Religious Expressions of Chicanos in Los Angeles. From the body to the streets. In Between Concept and Identity. Edited by Esteban Fernández Cobián. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK. PP 163-169. 2014. ISBN (10) 1-44386520-6. ISBN (13):978-1-4433-65203
I'm happy to say that this paper of mine has been published in a compiled edition of the Symposium Between Concept and Identity, that was held in Spain in 2009:
" the Ourense
Bishopric through the Santa María Nai Foundation and the Ourense Branch of
Galician Official Association of Architects (COAG) have called a new edition to be
held from November 12 through 14, 2009 in Ourense under the title: Contemporary
Religious Architecture. Between Concept and Identity."
This is my introduction:
I propose a sub-classification within representational spaces, full of
complex symbolism and usually related to the underground side of life:
there is a third space or Nepantla, applied to the culture of Mexican immigrants
in the USA and their descendants, popularly called Chicanos. They
create this new space from the feeling of being in the middle as a cultural
link among Anglos, Mexicans and Indigenous people.
Nepantla is considered to be a transitional stage that simply starts
with language. One of the cultural settlement strategies is precisely the
process of trans-culture acquisition and value transfer, which is summarised
in a different culture reflecting the ambiguity of mixed race.
Once the Nepantla tensions are understood and faced, the native Being/I
is recovered and thus Nepantla becomes a psychological, spiritual and
political space where Chicanos find the meaning of their culture by
recovering the ancestral.
Those religious spaces range from bodily artistic expressions to the
materialisation of traditional little altars at home and it is expanded to the
urban scale, to worshipping the dead and to Catholic rites in the street
where both the harmoniously co-existing Catholic and pagan imaginaries
give rise to massive gatherings.
Therefore, we must analyse the religious expressions of Chicanos as an
unavoidable part of their social reality in the city of Los Angeles portrayed
at every possible scale. Due to their own restrictive colonial origins, they
do not need a containing building but are merely supported by faith.
The link to buy the book:
