Sacred Fields, Sacred Nostalgia

Dr. Lloyd D. Barba presents excerpts from his recent book on Mexican Pentecostal farmworkers in California

Salinas Apostólicos Harvesting. Members of the Salinas church gather for a quasi-staged photograph in the mid-1940s. The church familia remembered and kept names of their fellow believers in a practice which betrayed that of portraying Mexican as mere laborers. Standing to the far right is the eventual presiding bishop of the AAFCJ Manuel Vizcarra. Photograph courtesy of Milca Montañez-Vizcarra.

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EDITORIAL NOTE

César Chávez Day (March 31st) is a U.S. federal commemorative holiday proclaimed by President Barack Obama in 2014 to celebrate the birth and legacy of the civil rights and labor movement activist.

For César Chávez Day 2023, HTI Open Plaza is honored to feature Sowing the Sacred by Dr. Lloyd D. Barba, “the first book to take up immigrant farmworkers' varied and sacred artistic outlets, material culture, and religion,“ according to the publisher.

The following are excerpts from Chapter 3 (“Sacred Fields,” pp. 112-120) and Chapter 5 (“Sacred Nostalgia,” pp. 196, 201-204) in Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California (2022) by Lloyd Daniel Barba, reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.

Footnotes in this feature are numbered differently in the book; citations appear on hover, with entries also listed in the Endnotes section.

CONTENTS

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SACRED FIELDS
Building Churches
Tabernacles in the Agricultural Wildernesses

Stepping into the Carpa

Apostólicos’ rituals and quotidian acts of work provided them with a routine to reinterpret and thereby interrupt the sacred and profane symbols at play contextually. We saw in the last chapter how they took polluted grower-controlled waterways as sacred sources of cleansing. Here in this chapter we see how they upended the conventional uses of carpas (and, as shown in the next section, accessed architectural styles historically denied to them). In so striving, they carved out an exceptional socio-religious existence that was not separate from but in keeping with the most profane aspects of industrial agriculture.

At first glance, carpas used as houses of worship, bereft of signage, crosses, or any typical trappings of houses of worship, may not have appeared to be “sacred spaces.” Indeed, the many Mexicans in the area may have mistaken them for theater carpas. The sonic overflow of notably loud Apostólico singing and shouting may have further confounded bewildered eavesdroppers. By day the farmworker faithful would stoop over to work the harvest, and by night they bowed down in their seats upon entering their houses of worship.¹ S. Brent Plate reminds us that when “walking into sacred spaces like temples, mosques, and churches, several sensual actions are often undertaken that mark the passage from profane space to sacred space.”² The sanctification of bodies in carpas constituted, in no uncertain terms, a spiritual ritual anchored in a material process. Less certain, however, is whether the profane ever ceased to exist in these spaces as worshipers carried in the smells, aches, sweat, and burdens of the day’s work.

Carpas, both used by Apostólicos and theater troupes, could most commonly be found set up in barrios, colonias, and the fields. The placement of carpas in the geographic peripheries signaled political and social liminality. As was the case of theater carpa performances, one could say in the open what one would not dare to print.³ On the peripheries of rural towns and denominational respectability, Apostólicos used carpas as key sites of evangelism and sacred space production. In the Patterson-Grayson area, the mobility and placement of Apostólico farmworkers in the fields set them squarely in the middle of the social scene at a labor camp. Figure 3.1 demonstrates how Apostólicos spatially arranged one farm labor camp around a consecrated carpa.

Figure 3.1. The Isaac Sánchez Labor Camp. Irma Pérez drew a diagram of the spatial arrangement of the agricultural labor camp managed by Isaac Sánchez in Patterson. The carpa functioned as the centerpiece of the camp, and families, including the Pérezes, lived near it and attended services there. Workers at the camp remembered it as the “Isaac Sánchez Farm Labor Camp” though Sánchez only oversaw the camp. The spatial arrangement of the camp embodies the kinds of alternative religious communities forged in the social margins. Schematic layout hand-drawn by Irma Pérez and digitally enhanced by Eva M. Díaz.

In this configuration, the carpa occupied the coveted central position where normally the camp store, post office, recreation hall, or school (i.e., the all-purpose building) would have stood. Apostólicos in the Patterson and Grayson area had used carpas since at least 1950.⁴ Labor recruiter and Apostólico Isaac Sánchez set up a carpa in the middle of the camp he managed and oversaw the obra. Like labor contractors of his day, Sánchez tapped into existing networks of kith and kin to comprise the core of a reliable workforce. ⁵ The carpa represented an early effort by the Modesto congregation to branch out into the nearby Grayson and Patterson area, a site replete with farmworkers, especially those brought in by the Bracero Program.⁶ Irma Pérez’s “mental map” reveals how the Bracero barracks were set up near the carpa, while the families (many of them Apostólicos) lived in small homes and trailers adjacent to the Braceros and the carpa.⁷ The barracks, at best, provided the mere essentials. The conditions of some barracks in the state caused alarm over endangering residents’ health. Braceros often enjoyed little to no leisure time or reprieve from the intensive labor. Whereas in other camps a visitation from a Catholic sister for catechism classes or a priest to offer Mass were few and far between, the Isaac Sánchez camp brought church to them on a consistent basis.⁸

The camp entrance led directly to the carpa. The spatial arrangement of this labor camp represents the genius of Apostólico farmworker primitivism and pragmatism. Government officials of the 1930s and 1940s stressed the significance of the orderly layout of buildings in a camp so as to promote positive social order. The center spaces of camps, typically community centers, benefited from “visual prominence,” convincing camp residents of the importance of community.⁹ Such spatial understandings seemed to be in operation at the camp managed by Isaac Sánchez. There, Apostólico bricoleurs arranged sacred space in their placement of the carpa at the heart of the labor camp, a privilege not afforded to other church groups in camps. Raúl Meza even recalled a time when the presiding bishop (the highest-ranking elected official in La Asamblea Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús [AAFCJ]) at that time, Benjamín Cantú, spent three weeks at the camp to preach and observe the obra.¹⁰ Cantú, like many leaders, grew familiar with having to perform fieldwork while on church business.¹¹ Carpas would never enjoy the spatial privilege afforded to ornate temples in the center of town, an economic and social reality far beyond Apostólicos’ means (and reach). Farm labor camps, however, made possible an alternative vision of spatial centeredness.

Colleen McDannell reminds us of the differences in receptorial apparatuses: “While we engage a written text with our minds…an artifact makes contact with our senses.”¹² Similarly, the spatial dimensions of the Isaac Sánchez carpa at the camp bore material consequences and unique sensory experiences. Held several times a week, the services left a peculiar impression on attendees. The unique sensory experiences went beyond the norm for church life in the United States. Irma Pérez and Raúl Meza recall how the services, especially during the high tide of the labor migration to the San Joaquin Valley in the dead of summer, would engender unbearable sudatory conditions. Wishing to maximize the light of the day, growers generally demanded that farmworkers work from sunrise to sundown. This schedule offered little time in between work and worship. Most churchgoers did not have sufficient time to bathe or even change clothes worn during the day. Pérez and Meza remember how the smell of tomato and alfalfa would be freshly detectable on the clothes of those entering the carpa, an olfactory experience exacerbated by the valley’s heat. The temperatures would become so unbearable that attendees would roll up the sides of the army-surplus tent in hopes of catching a wind draft. The platform, comprised of wood pallets, stood elevated only slightly above the dirt floor where adherents congregated. When the Spirit would fall (a time of bendición [blessing]—see chapter 4), those under its influence would dance, jump, stomp, and fall, kicking up the dirt floor and filling sections of the carpa with dust (una polvadera).¹³ Such physical, sacred occurrences commonly transpired in the carpas, as their use spread from one valley to the next. Figure 3.2 offers a snapshot of how the faithful came from all over the borderlands to fill the carpa as a normal service, complete with singing and worship.

Figure 3.2. Cantando en la carpa. The carpa in Patterson brought together farmworkers from the far-flung reaches of the borderlands. As this photograph of cantando en la carpa (singing in the tent) captures, an adult, or even a child, could very well be sitting next to another who might have journeyed hundreds to thousands of miles to work for a portion of the summer. The carpa, rather limited in size, brought worshipers into close quarters. Here we see the Dorcas (the married-women’s auxiliary) performing for the congregation. In the more transitory conditions uniforms were harder to come by and much less to keep consistent, and one can thus see the variation of dress styles and standards in the carpa. These variations in life and customs notwithstanding, the hymnals in their hands facilitated a shared expression of worship. Photograph courtesy of Milca Montañez-Vizcarra.

The rise in Apostólicos’ usage of carpas sheds light on the interaction among artifact, landscape, and belief. McDannell describes how “objects do not simply reflect an already existing reality but help bring about that reality.”¹⁴ The carpa as a pragmatic material artifact that they borrowed, transported, bought, and sold reflected elements of farmworker life. And as a semi-permanent fixture of the landscape, it partly revealed “ways of being, values, and emotions.”¹⁵ Carpas signified a materially inferior edifice of worship, but they did not represent an inferior site of worship, and Apostólico ways of being, values, and emotions in the carpa illustrate that. They intended that fervor of praising, worship, singing, preaching, and fellowship not be any different in a carpa than in a proper temple. In carpas one could quickly identify the key elements of the realities of la lucha in Apostólico farmworker life, as participants searched for social belonging and reprieve from crippling poverty. The collective creating of sacred space through shared hymnody, idioms of worship, and ways of belonging in Apostólicos’ sanctified world made for an overall radical orientation toward the landscape. In their materially inferior houses of worship, they engendered spiritually and socially intimate moments marked by singing, worshipping, dancing, laughing, weeping, and intercessory praying, often resulting in an instance of bendición. Polvaderas, then, signified more than an occasional dust up with el diablo; they tell of a sacred order and resistance in an alternative, unassuming site of la lucha.

Its material inferiority notwithstanding, the carpa elicited pride. Carpas underwent the same process of consecration that temples did in their very public dedications. In Riverbank (near Modesto), for example, the congregation called on the elder bishop of the Northern District, Epifanio Cota, to dedicate the carpa on January 20, 1949.¹⁶ The congregation in Lamont dedicated its carpa on June 28, 1952, in a jubilant service that welcomed fellow believers from nearby Bakersfield, Wasco, and Delano.¹⁷ These dedications exemplified how the farmworkers’ values of the sacred stayed in place irrespective of presentation. The sacred material world of houses of worship bespoke functional value primarily, and an aesthetic one secondarily.

The success of Pentecostalism, according to Grant Wacker, lay within Pentecostals’ ability to hold primitive and pragmatic impulses in productive tension.¹⁸ Mexican Pentecostals held taut these seemingly conflicting impulses in successfully deploying carpa evangelism to found churches in agricultural areas, as it proved to be at once a financially feasible method of mobile evangelism and also a venue for increased public exposure. Eugenia Manzano’s recollection of carpa services illustrates how these impulses worked in productive tension. In cases where hermanos would arrive at new labor sites that did not have an obra, “they wouldn’t waste time; they would get together and have church wherever they could.”¹⁹ This included hosting services under trees,²⁰ in ranches,²¹ in a “makeshift church” converted from a garage²² or barn,²³ under enramadas,²⁴ and in carpas in the open fields. On the one hand, the setting up of carpas “wherever they could” demonstrated the means/praxis of fulfilling a fundamental Pentecostal evangelistic mandate Apostólicos knew well: “Id por todo el mundo, predicad el evangelio á toda criatura” (Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creatures).²⁵ The carpa in Riverbank shown in figure 3.3 is an example of a tabernacle in the state’s agricultural wilderness, and, though it may not appear to be so at first glance, it indeed enjoyed a more elaborate structure than other carpas, equipped with sturdy wood siding to uphold the canvas roof.

