Musings on Latino/a Religion

Paul Harvey

Our former blog contributor here, Arlene Sanchez-Walsh, has begun her own blog over at Patheos: Musings on Latino/a Religion. We'll put it on our sideroll here. Here's her opening post, and I invite all to follow what should be an important conversation there.
____________________________________________________________

Musings on Latino/a Religion
by Arlene Sanchez-Walsh

So I was talking to my colleagues awhile ago, and we all wondered aloud, where are all the Latinos/as? Why aren’t we in the “emergent” convo? Why aren’t we published in all these religion blogs? Why are we invisible? You’d be surprised how much variety there is out there among those of us who have the luxury of calling ourselves descendents of the
La Raza, described by writer José Vasconcelos, as the amalgamation of the Empire…which is what we are. Over the next few months, to give our young writers some exposure, and to get me used to writing this blog on Latino/a religion, cultura and politics, I hope this blog serves a few purposes. Simply put, we want to be heard, we do have something to say, and with the contributions of my friends and colleagues, I hope we can do just that.

So along with being a space for my musings on religion, culture and the Latino/a religious imagination, I am going to introduce you to some new writers, thinkers, raconteurs, and traviesos/as (trouble makers). Why? who cares? Well, if the coming demographic earthquake that will turn 1/3 of this country Latino/a by 2050 is correct…not only to most of us desperately need to get to really know who we are, we, including me, need to brush up on our Español, and we need to start speaking for ourselves and not allow others to define who we are, who we should be, who we should vote for, and what causes are most important. As you will see, we are more than immigration, more than farm workers, more than cholos/as, more than anything the dominant culture has every imagined. I hope you follow me on Twitter @AmichelSW and I am also on Facebook.

Bienvenidos!

Comments

Jeff said…
Good points. Sort of reminds me about a few books I have read in my Hist 400W class. Hardly any of them make any mention of Latino Americans at all, let alone religious connotations. As the population of Latin Americans continues to grow in the US, I feel it is important to publish their story so as not to miss valuable chunks of history.
Mike Diaz said…
In my 400W class we mentioned Latin@s perhaps once or twice, one of which came from a student, a Latino himself. During class discussion the convo usually stayed dichotomous, switching back and forth between black and white Americans. Sometimes we'd hear about other peoples. Sounding something like "black, white, and red." But what about brown? This is probably limiting since Latin@s come in all colors, but it still would have been nice to hear that side of the story, regardless of color designation.

Popular Posts