Religious Pluralism and Ethnicity in Comitancillo

In his report Monografía del Municipio Comitancillo, Rubén Feliciano Pérez revealed the most important facts about village life, including the Protestant presence in the village. He estimated that Comitancillo’s population is up to 20 percent Protestant.⁹⁴⁹ I think this figure is too high, especially in light of a partial church census I carried out with the help of Karen and Andrew Vaters from the Summer Institute of Linguistics.⁹⁵⁰ The outcome is revealed below.

The largest Protestant congregations of Comitancillo belong to four churches. The first and largest Protestant church is the Misión Centroamericana or, in English, Central American Mission (CAM).⁹⁵¹ It was not until the early 1980s that the CAM had to compete with other Protestant churches.⁹⁵² These were the Iglesia del Nazareno (Church of the Nazarene), the Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo, a classical Pentecostal church, the Iglesia del Príncipe de Paz, Iglesia de Dios, Iglesia Cristiana, Iglesia Pentecostés, and the Sabatistas (Adventists). Except for the Iglesia de Nazareno and the Misión Centroamericana, most of the new non-denominational independent churches are Pentecostal.

The Misión Centroamericana started missionary work in Comitancillo in 1953. The first missionaries were the North American Horacio Pekes, followed by Edward Sywulka, who stayed for three months in the hamlet of Agua Tibia. The missionaries were able to convert two Mayans that year, one of whom was Apolonio Marroquín. Yet according to the current pastor, Víctor Pérez, the missionary work was accompanied by many problems. Later, Víctor Pérez’s own family from the village Tuilelén converted, and years later Víctor, the son of that family, became one of the pastors of the Misión Centroamericana. In 1968 the CAM started to build the Iglesia Bethania, the first Protestant church building in the village, staffed by the first permanent Protestant minister. Before this permanent Protestant presence, the church was administered by the neighboring little towns and villages of Corinto, San Lorenzo, San Pedro Sacatépequez, and Tejutla. ⁹⁵³

From an ethnic perspective, the organizational structure of the Central American Mission churches in the area of Comitancillo was for a long time an exception. In the Guatemalan Western Highlands, the CAM usually operated by having a strict separation between indigenous Mam and non-indigenous Ladino churches. In the congregations, and also in the higher-level councils (consejos), both ethnic groups assembled separately. Before this, there was only one administrative council for all CAM churches called the General Council, or Consejo General.

The change to an indigenous Mam and non-indigenous Ladino council came about at the end of the 1960s, when indigenous pastors from the province of Huehuetenango no longer accepted the non-indigenous councils. In other words, the indigenous Mayan congregations are the result of an autonomous Mam initiative. Currently, these indigenous congregations have a life of their own, although they are part of a predominately non-indigenous Ladino denomination. ⁹⁵⁴ In sum, during the time of this research (2000 and 2001), Comitancillo was the only Municipio in the whole region where some churches were, from an ethnic perspective, mixed. That is, individual churches were mostly completely indigenous. Yet, on a higher institutional level, some were under non-indigenous Ladino supervision. This also meant that the vast majority of churches in the area were part of the Mam council, although a few Comitancillo churches were not. Andrew Vaters and his wife Karen, both SIL missionaries and directors of the local Protestant Bible Institute (Instituto Bíblico), described the conflicts between the indigenous and non-indigenous churches as very strong and having plenty of negative effects on their own work,⁹⁵⁵ e. g., organizing events and mission work within an ethnically and religiously mixed constituency.