Figure 3.3. The Carpa in Riverbank. The carpa in Riverbank (ca. 1949) offers a glimpse of a sturdier tent whereas the carpas in Patterson and Sanger match the description of tents suspended by guy ropes and anchored by stakes. The tent served as a semipermanent transitional house of worship for two years. Photograph courtesy of Eugenia Manzano.

Carpas functioned as semi-permanent houses of worship set up where one could secure land. The consistent use of the carpa for services and their material vulnerability to outside elements, such as the Golden State’s scorching sun, persistent aridity, and mildly wet winters (in the northern part of the state), steadily deteriorated carpas. These were makeshift dwellings not intended for long-term or sustained use. Apostólicos raised up carpas for one to three years wherever they could secure a parcel of land. In San Jose, Pedro Banderas and his congregation held services in the carpa they set up at a former “dumping” site from 1928 to 1929. The occasional winds in the Santa Clara Valley ripped through the carpa, rendering it useless and perhaps uninviting and a blight to the Mayfair District, an already stigmatized Mexican barrio. Construction then began in 1929 on a parsonage that would dually serve as a temporary temple.²⁶ Likewise, Apostólicos in Sanger initially set up a tent for three months before opting to hold services during the winter months in the home of recent convert. (Sanger, at the base of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, experiences relatively colder winters than Wasco, where the tent was sent to a fledgling congregation). The local Catholic priest’s complaints to the city regarding the church services held in the home resulted in the meetings’ swift disbandment. Pastor Jesús Valdez then requisitioned the tent from the Wasco obra for use again in Sanger. The growing congregation then set up the tent on Inéz Hernández’s property and held services there for three years.²⁷ The carpa in Patterson housed Apostólico services for a few years before its replacement by a temple purchased in nearby Grayson. In Riverbank the congregation of farmworkers perhaps became too comfortable in the more elaborate carpa shown in figure 3.3.

As they had done for the carpa in Sanger, Apostólicos outfitted the Riverbank carpa with a place for members to perform their preeminent ritual. The makeshift baptistery shown in figure 3.4 evidences the types of sacred material objects that Apostólicos prioritized in their tents and temples. Similar to the concrete baptistery that Banderas made and placed just outside of the carpa in San Jose, the congregation in Riverbank fashioned a baptistery out of wood and filled it with asphalt. They used it to baptize farmworkers nearby, notably those who came into contact with Apostólicos laboring at the nearby Driscoll strawberry farm in Escalon.²⁸ The carpa functioned as a house of worship for two years, but time and weather tested its durability.²⁹ Although the partial wood siding of the carpa proved sturdier than the typical canvas tents set up in Delano, San Jose, Sanger, and Wasco, in time the carpa “ya se estaba gastando” (was wasting away) by 1951 due to adverse weather. In an ideal situation, a local congregation would have gathered enough resources to take the next step in congregational maturation and build a proper temple. But sometimes that next step took a different path.

Figure 3.4. The Makeshift Baptistery. Felipe Manzano baptizes in the makeshift baptistery in the Riverbank carpa. Because baptism counted as the most important ritual in Apostólico doctrine (as noted in the previous chapter), a baptistery factored in as a key feature of some carpas and all temples. Photograph courtesy of Eugenia Manzano.

SACRED NOSTALGIA
Remembering Churches

The Sounds of los Aleluyas

Borderlands migrants disseminated a culture of folk music from one field to the next. Photographs of migrants offer us a picture of the complex social and sacred parts of their music making. Their robust musical tradition offers a counternarrative to the pervasive notion that farmworkers had little to no active artistic expression. Government photographs of Mexican farmworkers occasionally captured one or a couple of Mexican laborers strumming their guitars, but beyond these isolated snapshots, Apostólicos busily filled the spaces beyond these frames with a rich musical tradition. Agricultural landscapes became Apostólico soundscapes.

