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Latinos and the New Immigrant Church
This page intentionally left blank
Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

David A. Badillo

The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore

© 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2006
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Badillo, David A.
Latinos and the new immigrant church / David A. Badillo.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn 0-8018-8387-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — isbn 0-8018-8388-1
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Hispanic Americans—Religion. I. Title.
br563.h57b33 2006
282v.7308968—dc22 2005027697

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
 Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi

1 Beginnings: Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain

and Latin America 1
2 Mexico’s Revolution Travels to San Antonio 23
3 Colonial Dilemmas: Puerto Ricans and the
U.S. Church 45
4 Powers of the Prelates: Urban Hierarchies Contrasted 66
5 Cuban Miami and Exile Catholicism 92
6 Suburbanization and Mobility in Catholic Chicago 120
7 New Urban Opportunities: Church Leadership in Texas and
New York City 154
8 Globalization and the New Immigrant Church 182
Epilogue: Latino Religious Tradition as Metaphor 203

Notes 211
Bibliography 237
Index 269
This page intentionally left blank
 Illustrations

Front Façade and Convento of Concepción Mission in San Antonio,

ca. 1901 27
Crowd Watching Procession outside San Fernando Cathedral, Feast of
Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12, 1933 38
Overflow Crowds at Our Lady of Montserrat Church, Brooklyn,
New York, April 21, 1957 77
Cardinal Francis Spellman at San Juan Fiesta, June 21, 1959 82
Nun and Two Boys Standing in Front of Centro Hispano Católico,
ca. 1961 100
Miami Auxiliary Bishop Agustín Román Accompanies the Image of Our
Lady of Charity on Traditional Boat Ride across Biscayne Bay,
September 8, 2000 105
Thousands Wave Cuban Flags as Pope John Paul II Visits Miami’s
Tamiami Stadium, September 1987 118
Entrance Procession for Mass, Ethnic Culture Celebration at St. Mary
of Celle, 2000 139
Young Girl at Quinceañera Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
2003 144
Scalabrinian Priests and Mexican Congregation in Fiestas Verano 2003,
St. Charles Borromeo 146
Archbishop Patricio Flores and Father Virgilio Elizondo at MACC
Night with a Mariachi Band, ca. late 1980s 161
Father Virgilio Elizondo Presenting Plaque to Composer Carlos Rosas
at MACC, ca. late 1980s 163
Stations of the Cross Procession, New York City’s Lower East Side,
1991 167
Fiesta San Juan 2004, Battery Park, New York City 169

vii
This page intentionally left blank
 Acknowledgments

Many mentors and colleagues have contributed to the completion of this

work, as have kind friends and family members. Richard C. Wade first
encouraged me to study Latinos from an urban historical perspective. Jay
Dolan, as editor of the three-volume Notre Dame History of Hispanic Cath-
olics, along with Jaime Vidal, Gilberto Hinojosa, Anthony Stevens-Ar-
royo, Ana Maria Diaz-Stevens, and others who contributed to the project
introduced me to the rigors of studying Latino Catholicism. I am also
grateful for the ongoing assistance and encouragement of Stephen War-
ner, Rafael Nuñez-Cedeño, Gilberto Cardenas, and Timothy Matovina,
as well as the members of CEHILA USA. Librarians and archivists at
countless locales generously helped procure important data.
The University of Illinois at Chicago provided generous travel and
research assistance for the launching of this project and the UIC Great
Cities Institute granted me a released-time fellowship which resulted
in expansion of the study to include Chicago. The University of Notre
Dame’s History Department and Institute for Latino Studies warmly re-
ceived me as, respectively, visiting professor and visiting fellow, for sev-
eral semesters. A particularly insightful manuscript review by Manuel
Vasquez resulted in a much improved final product. Mary Reardon pro-
vided very careful, thoughtful, and timely editorial assistance. Herminio
Martinez and the staff of the Bronx Institute at Lehman College of the
City University of New York have graciously supported my work on the
manuscript’s final revisions. Most important, however, I owe thanks to
my wife, Milagros Benitez, for her constant support.

Portions of some chapters were previously published in other forms, as

follows: Chapter 2: “Between Alienation and Ethnicity: Church Struc-
tures and Mexican-American Catholicism in San Antonio, 1910–1940,”
Journal of American Ethnic History 16 (September 1997): 62–83. Chapter
6: “Mexicanos and Suburban Parish Communities: Religion, Space, and

ix
x Acknowledgments

Identity in Contemporary Chicago,” Journal of Urban History 31 (No-

vember 2004): 23–46; “Religion and Transnational Migration in Chi-
cago: The Case of the Potosinos,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical
Society 94 (Winter 2002): 420–440.
Introduction

To fully understand Latinos in the United States today, one must un-
derstand their unique, complex and ever-evolving relationship with the
Catholic Church, the Catholic religion, and the various syncretisms born
of Catholic interactions in the Americas. The story of the Latino Church
is examined here through the history of Latino Catholicism in four urban
locales—San Antonio, New York City, Miami, and Chicago—with par-
ticular attention to religious tradition, city, and ethnic identity. A com-
parative approach seeks integration of the religious histories of the three
primary Latino groups—Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans
(and, to a lesser extent, more recent migrants)—highlighting distinctive
characteristics of each. As the stories are rich and varied, this study of
Latino Catholicism and the Catholic Church in the United States illu-
minates differences and similarities among peoples of Latin American
origin and in Latino Catholicism in different cities and regions.
The evolution of the U.S. Latino “immigrant church” has long needed
a carefully nuanced look. The earliest communities that arose in northern
Mexico and the Caribbean well before the formation of the United States
as a nation are a fruitful place to start. This book also provides a detailed
look at developments in Latino Catholicism in the early through the mid-
dle twentieth century, preceding the vast ecclesiastical and demographic
changes beginning around 1965. It was an era that proved central in the
development of Latino urbanization and ethnicity, yet Latino religion in
this era has been relatively understudied.
This analysis foregrounds historical, sociological, and theological
themes. Likewise, it highlights continuities and contrasts between Latin
American and U.S. Latino culture and religion, emphasizing the con-
tours of day-to-day life in the context of institutional and lived Catholi-
cism. This text explores “popular” Catholicism, which truly reflects the
faith and practice of the majority of people. Practitioners of this popular
religion, in its various forms, do not seek to emulate the educated elites,
and they show little awareness of the theological issues disputed in the
Protestant and Catholic reformations. Popular Catholicism has embod-

xi
xii Introduction

ied the visual, oral, and dramatic aspects of the religious practice of the
common people searching for a personal spiritual connection. Profes-
sional clergy and religious of all national backgrounds have often played
upon this sensibility to promote ritualistic observance, but they have also
frequently ignored it to invoke a more formal, and often alien, institu-
tional Catholicism. Latino popular Catholicism was often believed to re-
flect ignorance, superstition, or paganism.1

Roots of the Tradition

Latino Catholicism owes its origins to the contest between Iberian Ca-
tholicism, fortified by Indian and African religious strains, and a compet-
ing Northern European version. Many religious traditions and customs
were common across Latin America, yet problems such as lack of sufficient
clergy, isolation from urban religious centers, and anticlerical postindepen-
dence governments meant that Iberian popular religion developed and
changed at different rates in various regions of Latin America.
Roots of the North American scene lie, of course, in Europe. In the
sixteenth century Christian religious traditions diverged as the Prot-
estant Reformation fractured Western Christendom and led to a per-
manent schism between a single Roman Catholic church and several
Protestant ones. Wars of religion pitted Catholics and Protestants
against one another in France, Germany, and Ireland and produced ri-
val sects of Protestants vying for ecclesiastical supremacy in England and
Scotland.2
The Council of Trent, reacting to the challenges posed by the Prot-
estant Reformation, met intermittently from 1545 until 1563 in Trento,
Italy. Its reforms solidified parish development for the next four centuries
and also strengthened the role of the bishop in his diocese. One of the
goals was to regularize Catholic practices and priests’ activity, which had
in many cases taken on varying, nonstandard forms. The sacraments were
defined, under threat of excommunication, as not only baptism, Eucha-
rist, and penance but also confirmation, ordination, marriage, and final
unction. At the same time the language of the Mass was standardized.
Every parish within a diocese was to have a fixed territory; marriages
performed without the pastor’s consent were invalid; pastors were to be
selected by the bishop and guaranteed an income, though missionary re-
ligious orders retained the power to preach and to administer the sac-
raments without the express authorization of bishops.3 While decrying
superstition, the council did approve the veneration of Mary and other
saints.4
Introduction xiii

The Council of Trent reorganization imposed greater bureaucracy,

but its rules were less closely adhered to in Latin America than in north-
ern Europe. Inefficient transportation and communication reinforced the
isolation of the New World and encouraged a remarkable resiliency of
medieval forms of piety, especially processions and mystery plays, despite
the council’s reforms. Further, the Spanish crown did not allow dissemi-
nation of the council’s decrees until well after 1570, which had the effect
of discouraging liturgical changes in preaching and catechesis for gen-
erations. A concern for “orthodoxy” of expression that emerged in the
centuries of post-Tridentine Catholicism that developed in northern Eu-
rope, filled with anti-Protestantism, tended to suppress dramatic ways of
expressing the faith, whereas the Catholicism preserved in Latin America
reflected the popular faith lived in rural Spain. Spanish Catholicism—to
a greater extent even than Catholicism in Italy and Portugal, and unlike
that in northern European countries—was only slightly affected by com-
petition with Protestantism and developed into a monopolistic, imperi-
alistic state Catholicism. The Iberian religion brought to the Americas
had survived the seven centuries of the Spanish reconquista, during which
Christians fought, traded with, and lived alongside Muslims and Jews.
The fanaticism accompanying the final stages of conquest of the “infidel”
in 1492 was marked by a renaissance of piety and devotion, of monasti-
cism, and of theological learning, a renewed religious fervor felt in the
villages.5
Tridentine Catholicism in Latin America thus retained many medi-
eval practices and attitudes, though it evolved considerably in other re-
spects. Throughout the colonial period, no pontifical document could be
executed in any of Spain’s territories without the royal approval, which
limited access to papal edicts. The Catholic Reformation in the Americas
was in practice reduced to the creation of seminaries and schools, mainly
for Spaniards and the white criollo (native born, of pure-blooded Euro-
pean ancestry) elite, and to stopping some major clerical abuses. In addi-
tion to the many members of religious orders who came to the Americas
as missionaries, informal teaching by lay Spaniards along with Amerin-
dian, African, and mestizo laity who entered the church helped to propa-
gate the Christian faith.6
In Spain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a constant
tension existed between the Roman Church, allied with religious or-
ders, and the local church, identified with nation, town, or village, which
tended to rely on locally based devotions. This was the case in Latin
America as well. Latin American expressions of fervent piety continue
xiv Introduction

to exist outside the liturgy, including the use of home altars, or altarcitos.
Other elements of popular worship practices were devotion to the Virgin
Mary and to saints, as well as to the suffering Christ, posadas, ex-votos, and
Día de los Muertos. In regions dominated by Amerindians, evangeliza-
tion often encouraged native traditions of dance, music, and crafts. Pious
artistic styles of religious imagery, including crucifixes and santos de palo
(carved wooden images of saints), echoed those of medieval Spain. Many
U.S. Latino communities have preserved versions of these songs, rites,
and dramas, and thus they can still be witnessed and heard.7
Latino religious tradition resisted the rationalism of the Enlighten-
ment. Later attempts at implanting a more doctrinally oriented and so-
phisticated post-Tridentine Catholicism tended to remain largely at the
level of the colonial elites. Increasingly, however, nationalism weakened
medieval tradition. Today’s Latin American Catholicism reflects the dif-
fering impact of northern versus southern Europe—in simple terms,
Ireland versus Spain. After 1760, Jansenist influences in Ireland became
particularly strong and came to demarcate northern European and U.S.
Catholicism from Spanish and Mediterranean Catholicism. In general,
today’s Latinos, at the intersection of Spanish-Mexican and the doctri-
nal and austere northern European Catholicism adopted in the United
States, can be seen as a product of a religious synthesis. Unlike northern
European Catholicism, Latino Catholicism blends pre- and post-Triden-
tine influences.
The marginal status imposed on indigenous peoples in the Latin
American church is another factor in the development of a distinctive
popular Catholicism. Their marginalization helps explain their attitude
toward frequent Communion, for example. While most Mexicans ab-
sorbed European Jansenism’s sense of the laity’s unworthiness to receive
Communion and accepted that they must confess their sins to a priest
each time before receiving it, in general they do not seem personally
troubled or guilt ridden about “living in sin” because they have not con-
fessed recently.8
Theologian Anthony Stevens-Arroyo argues that Latin American Ca-
tholicism is rooted largely in the seventeenth century, characterized by
the Baroque emphasis on symbol, ritual, and celebration and on Christian
exuberance. Moreover, he believes that Marian devotion emerged not as
a medieval or pagan carryover but from the sentimentalism and search for
universalism that surfaced in the Baroque era, which was also manifested
in the massive cathedrals of Mexican cities built in the era’s ornate style.
An example of a largely post-Tridentine devotion is the special attention
Introduction xv

to the passion through cofradías (confraternities) and the emphasis on the

crucified Christ, a distinctive feature of Latino religiosity. The doctrines
and worldview born of Trent were more generally present in late colonial
Catholicism.9
Anthropologist William Christian Jr. sees continuity before and after
the Council of Trent and believes that elements that are supposedly pre-
Tridentine could have been brought to the New World not merely in the
decades of intensive evangelization prior to the middle of the sixteenth
century, when the Council of Trent met, but over the following centuries
as well, when devotion came to be expressed through images portraying
a vivid “sacred” landscape, through strong brotherhoods, and by reenact-
ment of the nativity and Christ’s passion. Moreover, the “concentration
on Mary, Christ as Child, and Christ Crucified to the gradual exclusion
of local and localized saints” which gained favor during the sixteenth cen-
tury had roots in Spanish, or “Mediterranean,” devotion.10
Less concerned with orthodoxy than was the post-Tridentine church,
many European missionaries evangelized through nonverbal activities,
such as processions, statues, paintings, music, and drama. Whereas the
overall message of the missionaries was profoundly Christocentric, they
participated in the late colonial process of growing identification of the
Virgin Mary, particularly the connection between the Mary of Catholic
popular devotions and local manifestation, such as the Virgin of Guadal-
upe in Mexico, la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre in Cuba, and la Virgen
de Montserrat or la Virgen del Carmen in Puerto Rico. In each area,
the masses appeal to Mary for succor amid life’s trials and tribulations.
Within Latino communities it is often women, mothers, and grandmoth-
ers who are the leaders of popular religion. They offer blessings, arrange
home altars, say the prayers, provide children and grandchildren with
religious instruction, and lead the family in religious song. The strong
Marian spirituality among Latinos results from the dominant role of
women in popular religion.11
Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans—the
migrants and descendants of these three largest of the Latin American
groups—even today maintain different customs and adhere to distinct
traditions; they are anything but interchangeable. Common denomina-
tors in the Latino experience include elements derived from the colonial
heritage—especially the Spanish language and Catholicism—as well as
long-standing racial intermixture. An important outcome was the in-
creased religious influence of the mestizo, who bridged chasms between
cleric and layperson, between conquerors and the conquered, establish-
xvi Introduction

ing both a religious and a secular cultural identity that remained well
after the colonial era. Theologians have come to recognize much of con-
temporary Latin American and Latino popular Catholicism as “mestizo
Catholicism.”12
Indigenous encounters with the mission communities were marked
by cultural clash, harsh treatment, and death from European diseases.
Parishes and military chapels have been the homes of Latino Catholic
faith communities from colonial times to the present. Included in the
mid-eighteenth-century heartland were the Hispanic Caribbean and mis-
sion territories now known as New Mexico, Texas, and California.13

