Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the most revered religious figure in Mexican Catholicism. Devotion to Guadalupe among Mexicans and Mexican Americans has evolved for nearly five centuries into a deeply rooted, multifaceted tradition. Here, religion scholar Timothy Matovina offers a thorough study of this tradition as it has been lived out by the parishioners of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas. He shows how the devotion to Guadalupe sustained this congregation through times of political turmoil, war and peace, and ecclesiastical and social changes over San Antonio’s long history, from an agricultural settlement on the northern edge of New Spain to a dynamic U.S. metropolis. Engaging recent scholarly analysis of ritual studies, lived religion, Latino theology and history, transnationalism, and ethnicity, Guadalupe and Her Faithful shows how religious traditions shape and are shaped by a faith community’s shifting contexts and power dynamics. This fascinating account reveals the potential force-and the potential limitations-of devotion in people’s lives and religious imagination.