Immediately inside, the cool air, long, dim nave, red marble, colonial artwork, gentle echoes, and pungent smell of a homeless man on the pew in front of me, provoke some reflection and questions: How, in this country with a unique tapestry of Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism (particularly Anglicanism and Pentecostalism, both prevalent in the south), and multiple indigenous faiths (some syncretic with Christianity), among other forms of spirituality, do Church, faith, power and anonymity mediate one another and shape the dynamics of cultural identity and political/economic ideologies? In terms of pragmatic research concerns, how does my experience as a foreigner inform my understanding of these issues? Allow me to elaborate.
Chile's Catedral Nacional on the Plaza de Armas. Pedro de Valdivia in the foreground.
Sliding scales of architectural grandeur, intimacy, and power determine the sense of anonymity that I feel in the Catedral Nacional in Santiago, and the penetrating lack of anonymity that I experience when friends in the south invite me to church. As a Jewish foreigner, I find these issues very stirring for reflection and writing.
In the south, indigenous culture, specifically of the Mapuche, is a great deal more visible than in Santiago. The south is thus the frontera, both in geographic and cultural terms. Christianity in the south takes different forms than in Santiago, including a much larger presence of Evangelical Protestantism. This set of Christian worship practices and attitudes, in my view, involves a great deal less anonymity than state Catholicism. Southern churches are smaller, the relationship to God is personal, and evangelical work is intimate. This is significant in terms of the role of religion in the state, assuming that the power of the state relies in part on its ability to work anonymously on the body politic. Along these lines, southern Protestants often consider themselves outside of the authority and doctrine of state Catholicism—a stance both politically and spiritually liberating. Also the center of Mapuche culture, with its long-running problematic relationship with the state, the south is perhaps the least Catholic region of Chile.
As noted elsewhere, Chile’s native cultures challenge the civilizational grandeur often attributed by historians, archaeologists and tourism agencies to pre-Colombian cultures of the Andes and Mesoamerica. While they differ enormously in their anthropological frameworks for studying pre-Colombian Chile, both cultural evolutionist Fernando Silva V. (whose work is included in a volume by Villalobos, et al. (1992 [1974])) and left-leaning potter and Mapuche historian Sergio San Martín (2002 [1996]) note that, in Chile, abundant natural resources long precluded the kinds of resource production and monopolization associated with state- and civilization-formation in other parts of the world.[1]
A central Chilean landscape: abundant green and imposing mountains.
This unique economic relationship to the land, spanning the history of Chile’s human populations, is reflected in the architectural legacies of the indigenous populations, the Spanish colony, and the Chilean state. Whether the topic is pre-Colombian architecture or national cathedrals, Chile offers considerably less grandeur than its Latin American neighbors (consider Mexico, for an extreme comparison), and certainly less than Spain. Rather, Chile is filled at every turn with a lush and staggering topography. Perhaps the mountains, desert, rich valleys, and abundant sea-coast are the churches and temples, informing sophisticated, millennia-old cosmologies. By contrast, in other regions these functions belong to great pyramids, ancient cities and colonial cathedrals, situated alongside complex agricultural infrastructure designed to make arid ecosystems support large populations.
In all fairness, Santiago does boast some impressive colonial architecture, albeit less grand than in other Hispanic capitals. The Catedral Nacional stands on the Plaza de Armas amidst other large colonial buildings, along with glass and steel structures telling of Chile’s modern economic prowess. However, around these architectural markers of statehood hovers a blanket of thick smog, a different sort of marker of modernity. Beyond the smog, the central Andes render Santiago a speck of concrete amidst rushing rivers and peaks which retain their snow year-round.
Pedro de Valdivia, conquistador de Chile, on the Plaza de Armas.
What drives faith and cultural identity here: the architecture, or the natural topography of the land? The answer is undoubtedly subjective, belonging to individuals and communities. However, the historical and archaeological records do signal a somewhat inversely proportional relationship between the pre-existing abundance of natural resources and the visibility of huge buildings signaling civilizational advancement in the western sense.
Furthermore, between Chile’s internal centers and peripheries, the varied topography of architecture and religion is palpable on a personal level. In the capital, I am a foreigner, in the comfort of religious architecture that is large and impersonal. In Santiago anonymity is both a form of shelter and a boundary to a feeling of belonging, while it mediates spirituality with the power of the state. In the country, to the south, a cultural borderland (frontera) makes faith a more intimate issue, marked by evangelism and small buildings. The south offers no large structures in which to hide, nor from which the state religion can work anonymously.
References
San Martín, Sergio. Importancia de la cultura mapuche: lo que la historia calla. Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 2002 [1996].
[1] I may have cited the wrong author for this section of Historia de Chile. The book belongs to a friend in Santiago, and I am writing this entry in Temuco (and not bothering to go the library to double check!). It is either the author I’ve noted, Osvaldo Silva G., or Patricio Estelle M.
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