Parish, City, and Ethnic Identity

Migration has forced the U.S. church, as well as its constituents, to adopt
a broad hemispheric consciousness bridging Latino and Latin American
worlds. As an indicator of space, boundaries, and community, one of our
major facets of study here, the parish—the churches themselves—cannot
be ignored; it is the point at which the institutional, hierarchical church
and the people encounter one another. Parishes in U.S. cities and sub-
urbs constitute both the ecclesial and the social site of sacraments, such
as Communion and confession; they are the sites of religious ritual as well
as ethnic group identity. Yet Latinos’ link to their parish has been his-
torically weaker than that of immigrants of European origins in terms of
Mass attendance, receiving the sacraments, and general participation—fi-
nancial as well as social—in parish communities in accordance with the
expectations of clergy and hierarchy.
Historian Jay Dolan notes that mid-nineteenth-century anti-
Catholicism contributed to a “defensive” dependency on parishes and a
retreat to separateness, designed to neutralize Protestantism and secu-
larism. Urban nativist violence opened a new chapter in the struggle to
define American Catholicism, as the number of Catholic immigrants in
the United States surged. In the following decades, efforts expanded to
construct a universe of institutions for the temporal and spiritual well-be-
ing of Catholics, while a war of words continued over the compatibility of
Catholicism and U.S. political culture. With the onset of massive waves
of European immigration in the 1800s, the American Catholic parish ad-
opted the model of the national (or language) parish, where the commu-
nity retained its native language. The national parish formed the basis for
the immigrant church, led by clergy (and later bishops) from the home-
land, with sermons and confessions conducted in the native tongue. This
contrasted with what was known as the “territorial” (or geographic) par-
Introduction xvii

ish, which utilized English. These parishes served people based exclusively
on where they lived, and they did little to help parishioners retain their
original language, cultural practices, sense of group identity, or divergent
religious aspects of the homeland.14
The pattern for Latino migrants has been different since 1930, af-
ter which few national parishes have been formed. “Integrated” par-
ishes arose among those national parishes already in existence, which
were losing elderly European ethnics and sometimes taking in Lati-
nos. Likewise many territorial parishes, to varying degrees depending
on local urban configurations, have served Latinos and non-Latinos,
offering them separate language services and distinct parish organi-
zations. In many areas non-Latinos have successfully resisted, or until
now avoided, mixing with Latinos. In other cases, parishes have been
overwhelmed with Latino newcomers, making for “national parishes”
that remain officially unrecognized by Rome and the local diocese.
Few Latino churches today are recognized national parishes. The hierar-
chy successfully gained control of the church’s institutional development
in the United States while combating nativist anti-Catholic agitation.15
The structures and challenges of parish growth have in turn helped
redefine the Church’s role with both new immigrants from Latin America
and Latino “ethnics” (second generation and beyond). The waning of na-
tional parishes in the early to mid-twentieth century, brought on by epis-
copal policies, occurred just as Latinos in the Southwest, Northeast, and
Midwest were supplanting ethnics of European origin in urban America.
This, in turn, set in motion new ethnic patterns and dilemmas, especially
for Latin American immigrants, notably in the areas of language and
cultural retention, which are both important factors in adjusting to the
larger society. Parishes still reinforce neighborhood and ethnic boundar-
ies, but their role in assimilation and in offering a homogenous religious
product has changed.16
The function of parishes, territorial, national, and integrated, has
much to do with the changing urban landscape. Many churchgoing La-
tinos do not attend their territorial parish but drive or take the bus to
a church in a predominantly Latino area. This happens especially after
a person or family who lived in such an area moves out of it to a more
“integrated” one; in such cases their new parish often cannot compete
with the original one’s greater feel for the homeland. Such parishes thus
become de facto national parishes. Territorial or geographic parishes pre-
dominate, even in urban areas, but the Catholic Church has accepted the
concept of an immigrant community’s choosing local church affiliation in
xviii Introduction

de facto national parishes, which offer little pieces of the homeland. Such
churches often enjoy considerable involvement of parishioners.17
Latinos may seek the parish for the support network it provides dur-
ing hard times and turn to the parish for the celebration of special oc-
casions like baptism, marriage, the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe or
of a local patron saint, and the quinceañera—the debut of a girl who has
reached her fifteenth birthday (the term quinceañera applies to both the
girl who is having her birthday and the celebration itself). However, oth-
erwise they often spend their religious lives apart from the parish and its
church.
Mexicans celebrate the quinceañera in a special way. The custom
probably originated in Spain, though some scholars find roots in Aztec or
Toltec cultural rituals. The celebration is generally recognized as the re-
ligious and secular celebration of a young girl’s rite of passage to maturity,
her role in the community, and, in the United States, that community’s
reassertion of ethnic identity. The ceremony generally begins with a Mass
after the quinceañera enters the church in procession with an entourage
of female attendants, sometimes with male escorts. After the homily and
Communion, the quinceañera offers a prayer and a bouquet of flowers at
the altar of Our Lady of Guadalupe.18
The presence of Latin Americans in cities has contributed to the re-
shaping of U.S. urban life in distinct patterns. Immigrants try to carve out
“sacred spaces” in their city through pilgrimages, festivals, processions,
and other public religious behaviors. There are, of course, no fully repre-
sentative “Latino” or “Hispanic” cities, though the ones featured in this
study—San Antonio, New York, Miami, and Chicago—provide helpful
contrasts and comparisons. Other cities could have been included, and
they are mentioned and recognized in this book as part of the broad scope
of urban Latino Catholicism. San Antonio is examined because there,
more than in any other Mexican-American city, one finds clear historical
patterns of Catholic settlement from the Spanish colonial era through the
present. There you can see Catholic Spain and you can see Mexico, pat-
terns predating twentieth-century Mexican-American developments.
As for Chicago, New York City, and Miami, their choice for study is
self-explanatory given demographic and historical patterns. Latino Chi-
cago, relatively unstudied from a historical perspective, is a city where
large numbers of virtually all major Latino groups have lived for decades
and it has emerged as a Latino mecca of sorts. Here, as elsewhere, large-
scale migration of refugees and immigrants from Central America in the
late twentieth century arose out of civil strife, economic instability, and
Introduction xix

religious persecution in the homeland; these factors affected parish com-

munities in Chicago and elsewhere north of the border. In the United
States, Mexican-American Catholics are dominant numerically, and they
pioneered in the urban Southwest and Midwest. Puerto Ricans and Cu-
bans, meanwhile, have a firm grip in other cities and regions and have
distinctive religious institutions and patterns of popular observance re-
flecting their backgrounds and circumstances.
New ecclesial landscapes emerging among Latinos in the postmodern
city circumvent the parish, opening new forms of immigrant Catholicism.
The tapestry is rich. Public displays of religion, for example popular and/
or Marian devotion expressed in lay organizations such as brotherhoods,
or religious movements such as the cursillos (retreats for laypeople orga-
nized to renew individuals’ Catholic faith), and the charismatic renewal
movement, all represent different aspects of Latino Catholicism. Some
charismatic Catholics—followers of a post-1965 Vatican II movement
within the Church that espouses highly personal, emotional methods of
prayer, often led by priests from the homeland—may refuse to participate
in the feast of the parish’s patron saint because they abstain from alcohol
and dancing. These examples demonstrate a dynamic and open-ended
quality to the concept of the sacred within a wider, increasingly global
context.19
Issues of identity emerge as people “negotiate” religion in new urban
spaces and face new social, economic, and political arrangements, as well
as ethnic tensions, in their daily lives and social networks. Latino Catho-
lic identities are being regenerated in cities and parishes, with pastoral
theology increasingly a part of the process. New cultural and religious
data call for reexamination of contemporary city life as Latino religious
needs are expressed and modified in distinctive ways. New immigrants,
especially women and youth, have contributed to this reformulation, both
within and outside of sanctioned, or official, models of local church orga-
nization. Transnational trends, such as migrants’ participating in parish
activities both in homeland communities and in urban U.S. barrios, will
also be examined here.

The Structure of This Book

Chapter One explores the convergence of European, Caribbean, Mexi-
can, and early North American history that forms the background for
Latino historical identity. Religion lies at the core of this foundation. The
chapter examines the roles of the institutional church and popular reli-
giosity during the formative era of Latino Catholicism on the northern
xx Introduction

frontier of New Spain and (later independent) Mexico and in the His-
panic Caribbean. It places Spanish colonial conflicts in the context of
Anglo-American expansion—the beginnings of manifest destiny and
the conquest of Texas, contrasted with the rapid rise and slow decline of
Spanish colonial power. Preoccupied with slavery, the Western frontier
movement, and European immigration, U.S. historians have tended to
overlook many aspects of this history, while Latin American historians
have not yet fully examined migration and urbanization, particularly in
the twentieth-century transnational context.
Chapter Two highlights San Antonio’s important connection with
the Catholic Church in Mexico in the early twentieth century amid that
country’s revolutionary turmoil. From before the 1910 revolution to
1930, the Church in Mexico faced anticlericalism from the revolution-
ary government and attracted support from the U.S. hierarchy. Religious
workers fled this persecution, including dozens of Mexican priests and
nuns. The hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants who crossed
the border in those two decades brought distinct types of Catholicism
into the mix in hundreds of parishes in the Southwest and Midwest, in
some cases overtaking U.S.-born Tejanos (Texas-born Mexican Ameri-
cans) in terms of influence on religious and secular San Antonio soci-
ety. The chapter shows how Mexican-American Catholicism has resisted
Americanization.
Puerto Rican migrants are the focus of Chapter Three. Like other
groups from Latin America, they came in waves reaching back to the
nineteenth century. Their numbers in New York City grew precipitously
in the 1920s and 1930s, a time when their reception by both the U.S.-run
colonial church in Puerto Rico and the immigrant church in New York
City crystallized. Puerto Rico’s history of unrelieved colonialism under
both Spanish and U.S. rule has played a crucial role in its religious evo-
lution and is examined in this book through urban experiences in the
homeland and the U.S. barrio and through the life of a Puerto Rican
family matriarch. Puerto Ricans’ struggle for an urban identity in the
East Harlem and Brooklyn barrios that they have dominated since 1920
involved religious elements that became first sublimated and then trans-
formed in the face of pressing survival needs, cultural conflicts with non-
Latino clergy and laity, and alienation produced by racial discrimination
in the secular world.
Chapter Four considers top-down episcopal leadership, focusing on
San Antonio, Chicago, and New York, roughly between 1940 and 1965,
a time of considerable Latino migration. The major players at that time
Introduction xxi

were Archbishop Robert E. Lucey in San Antonio, Cardinal Francis

Spellman in New York City, and Cardinals Samuel Stritch and Albert
Meyer in Chicago. During these years in the Southwest and Midwest,
the Bishops Committee for the Spanish-Speaking, a regional bishops’
conference, gave Latino Catholicism a social justice emphasis through
its service to rural and urban immigrants and even, for a spell, to Mexi-
can contract workers participating in the Bracero program. A renewed
and sustained influx of immigrants beginning in the 1940s boosted older
settlements and led to the expansion of parish networks. Especially in the
Northeast and Midwest, immigrants were allowed to develop their own
parishes, and, wherever possible, priests of the same national background
were assigned. The relationship between the United States and Puerto
Rico—unique in both religious and secular terms—allowed for consider-
able experimentation on the part of Spellman and those clerics working
under his charge in the Archdiocese of New York.
Chapter Five describes the attempts of Cuban refugees in Miami to
build a religious community and to reconstruct the society they felt they
had lost through the monumental revolution of Fidel Castro. Cubans
were fierce cold warriors, and much of their activity in Miami was rooted
in their opposition to what was happening in Cuba. But their experience
differed from the typical experiences of other Latino immigrants in that
their inability to return home stripped their experience of many transna-
tional elements. Cubans in Miami received much help in many aspects of
their lives from existing U.S. institutions—both the federal government
and the Catholic Church. Given their continuing political passion, even
their religious shrines became political. The chapter also notes that Mi-
ami’s increasing non-Cuban Latino presence has affected contemporary
developments in Latino Catholicism there.
The case study of Chicago in Chapter Six incorporates suburbaniza-
tion, religion, and transnational identity; it takes an ethnographic ap-
proach, based on oral history interviews, to set Latino Catholics among
European-origin ethnic groups, such as Irish, Czechs, Poles, and Italians,
as well as the area’s large African-American population. In typical central
city parish succession, the formerly Czech-dominated Pilsen neighbor-
hood has become almost exclusively Mexican, and the once Polish/Italian
Humboldt Park neighborhood has become largely Puerto Rican. More-
over, the Chicago metropolis since the 1960s has seen inner suburbs, no-
tably Cicero, Berwyn, and Melrose Park, fill up with large populations of
Mexican Americans and Mexican-born migrants. Demographic changes
have also affected outer suburbs—satellite cities such as Elgin, Aurora, and
xxii Introduction

