Aztlan and Arcadia: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Creation of Place

In the

wake of the Mexican-American War, competing narratives of religious conquest

and re-conquest were employed by Anglo American and ethnic Mexican Californians

to make sense of their place in North America. These invented traditions had

a profound impact on North American religious and ethnic relations, serving to

bring elements of Catholic history within the Protestant fold of the United

States’ national history as well as playing an integral role in the emergence

of the early Chicano/a movement.

Many Protestant Anglo

Americans understood their settlement in the far Southwest as following in the

footsteps of the colonial project begun by Catholic Spanish missionaries. In

contrast, Californios-Mexican-Americans and Chicana/os-stressed

deep connections to a pre-Columbian past over to their own Spanish heritage.

Thus, as Anglo Americans fashioned themselves as the spiritual heirs to the

Spanish frontier, many ethnic Mexicans came to see themselves as the spiritual

heirs to a southwestern Aztec homeland.