Afro-Mexican Saintly Devotion in a Mexico City Alley

This chapter examines Afro-Mexicans' level of involvement in colonial society and religious life as well as their desires to gain social power as defined by colonial authorities. An important form of Christian practice for Africans in the Diaspora came through membership in Catholic confraternities, lay groups that were organized around venerating saints and often served as mutual aid societies for their members. This chapter considers the case of a group of black men and women who performed clandestine religious ceremonies in the alleys of late seventeenth-century Mexico City and claimed to be religiosos (clerics) and religiosas (nuns) of Saint Iphigenia. In particular, it analyzes the possible meanings such gatherings held for the congregants. The case demonstrates how Afro-Mexicans asserted their right to worship as Christians on their own terms, deployed their understandings of Christianity around the prescribed tenets of religious orthodoxy, and interpreted the language of hierarchy and power embodied in religious objects and rituals.