Waukegan, which increasingly take in new immigrants both from older

Chicago neighborhoods and directly from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and else-
where. Catholic influence on distinct Latino groups has depended on a
host of social, economic, and cultural factors, ranging from the formation
of enclaves of suburbanized rancheros from rural Mexico and Guatemala
to a “brain drain” away from city cores among Puerto Rican professional
migrants, generated by technological advances in edge cities. Faced with
more and differing types of Latino immigrants, the Church has adopted
new survival strategies in Chicago. Mexican and other Latin American
immigrants, meanwhile, have found the Church a useful tool for their
expressing their changing identities, which increasingly extend to home-
land activities, causes, and institutions.
Chapter Seven is mostly a tale of two cities, San Antonio and New
York. It highlights similarities and contrasts in the Latino experience in
the two cities and in the role of the Church in the lives of Latinos in
the two locales. In San Antonio, very capable, even excellent, Mexican
Catholic leaders arose. Reaching well beyond the confines of the his-
toric Mexican city, they imaginatively sought alliances and, through ac-
tivism and working with civil authorities, achieved improvements that
made for better conditions in Latino neighborhoods. Yet these leaders
also kept a distinct religious agenda. This is a testament to their strength.
In New York, urban decay undermined religious collective organizing, so
that Anglo intervention became necessary for organizing, funding, and
even conceptualizing the Latino group. The Puerto Rican rubric proved
unenforceable and, for the archdiocese, undesirable. Much has been ac-
complished, but religious dynamism alone is insufficient for regenerating
Puerto Rican identity as a purely ethnic one, or even as a nexus to a larger
Latino one.
The transnational, hemispheric, indeed global, dimension exempli-
fied by Chicago appears as well in both San Antonio and New York. The
San Antonio Catholic community has launched numerous watershed
movements that reach far beyond the city’s local population in seeking
to foster Latino religious and social solidarity. In New York, new immi-
grant groups, particularly Mexicans, have changed the nature of parish
communities by broadening them into international networks that em-
brace a wide range of political and social services rooted in common na-
tional identity. Global parishes that depend heavily on lay leadership, on
women, and on voluntary organizations such as comités guadalupanos have
tended to embrace Mexican nationalism over a pan-Latino identity. The
work of scholars who have studied the history of Catholic immigrants and
Introduction xxiii

their church in New York City is broadened in this chapter to address

new manifestations of outward piety.
Chapter Eight covers social movements and related developments
both within parish communities and in larger church structures since
1965, when city, region, and ethnicity can be said to have merged into a
more coherent U.S. Latino history. Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans,
Cubans, and Central American refugees reacted differently to the stimuli,
but by 1965 a common outline of a Latino church-within-a-church began
to take shape. Following the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council
that year, ecumenism and a convergence of Catholic and Protestant re-
ligiosity began to take shape. Chapter Eight also provides insights on
the Latino experience in other cities and regions in the United States as
Latin American and Latino Catholics formed new immigrant congrega-
tions in increasingly transnational urban spaces. Significantly, consider-
ation of Washington, D.C., the Atlanta metropolitan region in the heart
of the “Nuevo New South,” and other cityscapes makes possible a new
historical perspective on Latino urban Catholicism. The incorporation of
recent sociological studies of religion and globalization helps in the clari-
fication of analytical frameworks for understanding Latino history, urban
life, and religion.
Finally, the epilogue contextualizes Latino ethnic identity, a growing
field of study. An integrative approach to the history of Latino Catholi-
cism in the United States illuminates both the more established groups
and the more recent immigrants of Central American descent as they
live out their religious practice in different urban milieus. The evolution
of Latino Catholic practices and institutions is closely intertwined with
the changing U.S. urban landscape. Large-scale migration in the twenti-
eth century produced large and stable communities and promises to con-
tinue for the foreseeable future. Understanding the connections among
city, religion, and a continually regenerated ethnic identity is key for ap-
preciating the range and impact of the Latino experience. For centuries,
Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans have brought with them into the
urban United States their Catholicism, the dominant religious tradition
of Latin America. Catholicism has faced, and in turn created, many chal-
lenges in the various phases of Latino settlement in urban areas. Latinos
need to be understood not only for their reception by the old immigrant
church but also for their contributions to its historic evolution.
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Latinos and the New Immigrant Church
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1 Beginnings: Catholic Religious Tradition
in Spain and Latin America

Religion, especially the Catholic religion, has been a primary vehicle in

the evolution of the Latino experience. European, Caribbean, Mexican,
and early North American history are the major threads in the tapes-
try of today’s Latino identity, and Catholic religious tradition has inter-
twined with that history. Yet religion’s primacy has often been ignored in
academic writing and other studies on modern Latinos.1 Unlike modern
voluntary forms of Christianity, religion in the Christendom of the past
was not a matter of personal choice but of birth and soil. In Spain, for
example, Christians considered Jews and Muslims to be foreigners and
aliens even though they lived within common borders and submitted to
royal rule.
The story of Latino Christianity begins in Spain, even before the key
date of 589, when the Visogothic kingdom of Hispania merged church
with state. Several centuries before Christ, Iberian villagers had wor-
shiped fertility and nature gods and goddesses, who they believed con-
trolled their life and surroundings, including the agricultural cycle and
natural disasters. Holy mountains, fertility rites, and other peasant rituals
helped establish a sense of community and define society. Early in the
Christian era, local shrines were set up to honor saints and martyrs, com-
peting with official church parish structures. Popular religion flourished
among peasants in the countryside while ecclesiastical structures of the
official church governed from cities. Several archbishops promoted the
veneration of Mary, in an early foreshadowing of the Marian cults that
enliven Latino spirituality today.2
In 711, the Moors and Berbers entered the Iberian Peninsula from
North Africa and forced many Christians north into the mountains. In
718 the Spaniards began what would become a seven-hundred-year “Re-
conquest” to win back their lands and their people from Moorish rule.
During the 844 Battle of Clavijo in Galicia, in the northwestern part of
the Iberian Peninsula, the apostle James, who according to tradition vis-
ited Hispania shortly after Christ’s death, was said to have intervened as
a mounted warrior in favor of the Spanish armies. Thus he was given the

1
2 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

victorious title Moorslayer. A tomb reported to be James’s was discov-

ered during the ninth century at what would later be known as Santiago
de Compostela. There a shrine was established which attracted medieval
pilgrims from across the Pyrenees, along a trail that centuries later came
to be lined with Christian churches. St. James represented military suc-
cess, and in later centuries he came to be known as Patron of the Recon-
quest.3
In later centuries of the Reconquest, devotion to the Virgin Mary
came to represent another path to Christian unity and victory over the
Moors. Many legends of the reconquered territories told of the discovery
of hidden, miraculous images of Mary. In the most prevalent such legend,
a shepherd was visited by a statue of Mary holding the Divine Child Jesus,
which had been buried by priests fleeing north to the Guadalupe River
Valley in Cáceres when the Moors first invaded Spain. The area near the
river became an important site of devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe as
patroness of the Reconquest. Throughout Spain and its colonies, Catho-
lics came to venerate different manifestations of the Virgin Mary as a
major intercessor who protected them from military enemies as well as
drought, floods, and sickness.4
In Spain as well as in Latin America, the Virgin was known in many
different forms, including Guadalupe, Pilar, and Montserrat. These vary-
ing manifestations often connoted particular attributes of Mary, such as
Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of the Rosary, the Virgin of Remedies
(Remedios), and the Virgin of Sorrows (Dolores). Other representations
were linked to particular locations of religious or secular importance.
Pilgrimage networks connected villages within the region, stimulating
political, social, and economic activity. Guadalupe in Mexico eventually
became the preeminent pilgrimage destination. Following the conquest
of Mexico’s indigenous people, Marian devotion was conflated with pre-
Spanish religious belief. During Hernán Cortes’s conquest of the Aztecs
(1519–21), the Spanish placed images of the Virgin Mary (la Virgen de
Remedios) in indigenous shrines and temples. From this the cult of the
Virgin grew during the sixteenth century, in the midst of societal disinte-
gration and death from disease.5
Devotion to the Spanish Virgin Mary took on new life in Mexico
(New Spain), beginning to flourish around the time of a legendary six-
teenth-century apparition at Tepeyac, the strategic point of entry into the
Valley of Mexico. This hillside area near present-day Mexico City served
as a sanctuary of Tonantzín, the Aztec Mother of all Gods, who had been
immensely popular and revered before the Spanish conquest. In 1648,
Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain and Latin America 3

a criollo priest (Latin American–born person of “pure” European blood),

Miguel Sánchez, wrote a narrative of the shrine of Our Lady of Guada-
lupe at Tepeyac. He described an apparition of la Virgen Morena, “the
dark virgin,” or Guadalupe, to a humble indigenous man named Juan Di-
ego on December 12, 1531. According to this account, despite the win-
ter weather she was said to have given roses to Juan Diego; he wrapped
them in his tilma, a poncholike garment, and when he unfolded the tilma
before Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, it bore the image of the Virgin. The
Sánchez narrative reports that the bishop then ordered the construction
of a church on Mount Tepeyac, sacred ground to the indigenous popula-
tion and one of the four main sacrificial places of the Aztec civilization.6
Eventually, belief in Tonantzín was supplanted by devotion to the mestiza
Virgin of Guadalupe.
In 1649, another criollo, Luis Lasso de la Vega, vicar of the hermitage
of Guadalupe—a local shrine to the Virgin of Extremadura that dated to
1556—published the Nican mopohua, an account attributed to Antonio
Valeriano, a native scholar at the College of Santa Cruz de Tlaltelolco,
arguing that devotion to the Spanish Virgin of Guadalupe originated
with the Indians, not the Spaniards. Written in the Nahuatl language, the
Nican mopohua featured, for the first time in writing, extensive dialogue
between Juan Diego and the Virgin; its content fits well with Nahua (Az-
tec) spirituality.
The Guadalupe devotion, initially concentrated in Mexico City and
environs, had spread through many locales in New Spain by the mid-
eighteenth century, especially in cities linked to the capital but also ex-
tending to distant urban networks on the northern frontier. In 1754 Pope
Benedict XIV declared Guadalupe the patroness of New Spain and estab-
lished December 12 as her feast day.7
Other shrines, chapels, and devotions in Latin America also empha-
sized Marian apparitions, frequently linking local entities with known
European Madonnas. The devotion to Our Lady of Montserrat, with or-
igins in Spain as far back as A.D. 932, had begun with a series of hermit-
ages and came to represent to the region of Catalonia what Guadalupe
meant to Castile. By the sixteenth century, the legend of discovery of a
Mary statue in a mountain cave, where it had been hidden at the start of
the eighth-century Moorish invasion, had been accepted, and a chapel
was erected on the site. The legend is recounted in Catalan-language
songs of praise. In an instance of a transplanted devotion reminiscent of
that of Guadalupe, in the New World Our Lady of Montserrat came to
be venerated with a hilltop shrine in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, a small
4 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

municipality founded in the early seventeenth century in the southwest-

ern portion of that colony. For residents of the Dominican Republic, the
legend of the origins of the painting of Our Lady of Altagracia has the
same function that the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe has for Mexi-
cans, although the names, geography, and other details are different. In
another example, during the early 1600s Castile’s Our Lady of Charity
had become popular in several Spanish cities, especially in Toledo Prov-
ince, which housed a pilgrimage site after 1562. This name of the Virgin
eventually became that of the patroness of the island of Cuba, based on a
seventeenth-century apparition in Cobre, Cuba.8
Spain transferred tight links between the church and the state to its
transatlantic colonies, as religion and politics shaped Latin American co-
lonial Christianity in the wake of the explorations of Christopher Colum-
bus. Spanish monarchs Fernando and Isabela sought and received papal
approval confirming Spanish jurisdiction and creating the famous line of
demarcation between their acquisitions and those of the Portuguese;these
were further clarified in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, which granted
Portugal permanent claim to the eastern area that was colonized as Bra-
zil. The pope charged Spain and Portugal with Christianization of the
native peoples of the new lands and issued the patronato real, which made
the king the head of the New World church except in matters of dogma.
The Spanish Crown thus gained papal power in ecclesiastical affairs, in-
cluding the appointment of bishops, becoming the pope’s vicar in the
New World. The patronato was a power over the church hierarchy (the
archbishops, bishops, members of the ecclesiastical cabildo, or council,
and priests). The state,in the person of the king, and through the council,
viceroys, governors, and the like, had total control of all the mechanisms
of the Church.9
The class system of modern Latin America has roots in Spanish Ca-
tholicism. In the mid-fifteenth century, purity-of-blood laws had been
decreed in Spain to keep conversos from Judaism and Islam out of posi-
tions of power and to keep “Old Christians” from intermarriage so as
to “protect” Catholicism. Proof of purity was needed to join the royal
service or enter into the professions. Although the purity-of-blood laws
were initially applied to distinguish Old Christians from newer converts,
the system came to encompass formal racial subcategories that restricted
the activities of Jews and Moors in Spain. Largely because of this, a caste
system developed throughout Latin America, with legal and social dis-
crimination aimed at enforcing the concept of “purity of blood.” These
statutes of limpieza de sangre took on racial dimensions in colonial Latin
Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain and Latin America 5

America and came to stigmatize individuals of Indian and African ances-

try. Anyone seeking to live in the colonies underwent a background check
on racial origin, genealogy, and religious beliefs. In these colonies, the
native-born Christians, or criollos, were considered second-class Chris-
tians. During the colonial centuries, only Spaniards and their criollo sons
were admitted to the ordained ministry.10

