LLAS 252 Religion in Mexico, PreColumbian Times to Present

This course offers a broad survey of Mexican religion from pre-Columbian times to the present. The course begins with the study of Nahua ("Aztec") spirituality and ritual and continues with an examination of major developments of the colonial period as indigenous European and African peoples came together with their many different beliefs and practices. We will study indigenous strategies, of both resistance and accommodation, to the imposition of Catholicism, the origins of the devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Mexican Inquisition, millenarian movements, missions, and women in the church in the colonial period. Our study concludes with the anti-clerical reforms of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries, the Cristero Rebellion, increasing influence of Protestantism, and the persistence of local religions in modern Mexico. Students will analyze historical documents, religious dramas, confessional manuals, Inquisition records, paintings, sculptures, and films in their examination of the history of religion and spirituality in Mexico.