Latinas and Religion: Strength, Purity, and the Body

This week we discussed a series of meanings for the expression “rapping Latinas:” a) young women seeking a life of significant impact of their talent, and making inroads of spaces traditionally considered male domains (like rap and hip-hop); b) young single mothers trying to provide for their children; c) women of all ages in the barrio joining the ministry to expand religion and religiosity from “other world” business and soul-redeeming-only endeavors to social justice and help out of poverty. How does shifting religious identity constitute ‘rapping’? How does social justice and rap relate to making a religious life come to life? What other meanings do you find for “rapping Latinas”?

Post a comment addressing one or more of these questions. Please, note that this post does NOT have a deadline, since most of you are concentrating on your proposals. These last few posts will come without a deadline, so you can write about them and post at your own pace. Hang in there, semester is almost over!

Last week we discussed ways in which Latina bodies recover and how religion (faith, devotion, conscience of presence-absence and its importance, materials such as images or icons, etc) help in that recovery.

We did not post last week. If your final project or your research interest relates to this topic, please feel free to post a comment about one or more of these questions; otherwise, this is an optional post.

On Monday we discussed the various relations of presence/absence (in the case of the Virgin from the life of Jesus, in the case of a mother from the life of a child, as we saw last week) and of violence, and the role of church leaders in the happening of domestic violence.

Take one point from the discussion, and relate it to one of the websites or videos I asked you to watch or browse on Wednesday.

Please, note that the link for “Existe ayuda / Help exists” is broken. This is the live one:

https://www.nsvrc.org/publications/existe-ayuda-help-exists-toolkit#:~:text=The%20Existe%20Ayuda%20Toolkit%20provides,competence%20and%20accessibility%20of%20services.

Please, post your reflection by Sunday at noon.

This week we have discussed different aspects that matter to better understand the adjective ‘transnational.’ We focused on two readings regarding transnational motherhood, which related to previous discussions we held on fertility, devotion, abnegation, family, gender roles, and faith; faith in divine figures, in oneself, in the community around one, in the State, in the Nation, in the changing of a national setting.

Draft a comment on one of these questions: a) your understanding of transnational motherhood, and its correspondences with transnational daughterhood / sonhood; b) the importance of considering transnational fatherhood a significant element of immigration and international relations; c) the bearing of poverty, hope, and walking away from poverty in the matter of transnational parenting.

Try to post your comment / meditation by Saturday at 8PM.

This week we devoted Monday to discuss connections between home, homeland, and homeland security. Travels through borders, life journeys, and transits between the original home, the homeland, and the new home, that one where for Latinas the Department of Homeland Security awaits and changes all border lines. We considered how religion, faith, devotion, spirituality, and religiosity travel through borders. Reverend Martel guided us through the dysfunctional GPS travels of her return to her homeland to find that time, space, and other parameters of her Evangelical religion did not work as they do in the mainland. Borrego and Menjívar laid out important definitions of legal violence at the border, and we considered how those interacted with motherhood, that event related to the same, and not, fertility that we have discussed for some of the sacred female figures about whom we have read.

On Wednesday, those present in class bravely shared their thoughts on the final research project. Bravo! Mega brownie points to those of you there, who spoke out. We also learned about resources, and the Research Guide that Phil MacLeod has kindly and generously put together especially for our seminar. Call on him, please.

For this week, please write a reflection on one of these two days: one, on the issue of home-homeland-homeland security; or two, on your final research project. Questions, concerns, ideas, musings.

Given how late I got to posting this, I am not going to impose a deadline on you. My apologies for this delay, know that time of delivery of your post for this week will be at your own pace. If you already drafted your post and were just waiting for the prompter, post as soon as you can. Otherwise, think about this and post whenever it is possible for you, knowing that in the next few weeks you will have other postings coming up. Happy posting!

This week we initiated discussions about bodies in motion, based on the articles assigned and on videos we partially watched in class. We considered bodies that moved between Chicago and the DF, and back, to join the First-or-Second Tepeyac from the other in the case of the Guadalupanas; to move into the woods, into smoke, or into the waters in order to be infused with the spirit of María Lionza; or to dwell in the back-and-forth motion of interorality, between verbal and non-verbal, between the scriptural and the performative, and between land and the waters of the ocean, to bring an offer to Yemayá, perhaps with Oshún, Oya, and other deities from the Lucumí-Yoruba pantheons.