Urban Conquests in Mexico and the Southwest

The first Catholic church in the New World opened in Hispaniola in
1503. Ecclesiastical rule was retained in Seville until the following year,
when the pope set up the basic structure of an archdiocese on Hispaniola.
In 1511, at the request of King Fernando, Pope Julius II established the
diocese of Puerto Rico. The Diocese of Puerto Rico and those of Santo
Domingo and Concepción de la Vega in Hispaniola were the first three
dioceses of the newly settled territories. In 1517 another was established
in Cuba. Clerics conducted missions among the native Taíno Indians as
part of the Spanish conquest; once the Taíno could repeat simple prayers
and show obedience, they were considered converted.11
Santo Domingo, San Juan, and Havana became fortified harbors and
had cathedrals, centers of institutional Catholicism, from the 1500s for-
ward. Smaller towns had parish churches located in central plazas that also
served as gathering places and conduits of news from the wider world. Af-
ter several failed attempts dating back to 1513, the first permanent (and
still functioning) settlement of Spanish Catholics in North America was
launched at St. Augustine, Florida, on September 8, 1565.
Throughout the colonial period, the Hispanic Caribbean and the in-
habitants of its capital cities remained subservient to Spain in religious
and secular matters. By 1608, Havana was home to more than half of
Cuba’s twenty thousand inhabitants, and Cuba dominated the entrance
to the Gulf of Mexico and hence the route to and from Veracruz, Mex-
ico, as well as the principal exits from the Caribbean Sea, through which
a sizable percentage of South American trade passed. By 1630 Havana
had largely replaced Santo Domingo as a military center. Meanwhile,
San Juan, whose walled and fortified perimeter withstood assaults on the
harbor by land and sea, permitting outside communication only at several
gates at the foot of the enclosure, descended to third place among capitals
of the Hispanic Caribbean. Puerto Rico, the eastern bastion against at-
tacks by British and other European marauders, was forbidden to trade
even with neutral or friendly ports or to conduct unregulated coastal
traffic.12
6 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

The “Black Legend” of Spanish cruelty in the New World became

known largely through the writings of Father Bartolomé de Las Casas
in the Indies and was invoked during Anglo-Spanish conflicts in the late
sixteenth century. Imperial justification of Indian enslavement had infuri-
ated Las Casas, who believed that gold mining was deadly labor for the
natives and sinful for Europeans. Las Casas believed that war and its evils
made Indians despise the Christian religion.13 While serving as a chaplain
during the Spanish conquest of Cuba, Las Casas noted numerous atroci-
ties committed against villagers by the Spaniards, who, “not content with
what the Indians freely gave, took their wretched subsistence from them,
and some, going further, chased after their wives and daughters.”14 Las
Casas wanted the Indians to be converted by the force of the gospel mes-
sage, not by force of arms. Only when the Church managed to separate
itself from Spanish culture, notes Latin American historian Enrique Dus-
sel, did the gospel message make great headway among the Indians.15
The conversion of Mexico, meanwhile, was entrusted to three men-
dicant orders: the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Augustinians. By
far the largest religious order in rural Spain was the Franciscans. In New
Spain that regular order took charge of several towns, including Tlate-
lolco, Texcoco, and Xochimilco, as well as the Aztec capital of Tenoch-
titlán, with some 200,000 inhabitants, several times more populous than
any Spanish city at the time.16
Many of these missionaries, confronted with Aztec beliefs, rituals,
and feasts, took these cultural elements as the starting point for evange-
lization, and some incorporated Aztec customs into the conversion pro-
cess. In the first great wave of missionary Catholicism in Mexico follow-
ing Cortes’s conquest, Dominicans established themselves south of the
capital, around Oaxaca. Subsequently, Franciscan missionaries pushed
northward and dominated evangelization throughout New Spain. Mis-
sions were conceived as temporary measures to evangelize Indians, who
would receive spiritual care from clergy of the religious orders until they
could be cared for by diocesan clergy. Missions were often completely
self-sufficient units, although they depended on towns for certain sup-
plies. Mission land was distributed among colonists, each of whom also
received a dwelling plot inside municipal limits. The vast population of
newly ordained priests in the Americas sparked missionary zeal. As part of
Spain’s tradition of conquest and colonization, regular clerics (those who
belonged to orders), led by Franciscans, missionized the Indians, while
the seculars (priests under diocesan control) ministered to the Spanish
laity of developing colonial towns.17
Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain and Latin America 7

Secularization of the missions—in this case, secularization meant turn-

ing the missions into parishes under control of the diocesan clergy—was
considered a key step in colonial maturity. In theory, the Indians would
then assume all the rights and duties of Spanish citizens, the mission
church would be converted to a parish church, and the missionaries
would be relieved of all powers of direction over the Indians. In reality,
this rarely happened.
One distinctly Latin American practice that emerged early on was
the formation of the cofradía, or confraternity. These lay organizations,
rooted in medieval Spain, played a large role in financing parish activities,
collaborated on a wide range of activities geared toward popular devotion,
and facilitated ties between community and church. Cofradías emerged
in northern New Spain, and their legacy lasted into the Mexican and
U.S. era in the Southwest, as they often eluded the control and approval
of cchurch authorities, fostering religious independence. A cofradía often
began when a group of parishioners—and occasionally a local function-
ary—agreed to donate livestock to cover the basic costs of public worship.
Neither parish- nor clergy-centered, the cofradías’ religion was rooted in
devotion to a saint. The cofradía trend was expressed in the building of
many small private chapels, replicas of the large mission churches built
by individual families as well as the religious brotherhoods. The seven-
teenth century witnessed a proliferation of cofradías centered on the Vir-
gin Mary, not surprisingly, given the widespread and fervent veneration
of the Holy Mother prominent in both Spain and America.18
Missionaries and settlers began penetrating today’s U.S. Southwest
from Mexico as far back as the 1530s. New Spain came to be charac-
terized by changing territorial frontiers, shifting imperial alignments,
and widening commercial relationships. Its northern borderland areas
lacked a stationary indigenous population such as existed in the Valley
of Mexico before the conquest. In what eventually became New Mex-
ico, Texas, Arizona, and California, missions generally accompanied, and
were connected to, military and civilian outposts. Spanish colonial pueb-
los, more than mere towns, served as self-contained urban units wherein
settlers could not sell their lands, as absolute title to these belonged to
the Crown. Mission chapels, in addition to tending to Indian converts,
provided pastoral care for Spaniards who served the military garrisons or
lived in civilian communities.19
Spanish priests deliberately built Christian churches on sites where
Indians had been accustomed to worship their own gods, such as in Te-
peyac. In their evangelization of the Americas, the priests organized autos
8 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

de fe, dramatizations of biblical scenes performed by the laity, usually in

the atrium in front of a church. In the late 1500s the conquest intensified
in Nuevo Mexico, the largest populated frontier settlement, roughly the
settled core area of the upper Rio Grande Valley (considerably smaller
than the state of New Mexico today). Franciscan friars accompanied Juan
de Oñate to New Mexico in 1598 and immediately began building mis-
sions and attempting to Christianize the Indians. By 1629 they had su-
pervised the construction of fifty mission churches in Pueblo Indian vil-
lages and had “converted” roughly fifty thousand Indians. Demographic
decline among the Pueblos resulted from the introduction of European
diseases, yet recurring epidemics caused Indians to flock to the missions
for food and protection.20
On the eve of a great revolt in 1680, the Spanish population totaled
approximately twenty-eight hundred, while the Pueblo Indians of the re-
gion totaled about seventeen thousand. Pueblos, led by the cleric Popé,
rose up against the Spanish colonizers at Taos, killing some two-thirds of
the Franciscan friars, burning San Miguel chapel in the Santa Fe plaza,
and destroying other Christian churches while restoring sacred native
sites. The Pueblo Revolt forced a Spanish retreat to El Paso for more
than a decade, until Spanish nobleman Diego de Vargas recaptured New
Mexico in 1693. Spanish missionaries then reestablished missions at nu-
merous Indian pueblos. The Pueblo Revolt makes vivid the clash of civi-
lizations along the northern Spanish frontier in connection with mission
settlements.21
In a subsequent entrada, or colonial thrust—this time into the part of
northern Mexico called Tejas, on New Spain’s northeastern frontier—the
city of San Antonio served as the key urban nucleus. Founded in 1718,
the city was a mixture of civil, military, and religious settlements that had
begun when Franciscan Father Antonio Olivares, accompanied by Span-
ish soldiers, established a settlement in a fertile river valley that served
as a base thereafter for missionary activities among the Coahuiltecan In-
dians and other tribes along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Spain had
positioned a presidio (garrison) on the site.22 San Antonio, the major U.S.
city that remains the most Mexican in culture, is a case of a city that grew
up around a mission. Mission San Antonio occupied three different lo-
cations before its move in 1718 to the San Antonio River, where it took
a new name, San Antonio de Valero. A year later it relocated to the east
bank of the river, a more suitable site with better ground that was more
easily irrigated.
In 1731 the missionaries gathered at the San Antonio presidio to for-
Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain and Latin America 9

mally reestablish three missions at new, permanent locations on the San

Antonio River. Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de
Acuña had first been established several hundred miles to the east in 1716
and now was relocated to San Antonio along with Mission Espada. Mis-
sion San Juan Capistrano was also moved from eastern Tejas and placed
halfway between Mission San José (founded in San Antonio in 1720) and
Mission Espada.23
The settlers’ area, known in 1731 as San Fernando de Béjar, consisted
of a villa, a presidio, and five missions. After first holding religious ser-
vices in a makeshift chapel, in 1738 the settlers in San Antonio initiated
the construction of a parish church, San Fernando, primarily for recently
arrived Canary Islanders. The church was built by soldiers and civilian
settlers and opened in 1749. Beginning in 1755, notes theologian Timo-
thy Matovina, diocesan clergy and San Fernando parishioners pledged to
celebrate the feast of Guadalupe annually. The church has since served as
a site of baptism, marriage, and Mass. Under U.S. rule, in 1874 the Dio-
cese of San Antonio was carved out of the Galveston Diocese, and San
Fernando Church became a cathedral.24
By 1792 San Antonio was home to Spaniards, Indians, and mestizos; a
significant number of mestizos settled on the outskirts of the settlement,
southwest of Mission San Antonio de Valero. The San Antonio missions
operated sizable farms and ranches that not only provided for the mission
communities but also produced surpluses, sending maize, meat, tallow, and
livestock to other parts of Tejas and to northern regions. In return, they im-
ported a variety of manufactured goods, including clothing, shoes, knives,
and saddles. Under Spanish and later Mexican rule, the pueblos that had
grown up alongside the mission system remained small and relatively un-
important settlements. The Spanish missions, however, were only one stra-
tegic and temporary facet of a broader and more enduring emergence of
resilient local churches on the northern frontier of New Spain. Soon the
settler population far surpassed that of the missionized Indians, boosted by
immigration from the south and east and reinforced by the military protec-
tion of Spanish settlements.25
In 1824, the secularization of San Antonio—the transfer of respon-
sibility for religious ministry from missionaries to parish authorities and
the distribution of the property and possessions of the mission to its resi-
dents—started in the early 1790s, was complete. Ecclesiastical supervision
fell to the pastor of San Antonio’s parish church, San Fernando, who soon
parceled out mission land to local residents. The dismantling of the mis-
sions was accompanied by a rapid decrease of Franciscans on the frontier
10 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

in the 1820s and 1830s. By the 1830s, when a revolution brought about
the creation of the independent Republic of Texas, the missions had lost
their religious significance and were little more than abandoned ruins.
Under the Republic of Texas, Catholics in Texas remained nominally un-
der the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Monterrey in northern Mexico, but
this left them for all practical purposes cut off from official ecclesiastical
oversight due to the heightened animosity between Texas and Mexico.
Parishes first appeared with the establishment of formal towns and
grew as missions became secularized in the last decades of the Spanish
colonial period. Parish priests played significant roles in visiting the sick,
saying Mass, and coordinating observances of the faithful for feast days
and other ceremonies, often in remote locations.26

Spain’s Power Dwindles: Religion and

Anglo-American Occupation
By the 1780s, Spain was losing its influence on the North American con-
tinent. Increasingly, Catholic Spanish-Mexican settlers clashed with in-
coming Anglo Americans on several frontiers. Unable to attract enough
colonists from Spain or its American colonies, Spanish officials began in
the mid-1780s to allow Protestant immigrants from the United States to
settle in Louisiana and Florida, which were under Spanish rule at that
time. Believing that many of the inhabitants of U.S. western territories
were not strongly attached to the U.S. government, the Spanish hoped to
transform them into colonial subjects. To attract them, Spain promised
free lands and commercial privileges to those immigrants who took loyalty
oaths and agreed to become Catholics. The template for manifest destiny
had been created as New Spain’s (later Mexico’s) northeast border became
increasingly vulnerable due to a lack of sufficiently populated settlements
and neglect from the distant capital.
Between 1763 and the late eighteenth century, Louisiana and Flor-
ida belonged to the Diocese of Santiago, Cuba. Father Luis Peñalver y
Cárdenas, born of a prominent Havana criollo family, became the first
bishop of the Louisiana Diocese, established in 1793; it was centered in
New Orleans and extended to sparsely populated Spanish Florida, south-
ern Alabama and Mississippi, Louisiana, and lands north of central Okla-
homa between the Rockies and the Mississippi River. In his almost four
years of service, Peñalver y Cárdenas decried the widespread practice of
concubinage with slaves and worked with the Ursuline Sisters to expand
education. Peñalver also assumed many priestly duties on the frontier, ca-
tering to a dispersed Spanish civilian and military population. Beginning
Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain and Latin America 11

in 1802. he served as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Guatemala, and in