The Canadian couple who ran the above-mentioned Instituto Bíblico, a Protestant Evangelical institute built and established by American missionaries, argued that there are two main aspects that explain the peculiar ethnic organizational structure of Comitancillo’s CAM churches. According to them, ethnicity is the dominant factor responsible for the current dynamic. They argued that the non-indigenous ethnic identity of the first pastor of the CAM, a Ladino, played a pivotal role in how an ethnically mixed congregation came into being under a non-indigenous supervisory umbrella. Historically, they argued, the indigenous population that first assembled within the CAM church was very loyal to this Ladino pastor and did not want to leave the Ladino-run Consejo General. According to them, because of the non-indigenous identity of the pastor, the church service was held in Spanish and not in the indigenous Mam language. They thought that the language factor was very important, because it symbolized a higher status. As they phrased it, “Spanish was more of a prestigious language, and they [the indigenous people, A.A.] really wanted to relate to a higher society.” ⁹⁵⁶ This assumption actually matches not only the historical but also the current situation of the Iglesia Bethania. Both the older and newer converts are a group of economically better-off Mayans and Ladinos who live in the local township of Comitancillo. Many have the typical professions of the Guatemalan rural middle class, e. g., they are bus or truck drivers, salespeople, or work as civil servants. It has to be stressed that living in the township and not in one of the surrounding hamlets also symbolizes a higher social status. This is because the municipalities or townships are more closely associated with regional and national structures, since they provide the necessary infrastructure to relate with the broader nation (post office, bus service, etc). In contrast, those that congregate in the surrounding hamlets mostly live from subsistence agriculture by cultivating corn and beans. If that is not sufficient to sustain them (and usually it is not), they migrate for a few months of the year to the coastal plantations to supplement their income. On one point, my observations are identical with those of other scholars. They show that converts of different social strata are concentrated in Protestant churches of different types, a point that actually explained the modest success of the CAM in Comitancillo. Converts who are economically better off prefer churches such as the Central American Mission, whereas economically marginalized converts usually congregate in Pentecostal churches.⁹⁵⁷

In reconstructing the missionary history of Comitancillo, several aspects become apparent. The first congregation and the first converts who were reached by the missionaries belonged to a more prosperous indigenous and non-indigenous middle class. The indigenous people who joined were dropping out of the traditional indigenous occupations of a semi-proletarianized peasantry, becoming bus drivers and salespeople among other professions. They were the ones who, due to the dynamics of modernization, had few bonds to the traditional religious system within the indigenous community. Their professions brought them into contact with the world outside the village, a situation that required a different lifestyle, including a religion that better suited their occupational circumstances. In this sense, the CAM does confirm the earlier hypotheses on Protestantism and religious pluralism, such as the works of Waldemar Smith, Douglas Brintnall, and Sheldon Annis.⁹⁵⁸ However, at a later stage, when more and more Pentecostal churches in the surrounding hamlets were established, this pattern was disrupted. The newer churches were comprised entirely of Mayan peasants and under the rule of indigenous Mayans. In addition, these Mayans were not affluent professionals, associating with the broader nation through their religious affiliation. The story of one of these Mayan converts is told next.

Religious Pluralism from an Individual Perspective: The Biography of CidiacoTemaj (Iglesia del Nazareno)

Cidiaco Temaj was one of the first Mayan priests in the village who converted to orthodox Catholicism and later to Protestantism. He is also the founder of the Iglesia del Nazareno⁹⁵⁹ in Chicajalaj, one of the largest hamlets that surround the main village. What follows is a summary of his autobiographic account and of how other villagers recall his religious trajectory. It is important to note that his account is representative in that it reflects a broader biographical pattern, which can be summarized in the following sequence: The convert was originally a prominent Mayan priest, became a Catholic catechist, and ultimately ended up as a Protestant pastor or Catholic Charismatic Renewal leader and preacher.

Cidiaco Temaj is an old man. He converted in the 1960s to orthodox Catholicism. Before he converted to Catholicism, he was a famous Mayan priest.⁹⁶⁰ He remembers that his defection to Catholicism did not go smoothly, and that when he burned his priestly tools to underline his conversion, other Mayan priests threatened him. As a catechist, he worked for six years for the first permanent Catholic priest of Comitancillo, Virgilio Camey Día. Part of his catechist work, he said, was to evangelize the surrounding hamlets and to oversee the saints’ days and other religious celebrations. According to Temaj, the priest trained him how to pray the rosary in order to be able to recite the prayer through the vigil that accompanies the fiesta. He and other villagers remember that until the mid-1970s, the cofradías still had huge importance. He did not describe his motives for becoming a catechist; his only comment was that he wanted to study the Bible.⁹⁶¹

He recalled that after several years of being a catechist, he started to discuss religious matters with the priest, in particular the Catholic custom of celebrating the village patron. He explained that two things triggered his desire to talk about this issue. First, he had doubts about whether or not the patron saint feasts really represented God’s will and whether it would be possible to obtain God’s blessings through them. Second, he had doubts about whether or not the extremely high costs, which frequently ended with the bankruptcy of some of the members of the cofradías, corresponded to God’s will. What worried him most, he said, was that he did not find any evidence for these matters in the Bible. To the contrary, he saw that the veneration of the saints and the carousels that were related to them were depicted in the Bible as something against God’s will. Then a new priest, Oscar Hernández, arrived to serve the village, and Temaj started to discuss his concerns with him. Interestingly, the first reaction of the new priest was to ask Temaj if he had talked the matter over with the Protestant villagers. Temaj had not. They both agreed to dissolve the cofradías during the next patron feast. Before that, however, the priest gave him a warning and asked if he was aware of the danger that he was putting himself in. “People might revolt against you, they might even kill you,” the priest told him. “He reminded me,” Temaj said, “that I was at home in the village and had no other place to go should things turn out badly.”

