Defining Commitments through Spiritual Dialogue

This chapter argues that religious commitments are often articulated by Santaneros as a sense of ongoing communication with divine and spiritual entities. This particular pattern signals commonality between Catholics and evangelicals in that members of both groups emphasize seeking spiritual guidance through their choices of religious commitments. Though Catholics and evangelicals differ in some of their respective practices related to communicating with spiritual entities, the expectations of divine guidance are similar. I argue that notions of spiritual dialogue are especially helpful to Santaneros as they evaluate the diverse religious options at their disposal. Santaneros concretize and affirm their religious commitments through practices of divine conversation. In navigating the ethnic space of Santa Ana, divine dialogue imbues the urban landscape with a sense of supernaturalism.

Notions of Neighborhood

This chapter examines how Catholic and evangelical affiliations influence diverging understandings of coethnic barrios. Relationships to ethnic enclaves matter, the author argues, because ethnic enclaves host a concentration of ethnic resources that distinctly shape ethnic identities. Catholics understand the barrio as a “community,” denoting both physical neighborhood and tight-knit support networks. The barrio functions as a space for communally performed rituals of collective memory for Catholics. On the other hand, evangelicals tend to view the barrio as a place that is in need of redemption. For evangelicals, the barrio is a target of evangelistic efforts and they conceive of their place in the barrio as a catalytic role, centered on bringing about transformation therein. Both Catholics and evangelicals are highly invested in the ethnic enclave, but their differing views provide them with different channels of access to localized ethnic resources.

A City of Saints

This chapter discusses how religion delineates boundary markers related to ethnic identity. It provides a snapshot of two of Santa Ana’s religious communities, one Catholic and one evangelical, to demonstrate the ritualized approaches of ethnic identity construction tied to each respective religious tradition. Critical differences between these two communities emerge in relation to understandings of the past, a dimension closely linked to ethnic identity construction. Distinct understandings of ethnic history, the author argues, lead to diverging patterns in how peoplehood is experienced across these groupings. Secondly, the author argues for a social boundary approach to explain how ethnic identity is maintained and negotiated, both within groups and across groups. That is, ethnic identity is significantly affected by in-group differences across religion. Finally, the author argues that intra-group boundaries between co-ethnic Catholics and evangelicals are consistently reproduced through face-to-face interactions in Santa Ana.

Introduction

This chapter sets the stage for how central Santa Ana functions as a space in which a substantial number of residents experience a close link between faith and ethnic identity. The chapter introduces the role of faith as a critical resource in the lives of Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana. Faith functions as a salient dimension of identity because it provides resources of survival for many marginalized Mexican immigrants. General statistics on the city highlight particular aspects of inequality experienced by many working-class Mexican immigrants. Finally, this chapter invites the reader to look beyond institutional forms of faith and to examine how Mexican immigrants express agency through forms of lived religion in the city.

Altar Encounters

This chapter examines Latinx religious identities through the lens of change and continuity. For evangelicals, the experience of religious conversion becomes a marker of evangelical identity. Some Catholics, too, have experiences of religious renewal which closely approximate religious conversion. For evangelicals, conversion experiences are closely linked to rupturing with the past. For Catholics, religious renewal is a way to solidify ties to the past, both religious and ethnic. Essentially, Catholics have a stronger sense of continuity with the past and evangelicals tend to emphasize discontinuity with the past. Ultimately, the author addresses the dilemma of how experiences of religious renewal and religious change relate to ethnic identity maintenance. Understandings of the past matter for ethnic identity because they structure the collective memories that people have at their disposal to bolster a sense of shared history. Conversion experiences also shape how people understand themselves in relation to ethnic spaces.

The Authentic Ethnic Self

This chapter examines how Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana articulate notions of who they are ethnically. The author conceptualizes group differences in ethnic self-identification in relation to the boundary work being done among Catholics and evangelicals. Generally, most respondents, both Catholic and evangelical, identify as Mexican. A subset of respondents identifies using pan-ethnic labels such as Latino or Hispanic. Whereas both religious groups show similar patterns in the labels of ethnic self-identification that they select, Catholics and evangelicals employ diverging discursive strategies to qualify their responses. Catholics exhibit more confidence in their responses to questions of ethnic self-identification. Evangelicals engage in extended discursive labor to legitimate their ethnic labels. The author argues that these diverging discourses uncover contestations within the broader ethnic community about what legitimate ethnic identity should look like.

Sites Unseen

This chapter argues that Catholics and evangelicals ultimately contribute to distinct constructions of ethnic space and of ethnic identity, in as much as ethnic space serves as a mechanism for ethnic identity construction. For Catholics, religion shapes the boundaries of ethnicity as a retrospective, locally anchored, communally embodied identity. For evangelicals, religion shapes the boundaries of ethnicity as a future looking, regionally dispersed, voluntarily selected identity. Catholicism, the author argues, tends to contribute to a more robust sense of ethnic continuity, while evangelicalism tends to contribute to a more robust sense of religious salience. The author argues that intergenerational transmission is a matter that both traditions continue to contend with as it has significant bearing on their ethnic futures. The chapter closes by reflecting on the adaptive ethnoreligious identities being forged by later generation Latinxs in light of the materials made available by earlier generations.

A Century of Saints

This chapter chronicles the emergence of Santa Ana’s distinct Latinx majority religious ecology. The diversity of Latinx religious communities significantly shapes Santa Ana as an ethnic space. The author delineates how the religious ecology navigated today by Santaneros is tied to histories of local religious institutions and to patterns of racialized, ethnic exclusion. Ethnic identities that residents have had to contend with today are rooted in patterns of negotiations and struggles that Mexican-identified individuals have long contended with. Religion, the author argues, has often been used by whites in the construction of exclusionary boundary markers against Latinxs. Likewise, religious differences among co-ethnics have been salient points of in-group distinction. Nevertheless, Latinx majority religious communities have provided Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana with opportunities to exercise agency and leadership.