Visiting St. Patrick’s Church and the shrine to the Virgen de Guadalupe provide the stimulus for reflection on the legacy of colonialism and Catholicism in Latin America. Drawing on a range of examples, the relationship between the two is shown to be rather more complicated than it may at first appear.

Further reading:

* On the history of St. Patrick’s Church: https://stpatricksoho.org/about/history/

* On Yolanda López:

http://almalopez.com/projects/ChicanasLatinas/lopezyolanda3.html

* On the St. Patrick’s Batallion:

https://time.com/5201896/st-patricks-day-history-mexico/

* Octavio Paz (2004), El laberinto de la soledad; Postdata; Vuelta a El laberinto de la soledad (3rd edn.; México: México: Fondo de Cultura Económica)

* Joan Bristol (2016), ‘The Church, Africans, and Slave Religion in Latin America’, in Paul Freston, Stephen C. Dove, and Virginia Garrard-Burnett (eds.), The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.198-206

* Derek Krueger (2011), ‘The Religion of Relics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium’, in Martina Bagnoli, et al. (eds.), Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe (London: British Museum Press), pp.5-17

* Timothy Matovina (2016), ‘Marianism in Latin America’, in Paul Freston, Stephen C. Dove, and Virginia Garrard-Burnett (eds.), The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.319-30

* Jennifer Scheper Hughes (2016), ‘Contemporary Popular Catholicism in Latin America’, in Paul Freston, Stephen C. Dove, and Virginia Garrard-Burnett (eds.), The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.480-90

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