Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the dissemination of various forms of Marianism (in terms of beliefs, practices, and visualization) and how it has mediated ethnic collectivity among Vietnamese living in Vietnam, the U.S., and Cambodia. It argues that Marianism was not synonymous with ethnic identity until re-connections among Vietnamese Catholics in these countries within the past 15 years. The paper reveals that the trajectory of this shift was uneven across the three places because of local ethnic reception and global economic forces.

Paper long abstract:

Knowledge of Our Lady of Lavang was confined to Vietnam until the global dispersion of Vietnamese Catholics following the 1975 communist takeover of the country. In the U.S., they remained fearful of ethnic dilution within the contexts of multiculturalism and isolation from the homeland. As a result, they sought to distinguish their cultural Catholic heritage and history through the Marian image. In 1996, "Our Lady of Vietnam" was sculpted in the image of a Vietnamese woman, dressed in the Vietnamese national attire and adorned by a Vietnamese traditional headpiece. In 1998, the statue of Our Lady of Vietnam returned to Vietnam and served as a model for Our Lady of Lavang. Since then, the Vietnamese representation of Our Lady of Lavang has been embraced by Vietnamese Catholics throughout the world.

However, Vietnamese Catholics in Cambodia have been isolated from this flow of exchanges. Within the anti-Vietnamese hostility environment in the country, Vietnamese Catholics have to suppress their ethnic identity. They could only worship the universal ("white") representation of the Blessed Mary and the Khmer ("dark brown") version of her.

These options expanded in 2008, when a steel statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was lifted from the Mekong River by non-Catholic Khmers. Vietnamese Catholics named her "Our Lady of the Mekong River." As her popularity swelled through loose networks with co-religionists in Vietnam, her image gradually became increasingly identified with Vietnamese ethnic identity in order to attract financial support from Vietnamese Catholics in the U.S. and other developed countries.