Despite the objections, they continued with their plan. The saints’ days procedure was as follows: The saints were taken out of the church and guarded in the house of one of the members of the cofradía. During the night, the village engaged in the usual fiesta accompanied by marimba music, the carousels, and the dances. On the second day of the feast, the priest sent Temaj with loudspeakers to the house where the saints were kept with the order to dissolve the cofradía. Temaj went and gave the order. As foreseen by the priest, an uproar began and the people tried to lynch him. Yet, Temaj says, two men helped him and prompted the people to approach the priest with this issue instead. Ultimately, the Comitecos sent a letter to the governor requesting the replacement of the priest, something that eventually happened. The new priest was Monseñor José Carrera.⁹⁶² After his nomination, the importance of the cofradías faded gradually, ⁹⁶³ mostly because José Carrera supported the implementation of another religious brotherhood called hermandad.⁹⁶⁴

Why then did Temaj convert a second time? Did he know Protestant converts who put him in touch with Protestantism? According to him and to other village Catholics, he acted of his own accord.⁹⁶⁵ Temaj himself said that Bible studies⁹⁶⁶ and the patron saint fiesta were his motives, but interestingly he also mentioned the factor of racism and discrimination. Here, an important point is that he established his own church, the Iglesia de Nazareno, and did not convert to CAM, a church already in the village. He evaded the question when I asked him directly why he did not convert to CAM. Retrospectively, and by incorporating other contemporary witnesses, it becomes evident that in establishing another Protestant church independent of the existing religious institutions and becoming its pastor, Temaj could tie his new situation to his former leadership position as a religious expert.⁹⁶⁷ Moreover, the Central American Mission was primarily addressing the few Ladinos and, to a much lesser extent, the middle-class Mayans in the village, both groups to which Temaj did not belong.⁹⁶⁸

He told me that he had learned about the Iglesia del Nazareno on one of this business trips to Quetzaltenango. There he visited a Church of the Nazarene and was deeply moved by the personal attention that the pastor gave him, an indigenous man. At that time, he was already leading a group of Catholics in Chicajalaj ⁹⁶⁹ who also disagreed with the pastoral practices of the parish. Finally, he suggested contacting the Church of the Nazarene in Quetzaltenango in order to establish their own church. The group of Catholics agreed.

Temjas’ description of his visit to a Protestant church in Quetzaltenango and the deep impression the treatment of the pastor left illustrate that it took the comparison of this situation with his home village to make him aware of the existing structures of religious inequality. Other accounts from indigenous Catholic laypeople underline that they are often regarded as a labor reservoir that can be activated for anything the institutionalized church needs and wants from them.

As in the case of Enrique Sandóval from CAM, the biography of Cidiaco Temaj illustrates how emancipatory processes toward the Catholic Church develop. The conflict with Catholic doctrine centers on the issue of who has the authority of religious interpretation. In a way, the battles around religious interpretations are not only emancipatory processes but also disguised conflicts around power, thus often preceding religious schisms. The fact that Catholic doctrine contains many elements that cannot be biblically justified or that even contradict biblical teachings supports this emancipatory process, because it gives the literate Mayans a tool to start religious inquiries and interpretations of their own. Numerous examples can be seen in this light. As well as the patron saint fiestas already mentioned, there is the opposition to infant baptism by Protestant groups (because it contradicts the process of conversion), the payment of pastors and priests (which is strongly rejected because it contradicts the practice of tithing by which they believe pastors should be supported), and their condemnation of alcohol. The latter is a practice associated with Mayan spirituality and popular Catholicism. That is, the easy-going attitude of Catholicism only confirms the opinion of Protestants that Catholicism is in fact in league with the devil. In sum, strong boundary constructions around what is considered a religious truth often reflect ethnic power conflicts with existing church entities that have an ethnically mixed constituency.