1805 he retired to Havana.27
In 1800, Napoleon conquered Spain and regained Louisiana for
France, only to pass the territory on to the U.S. government, which
bought it for $15 million in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The west-
ern border of the United States was now at the Mississippi, and the U.S.
Diocese of New Orleans now fell under the jurisdiction of Baltimore-
based bishop John Carroll. Following the U.S. purchase of Spanish Flor-
ida in 1819, Texas, partly under Spanish and partly under Mexican rule,
emerged as the next significant diplomatic and territorial point of con-
flict, as the push for manifest destiny was on. Here, as in the Mississippi
Valley a generation earlier, mostly Protestant U.S. immigrants were re-
quired by Spanish frontier officials to respect Catholicism as a condition
of their entry.28
Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821. The Mexican Con-
stitution of 1824 recognized Catholicism as the national religion, but the
government’s lack of vigorous enforcement of a Catholic immigration
requirement led to a policy of unofficial religious tolerance that threat-
ened a frontier Catholicism already made tenuous by a lack of clergy. In
1821, Mexico offered Stephen Austin a generous grant of prime Texas
farmland in order to populate the northern region. This marked the first
step in Mexico’s loss of its northern territories to U.S.-born empresarios,
functionaries of the Mexican government who were licensed to introduce
U.S. settlers into the territory. Entry was offficially restricted to “Roman
Catholics of good character willing to become citizens of the country,”
but this prohibition against the entry of Protestants was rarely enforced
on the frontier.29
During the early 1830s, Mexico’s centralist government’s unsuccess-
ful attempts to control immigration into Tejas, which was still part of
Mexico, spurred an alliance between Anglo Americans and Tejanos in re-
bellion against Mexico. Tejanos with republican sympathies participated
in several battles, including the famous Battle of the Alamo, where several
fought and died alongside Anglo Americans. In 1836, in the wake of the
establishment of the independent Republic of Texas, San Antonio’s Mexi-
can population of fifteen hundred faced a sustained and successful Anglo-
American onslaught. The newcomers included white Protestant south-
erners and sometimes their slaves, as well as northerners and a growing
variety of European-born settlers of various Protestant denominations.
They began to reshape the city and gain positions of power through
force of numbers, political maneuvering, and sometimes intermarriage
12 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

with wealthy Tejanos. Many Tejanos lost their lands under an unfamiliar
justice system: in costly litigation in English-language courts, ownership
had to be proved by families that had lived on the land for generations.30
Unresolved territorial struggles laid the foundation for the Mexican-
American War of 1846–48, which culminated with the transfer of over
one-third of Mexico’s pre-1936 territory to the United States, adding
California, Arizona, and other southwestern border territories while for-
mally ceding Texas. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in Febru-
ary 1848, allowed those in the annexed territories to remain and “either
retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens, or acquire those of citizens
of the United States.” Most were incorporated into the United States and
granted citizenship; the others were nonetheless guaranteed “the free en-
joyment of their liberty and property, and secured in the free exercise of
their religion without restriction.”31
At the outset of the Mexican-American War, San Antonio had had
only one thousand inhabitants, with hundreds having fled to throughout
Texas and to points further south due to wartime conditions. After the
war, French clergy entered San Antonio and established churches, col-
leges, and seminaries that formed the core of institutional Catholicism.
Bishop Jean-Marie Odin came to the Texas-Mexico border and estab-
lished many rural mission churches for Tejanos as part of the Galveston
Diocese, and in 1850 French clergy begin to replace Mexican clergy. Ap-
pointed vice prefect apostolic of Texas in 1840, Odin removed two native
priests at San Antonio, Fathers Refugio de la Garza and José Antonio
Valdez, accusing them of mismanagement of parish coffers and concu-
binage, and appointed a Spaniard to pastor at San Fernando. After 1851
the Ursuline Academy, staffed by nuns, attracted the daughters of some
of the city’s older Tejano families as well as more recent Anglo arrivals.
The Ursuline Sisters also received many pupils from Mexico, including
the daughters of Mexican governors, senators, and generals, despite the
perils of distant travel.32
By 1861 Bishop Odin had repaired the church at Mission Concepción
and turned it over, along with “the ruins of the old monastery and the
splendid land which adjoins them,” to the Brothers of Mary; Mission San
José went to the Benedictines, who established a monastery there and
cultivated the fields. Meanwhile, the two missions farther south benefited
from the efforts of another French priest, who had arrived in San An-
tonio in 1855. In 1858, Father Francis Bouchu was named parish priest
and was able to rehabilitate several of the dilapidated mission churches
so that they could be put back into use. “Padre Francisco” also composed
Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain and Latin America 13

and distributed a Spanish-language catechism that came to be employed

widely in Texas and New Mexico; it was adopted in 1896 as the official
catechism for Spanish speakers in the Diocese of San Antonio.33
San Fernando Parish remained a stronghold of Tejano culture and
Catholicism, a cohesive force within a city that had become predomi-
nantly Protestant in the 1850s. St. Mary’s Church became the mother
parish of San Antonio’s German- and English-speaking (mainly Irish)
Catholics in 1857, and newcomers built their own parishes thereafter,
including several modeled as national, or language, parishes. Nine par-
ishes emerged between 1857 and 1910, but San Fernando was the only
one for Tejanos, with the dwindling Spanish missions still operating, but
only barely. Mexican folk religion survived in some locations, notably in
the Chapel of Miracles, a private family chapel built in the 1870s near
downtown, which featured a Spanish colonial crucifix on the main altar;
reportedly it was a remnant of the old mission church of San Antonio de
Valero and exhibited miraculous properties.
Tejano culture continued to permeate religion and other realms of
frontier society. Texas had become the Anglo-American gateway to Mex-
ico, while it retained its old identity as a patria chica, a minihomeland or
country within a country.34

Latino Religious Roots in Mexico and the Hispanic Caribbean

At the start of the Spanish enterprise in the Western Hemisphere, the
Caribbean was the center of interest and of administration. After explor-
ers entered Mexico and Peru a few decades later, Spain’s focus shifted
to establishing those regions as new viceroyalties. During the early-
nineteenth-century wars of independence, Cuba and Puerto Rico in-
creasingly came to depend economically on the United States. Mean-
while, U.S. expansionists proposed annexation of the Southwest along
with other parts of Mexico and Cuba. Cuba and Puerto Rico remained
part of the diminished Spanish colonial empire until the Spanish-Ameri-
can War of 1898, when both islands came under U.S. jurisdiction. Cuba
became an independent republic in 1902, while Puerto Rico has remained
a U.S. territory.
On the islands, mobilization against the Napoleonic invasion of Spain
in 1808 strengthened the traditional identification of Catholic faith and
Spanish nation. After 1820, however, Caribbean-born criollos evinced
sparks of nationalism. In the 1830s, violent anticlericalism broke out in
Madrid and in other major cities of Spain, resulting in the expulsion of
priests and confiscation of church property. By the mid-nineteenth cen-
14 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

tury, the phenomenon of “the two Spains,” a Catholic Hispanic Spain and
a liberal Europeanizing one, had appeared. The 1868 “Glorious Revolu-
tion” brought a brief religious disestablishment and greater religious tol-
erance, lasting until 1873 in Spain and to a lesser extent in the colonies.
Catholicism did remain the state religion during this time, though anar-
chist and socialist ideologies spread in spite of clerical opposition.
In both Cuba and Puerto Rico, the increasingly nationalistic elite of-
ten opposed the Church’s support of Spanish colonialism. Spain’s neglect
of its Caribbean colonies and growing nationalism within them inspired
separate criollo-led revolts in 1868 in Cuba and Puerto Rico, with vary-
ing results. While 50,000 Cubans and over 150,000 Spaniards lost their
lives during the Cuban Ten Years’ War, which developed into an all-out
separatist struggle, only a handful died in the Puerto Rican revolt, known
as the Grito de Lares, which lasted only a few days and was limited to a
small part of the highland region. After the Grito’s prompt suppression,
Ramón Emeterio Betances, Eugenio María de Hostos, and other Puerto
Rican separatists cast their lot with Cuba, hoping in vain for an inde-
pendent Puerto Rico and an Antillean Union. Beginning in 1868, the
Puerto Rican separatist movement increasingly called for the separation
of church and state and sought the elimination of ecclesiastical privileges
in a colonial regime that denied religious and other freedoms throughout
the nineteenth century.35
During the Ten Years’ War from 1868 to 1878, which began the
struggle for political independence of Cuba, most rural clergy on the is-
land were Cuban. Several priests participated in the struggle for inde-
pendence and were persecuted for it. During the decade of insurrection,
many Cuban families migrated to Key West, Tampa, and New York City.
The end of the war accelerated the emigration from Havana of work-
ers, mainly from the tobacco industry. They took refuge, sought work,
and formed mutual-aid societies, cooperatives, and unions that increas-
ingly linked Cuba and Florida. In 1890 José Martí, architect of the Cuban
revolution, founded the Liga de Instrucción to gather support from exiles
for independence, and later in Tampa and Key West he recruited sup-
porters and collected donations from Cuban cigar makers. In 1892 Martí
founded the Partido Revolucionario Cubano, which sought the indepen-
dence of Cuba and aided Puerto Rican patriots as well. Martí made New
York a vital link in Cuban independence between 1890 and 1895, also
drawing support from New York’s small but growing Puerto Rican exile
and tabaquero community. Key West’s cigar community conspired against
Spain and helped launch the final war of independence in 1895.36
Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain and Latin America 15

Cuba’s Forgotten Church

Throughout the nineteenth century, when Cuba became the most wealthy
sugar-producing nation in the Caribbean, the Church defended the insti-
tution of slavery, as it had done throughout the colonial era. Yet, accord-
ing to sociologist Lisandro Perez, the sugar revolution in Cuba from the
late eighteenth to the middle nineteenth century contributed to religious
secularization and relative indifference to official Catholicism. The sugar
planters’ new technologies allowed for the construction of larger mills,
replacing the semipatriarchal social order of slavery under which owners
had hired a part-time priest to serve at a small chapel. With the expan-
sion of the mills, competing economic pressures increased to minimize
the presence of the Church, or at least prevent it from keeping pace with
planters’ acquisition of additional land and slaves. Owners became reluc-
tant to grant slaves time to practice the sacraments, to receive religious
training, and to observe Sundays and religious holidays. Conflicts with
the Church also arose over tithing and the opening of cemeteries on land
owned by the mills.37
Africans had been brought to Cuba from a vast region in western
Africa and from Mozambique on the eastern coast, and thus different
dialects developed in distinct geographic areas of Cuba. Cuban slavery
was most prevalent among western planters; planters’ enterprises were
smaller in the east, where a large free mulatto, or mixed-blood, popula-
tion arose. Afro-Cubans retained much of their language, religion, and
musical heritage into the twentieth century, and indeed, much of that
heritage remains strong in Cuban culture today.38
Church structures withered further with the large numbers of arriv-
als from Africa, as African religious beliefs began to blend with Catho-
lic practices. The syncretic process that led to Santería developed over
three centuries. Cabildos de nación were institutions that stimulated syn-
cretism and provided the context in which the new Afro-Cuban religions
were nurtured. African “nations” were organized into cabildos—religious
brotherhoods with origins in medieval Spain that the Cuban Church be-
gan organizing in 1598 under the direction of diocesan priests. The ca-
bildos, whose purpose was to fit African customs into the Church’s wor-
ship, became centers of urban social life. At the end of the eighteenth
century, there was rapid growth in the number of cabildos in Havana,
and many moved their music and ceremonies outside the city walls. The
countryside had no cabildos, but on holidays Catholic authorities permit-
ted blacks to assemble in the batey, or alleyways between buildings, to re-
16 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

hearse their sacred dances. The hybrid tradition of Santería evolved from
the Lucumí cabildos (Lucumí is a West African linguistic dialect).39
The African presence proved a major influence on island religious
practices. Cuban blacks used major church feast days as occasions for the
celebration of their own rites, syncretized with Catholic rites. Yoruba dei-
ties, or guardian spirits, known as orishas, became identified with Catholic
saints: Oshún became known as the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (Our
Lady of Charity), Santa Bárbara became conflated with Shangó, and so
forth. During Easter week, observance of the death and passion of Christ
replaced the mourning for deceased royal ancestors.
Spain had paid little attention to the Church in Cuba, and the island
was always understaffed, with priests concentrated in cities, especially the
capital. Generally, Cuban society tended to have a more secular character
than other Spanish colonies had, although Havana and other large cities
remained Catholic strongholds. In Cuba in the middle of the eighteenth
century, almost all of the rural clergy were criollos, and there was a Cu-
ban-born bishop from Santiago. Popular Catholicism was generally weak
in Cuba, and the impact of the Church was particularly weak in rural ar-
eas of the island. The Catholic Church limited its evangelistic activities to
the white elite, leaving a wide sector practicing Afro-Cuban religion. In
the countryside, many people had not seen a priest since baptism, though
religious festivals played a significant part in devotional life, especially
celebrations of Good Friday, the Epiphany, and the feast days of Santa
Bárbara, San Lázaro, and Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre.40
Cuban devotion to the patroness dates to the early 1600s. According
to one narrative, two Indian brothers and a boy slave saw a carved statue
of the Virgin Mary floating on a piece of wood on a bay near the copper
mines of Cobre, on the northwestern tip of the island. She was brought
ashore, and then the statue disappeared; it later reappeared, and a church
was built on the spot where she was found. Over time the devotion spread
westward throughout Cuba. La Virgen came to take on nationalistic over-
tones during the nineteenth-century wars for independence from Spain.
Some soldiers fighting for independence, los mambises, adopted her as
their patroness and carried her image with them into battle, which is the
reason she came to be referred to as la Virgen Mambisa.41
Cuba had been influenced by the same ideological trends that spurred
independence movements throughout the Latin American mainland, but
Cubans were unable to put that ideology into successful action early in the
nineteenth century. The Spanish did face unsuccessful challenges from
criollo insurgencies later, in the 1860s and 1870s. Despite the greater
Catholic Religious Tradition in Spain and Latin America 17

concentration of Spanish military power on Cuba, Cubans found it eas-

ier to combat Spanish colonialism than did Puerto Ricans due to their
island’s greater size, topographical diversity, and geography, among other
factors. The 1774 inauguration of the Seminario San Carlos y San Am-
brosio, a college and seminary catering to Cuba’s elite, had served to open
up awareness of Cuba apart from Spain. Among the leading faculty mem-
bers was Félix Varela y Morales (1788–1853), Cuba’s “first revolution-
ary,” an abolitionist and promoter of Cuban independence. Varela served
briefly in 1822 as representative in the Spanish Cortes, or parliament,
where he presented bills calling for the abolition of slavery and autonomy
from Spain. After being exiled from the colonies, he arrived in the United
States in 1823 and launched El Habanero, a paper dedicated to science,
literature, politics, and faith. In the 1830s Varela developed a legendary
reputation for his work among Irish immigrants in New York’s dangerous
Five Points District, where he founded Transfiguration Church, created
dozens of schools and social services for the city’s poor, and rose to be-
come vicar-general of the New York Archdiocese.42
A general perception of the Church as pro-Spanish, an enemy of Cu-
ban independence, contributed to the weakness of the Catholic Church
in Cuba. Protestant denominations received a major push with the grow-
ing interest of the United States in Cuba, the Spanish-Cuban-American
War, the U.S. occupation of the island from 1898 to 1902, and the influx
of U.S. capital and influence during the first two decades of the twentieth
century.43

