This article critically reviews recent contributions to religious research in Latin America. Social scientists have long considered religion to be a structuring feature of culture and local society. Owing to the centrality of Catholicism in Latin America, early studies privileged the political influences of the Catholic Church with respect to the state and society at large. The “otherness” of native folk religions received less attention, with scholars undervaluing the presence of indigenous and African religiosities. In Latin America, religions are currently experiencing a diversification and reconfiguration, owing in part to the growing influence of different Christian denominations, particularly Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Religious change is also occurring at the margins of institutional churches through New Age, neo-pagan, neo-Indian, neo-esoteric, and self-styled religiosities, as well as through popular religious syncretisms, indicating new experiments with what is considered sacred. This dynamism poses theoretical and conceptual challenges to scholars analyzing religious diversity and the renewed role that religions play in contemporary societies with respect to secularization, syncretism, and hybridization as well as the emergence of alternative identities (gender, sexual, ideological and political).

El propósito del artículo es reflexionar sobre las transformaciones recientes en Guadalajara y destacar algunos de los retos que actualmente enfrenta esta ciudad. Proponemos acercarnos a su heterogeneidad; para realizar este recorrido, y como tipificación de espacio habitado, se distinguen cuatro Guadalajaras: la ciudad concéntrica, la ciudad dividida, la ciudad fragmentada y la ciudad flujos. Este viaje nos obliga a elaborar una interpretación crítica de las múltiples representaciones de la identidad de la ciudad, y a delinear algunos nodos problemáticos en el presente que sería necesario resolver para imaginar su futuro.

The authors focus on the creation, by Mexicans born in the United States, of an ‘imagined nation’ named Aztlán. Having arisen in the struggle of the Chicanos for recognition of their cultural citizenship, it has now found a new significance in the revival of an ancestral religiosity. This nation is based on the creation of a mythic spirituality with both political and cultural meanings. The authors analyze the symbolic efficacy for the Chicano population of various strategies: a) the construction of a symbolic lineage based on tradition and the experience of the Aztec Conchera dance, a syncretic ritual in popular Mexican Catholicism; b) a reproduction or reenactment of the founding myths of the Mexican nation as a way to legitimize the existence of a spiritual nation that spreads over both sides of the international border; c) the appropriation of territories where the Chicanos can practice their rituals.

RESUMEN. El presente trabajo se enmarca dentro de las reflexiones contemporáneas acerca de la interacción entre el teísmo y el ateísmo. La idea principal que se sostiene es la posibilidad y necesi-dad de conciliar armónicamente las nuevas visiones de la realidad generadas por los avances tecno-científicos, los cambios sociales, y el lugar que hoy ocupan la religiosidad tradicional o institucional de índole trascendente y la espiritualidad inmanente producto del naturalismo filosófico. El objeto del trabajo es pues ahondar sucintamente en las causas, fundamentos y problemáticas de la espirituali-dad naturalizada. En este sentido, se pretende examinar las limitaciones y dificultades que presentan las increencias pretendidamente espirituales y antirreligiosas basadas en postulados inmanentistas y cientificistas. Se proyecta necesario y fecundo un esfuerzo en el diálogo y conocimiento recíproco por parte de la pluralidad de posiciones existentes, principalmente entre la espiritualidad trascendente y la naturalizada. PALAbRAS cLAvE: increencia, religión, ciencia, espiritualidad, secularización, diálogo teísmo-ateís-mo, naturalismo. Disbeliefs, science and religion: the necessary dialogue between the transcendent and naturalized spirituality AbSTRAcT. This work is part of the contemporary reflections about the interaction between theism and atheism. The main idea is to think about the possibility and necessity of reconciling harmoniously the new insights on the reality generated by the techno-scientific advances, social changes, and the place currently occupied by the traditional and institutional and transcendent religiosity and the immanent spirituality generated by the philosophical naturalism. The purpose of this work is to examine the causes, foundations and problems of the so called naturalized spirituality. In this regard, the paper aims to briefly observe the limitations and difficulties of the spiritual and irreligious disbeliefs based on scientific and immanentist assumptions. The work seeks to contribute to the promotion of dialogue and mutual understanding by the plurality of existing positions, mainly between the transcendent and naturalized spirituality.

Since 1895, the Population and Housing Census of Mexico has included the variable ‘religious affiliation’, and this helped to affirm the monopoly of the Catholic religion. In the new millennium, the dynamics of religious diversification of recent decades required a change of design in order to capture the new situation, making religious minorities visible in a way that would propitiate a culture of pluralism. To this end, a team of researchers worked together to capture the diversity of religions in Mexico for the 2010 census. In this article we shall describe: a) the methodological strategies developed to improve the census classifier, and a critique of its achievements in capturing the diversity of religious affiliations and memberships in Mexico; b) the need to combine a quantitative approach to religious affiliation with qualitative approaches to religious self-identification in order to describe and analyze religious deinstitutionalization and individualization tendencies, applying questionnaires to representative samples of the population.

This article addresses the effects of the mass production of religious images that is decentering the institutional management of Catholic symbols in Mexico. How do mass production and the global circulation of religious images in various types of media create new ways of practicing religion and professing faith today? In the search for answers to this question, two cases are presented. The first, Catholic baroque as a popular initiative, addresses the mass production of Catholic icons and how it deinstitutionalizes Catholic symbols. In the second, the case of the Mayan prophesy for 2012, the manner in which cultural industries are generating transmedia beliefs is revealed. The author argues that the synergy between popular baroque religiosity and the videocracy creates a new sort of ultra-baroque Catholicism based on superimposing images. (2) risquent-elles d'avoir sur les nouveaux modes de croyance et de pratique de la religiosité contemporaine? Pour répondre à cette question deux cas sont présentés ici. Le premier, « le baroque catholique en tant qu'initiative populaire », aborde la production massive des icônes religieuses du catholicisme qui influe sur la désinstitutionalisation des symboles catholiques. Le second cas présente la « prophétie maya 2012 » afin de montrer comment les industries culturelles génèrent des croyances transmédiatiques. Selon l'auteur, la synergie entre religiosité populaire baroque et la vidéocratie impulse une nouvelle sorte de catholicisme hyper-baroque basée sur la superposition d'images. KeywordsMots-clés apocalypse transmédiatique, baroque catholique, images, Mexique, prophétie maya, symboles du sacré

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Se presenta una aproximación etnográfica a la religiosidad vivida de católicos mexicanos incluyendo tres elementos: un ensayo fotográfico sobre altares domésticos; extractos de narrativas de sus propietarios que aportan sobre los sentidos culturales y religiosos de los altares y un ensayo analítico. El estudio de los altares (sus materialidades, los rituales y sus significados) tiene como objetivo abordar la religiosidad católica que se practica de manera cotidiana dentro del sistema de prácticas paraeclesiales de la religiosidad popular. El trabajo etnográfico centra su atención en la materialidad de los altares y sus estéticas sensitivas (que visibilizan creencias y generan sensibilidades comunicacionales) y en las narrativas orales con las que sus propietarios dan cuenta de los sentidos simbólicos, las apropiaciones y los usos de las imágenes católicas en la vida ordinaria de los creyentes. Abordamos tres escenarios de montajes y práctica de altares: domésticos; en lugares de trabajo, como son oficinas, puestos de mercado, cantinas y talleres y callejeros o barriales. Consideramos que es una propuesta metodológica novedosa para acercarnos a la comprensión de las experiencias religiosas y sus lógicas no eclesiales.