Pentecostalism and Ethnicity

Many of the things said about neo-Pentecostalism can be applied to Pentecostalism, especially with regard to social effect on the ethnic status quo of Guatemalan society. Yet there are some differences when it comes to how Pentecostalism operates within marginalized sectors of society. Contrary to neo-Pentecostalism, Pentecostal congregations are mostly rural rather than urban, poor rather than middle class or affluent, small rather than gigantic, and often indigenous rather than non-indigenous. Furthermore, participant observation and interviews with church experts indicated that rural indigenous congregations are tight-knit communities and are mostly built on kin. Kinship is the central category of identity formation within indigenous communities. Seen from this perspective, Pentecostal communities not only strengthen traditional aspects but also contribute to their prospective existence. In this light, the custom of tithing also needs to be considered. Instead of giving money to a large denomination, the money that is donated stays in the congregation and the family, since the church functions as a family enterprise. Moreover, despite the foreign origin of Pentecostalism, and despite obvious contradictions with official Pentecostal doctrine, many Pentecostal believers at the grassroots level continue with syncretistic practices and traditional forms of belief, a situation that, in the end, also leads to a preservation of traditional norms and values. Here again the autonomy of many small congregations, whether non-denominational or part of large religious bodies, only fosters the integration of extant beliefs and religious practices.

Several other aspects document a close relationship between Pentecostal belief and a traditional environment. Pentecostal belief has a strong practice-oriented component and integrates in many ways the existential hardship of an impoverished constituency. Pentecostal churches are masters in responding to the most urgent social problems in Guatemalan society, including alcoholism, domestic and societal violence, poverty and financial distress, physical diseases, psychological problems, and other conflicts. Interestingly, the ways Pentecostalism approaches these conflicts to help individuals overcome difficulties in daily life and during existential crises is very similar to the traditional methods of healers and Mayan priests. Examples include prayers to influence a transcendental authority and the use of a mediator to act on behalf of the distressed person, for instance a fellow member who possesses the don de sanación – the gift to heal.

The empirical examples have also shown that it is precisely the cultural factor that determines the decision and initiative to create worship settings that are ethnically homogeneous. Examples abound; different tastes in terms of music and preaching styles have led to separate congregations, church buildings, and different days and hours of worship. Christian radio stations that broadcast in indigenous languages do exist. These are all factors that take into account the ethnic background and distinct culture and lifestyle of Mayans.

The independence of indigenous Pentecostalism from the national context also needs to be stressed. The rural characteristic of Pentecostalism has certainly contributed to the establishment of Mayan congregations as separate entities from other non-indigenous civil society groups that operate on a national or even a transnational level. Therefore Pentecostalism can be viewed positively, providing niches to marginalized population groups who live in a society marked by political violence and extraordinarily high crime rates. Contemporary Mayan Pentecostalism, like Ladino neo-Pentecostalism, has a life of its own. An autonomy within Mayan Pentecostalism exists, even when the individual congregation operates within the framework of a predominately Ladino, that is non-indigenous, religious body. Even within the racially mixed denominations there is a strong ethnic divide at the grassroots level, and the higher we look in the institutional ranks the fewer Mayans we encounter. In some cases, Mayans achieved complete autonomy within an institutional framework that is predominantly Ladino. The Central American Mission, the Church of the Nazarene, and the Presbyterian Church are some examples.⁹⁷¹ Precisely because Mayan Pentecostalism is a product of Mayan initiatives, decades after foreign missionaries established the first missionary churches, their existence can also be seen as emancipation from both patronizing Catholicism and extant racism in multi-ethnic denominations. In this regard, strong boundary constructions around what is considered religious truth often reflect conflicts with existing church entities. In other words, the opposition to infant baptism, patron saint fiestas, alcohol consumption, etc., can be seen as the strategy of a minority group to create places of refuge from the dominant society.

Unfortunately, the fact that congregations flourish precisely where there is ethnic control and where ethnic cultural norms are embedded in worship practice represents a double-edged sword with regard to ethnic antagonisms, because the cultural and ethnic preference to congregate in different worship settings only perpetuates the existing ethnic divide. The growing religious pluralism only seems to contribute to this dynamic. What looks at first glance like a new religious freedom, the option for choice, also leads to the development of further divergent ways of worshipping, music styles, preaching styles, and church organizations, ultimately leading to even more divergent social identities that in the end reproduce ethnic segregation at a higher level.