Puerto Ricans in the Spanish Colonial Church

Puerto Rican towns developed under royal auspices, with a church located
in each central plaza. In the seventeenth century the towns of Arecibo,
Aguada, and Ponce were visited occasionally by priests from San Juan
in the northeast and San German in the southwest. From their towns
of residence, priests journeyed out to create additional royal towns. In
the eighteenth century over a dozen new towns were founded, including
Mayaguez on the west coast and Santurce, Río Piedras, and Bayamón
near the capital. Many new interior towns were gradually populated by
Spanish colonists, including retired military personnel and former cattle
ranchers. The mountain towns remained isolated from imperial ecclesi-
astical control, and the highlanders, known as jíbaros, resisted attempts by
civil and ecclesiastical authorities to fully integrate them into the larger
colonial system and chose to develop religious practices by innovation.44
Popular Catholicism in Puerto Rico, then, evolved independently of
18 Latinos and the New Immigrant Church

the sacramental life of the Church. In the more isolated areas, devotion
to saints and the rosary constituted the only doctrinal training, which was
anchored to the saintly cycle of the liturgical calendar, the veneration of
Mary, and the preservation of certain rites and observances, such as el
echar agua (the pouring of water for baptism in the absence of a priest).
Baptism, according to theologian Jaime Vidal “the most important sacra-
ment in the Puerto Rican popular mind,” remained important for bring-
ing a child into the religious community. With the shortage of clergy
in the latter part of the nineteenth century, delays in baptizing children
became more common, as did emergency lay baptism by midwives. The
relationship between godparents and godchild, as well as between god-
parents and blood parents, who became coparents (compadres), became a
strong bond comparable to kinship.45
In 1645 the Spanish bishop in Puerto Rico mandated the frequency of
people’s expected attendance at religious services, based on proximity to
churches. Those within one or two leagues were to hear Mass every other
Sunday, those farther away once a month, others still more removed ev-
ery other month, while those who lived more than six leagues from the
parish church had to attend only on Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and
one of the Sundays of Lent. This ruling remained in force throughout
the colonial period. By the early part of the nineteenth century, at least
half the priests on the island were Puerto Rican, but in spite of the found-
ing of Puerto Rico’s sole institution of secondary education, San Juan’s
Conciliar Seminary, the proportion of natives to Spaniards in holy or-
ders steadily decreased. Many priests remained within the walled capital,
primarily in the cathedral and the two friaries, while the population was
scattered across the island.46
From 1765 to 1810, Puerto Rico underwent rapid population growth,
going from 45,000 to 183,000 inhabitants, but the island was still sparsely
populated, and the population was overwhelmingly rural, as ranching and
subsistence farming attracted families from the coast. The lifestyle of the
independent Puerto Rican peasant changed from that of cattle herder to
that of mountain peasant—the jíbaro of the mountains, planter of subsis-
tence crops such as plantains, followed by cash crops such as tobacco and
finally coffee. With the rise of coffee production for large-scale export in
the mid-1800s, many jíbaros were displaced by jornaleros (day laborers)
working on coastal haciendas. The interior withstood outside forces better
than the coast did. Landless criollos were pushed to the interior with the
usurpation of coastal lands by sugar interests and by a massive importa-
tion of slaves, which enlivened coastal commerce. Then, with population
Exploring the Variety of Random
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Keeper of the
Deathless Sleep
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Title: Keeper of the Deathless Sleep

Author: Albert dePina

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KEEPER OF THE

DEATHLESS SLEEP ***
Keeper of the Deathless Sleep
 by Albert De Pina

Nardon, the Correlator, had banded together the

greatest brains of the Solar System to battle the
menace spawned by Saturn—was leading them into
the stronghold of the Energasts themselves.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Planet Stories Winter 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"We cannot fight," Antaran said. "Not now.... We must be patient a
while longer. Venus still holds the secret of Vulcan base and without
allotropic metal our fleet would be so much papier mache!" He fell
silent.
In the soft, smoky-blue twilight of the great subterranean room
beneath the Universarium, Bill Nardon gazed expressionlessly at the
angular austerity of the Council Leader's face, and remained silent.
"Three more spacers today!" Antaran sank slowly into the yielding
firmness of a priceless crysto-plast chair. "Disappeared...." He
paused. "Must you have this hellish blue fog, Bill?" He frowned in
distaste. Bill Nardon smiled slowly from where he lay on a great
couch of alabastrine, utterly relaxed. "Would you rather have a
mountain night, a summer twilight, or dawn?" His great shoulders
shook a little with silent laughter until the mane of dark red hair that
hung to his shoulders seemed to twinkle with pinpoints of light. He
pressed a series of selectors on the back of the couch, and slowly a
rosy light like a tardy dawn diffused through the room together with
the smell of the sea. "Don't look so outraged, Antaran; that Spartan
conditioning of yours is a tragedy!" The aged Council leader shrugged
his shoulders.
"Listen to me!" Antaran said brusquely. "Half a hundred thousand
men and women from six planets cannot be hidden away like so
much plunder. Sooner or later someone is bound to escape and give
away the mystery. Yet months have passed and no trace of them has
been found. Correlate that!"
He sniffed at the marvelously fresh odor of the sea and blinked at the
rose-gold light of the static dawn as if it weren't a scientific and
artistic miracle, but something not quite decent.
"The loss in terms of life and treasure is negligible. It's what it
purports in the long run that's serious. Already Venus has clamped
down on shipments of radio-actives and Mars has declared limited
martial law. No trade with Neptune is possible in the face of their
embargo, and the European coalition of Terrans and Panadurs have
closed their world! The logical development of this psychological state
of nerves is...."
"War." Bill Nardon said softly, almost in a whisper that died in the
faint sea-breeze that eddied about the room. For a long time there
was silence, while the "Correlator" played with the selectors on the
couch unaware of doing so in his profound absorption, and the tardy
dawn faded into bright daylight which in turn gave way to the
perfumed mystery of a starry night deep within the mountains and
the odor of pine stole about the room. A ripple of music almost as
soft as a sigh invaded the chamber, gathering in volume and poesy of
melody like an enchanted lullaby to a wonder child or, a woman
utterly beloved.
When the "Correlator" came to, Antaran had gone.

The rain's silver curtain had lifted for some time—over an hour now—
Bill Nardon mused. The blinding blueness of the skies was reflected
on the satiny sheen of the platino-plastic structures of the spaceport,
now glorious in its display of opulence for the benefit of the arriving
delegations of five worlds. The Terran display of grandeur had been
planned to increase with exquisite skill all the way to the
Universarium.
Which in itself was a piece of effrontery, Bill thought with a sardonic
smile, considering that with Earth, only six worlds were represented,
which was far from being the Universe. Not to mention that each
planet was sovereign, jealously and hypersensitively suspicious of the
slightest encroachment upon their rights and domains. Bill was
certainly aware of the fact that the word Universarium would be a
cause for resentment.
They were arriving now. Upon the gigantic Ethero-solidograph that
covered an entire wall of the spacious room, deep in the bowels of
the Universarium, Bill Nardon could see the great inter-planetary
vessels emerge from outer space, where both space and time have
but a remote and relative meaning, and flash like inter-stellar daggers
into the outer fringe of the stratosphere.
"Warships! All of them!" He mused aloud, while the slightly satirical
smile deepened, hovering on his square-cut lips, crinkling the corners
of the long, strangely colored eyes—almost electric blue.
"Warships?" he mused.
Bill saw them extend lateral fins upon the icy fragility of the upper air,
much as a bird extends its wings, and come shrieking through the
tortured air in a mad race to be the first to land upon the expectant
Earth. In great flawless spirals—beautiful beyond belief—they lost
altitude, leaving behind a vortex of clouds boiling furiously at their
passage. Venus was in the lead. Bill Nardon recognized the powerful
cruiser by its insignia of a serpent biting its tail, fashioned of
Josmians—Venusian pearls. Close behind it was Europa, with the
insignia of a blazing Jupiter on its side; Neptune with its emblazoned
shield of a tiered city, and little Mercury with the royal emblem of
incandescent Sol. And at the very end, aloof, disdainful, the truly
magnificent work of science and art that was the Martian vessel,
which characteristically wore no emblem at all, and seemed to be
content to be the last to arrive, so long as it kept from being
contaminated by close contact with the races of other worlds than
Mars.
A great swirl of ceremonial music rose from the immense spaceport,
the cathedral-like architectonics weaving intricate patterns upwards
to the skies as if to receive in an ocean of melody the arriving
delegates.
Bill Nardon sighed, his task was about to begin. With a slight
movement of his right hand, he touched the controls gleaming on the
desk before him, and the scene at the spaceport rushed with
vertiginous speed into close focus; still he was not satisfied, but
continued to manipulate the Ethero-solidograph controls until the
emerging occupants of the Venusian ship grew on the screen to life-
size. With infinite care he studied and analyzed their faces, their
exquisite fragile bodies with the long, membranous wings; noted the
almost imperceptible shadow of baffled apprehension beneath the
mask of imperturbability, and found—nothing. But that was to be
expected. After all, of all the planets, Venus was the least warlike,
which was fortunate indeed.

The tall, rangy Europans, offspring of Terran colonists, with their

strange, silver-furred Panadur co-rulers, came next. Bill lingered over
the Panadur leader, so strangely human in his four feet of upright,
slender body, completely furred in gleaming silver fur to the very
throat-line, with the delicate triangular face dominated by immense
beryl eyes. Strange creatures of a world within a world, drawing their
sustenance from the eerie radio-active caverns of their great
Jupiterian satellite. The Neptunians were descendants of Earthmen
too, but subtly changed by the awesome environment of their
gigantic world.
The Mercurians were a problem in themselves. For of all the planets,
theirs was a ruthless Matriarchy. The striding, uncompromising
Amazons that emerged from that blunt, utilitarian-looking ship, were
in themselves a promise of trouble. They gazed around them out of
blazing dark eyes, and their metallic complexions seemed to flow
oddly like quicksilver with their movements, as if their features were
fluid. Only the eyes, hard, suspicious, expecting the worst, retained
their unyielding character. When the Martians emerged, tall, tawny-
haired, with their immense violet eyes and exaggeratedly narrow
waists, that contrasted with their broad shoulders, it occurred to Bill
that the least accident would precipitate an holocaust that would end
in the most gigantic hecatomb the universe had ever seen. He
shuddered to think what would happen if the least delegate were to
meet with harm. From the very beginning, he had protested against
this inter-planetary meeting on Terra, and great as his influence was,
profound as the respect was in which his unique powers were held,
the Council vote had been against him.
Still, Bill Nardon could not rid himself of the feeling that this was a
wild goose chase, that nothing would be accomplished by a meeting
of the highest dignitaries of the Inter-Planetary League—in short,
that the great danger of an accident that was being incurred was not
only unnecessary—but futile, which was far worse.
Asprawl in the great hetero-plastic chair, his long legs extended, his
superb torso completely relaxed, he looked as if even his great
muscles would never again lift that magnificent body upright. But all
the while his unique mind was absorbed in assembling multitudes of
details and facts, coordinating and correlating psychological factors
and psychic coordinates with the speed of thought into a clear picture
which in the end proved—absolutely nothing. He was baffled. To the
tragic problem which would soon be under discussion in the
stupendous Universarium, expressly built for that momentous
purpose, he would be able to bring precisely nothing.
For once he had failed. And Bill damned the cold efficiency of the
Master Neurograph machine that had unerringly summarized his
strange mental coordinates. For Bill's mind had the peculiar gift of
being able to grasp a series of basic facts and from them deduce with
supernal accuracy the individual answer to any human problem. What
took the great Philosophers in Psychiatry VI days, and weeks, and
even months to solve, Bill Nardon could coordinate and give the
correct answer to in hours, sometimes minutes.
There was nothing mysterious about it. Given enough time, Bill
Nardon could have explained in detail how he could solve a particular
problem in human equations—if he cared to, which he never did—it
was merely a mental ratio of activity in the upper part of his brain,
where the most involved and difficult thinking is done, many times
greater than that of the normal human brain. To this was added an
intensity and scope of awareness surpassing any Neurographic
records known. The result was the coordination of details, the
synchronizing of factors—nay, nuances so tenuous that they were
non-existent to even the philosophical minds.
As a result, Bill Nardon had been immediately removed from his job
as an explorer and transferred to Security I, answerable only to the
very head of the Supreme Council itself.
To him it had been a tragedy. The ecstasy of the vast reaches of
space; the illimitable freedom, birthright of explorers, the intimate
communion with the stars had been transmuted into a guarded
existence as if he were one of the most valuable factors in the
security of Earth, which unquestionably he was. Every luxury, every
whim even, was his to indulge, he could have anything ... literally
anything, but freedom!
And now he had failed. In his sardonic mood he was glad that he had
been unable to find even a tiny clue. In all that glittering,
heterogenous assemblage Bill had not found even a slight nuance to
pounce upon. Involuntarily he shook his head, and the dark red mane
that fell to his shoulders in the conventional style of the day, swirled
about his shoulders, again he shook his head as if some almost
imperceptible irritant were annoying him. And suddenly he sat
upright, his eyes narrowed and steel-blue. In his intense absorption
in the scene on the Ethero-solidograph, the elfin probing of his mind
had gone unnoticed. A profound surprise mingled with the instant
pointing of all his faculties as he became aware. That anyone could
penetrate his mental defenses was unthinkable!