Concepción Ares recalled how back in the early 1930s she and her sister Ramona were drawn to Apostólico services precisely because of the music:

Un domingo que veníamos, oímos y estaban cantando, entonces fuimos a asomarnos, pues tenía una ventana y nos sumamos a ver que es ésto. Nunca habíamos visto los protestantes, y nos dijeron que nos pasábamos y dije “no, nosotras somos Católicas”; no entramos allí. Pero después cada vez que tenían servicios íbamos y nos parábamos en la ventana a oír los cantos. (One Sunday when we were coming, we could hear that they were singing, so we went to peep in since there was a window, and we got close to see what this is. We had never seen the Protestants. And they invited us to enter, and I said “no, we are Catholics.” We did not go in there. But then every time that they had services we went and stopped at the window to hear the songs.³⁰)

Concepción and Ramona’s prolonged Sunday trips to the panadería (a Mexican bakery) raised their mother’s suspicion. After several delayed Sunday returns, the mother inquired concerning their whereabouts. A few weeks later the mother and two daughters visited the church and soon thereafter joined the band of believers.³¹ For them as well as many Apostólicos, the term aleluya evolved from a caricature to a wistful badge and source of pride as it harked back to the experience of conversion. Similarly, Raúl Meza, remembering the days of his conversion, testified, “That’s when I finally decided to get baptized because I enjoyed the hymns and all the singing and all of that. It felt good here in Grayson.”³² The conversion of Jacinto Miura, a man of Spanish descent, resulted from the distinct Apostólico soundscapes produced by evangelist Jesús Valdez as he played his guitar, sang hymns, and preached in the streets of Fresno.³³ On a similar note, the first miracle in the Imperial Valley by the denomination’s patriarch, Antonio Nava, resulted from a couple hearing aleluya sounds spilling over into the streets. An account in an unpublished biography records Nava reminiscing how

En el lugar de Caléxico, California, a la hora del culto, como a las doce del día, llegó un hombre ciego llevándolo su esposa de la mano, ellos no venían al culto con nosotros, ibán a un templo católico que estaba enseguida del lugar donde nosotros hacíamos los cultos. Al oir nuestros cantos y alabanzas a Dios, les gustaron, y fueron por curiosidad y entraron al lugar donde estabámos para ver qué era aquello. Estando yo haciendo el anuncio a los hermanos de la hora del culto para que hicieran invitación a los enfermos para orar por ellos. Estas personas estaban a la puerta y oyendo y pasaron adelante, les pregunté, ¿desean que oremos por ustedes? Contestó la señora sí. No sabiendo yo que el hombre estaba ciego, al estar orando por aquellas personas, el hombre gritó repentinamente y dijo, “Ya veo, ya veo” y caminaba de un lugar a otro.³⁴ (In Calexico, at the hour of church services around noon, a blind man arrived. His wife led him by the hand. They were not coming to our church service but rather were heading to the Catholic church that was near where we were. Upon hearing our songs and praises to God, they liked them, and by curiosity they entered where we were to see what was going on. I was making the announcement to the brethren about the schedule of church services so that they could invite the sick to be prayed for. These people [the blind man and his wife] were near the door listening and they came forward. I asked them, “do you wish to be prayed for?” The woman replied “yes.” Not knowing that the man was blind we began praying for them and the man started to shout saying “now I see, now I see” and he walked from one place to the next.)

