Hispanic Fanatic

The 1980s pop band Frankie Goes to Hollywood famously asked, “Are we living in a world where sex and horror are the new gods?”

It was a fair question for the 1980s.

Today, we have to ponder if we are living in a world where AI and ostentatious wealth are the new gods. It’s either them or sociopathy and fear.

In any case, the traditional gods of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism seem to be doing fine. After years of decline, attendance at places of worship has picked up slightly for the first time in decades, mostly because more young people are embracing religion than in the past. I’m guessing this has something to do with the bleak future that younger generations face, and that desperation has driven them to the last resort of prayer. Either that, or Gen Z has decided churches are excellent backdrops for selfies.

An exception to these trends is that “young Latinos are abandoning organized religion at a faster rate than any other demographic in the United States.” I have to say that I am not surprised at this statistic.

Now, I’m not hostile to religion, even though I left it behind long ago. Hey, if believing in the guy in the sky is your thing, go for it.

But I find it strange that Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, has such a powerful hold on Latinos that its influence is only now beginning to soften. Yes, plenty of Latinos, like me, were raised in the church, and people tend to stick with the religion in which they were raised. But on a wider cultural level, the whole concept of Christianity among Latinos is bizarre. 

After all, we all know that hundreds of years ago, Spanish colonizers forced indigenous people to convert. If the natives resisted, the Spanish often made sure they met their gods as soon as possible, if you know what I’m saying.

This is not some obscure historical fact or the peeved perspective of a liberal know-it-all. Even casual Catholics know that Christ was often thrust upon Latin America at the point of a sword or the barrel of a musket.

It’s an obvious question but one I rarely hear asked: If this religion was forced upon your ancestors, why do you still follow it?

I understand why a terrified Mexican in the 1500s would say, “Hand me that communion wafer” when the alternative was a flaming pyre. But centuries later, why do so many Latinos continue to worship the god of their colonizers when they have a choice of other religions (or none at all)? Why do so many Latinos go to church 60 times a year when they are not being threatened with execution? The excuse of adopting the customs of the conquerors is no longer valid.

Again, I’m not saying Christianity is inherently vile. Nor am I saying we should bring back the ceremonies of the Aztecs and Mayans. After all, ripping people’s hearts out on top of pyramids is likely to be frowned upon in contemporary society.

But if the main reason you believe in a certain type of god is because you were raised in that religion, and the main reason you were raised in that religion is because your grandfathers of 400 years ago were facing torture, shouldn’t that give you pause?

Clearly, I’m not the only one asking these questions.

First, let me thank Stephanie for her comments on my post “Omnipotent” and for supplying a great resource on Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Second, thanks to Jeanne for her kind words (and enthusiastic encouragement) on my post “A Sort of Hajj.”

Third, I have to announce another brief hiatus.

I am taking a brief vacation this week. I will be going back to my home state to see friends and family (including the Cousins). As I mentioned in a previous post, the one thing I will positively not be doing in my home town is attending my high school reunion, but as we said back in the 1980s, “Whatever…”

The bottom line is that I won’t be updating this blog for the next week or so. I hope to publish new posts as soon as possible.

To keep you entertained in the interim, here is the creepiest story with a Latino angle that I could find:

An engineer has reconstructed the infamous Aztec whistles of death. You can see what they looked like and even hear the spine-tingling tones they emanated. As the story states, “If death had a sound, this was it.”

I mean, how cool is that?

See you all soon.

Last week, scientists announced that they had finally cracked an Aztec math code. It took the researchers 30 years of work to decipher what the ancient inhabitants of Mexico meant when they wrote equations with symbols of hearts and arms and arrows. Apparently, it was an elaborate setup for a dirty joke involving a high priestess named Txchotl…actually, it wasn’t, but wouldn’t that have been cool?

No, the Aztecs had the same concerns as everybody else. They kept financial records to make sure nobody was ripping them off. The coded entries referred to land transactions, tax assessments, and the like.

It’s discombobulating  to realize that, hundreds of years ago, these fierce warriors took breaks from pillaging villages and throwing virgins into volcanoes to handle the red tape of government bureaucracy. The Aztec version of the IRS must have been murder.

However, the mundane solution to the mysterious code doesn’t address a larger question. Namely, why would academic researchers spend decades trying to figure out what long-dead Latinos had recorded?

Perhaps it is because the Aztecs, along with the Incas and the Mayans, continue to tantalize the imagination, centuries after their extinction. They remain the Big Three of original Hispanic culture.

I’ll talk more about the reasons for this fascination in later posts. I’m just pleased we finally know that, according the Aztecs, a bone equals one-fifth of a rod… and suddenly we’ve lapsed back into that vulgar joke.