Even before his awareness of peril was complete, Bill became a blur
of motion that coiled and sprang erect. And the incredible shape that
had launched itself with razor-like talons outspread unerringly for the
sprawling Terran's throat thudded against iron-hard stomach muscles,
over which a thin beryllium mesh tunic afforded protection. Almost at
the very instant it struck, the creature launched itself again, with
demoniacal fury, taloned hands reaching with super-human strength
for the bared throat, its taloned feet trying to disembowel the Terran.
Bill fought silently, driving a shattering blow to the open mouth with
its gleaming fangs, with the other striving to keep it at arm's length.
But the thing twisted with a sinuous motion and flung itself to one
side, then leaped in again, driving like a tiger for the Terran legs, as
Bill sprang to one side and then dived for the flashing creature.
Bill caught one of its legs and instantly it coiled back upon itself and
fastened its fanged mouth upon his forearm. Only the invulnerable
Beryllium mesh saved it from being fanged through; as it was, the
awful pressure of those inhuman teeth was excruciating agony. In
desperation Bill aimed another slashing blow at the maniacal face of
the being, and saw it become indistinct with blood; using every
ounce of strength at his command, the Earthman slowly forced back
the face of the thing and with a convulsive movement shattered its
vertebrae. When Bill released it, the creature dropped limp on the
bloodied translucence of the Jadite flooring.
Reeling from fatigue, his body a mass of bruises, Bill methodically
examined his attacker. It was about four feet tall, humanoid in shape,
even as to features which were delicate—surprisingly beautiful in the
repose of death. It had the face of a very beautiful woman in
miniature. But there was nothing lovely about the competent taloned
hands with their cording of steely muscles, or about the oddly shaped
flexible feet—almost hands in themselves, like that of the now extinct
apes of thousands of years back when Terra had been young. The
body had evidently been evolved with a great simplicity of purpose—
and, strangest of all, it was sexless!
And this was the thing that had been able to penetrate the defenses
of his mind, almost succeeding in probing it without Bill being aware
of it. In coordinating his findings, it occurred to Bill Nardon that this
unholy creature was the nearest thing to a homunculi he had ever
known! But whence had it come? How correlate such a mind of
power with such utterly ruthless, coldly calculating ferocity.
Bill shivered a little, and it was not altogether from his recent
exertions in defense of his life. Stretched upon the exquisite
whiteness of the plastic Jadite flooring, there was an infinitely
appealing beauty to its face in the ultimate sleep, as if it were a
welcome repose. The light brown eyes still open mirrored sadness—
that was the incredible fact. The mind that had tip-toed the shores of
his consciousness with sandals of foam, was still. But Bill Nardon's
mind recovered from the horror of the unexpected attack, felt even
more the icy chill of failure as it sought factors and only found an
impenetrable mystery instead.
"No planet ... no world known to me," and Bill had traveled half a
galaxy in his time, "has spawned this creature. This," he paused, his
eyes electric with excitement, "is a manufactured, an artificially
evolved being! But who? Not the Martians surely; the Venusians? The
Neptunians? No, no race in the entire six planets is capable of
creating...." In the very midst of his soliloquy he paused startled.
"The Panadurs! Only they with their strange powers could achieve
such a miracle.... But would they? In all the annals of Europa there is
no clue to the "Will to Conquer." Besides, to the Panadurs life was
sacred...." His thoughts swirled feverishly, and, impenetrably, the
mystery became more and more involved as the glittering
assemblage of delegates from other worlds traveled to the great
Universarium.

For a timeless moment of absolute silence, every being present stood

with bowed head in reverence to the Absolute. Then they took their
assigned places around the immense Council table grimly. The crisis
was at hand.
When Bill Nardon entered, he was late, for the preliminaries, the
usual diplomatic fencing and jockeying for favorable positions was
over. The smouldering resentment of six belligerent worlds was
frankly in the open.
Antaran, Head of the Supreme Council of Terra, presided at the head
of the table—there had been no difficulty about that—as was his due
as Host; but Venus and Mars had been diplomatically seated at his
right and left, respectively, facing each other and with equal honors,
where they could glare at each to their hearts' content. Neptune had
been given the other end of the table facing Antaran, and to his right
the Amazonian leader from Mercury. The balance of the delegates
had been scattered around the council table interspersed cleverly
with members of Terra's Council.
Bill saw instantly Antaran's anxious frown as he entered and caught
the half-annoyed, half-anxious query at his lateness, telepathed in
their secret code. He merely signalled, "Wait, Antaran!" and
proceeded to stand behind the Terran Leader's chair as unobtrusively
as possible. But it had been an entrance! His stately height of six feet
five inches, in the close fitting tunic of beryllium, the dark red mane
of wavy hair falling to his shoulders, allied to the lateness of his
coming, gave him an importance in the eyes of the visiting delegates
which, just now, he would have liked to avoid.
But when Antaran arose, all eyes centered coldly upon the Council
Leader. A sensuous fragrance of Venusian Jasmines wafted like an
invisible presence as the Martian Leader insolently applied a
gossamer handkerchief to his nostrils in defense of the odors of the
other races, and the tiny, winged Venusian ambassador glared with
scorn. The Amazonian being from Mercury clanked her power-rapier
uneasily, while the tall Neptunian unconsciously touched his belt.
Above them, the cathedral-like dome of the tremendous Hall of
Planets rose until the graduating hues of its intricately carved
Sapphirine plastic walls paled from translucent sapphire to
aquamarine, to beryl to palest mauve, and then only the sheerest
rose-gold or diffused sunlight where the intricate interlacing of arches
was like a cob-web pattern in the distance.
"We are gathered here," Antaran began without preamble in his
terse, icy voice, "to discuss a problem that threatens...." He paused
as if not willing to voice the ghastly thought, "to plunge our Universe
into suicidal strife, and engulf the magnificent fruits of inter-planetary
civilization."
Bill Nardon while engaged in appraising the reactions of those
present, couldn't help being amused with part of his mind at the
Terran Leader's purple periods. "Dearly loves speeches!" He
exclaimed mentally in the curious mental short-hand with which he
was wont to soliloquize.
"Ship after inter-planetary ship has disappeared without trace
somewhere in transit between the inner and outer planets.... That is,"
he amended, "the known outer planets which include uninhabited
Jupiter and its uncolonized Moons, the great centers of civilization—
Europa and Neptune. I cannot speak for Uranus which has only been
partly explored, and those two unknown quantities, Pluto and
especially Saturn, that planet of maddening contradictions on which
no space vessel has been able to land. Thousands upon thousands of
passengers, colonists of all races, and untold treasure has vanished
into thin air, without trace. I submit," Antaran drew himself to his full
skeletal height of over six feet, thin to the point of emaciation and
austere in all the dignity of his two hundred years, "I submit that
Terra is blameless—that the infamy of this outrage is surpassed only
by the mystery of the purpose behind it all!" He stood grim and
silent, with folded arms, his translucent gray eyes searching the faces
before him.
And pandemonium broke loose! The Martian exquisite forgot his
affected snobbishness and his perfumed handkerchief, and was
shouting:
"The floor! Grant me the floor!"
While the blazing eyed virago from Mercury unceremoniously shoved
the tall Neptunian aside and was bellowing in stentorian tones:
"I take the floor, Terran! I take the floor!"

Oddly enough, it was the tiny Panadur from Europa who eventually
got it. He had leaped upon the Council table and stood immobile,
sending powerful telepathic vibrations in utter silence, for his race
was voiceless. Before the incredible power of that involved mind, the
Terrans, the surpassingly telepathic Venusians, even the Martians
gave way. Only the Mercurian creature bellowed still, until Antaran
granted the floor to the Panadur. And the telepathic flood poured out.
The being from Europa accounted for his world in no uncertain terms.
To them life was sacred, and the last thing in the Universe they
wanted was strife!
Planet after planet laid their cards on the table. Even Mars, for all
their supercilious affectation, made a categorical denial. And as the
mystery deepened, mutual suspicion flamed higher and higher. It was
Venus that finally gave voice to what was in all their minds.
"After all, treasure is replaceable, great as the loss may be. But at
least a dozen inter-planetary spacers built of the invulnerable metal
from Vulcan have disappeared! A few more of such Venusian ships,
and whatever planet is responsible will have a respectable fleet of the
most deadly ships of space known to our Universe! Our inter-
planetary treaty with Mars and Terra and Mercury gave us undisputed
and undivined sovereignty over Vulcan Base and the invulnerable
metal of its mines, because having in our grasp the conquest of Terra
and Mars, we kept the peace! Now, after ages of adhering to the
treaty, we are faced with virtual attack. We demand a solution!"
It was then that Bill decided it was high time to intervene. With a
gesture he signalled to the outer arch of the Hall of Planets, while
simultaneously he requested the floor. Antaran granted the request
while a slight frown of puzzlement crinkled the pale, parchment-like
brow crowned with snowy hair. And into the silent Hall came two
ordine-plastic robots bearing between them a plastic box. They laid it
on the floor, before the Council table and as silently withdrew. All
eyes were centered on the plastic box, and the personal vibrations of
the delegates were overpowering, as Bill strode calmly towards the
box and wordlessly opened the lid.
With one effortless gesture he lifted the inert and stiffening form of
the homunculi that had attacked him, and flung it into the center of
the table. Even as they arose in amazement, he swept them with a
bright, electric blue glare and with the unsuspected force of his
tremendous mind-power he gave them a faithful, telephathic picture
of what had occurred. They all saw it. The battle to the death; the
creature's probing of his mind—All!
And there was no doubt as to its authenticity, the proof was before
their eyes, and no mind—not even Bill Nardon's—could possible fake
such a harrowing experience and bring before them the corpus
delicti, not even through telekinesis!
"That," Bill Nardon telepathed succinctly, "is a definite clue. I do not
know of any race in our inter-planetary League able to create such a
creature. I only have a suggestion to make. Once I was an explorer. I
can be one again. Ordinary minds cannot cope with this problem.
Terra will have to risk me if a solution to this mystery is to be
achieved. I suggest a suicide expedition. If Mars, Venus, Neptune,
Mercury and Europa will join Terra in sending a group of their best,
their keenest minds, and their highest trained inter-planetary
explorers, we may have a chance to relay back to the inhabited
planets whatever we discover.
"I said suicide expedition—I meant just that. A single cruiser, armed
by the combined science of all planets. Let Venus provide Vulcanite,
because it's invulnerable; the atomic engines supplied by Terra—
those are details. Every Ethero-Magnum Station between the inner
and outer planets to be constantly on the alert—as far as Neptune!"
His narrowed eyes swept them briefly, noting the instant negative
reaction from the Venusian at the mention of Vulcanite. Suspicion
lingered. Doubts rooted on a million incidents of the past—intrigues
so involved as to drive a mind mad. Injustices. The last fratricidal war
that had set their Universe aflame.

The stately Martian had recovered his aplomb; the wisp of

handkerchief he pressed to his nostrils as he eyed the inert creature
asprawl on the table diffused a breath of fragrance, cool as a
mountain breeze. He gestured toward it fastidiously, his violet eyes
inscrutable.
"That ... homunculi, or android ... nothing mysterious about it.
Superb biosynthesis, I grant you, but Terra could produce it!" The last
words were like a stab.
"And so could Mars," the Venusian said wearily in instant
contradiction. "The point it, what could anyone of us hope to gain by
war?" The word was out at last. The chill atmosphere of horror the
appearance of the homunculi had inspired, became icy, seemed to
seep like the breath of death through the lofty Hall. In the silent
pause their faces were like masks as the tiny Venusian eyed them
with a sardonic glance. "Power, perhaps?" He continued. "No one
planet wears the crown of empire—no one ever will as long as Venus
holds Vulcan!" He said it softly, but with a Universe of power in his
voice.
The sloe-eyed Amazon from Mercury stirred uneasily, and the
Neptunian delegate seemed uncertain as to the next move. In
silence, Bill Nardon waited patiently.
A swift glance of intelligence flashed between the rangy Europan
Earthman and his inseparable Panadur companion. And then the
latter rose. He held up a silver-furred arm perfectly moulded, and
gestured with his oddly human but thumbless hand.
"This being could have easily traveled by spacer from whence it came
—as easily as we did!" The Panadur telepathed. "A small ship would
be practically indetectable; besides, in view of our coming, even if
seen it would have been taken for one of our ships. It occurs to me
that this being may not have been created by another race, but is in
itself the very danger we have to face!"
"No!" Bill Nardon exclaimed with utter conviction. "I caught it
exploring my mind. In the instant that I contacted his, I knew it was
not independent ... it was directed. Three things only have I been
unable to solve: It brought no weapons save its own murderous
powers; it was purposely directed at me as if to destroy the only
'Correlating' mind in our League. And, most mysterious of all—in
death, an ineffable sadness overlays its features, where the
expression of bestial lust to kill should have been frozen in death." As
Bill finished, the Martian delegate stood up:
"I suppose my Government would be willing to release the Multi-
Energon Screen for this expedition—retaining its secret, of course—
provided," he flared, "provided Venus releases the necessary
Vulcanite for the hull!" They glared at each other from both sides of
the Council Table in ominous silence.
The Panadur gazed at them with evident scorn. "Europa," he
telepathed with a curious sort of sardonic benignity, "would be quite
willing to supply radiant energy bombs!" The nearest thing to a smile
seemed to flit over his delicate features, as he noted their reaction to
the dreaded reminder.
"And we will furnish plastics such as your worlds have never seen!"
The man from Neptune spoke at last. The Amazon merely clanked
her awful Power-rapier significantly.

