Jean-Pierre Bastian

Les protestantismes latino-américains: un objet à interroger et à construire

The study of the religious phenomenon assimilated to the generic concept of “protestantism” has turned out to be a fruitful field of research for sociologists, anthropologists and historians these last twenty-five years. Nevertheless, reductive comprehension of such a complex social and religious phenomenon, related to the differentiation and atomization of a religious field wider than mere “Protestantism” still predominates. In order to emphasize the degree of difference and dissociation between the new religious movements, so-called Protestants and the historical Latin-American Protestantism, the author develops a socio-historical approach. When the Protestant societies of the late 19th century emerged from the political culture of radical liberalism typical of those schools of thought favouring an anti-corporatist and democratic modernity, the present-day Protestant religious movement, particularly the Pentecostals, evolved from a religious and political culture typical of folk catholocism, syncretic and strengthening the passivity of the masses. Contemporary forms of Protestantism deputize for popular Catholicism and fill a vacuum, reshaping in a traditional way the relative autonomy of popular religion.

Violencia, etnicidad y religión entre los mayas del estado de Chiapas en México

The rapid growth of different religions in the ethnic communities of Chiapas has resulted from intra-ethnic violence. At stake are the construction of a modern Indian reality based on religious pluralism; the preservation of ethnic differences in a larger national society; and the elimination of intraethnic violence justified in the name of catolicismo de la costumbre (popular Catholicism).

Dissidence religieuse dans le milieu rural mexicain

Mexican anthropologists and ethnologists have maintained that the rapid spread of protestant sects in the country can be explai ned as the avant-garde of an alleged ideological penetration of North American imperialism. In this article, the author shows that this is not at all the case, by basing his argument on fieldwork car ried out in various places in the south of the country where, accor ding to the last population census, the percentage of the overall population which is protestant is highest. Mexican protestantisms are predominantly rural, and their spread can be explained by their ability to ensure continuity with the magical-religious symbollic uni verse, by incorporating and reviving healing practices in particu lar. Moreover, the sectors which adopt the new credo do so with the aim of mounting political resistance to the traditional caciques which have been able to maintain control over catholic symbollic practices (system of ritual duties and feast-days), in order to more effectively secure a rapid accumulation of capital for themselves, as areas with a traditional economy are gradually integrated into the market economy. Protestantisms therefore represent a politi cal refusal to submit to the caciques, and make it possible to struc ture an autonomous organization and to break the dominant social relations.

La fonction sociale et politique des hétérodoxies religieuses en Amérique latine

Pentecostalism and other new religious movements have acquired an increasing social and political visibility during the 1980s. This corresponds to a restructuring of the religious field and a re-elaboration of the popular religion of subordinate and marginal social sectors by means of a symbolic do-it-yourselfism. Far from being faced with a movement of protestant religious reform as Martin and Stoll suggest in their recent works, we are witnessing a re-enchantment of the world in the sense of traditional, corporatist and authoritarian practices and values. The “clientelist” use of heterdox religious infrastructures by military regimes as well as by neo-populist politicians confirms the perennial nature of traditional religious mentalities and practices and not the rise of a democratic and tolerant religious modernity.

Jacobinismo y ruptura revolucionaria durante el porfiriato

This essay examines the way in which modern associations spread within Mexican society during the last third of the nineteenth century. These lodges, Protestant and mutualist associations, spiritist circles, and liberal clubs formed a jacobin political culture which not only escaped the control of Diaz9s oligarchical and neo-conservative state, but which also opposed the regime.

Protestants, franc-maçons et spirites : pluralité religieuse et mouvement révolutionnaire au Mexique, 1911-1920

Th is article analyses the process of “citizenship construction” during the Mexican revolutionary phase of 1911-1920. It takes seriously the identity of certain actors defi ned by their religious link to Protestantism, to spiritism and to free-masonry. Th eir contestation of the Porfi rist regime did not stop with the triumph of Madero. Th e revolutionary process gave them a new impulse. Th is draws our attention to the religious dimension of the Mexican revolution by showing that anti-Catholicism, both in its religious and anti-religious form, was an element structuring different political universes. In particular, the article reconstructs the way these actors served as a civil basis for the Venustiano Carranza’s regime in its fi ght against the revolutionary Obregonist faction.