Abstract
Twenty-five years ago, I left Guatemala with my younger brother and my good friend. We left with the hopes of making it to the United States. Within a week we had crossed Mexico and successfully avoided the Mexican police. My uncle gave us a rough map outlining the direction of our journey. Several times we ran out of money and asked people to give us some change to get there—al norte. We found wonderful people who helped us and gave us money, food, and shelter along the way. When we arrived at the US-Mexico border, we found some coyotes who offered to take us across the Rio Grande. To my surprise, none among them knew how to swim. I knew that my brother’s best friend had drowned in the same river a year before.
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Notes
Manuel A. Vâsquez and Marie Friedmann Marquardt, Globalizing the Sacred: Religion across the Americas (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003).
Subsequent migratory waves from the island have taken place but remain inextricably linked to the events that transpired in the Cuban Revolution at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century. See Teresa Châvez Sauceda, “Race, Religion, and la Raza: An Exploration of the Racialization of Latinos in the United States and the Role of the Protestant Church,” in Protestantes/Protestants: Hispanic Christianity within Mainline Traditions, ed. David Maldonado Jr. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1999), 177–93.
See Juan Gonzâlez, Harvest of the Empire: A History of Latinos in America (New York: Penguin Books, 2000). Significant changes have taken place among the Latina/o population in the United States due to recent waves of immigration. For a fuller discussion on some of these changes, see David A. Badillo, Latinos and the New Immigrant Church (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006). Immigration of Central
Migration is a direct critique of globalizing markets that benefit richer countries while causing the exploitation and dislocation of those from poorer nations. See Orlando O. Espin, “Immigration and Theology: Reflections by an Implicated Theologian,” Perspectivas: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Paper Series, no. 10 (Fall 2006): 42.
The number of migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border rose 27 percent in 2012, eclipsed only by the 2005 death toll of 492. See Stuart Anderson, How Many More Deaths? The Moral Case for a Temporary Worker Program, NFAP Policy Brief: March 2013 (Arlington, VA: National Foundation for American Policy, 2013), http://www.nfap.com/pdf/NFAP%20Policy%20Brief°/o20Mora1%20Case%20For%20a °/o20Temporary%20Worker%20Program°/o20March°/o202013 .pdf, accessed July 15, 2013.
Néstor Medina, James Logan, Elaine Padilla, Stephanie M. Crompton, and Kamasi Hill, “Strangers No More: Conversational Essays between PhD Candidates,” Perspectivas: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Paper Series, no. 12 (Fall 2008): 87–88.
See Daniel G. Groody, Border of Deczth, Valley of Life: An Immigrant Journey of Heart and Spirit, Celebrating Faith Series (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002); Daniel G. Groody and Gioacchino Campese, eds., Promised Land: A Perilous Journey (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2008).
Daniel Ramirez, “‘Call Me “Bitter”’: Life and Death in the Diasporic Borderland and the Challenge/Opportunities for Norteamericano Churches,” Perspectivas: Hispanic Theological Initiative Occasional Paper Series, no. 11 (Fall 2007): 53.
Arlene M. SLnchez-Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003); Gaston Espinosa, “El Azteca: Francisco Olázabal and Latino Pentecostal Charisma, Power, and Faith Healing in the Borderlands,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 597–616.
According to Espinosa, Pentecostals and Protestants are contributing to the growth of Latino Protestantism in the United States. See Gaston Espinosa, “The Pentecostalization of Latin America and US Latino Christianity,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 26, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 268. On Pentecostals turning to Catholicism, see Edward L. Cleary, “Shopping Around: Questions about Latin American Conversions,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 28, no. 2 (April 2004): 50–53; Edward L. Cleary, The Rise of Charismatic Catholicism in Latin America (Gainesville, FL: University Press ofFlorida, 2011).
José Severino Croatto, Exodus: A Hermeneutics of Freedom, trans. Salvator Attanasio (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1978); José Severino Croatto, “Liberación y libertad: Reflexiones hermenéuticas en torno al Antiguo Testamento,” in Pueblo oprimido, Senor de la historia, Biblioteca Iglesia y Sociedad (Montevideo, Uruguay: Tierra Nueva, 1972), 219–23.
Gloria Anzaldüa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco, CA: An Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 37. 26. Daisy L. Machado, “The Unnamed Woman: Justice, Feminists, and the Undocumented Woman,” in A Reader in Latina Feminist Theology: Religion and Justice, ed. María Pilar Aquino, Daisy L. Machado, and Jeanette Rodriguez (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2002), 161–76.
See Tony Tian-Ren Lin, “The Best of Both Worlds: How Word of Faith Pentecostalism Teaches Latino Immigrants to Become Americans” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2010); Kevin Lewis O’Neil, City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
Elizabeth E. Brusco, The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995).
José Leonardo Santos, Evangelicalism and Masculinity: Faith and Gender in El Salvador (Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2012).
Rosalina Mira and Lois Ann Lorentzen, “Women, Migration, and the Pentecostal Experience,” Peace Review 14, no. 4 (2002): 425. See also Maduro, “Notas sobre pentecostalismo y poder,” 20n27.
Néstor Medina, “Rethinking Liberation: Toward a Canadian Latin@ Theology,” in The Reemergence of Liberation Theologies: Models for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Thia Cooper, New Approaches to Religion and Power (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Néstor Medina, “Hybridity, Migration, and Transnational Relations: (Re)Thinking Canadian Pentecostalism from a Latina/o Perspective,” in Many Tongues: Globalization and the Transformation of Pentecostalism, ed. Michael Wilkinson, International Studies in Religion and Society Series (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 210–26.
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Medina, N. (2016). Being Church as Latina/o Pentecostals. In: Snyder, S., Ralston, J., Brazal, A.M. (eds) Church in an Age of Global Migration. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137518125_5
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