The couple could hear the sacred before they could see it. Apostólico sounds again piqued curiosity, this time resulting in a healing. Nava later reported that word of the miracle spread and many conversions followed. (Due to his growing reputation, at this time he also faced serious backlash from religious authorities, including death threats from Los Caballeros de Colón—The Knights of Columbus.)³⁵ The music’s spatially transgressive aspects attracted the couple’s attention. At that time industrial-agriculture towns offered few public social gatherings for Mexicans. Churches offered a welcoming respite. Good music at churches offered even more. Apostólicos figured out this formula early on and ultimately proved particularly adept at a Protestant practice of adopting popular musical styles and infusing them with “sacredness.”³⁶ The account of the blind man’s healing clues us into the novelty of Apostólico music and effervescence.

Outsiders also attested to the appeal and sensory stimulation of Apostólico sounds. The vibrancy can be seen in the cooperation between Apostólico pastor of the Madera congregation Mariano Marín and Cesar Chavez (the eventual leader of the farmworkers’ movement). Chavez came into the small San Joaquin Valley town (and consequently landed in Marin’s church) in the summer of 1954 because of the recent implementation of xenophobic immigration laws (Operation Wetback) at the federal level and discriminatory voting laws at the state level. There, Chavez experienced the distinct sonic elements of Apostólico music that later would prove to be the kernel of charismatic techniques used to later organize the National Farm Workers Association. Chavez recollected,

After they started their service I asked if I could join them…So in that little Madera church, I observed everything going on about me that could be useful in organizing. Although there were no more than twelve men and women, there was more spirit there than when I went to mass where there were two hundred. Everybody was happy. They all were singing. These people were really committed in their beliefs and this made them sing and clap and participate. I liked that. I think that’s where I got the idea of singing at the meetings. That was one of the first things we did when I started the Union. And it was hard for me because I couldn’t carry a tune.³⁷

Chavez noted a rather stark contrast between the sonic and material world of Pentecostal and Catholic music. Vernacular expressions of Catholic music and liturgy were severely limited in American parishes until the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Soon thereafter many American Catholic churches slowly transitioned to more vernacular musical forms.³⁸ The gusto with which Apostólicos performed their sacred music and worshiped so memorably moved Chavez. Nearly two decades after his experience in that little church in Madera, he recalled witnessing for the first time the material, sonic, and performative dimensions of sacred music and how that experience proved to be formative for his organizational tactics. The aurality of—and bodily accompaniment to—Mexican Pentecostal corridos would have diverged from the staid, formulaic Catholic soundscapes with which Chavez was most familiar in the pre-Vatican II era. The material dimensions and effects of Apostólico music ultimately informed Chavez’s techniques for successful labor organizing.³⁹ Apostólico music, especially before 1965, clearly provided a distinct sacred sound wherever it was performed. Though Chavez was impressed by the “spirit” in that little church, he aptly described something material, a hallmark of Apostólico worship.

• Endnotes

  1. The custom upon entering a house of worship was (and continues to be in some churches) to bow down in one’s seat or at the altar and consecrate oneself before engaging in worship; Gaxiola, Constitución de la Asamblea, 83.

  2. Plate, History of Religion, 64.

  3. The practice arose during politically repressive times in Mexico; see Kanellos, Mexican American Theatre, 78.

  4. Aniceto Ortiz interview.

  5. On contractors’ recruitment patterns, see Weber, Dark Sweat, 69–72.

  6. Irma Pérez interview with the author, Turlock, California, March 16, 2018; Banda interview; “Nuestra Historia: Modesto.”

  7. In Martínez-Matsuda’s research, former residents of migrant labor camps frequently drew “‘mental maps’...in order to explain camp relations” and “illuminate the physical and social space that existed within and beyond the labor camps.” See Martínez-Matsuda, Migrant Citizenship, 97.

  8. Examples of priests and sisters visiting camps can be found in Cohen, Braceros, 118–28; McEvoy, “Operation Migratory Labor,” 89, 95; Soto, “The Chicano and the Church,” 221–22. Even though in some cases parishes arranged for migrant laborers to be brought to church, Burns, ultimately, argues that well into the 1950s “ministry to migrant Mexican farm workers was practically nonexistent”; see Jefferey Burns, “Migrants and Braceros,” in Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900–1965, ed. Jay P. Dolan and Gilberto M. Hinojosa (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 209–21.