On Wednesday, we also embarked ourselves in a different kind of motion, that of the comparative methods. We initiatied a discussion about the complexities of good comparativism (apples and oranges, well compared), and started the comparative chart of all the female figures we have so far discussed.

For this week’s blog reflection, choose one thread of religious / spiritual meaning from one of the deities we studied and discussed this week, and one from previous weeks, and offer a comparative reading of them. Comparative reading 101: you shall not offer a tit-for-tat journey. Namely, you shall not seek to find ALL analogous traits; some of the best comparative work dwells in, and analyzes, contrasts and differences, to find links hidden below such disparities.

Please, post your reflection by Saturday at 8PM at the latest, so you can shift your focus to the readings and questions for next week. Good weekend, everybody!

This week we discussed the many ways in which three female figures are associated with fertility, race, religion, gender, motherhood, marriage, nature / earth, more-than-human entities and environments: La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, Oshún, and Pachamana.

Today we wondered how these female figures represent not only icons to be adored from without, but how they may be or are, indeed, present in our surroundings, in our lives, even when we do not invoke them or name them. We also discuss how, in their being of love, they represent the matter of ancestry or precursors.

Write a blogpost in which you meditate on how reading, discussing, and learning about and from Cachita, Oshún, and Pachamana help you answer the questions a) where is the more-than-human in my life? and b) who are or where are my precursors? You do not have to answer these questions (life quests, after all), but write up a comment on how these readings and ideas we discussed this week help you seek some answers in thinking about those question.

Try to post your blog entry by Saturday at 8 PM. Happy dwelling, thinking, writing with these three fabulous womanly figures!

This week we discussed the ways in which blood corresponds with honor, and how these are intertwined with religion–in particular, with Christianity–capital, gender, state, and race. We considered how these correspondences change, or not, in history, and how they are integral in particular to the formation of the Vampire States of Spain and the United States.

Choose one of these points of correspondence and comment how it helps you articulate a clearer vision of strength, purity, and the body to better understand Latinas and religion. Try to post your blog entry by Sunday at noon.

This week we began to tease out elements of of ‘the body’ in the title of our course. On Monday we engaged questions of sinfulness, Christianity, relationality, race, imperialism, colonialism, and coloniality to ‘flesh bodies’ with Mayra Rivera. On Wednesday we read two very different pieces by Padilla and Barreto that added questions about submission, family, self-negation (or abnegation), ethnicity, history, gender, and comunidades de fé, among others. The story of the Guadalupe (which we shall return to when we discuss migration and the diasporic communities of Guadalupanas in the US and México) illustrated the complex network of angles and perspectives that must be engaged to grasp the purity and strength of Latinas in Religion.

With this in mind, write a reflection on which of these issues, questions, and stories inspired a better understanding of ‘the body’ of Latinas in religion.

Try to post your reflection by Saturday at 8PM, remembering that this is a suggested deadline, so you can then pass the page and move on to the next set of questions we’ll contemplate next week.

This week we dug deeper in the definitions of Latinas / Latinos and Religion that we began drafting last week. On Monday, in the Pew Research Center report we read about Latinx shifting religious identities from a Catholic block to Protestant religions, especially Evangelical and Pentecostal, as well as lapsed professions of religion. This image, our icon for this week, which represents seven orishas from Afrocuban iconography, speaks volumes about that.

We then discussed Pineda’s take on Feminist Foremothers, and discussed the importance of learning about for the first time, or remembering differently, women who have been either manipulated or forgotten by historical accounts of latinidad. On Wednesday, we learned or reviewed with Michelle González a handful of critical concepts developed to understand the humanity of Latinas (what a concept, we are people!) and religion: the covery / discovery of the Americas; colonialism and coloniality; the importance of history (with Pineda); how Latinas occupy different subject position and identities; nepantla or the third space, and others.

Tell us which one (or ones) of these premises, arguments, or concepts have helped you initiate a path to study Latinas and Religion this semester. This is not intended for you to have to commit ONLY to that premise, argument, or concept, but to touch base with your own memory and see what is sticking for now. You can change this later.

Please, post your blog entry by Sunday at 8pm at the latest.