Paper Short Abstract:

The paper focuses on the financial practices of Mexican Catholic festivals and the specific role of money as an object that, through specific ritual manipulations, builds, renews and, in the case of conversions, disrupts the bonds of material and symbolic debt between the faithful as a social group.

Paper Abstract:

The paper focuses on the financial practices of Mexican Catholic festivals and the specific role of money as an object that, through specific ritual manipulations, builds and renews the bonds of material and symbolic debt between the faithful as a social group and between them and the patron saints of the locality.

By comparatively analyzing the ethnographic material collected in the last twenty years in two contexts of contemporary Mexico inhabited by the Mestizo population (Southern Jalisco) and by the Amerindian Ikojts (Oaxaca), I will discuss some classic dichotomies on the nexus between religion and economy, in Mesoamerica and beyond.

First of all, the one that considers money playing a fundamental role in the predilection for conversions oriented towards individualistic religious options, characterized by economic and entrepreneurial success. The use of money in the Catholic rituals of the first context (mestizo) shows the fundamental role of monetary indebtedness in the social (and historical) continuity of the community of the faithful and at the same time the aspiration to subjective realization.

It also shows, in the second context (of the Amerindian Ikojts), how the conversions from indigenous Catholicism to the Christian-Evangelical churches provoke the consequent rupture of the link between economic debt and festive-religious commitment, sparking crises in kinship relations and social cohesion, as well as political conflict within the wider community.

The analysis of economic practices makes it possible to discuss, at a theoretically broader level, the continuities and discontinuities between ethnic identification and adherence to a specific religious system.