious community brought through the westward expansion of the United States. Using the records of Protestant missionaries, he uncovers the story of Mexican converts and the churches they developed. Those same records reveal Protestant attitudes toward the war with Mexico, the conquest of the Southwest, and the Mexican population that became U.S. citizens with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848)."--BOOK JACKET.

"Analyzes the impact of the opposition candidacies in the Mexican presidential elections of 1940, 1946, and 1952 on the internal discipline and electoral dominance of the ruling Partido de la Revoluciâon Mexicana (PRM) and its successor, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)"--Provided by publisher.

2020, Texas Historical Commission's Governor's Award for Historic Preservation was awarded to the Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools (CHAPS) at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. This book grew out of the CHAPS program. Runner-up, 2019 Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Book Award, sponsored by the Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association (TOMFRA) Long known as a place of cross-border intrigue, the Rio Grande’s unique role in the history of the American Civil War has been largely forgotten or overlooked. Few know of the dramatic events that took place here or the complex history of ethnic tensions and international intrigue and the clash of colorful characters that marked the unfolding and aftermath of the Civil War in the Lone Star State. To understand the American Civil War in Texas also requires an understanding of the history of Mexico. The Civil War on the Rio Grande focuses on the region’s forced annexation from Mexico in 1848 through the Civil War and Reconstruction. In a very real sense, the Lower Rio Grande Valley was a microcosm not only of the United States but also of increasing globalization as revealed by the intersections of races, cultures, economic forces, historical dynamics, and individual destinies. As a companion to Blue and Gray on the Border: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail, this volume provides the scholarly backbone to a larger public history project exploring three decades of ethnic conflict, shifting international alliances, and competing economic proxies at the border. The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846–1876 makes a groundbreaking contribution not only to the history of a Texas region in transition but also to the larger history of a nation at war with itself.