  9. Martínez-Matsuda, Migrant Citizenship, 72–76.

  10. Raúl Meza interview with the author, Turlock, California, March 16, 2018.

  11. Ortega, Mis Memorias, 170.

  12. McDannell, “Interpreting Things,” 374.

  13. Meza interview; Irma Pérez interview; the kicking up of dirt by individuals in a state of “bendición” appeared to be the norm in carpas set up in the borderlands; see Anita (Susie) Zaragoza-Florian interview with the author, Bakersfield, California, August 9, 2017.

  14. McDannell, “Interpreting Things,” 373.

  15. Ibid.

  16. “Nuestra Historia: Modesto.”

  17. “Nuestra Historia: Lamont.”

  18. Wacker, Heaven Below, 10.

  19. Eugenia Manzano interview with author, Modesto, California, November 16, 2013.

  20. Nava, Autobiografía, 4; Jessie Rodriguez interview; hemlocks served as a shelter from the scorching Coachella Valley sun as mentioned in Cantú et al., Historia, 26; and willows provided shade in Sanger; see Trujillo et al., Precious Memories, 10; Eugenia Manzano and her father in the late 1930s joined others under fig trees in Planada to sing and have worship services; see Eugenia Manzano “Preaching the Gospel Under the Fig Trees” (n.p., August, 8, 2017), courtesy of Eugenia Manzano.

  21. Nava, Autobiografía, 6; Ortega, Mis Memorias, 80–81.

  22. The church began in a converted garage in 1947; see “Our Family Heritage: Francisco and Maria García 1892–2002” (Papers of Manuel Vizcarra).

  23. Aniceto Ortiz interview.

  24. The first Apostólico services in the Coachella Valley took place between Indio and Thermal in a ramada, “Distrito Sur de California” (Papers of Manuel Vizcarra); for an example of such a structure in the Mexicali Valley, see photograph titled “Enramada donde se principió la Iglesia Apostólica en la ciudad de Mexicali…año 1924,” accessed August 30, 2018, https://historia.iafcj.org/images/e/ea/Primer_templo_en_1924.png.

  25. Mark 16:15; Gaxiola, Constitución de la Asamblea Apostólica, 85.

  26. Banderas, “Mis Memorias.”

  27. Trujillo et al., Precious Memories, 10–11.

  28. Manzano conversation with the author.

  29. “Nuestra Historia: Riverbank”; “Nuestra Historia: Modesto.”

  30. Mary Helen Ponce’s autobiography, set in the barrios of the Oxnard Plain (the strawberry capital of the world), conceives of time as regulated by holidays and sacraments. See Mary Helen Ponce, Hoyt Street (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006); similarly, the autobiography of Frances Esquibel Tywoniak documents her Catholic upbringing as part of a migrant farm-working family; see Tywoniak and García, Migrant Daughter.

  31. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 24.

  32. Albanese, America: Religion and Religions, 8; also see chapter 1.

  33. Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows, 26-27.

  34. Estrelda Alexander, “Introduction,” in Phillip’s Daughters: Women in Pentecostal-Charismatic Leadership, ed. Estrelda Alexander and Amos Yong (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 3–4.

  35. Margaret Poloma, The Assemblies of God at the Crossroads: Charisma and Institutional Dilemmas (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).

  36. Charles H. Barfoot and Gerald T. Sheppard, “Prophetic vs. Priestly Religion: The Changing Role of Women Clergy in Classical Pentecostal Churches,” Review of Religious Research 22, no. 1 (1980): 4.

  37. Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 54.

  38. Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel.

  39. Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 51–54; on the duties of “deaconesses” and for a facsimile copy of the “License Certificate” issued to Nicolasa García in 1939, see Ortega, Mis Memorias, 49.

