Religion, people and nation: “peripheral” Catholicism and na-tional identity in Mexico in the Italian travel narrative of the ear-ly 20th century

Abstract

This chapter addresses the religious and identity panorama in Mexico during the period of the Religious Conflict, through the eyes of four Italian writers who visited the country between 1913 and 1931. The Italian writers have a particular perspective that is part of a transnational relationship, where a European “periphery” (Italy) directs its gaze to another “periphery” of the West, located on the American continent, which is also a “periphery” of Catholicism. Italians seek to understand Mexican otherness in its anthropological, historical, social and political aspects in a way that is both more stylized and more reflective, compared to other ways of looking from the outside. The result is a peculiar narrative that helps to understand a dramatic moment in the country's history, characterized by a civil war and a contradictory and gigantic process of national and institutional formation, with radical ideological features, which include a coherent anticlerical and secularizing policy by part of the State. Religion, culture and the national identity challenged in this process of transformation are the focus of interest in the narrative of Italian writers who delve into the complexity of the Mexican labyrinth.