Beyond Expulsions Exploring Conflict Dynamics and Parallel Communities in Indigenous Protestant-Catholic Relations in Oaxaca, Mexico
Catholics and Protestants now negotiate religious difference in Oaxaca’s Indigenous municipalities, most of which follow Usos y Costumbres (UyC) self-government. Using 2020 census microdata, archival conflict files, and twelve in-depth interviews, we show that the expulsions once common in these vil...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
International journal of Latin American religions
Year: 2025, Volume: 9, Issue: 2, Pages: 424-444 |
| Further subjects: | B
Parallel Communities
B Oaxaca B Resource contestation B Religious Conflict B Pentecostal growth B Usos y Costumbres B Indigenous governance |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Catholics and Protestants now negotiate religious difference in Oaxaca’s Indigenous municipalities, most of which follow Usos y Costumbres (UyC) self-government. Using 2020 census microdata, archival conflict files, and twelve in-depth interviews, we show that the expulsions once common in these villages have given way to subtler, but persistent, struggles inside communal institutions. Seventy-seven expulsions occurred between 2010 and 2022 (≈ 6 per year), yet Protestants and Catholics today inhabit what we call parallel communities: negotiated coexistence rather than constant conflict (CNDH, 2020). Communal Catholicism, a civic-religious system that merges patron-saint festivals, ritual cargos, and communal labor (tequios) with local governance, remains the dominant frame, but it must now contend with Protestant growth. We develop the concept of Parallel Communities, overlapping Catholic and Protestant social worlds that share territory while keeping separate moral repertoires, and identify three pathways that steer Protestant expansion: passive cooperation (hostile respect combined with cargo fulfilment), power negotiation (seeking assembly recognition) and resource contestation (competing for land, budgets and fiesta funds). These channels explain why overt violence has declined even as tensions persist: conflict is increasingly routed into institutional bargaining instead of ending in expulsion. The analysis recasts Indigenous religious pluralism as a question of resource politics rather than doctrine, offering a comparative lens for hybrid governance across Latin America. |
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| ISSN: | 2509-9965 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: International journal of Latin American religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s41603-025-00307-7 |