Neo-Pentecostalism and Ethnicity

Despite their similarities and a social reality demonstrating that the boundaries between Pentecostalism and neo-Pentecostalism are further and further blurred by the attempts of large Pentecostal denominations to ascend into the domain of the middle and upper classes,⁹⁷² there are other important reasons why the Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal movements should be, and indeed must be, distinguished. Within neo-Pentecostalism, four discursive elements prevail that do not exist – at least not according to my empirical data – within rural Pentecostal Mayan communities: post-millennialism, the prosperity gospel, biblical literalism, and a strong emphasis on demonology, in particular on spiritual warfare and generational bondage.

How are the four above-mentioned discursive elements affecting race relationships in Guatemala? Evidently, post-millennialism is fostering and legitimizing the construction of a nation in which a specific Christian identity trumps or even eradicates all other religious and ethnic identities. Considering that neo-Pentecostalism is mostly a phenomenon of the urban, non-indigenous population, it becomes apparent that the claim for leadership and the establishment of a Christian nation overlaps with the interests of the non-indigenous population. Mayans are only of interest as missionary objects, that is, as long as they subordinate themselves to the specific conception of a Christian doctrine whose representatives are mostly non-indigenous. From this perspective, the project of evangelization is a project of assimilating the indigenous populace into something that is understood as a superior form of collective identity.

Secondly, there is a link between the prosperity gospel, biblical literalism, and the class and ethnic composition of neo-Pentecostalism. According to the data presented here, the prosperity gospel is a doctrine of the haves and not of the have-nots, justifying the wealth of those who are already rich and prosperous and condemning those who are poor, explaining poverty as a result of a lack of faith.⁹⁷³ Biblical literalism also reflects the class composition of neo-Pentecostalism, because it requires the ability to read and write, a qualification absent in the part of the population that lives in great poverty.

Moreover, the neo-Pentecostal elements of demonology, particularly spiritual warfare, generational bondage, and generational curses, merit attention with regard to their effect on race relationships in Guatemala. For instance, the demonology of neo-Pentecostalism equates Mayan spirituality with a cult of the devil. This equation works perfectly in the Guatemalan context, because biblical references to Satan can be applied on a one-to-one basis to Mayan culture, e. g., the serpent as a symbol of the devil in the Bible and the feathered serpent representing the famous deity Quetzalcoatl in the Mayan pantheon. The latter was an important deity in Mayan pre-colonial culture and gained new importance in the efforts of the Maya movement to promote ethnic-cultural revitalization.

Generational bondage and generational curses are other doctrinal elements that directly target Mayan culture and history. They draw a direct line from pre-colonial to contemporary Mayan culture, stating that the sins of the ancestors are still operating in current Mayan generations. In other words, they imply that sins are perpetuated in families and passed on from generation to generation unless the bond or curse is lifted. Interestingly, it is Mayan pre-colonial culture, in particular its practice of human sacrifice, that is addressed rather than the hideous crimes and atrocities of former generations of non-indigenous Catholics. One wonders why the slaughtering of the indigenous population by Catholic Spaniards during the conquest is not considered a sin that is passed on from generation to generation. Most astonishing is perhaps that the recent genocide and civil war does not appear on the radar of neo-Pentecostal doctrine. Thus, with regard to ethnicity and the current efforts of Mayans to revitalize their own culture, the standpoint of neo-Pentecostalism is clear: In the doctrine of generational bondage, Mayans and other indigenous peoples in Latin America are not the descendents of great civilizations but are heirs of a terrible, sinful, and savage heritage. In sum, both the cultural imagery of biblical evil and generational bondage work hand in hand to create a radical anti-indigenous discourse. Furthermore, Mayan culture constitutes a negative point of reference against which a Christian counter-identity is projected.

On a more general level, we can see how the religious discourse of neo-Pentecostalism, its organizational structures, and its understanding of social order contribute to ethnic antagonisms and the ethnic status quo. Neo-Pentecostalism is an essentialized version of a faith that makes absolute and exclusive claims about its religious belief system. This, combined with the fact that neo-Pentecostal congregations are almost entirely comprised of non-indigenous people operating in urban enclaves among the middle and upper classes, leads me to conclude that they constitute a strong religious network that supports, consolidates, and legitimizes the interests of a non-indigenous elite. The demand for the restoration of a biblical order, which is embodied in the neo-Pentecostal community, is the attempt of this non-indigenous elite to justify their ethnic superiority and their higher social status religiously. This discourse, together with the class and ethnic composition, in particular the ethnically homogeneous congregation structures, contributes to a spatial and ethnic segregation of Guatemalan society, which has ultimately preserved ethnic antagonism and the ethnic status quo.⁹⁷⁴