• Bibliography

  Archival and Research Collections

  Pasadena, California

  Papers of Manuel Vizcarra, David Allan Hubbard Library Archives, Fuller Theological Seminary

  Interviews

  Banda, David. Interview by the author, March 15, 2018, Stockton, California. Audio recording.

  Manzano, Eugenia (Jeannie). Interview by the author, November 16, 2013, Modesto, California. Audio recording.

  Meza, Ralph (Raúl). Interview by the author, March 16, 2018, Turlock, California. Audio recording.

  Ortiz, Aniceto. Interview by the author, April 23, 2014, Ceres, California. Audio recording.

  Pérez, Irma. Interview by the author, March 16, 2018, Turlock, California. Audio recording.

  Rodriguez, Jessie. Interview, July 1990, Visalia, California. Cassette Tape at the Center for the Study of Oneness Pentecostalism, Wentzville, Missouri.

  Church Biographies, Constitutions, Minutes, Pamphlets, Periodicals, and Yearbooks

  Banderas, Pedro. “Mis Memorias,” (n.p. July 21, 1966). Courtesy of Daniel Ramírez.

  Gaxiola, Maclovio, ed., Constitución de la Asamblea Apostólica. 1945 repr. Mexico: Author, 2007.

  Manzano, Eugenia. “Preaching the Gospel Under the Fig Trees” (n.p., August, 8, 2017). Courtesy of Eugenia Manzano.

  Biblical Passages

  Mark 16:15

  Secondary Sources

  Albanese, Catherine L. America: Religions and Religion. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1998.

  Alexander, Estrelda Y. “Introduction.” In Philip’s Daughters: Women in Pentecostal-Charismatic Leadership, edited by Estrelda Y. Alexander and Amos Yong, 1– 15. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009.

  Barfoot, Charles H., and Gerald T. Sheppard. “Prophetic vs. Priestly Religion: The Changing Role of Women Clergy in Classical Pentecostal Churches.” Review of Religious Research 22, no. 1 (1980): 2– 17.

  Burns, Jeffrey M. “Migrants and Braceros.” In Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900– 1965, edited by Jay P. Dolan and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, 209– 21. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994.

  Cantú, Ernesto S., José A. Ortega, Isaac Cota, and Phillip Rangel. Historia de La Asamblea Apostólica de La Fe En Cristo Jesús, 1916– 1966. Mentone, CA: Sal’s Printing Service, 1966.

  Cohen, Deborah. Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

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Podcast

SOWING THE SACRED

Dr. Joao Chaves talks to Dr. Lloyd Barba about his recent book on Mexican Pentecostal farmworkers in California, 1916-1966

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Blurbs

Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California
by Lloyd Daniel Barba
Oxford University Press, 2022

"A terrific glimpse into previously untold histories, Sowing the Sacred is beautiful, moving, and an important work of scholarship on the material and spiritual lives of ethnic Mexican farmworkers and church leaders in California. Please read this book." —Jacqueline M. Hidalgo,
Professor of Latina/o/x Studies and Religion, Williams College

"With a beautiful mix of photographs, oral histories, and archival research, Barba gracefully uncovers the tragic and resilient worlds of Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers as they labored in the fields, created sacred spaces, and lived dignified lives in the American West. Sowing the Sacred more than fills a significant gap in the literature on Latina/o religion and labor, it changes the field entirely. Simply put, this book is groundbreaking."
—Felipe Hinojosa
Author, Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio

"Sowing the Sacred impressively reframes the history of proletarian religion in California's harsh agribusiness. Lloyd Barba deftly demonstrates how subaltern Pentecostal farmworkers sacralized the very soil and water of their labor and fired the imaginations of key Chicano/a Movement leaders."
—Daniel Ramirez
Associate Professor of American Religions,
Claremont Graduate University

DISCOUNT CODE for purchase of PAPERBACK (ships out from mid-July to early August) or HARDCOVER: AAFLYG6

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