II
"No strikes yet!" Bill Nardon said softly, his eyes glued to the
Electronoscope. "Sense anything, Freml?"
"Only an outflow of thought-energy ... infinitely distant.... I don't
quite know, Nardon. It's voiceless ... patternless, to me at least." The
Panadur leader sounded uncertain. Even to his stupendous mind-
power, the voiceless susurration, alive, malignant, was a tenuous
thing sensed more than felt, directionless, part of the vast, galactic
night that engulfed the bait ship in blackness so velvety it was like
smothering charred ash. The gigantic super-spacer in the building of
which six planets had tried to outdo each other, knifed through the
impalpable vibrations in its endless flight. Back of it, a tiny
smouldering disk, like a glowing ruby-brooch, nearly three-quarters of
a billion miles away, was the sun.
Ahead, Saturn was slowly coming into position, and the great wings
of light that were its rings shone with the glory of an eternal rainbow,
paling the immense crystalline jewel that was Pluto.
The tension within the spacer mounted perceptibly. Yet interminably
the hours dragged on and on. All screens were down, save those for
meteorite protection, as if deliberately inviting an attack. Every
member of the heterogeneous crew knew their assigned tasks so that
mechanically they would spring to their stations at the least warning.
Saturn grew immense, glorious beyond belief, until Bill Nardon was
forced from the Electronoscope by the intolerable light. It was then
that some one laughed. Rather, it was a cachinnation sounding eerily
in their midst.
Abruptly, Bill Nardon tensed, his preternatural faculties alert. He
swung slowly from the eye piece of the 'scope and faced the
emissaries—scientists-explorers all, of the six planets. It was the
Neptunian who had laughed. He was shaking silently now, as if some
hidden mirth convulsed him.
"We're close to the last planetary outpost," he observed, "and,
nothing yet! This isn't an expedition, Nardon ... it's a farce! What can
you expect to find in Saturn? A frozen waste of solid, glassy hydrogen
and helium, an infinite wilderness of 'hot-solid' gases under
unimaginable pressure. You know Saturn has an atmosphere of at
least twenty thousand miles in depth!"
"I know nothing of the kind," Bill answered evenly, with studied calm.
"Saturn has never been properly 'correlated.' Liquids and solids don't
compress; besides, even if Saturn were as you say a frozen waste
with a temperature of say 180° C. below zero, that would still be too
hot for hydrogen, which cannot exist as a liquid at that temperature.
I needn't mention helium which requires a temperature lower still for
liquefaction."
"You're leading us," the Neptunian hissed through clenched teeth,
"into gales of methane and ammonia roaring around a dead world of
frightful cold; into a frozen hell where if the atmosphere doesn't
crush us, we'll never escape the overwhelming gravitational pull....
You ... you fiend." The last words were a shriek just as he launched
himself in a tigerish leap straight for the throat of the Terran
"Correlator."
And Bill sprang aside, his left hook instinctively catapulting to the
unprotected chin of the Neptunian. But it failed to stop him. Off
balance, slightly stunned by the blow, the maddened delegate from
Neptune whirled on the Terran, aiming a staggering blow that
whizzed past Bill's head with savage force. Off balance, the
Neptunian staggered forward, his lean features contorted by bestial
rage and the lust to kill. He was like a man possessed.
Bill Nardon was icy calm now. The harrowing training all members of
the Explorer Class had to undergo, had come to the surface, and to
the tall Terran everything had ceased to exist but the task at hand.
He rolled aside slightly, sending a straight left to the Neptunian's
head, driving him off balance again. Bill weaved to and fro, lightly
balanced on his toes as the Neptunian came boring back with terrible
tenacity. Bill's right arm was a peg on which he hung the blows of the
man from Neptune, while lashing like a cobra, his boxer's left, long
and weaving, stabbed in again and again. The "Correlator" didn't
want to kill the man. For here was another mystery. The attack was
absurd, from the standpoint of their aims and goals. But he had no
time to correlate the facts and arrive at a decision.

The Neptunian rushed murderously eager, and Bill let his heels touch
the floor, refused to give way. He took a staggering blow to the
midriff, and went pale from pain, but with the swiftness of a striking
Calamar, he countered with a vicious left to the face and a slashing
right cross. The Neptunian staggered uttering a hoarse cry as his
features seemed to run like the quicksilver face of the Amazon from
Mercury. He staggered and fell to the blood-spattered ordine plastic
floor of the cruiser. Bill stood heaving, only now the answer was
apparent to him, but again his thoughts were cut short, for the
Neptunian was far from through. Into the ghastly face, a new
expression of diabolical fury had appeared, and as he lurched to his
feet, his right hand clawed at his belt for a weapon. Only power-
rapiers had been allowed them individually until a landing was
effected, and it was fortunate, for as the clawing fingers closed about
the rapier's hilt, an unholy light came into the Neptunian's eyes.
Bill heard a thunderous battle-cry as a bulky shape sprang between
him and the Neptunian, but he swept his rescuer aside. It was the
Amazon, her own power-rapier drawn for battle.
"No interference!" he exclaimed in a voice as cold as outer space. His
own blade was in his hand now, the flexible Columbium-steel
activated by the dreadful electronic fire. The touch of that blade
disintegrated flesh and bone and metal even. They were face to face
now, confronting each other with the wary savagery of Venusian
Ocelandians. The smell of death was in the air, and too, the wordless,
tremendous, inarticulate vibration from an unknown source that
seemed to hint at inconceivable horror, and ebbed and flowed about
them. They could all sense it now, as it increased as if in a crescendo
of triumph.
And at that instant the Neptunian struck. One moment they were
circling for an opening, their ghastly weapons ready, and the next the
singing blades met in midair as Bill Nardon parried the slashing blow.
And then reason tottered as time stood still. Where the blades had
been a flaring vortex of unendurable blue light sprang between them
like a hellish fan of electronic fury opening before their eyes.
The Neptunian's blade had disappeared, consumed in the incredible
holocaust; only the neutralized hilt of Vulcanite remained in his
palsied hand as they reeled aside, blinded and unnerved. Bill's blade
swished through the air as he reversed it and struck the Neptunian
on the left temple with the Vulcanite hilt. The man's knees went
rubbery and without a sound he slumped to the floor.
"The screen ... throw on the Multi-Energon screen!" Bill bellowed.
"This man was being directed, someone else may be next!" The
powerful hum of the inner screen within the cruiser, that rendered
everything within impervious to every known power, arose in the brief
silence. And none too soon. Suddenly the cruiser lurched, and
trembled like a great wounded stallion.
Bill had a confused picture of the addled members of several planets
clinging to ultra-mullioned gravity seats as the ship began to spin.
Every possible aid of science had been lavished on the cruiser, even
to the most exacting provisions against physical injury, or the danger
from an unexpected crash-landing in some far off world. But even
their combined science, great as it was, had not foreseen the
unpredictable enough to counteract this blow.
As if a cosmic hand had grasped the hurtling, spinning ship, it
described an orbital parabola, flashing like a living thing through
space, and headed at an unimaginable acceleration directly into the
phantasmal light of the great winged world. Bill's dazzled eyes saw
the tiny Panadur fight to strap himself to the acceleration seat on
which he perched, while frantically he strove to retain consciousness.
Everything seemed ringed with prismatic rainbows from the awful
glare of the electronic flash, as Bill resolutely set his conscious and
sub-conscious mind in alignment to fight off oblivion. But nothing
human could withstand consciously the orbital fall of the great ship,
as it dived into the fathomless abyss of night in a concentric spiral
that narrowed tighter and tighter, wheeling in direct ratio with the
rotation of the mammoth planet, at which it was aimed like the spear
of a cosmic angel.
Bill's last comforting thought was the Multi-Energon screen. Nothing,
his superb mind conceived, could possibly penetrate that. A crash
was imminent, he knew, but against that they were prepared. He
tried to contact whatever it was that had sent the polyglot vibrations
and had managed to grip the Neptunian's brain, and only a confused
disorder, as of many minds abandoning their temporary union came
to him, and then ... the profound illimitable darkness of complete
oblivion.
None aboard saw the fantastic scene as the cruiser neared Saturn
and was trapped by the hungry pull of the planet. None witnessed
the macabre sight of stupendous mountains rising to impale them as
they struck its atmosphere. Uncannily, the cruiser began to
decelerate as the robot control went into action, activated by the
atmospheric pressure. In a great swinging arc, the super-spacer
settled lower and lower, until at last, immense lateral fins shot out of
its sides, and secondary rockets belched forth, braking the headlong
rush.
Beneath them, a world of light and shadows shimmered under the
unearthly loveliness of the great rings, as if illumined by a sidereal
current of glowing jewels. Three of the nine moons were in transit,
phantasmal in their silent loveliness as they hovered over the parent
world. Beneath, the liquid sparkle of an unknown ocean undulated
softly, twinkling with myriad star points as if spangled with stardust.
At last the inter-planetary cruiser came to rest, ploughing up
immense furrows in the glittering sands of the shore, in a partial
crash-landing. The robot controls, magnetically activated to
decelerate in direct ratio with the proximity of land, had held true.
The almost incandescent tertiary-outer hull of the ship, began to cool
to a dull silvery hue. In the near distance, a glorious city of towering
spires and prismatic domes, was like a fairy scene on a colossal scale.
But no fingers of light issued from its towers and domes. No living
beings issued from its portals to investigate the arrival of these
voyagers of space.
Only the querulous susurration of the spumeless waves of the great
shining sea disturbed the eternal silence of Saturn. The silence of a
dead world had enveloped the Terran ship, even as within it, the
unconscious members of its heterogeneous crew were wrapped in
the silence of oblivion.
The wheeling moons, one blue, one palest amber, and one, the
largest like a glowing ruby of the skies, passed on, while time
marched on in its endless cavalcade.
Bill gasped in a spasm of living torture as consciousness returned in a
flood. Slowly he opened long blue eyes that were tragic with pain,
and surveyed the inert forms all about him in the great control cabin
of the ship. To one side, the partly crushed form of the Neptunian
delegate sprawled abnormally twisted. Bill knew instantly the man
was dead, and a flicker of sorrow touched his eyes. There had been
no time to strap him to an acceleration chair. It was their first
casualty. To his right a slight movement betrayed returning life to the
Amazonian being from tiny Mercury. The woman, if she could be
termed that, moaned unconsciously and then opened her coal black
eyes with a stupefied look. They widened as comprehension came.
The great cruiser was at rest, and through the visiports flooded the
jewelled illumination of Saturn's rings. An indistinct croak issued from
her throat, and was echoed by the "Ahh" of excruciating pain as the
fastidious Martian also came to. With an effort, Bill Nardon
unstrapped himself and rose unsteadily, flexing cramped muscles that
shrieked exquisite torture at every movement he made. But he
managed to reach the emergency cabinet and extract a priceless
Neptunian flask of Jadite, jewelled with Sapphirines. He opened and
satisfied himself that it was filled with Sulfalixir, then ministered to
their needs. The miraculous stimulant was like a draught of life-
essence to them. Not until then, did he ascend to the observation
dome. The sight that greeted his eyes was to remain as long as he
lived a memorable experience.
Behind him trooped the others, to stand in awe at the spectacle
before them. "Saturn!" Bill Nardon breathed. "For countless ages
unvisited by man ... and yet, a habitable world!" In the distance, the
shimmering city glowed with a thousand hues under the illumination
of the rings, silent, aloof.
"Cut multiple screen briefly and obtain atmospheric samples," Bill
Nardon broke the spell. "I'll want everyone wearing Energon helmets
for the interval while the screen's off."
He gestured to the assembled scientists, coldly efficient. The
breathless moment of matchless thrill was over. The winged Venusian
left immediately on his way to the Geology lab, while the Martian
followed to make atmospheric tests. The Neptunian scientist in
charge of chemistry was dead, so Bill sent a Terran subordinate in his
stead. At last only the Panadur whose task was psycho-synthesis due
to his abnormal telepathic sensitiveness remained with Bill, who
besides being Commander, had the arduous task of correlating
findings.
"We've landed alive! That is the incredible fact," the Panadur flashed.
"And now that we're here, it seems our enemy—whatever it is, has
changed its plans. At least, I sense no peril."
"Here," Bill replied mentally, handing the silvery creature a flexible
crysto-plast helmet powered by the Energon principle, "Don your
helmet. The screen is being cut, and we can't risk any more
seizures." He paused while he adjusted his own helmet, then went
on: "If we are alive, we have the multiple-energon screen to thank,"
he said slowly. "Whatever seized us in space meant to end our
journey right then and there. Remember the man from Neptune!"
"That city is human ... I sense it!" The Panadur telepathed, as the
impenetrable barrier of the screen was cut off. "Odd, the vibration is
low, almost imperceptible, where it should be tremendous if it's
inhabited!"
"We're plagued by mysteries!" Bill replied exasperated. "Well, next
thing's to vibrate the news to Europa and Neptune via Astro-
Magnum.... Hope it hasn't been damaged—no Ethero-Magnum could
bridge the distance to the nearest planets!"
But Freml, the Panadur, wasn't listening even with part of his mind;
the great shining city in the near distance seemed to have a hypnotic
fascination for him. Slowly he took off the Energon screen helmet,
and seemed to concentrate its mental power into its highest apex of
ultra-sensitivity. At last it turned its glaucous beryl eyes on Bill
Nardon, shining with a great excitement, and poured a telepathic
stream:
"There is life in that city ... an ocean of life! But it's not active ... it's
dormant, submerged ... helpless!" The Panadur seemed to grope for
qualifying adjectives; impatiently it went on: "But there is one that is
not dormant, and it is a mind of power!"
Into their midst the Martian scientist raced with a wild look in his
eyes.

"The atmosphere ... Commander ... it can't be! It's a hydrogen,

oxygen compound stabilized by an unknown gas that has properties
of living energy ... there's nothing like it in our known universe ... it's
like a sentient thing!"
"Is it breathable?" Bill's laconic query.
"Yes, exhilarating even ... but I have yet to test for secondary
metabolic effects.... I ... for once in my existence I was too excited to
complete the tests!" The Martian scientist was abashed. "It has one
remarkable property, though, its vibratory conductivity exceeds that
of water many times, not to speak of air."
"That will aid us in sending by Astro-Magnum," Bill thought instantly,
and their attuned minds received the message. "Astro-radio will
receive an impetus in its passage through this atmosphere we had
not counted on!"
And something else they had not counted on was advancing toward
them like a vast curtain of scintillating light. It was Bill who saw it
first, covering half of the vast horizon, terrible in the unearthly beauty
of its swirling vortices of prismatic stars.
In a prodigious leap Bill Nardon was at the conveyor that slid
noiselessly into the control room, in those few dreadful seconds, it
seemed to him he would never have time to reach the control board
as he raced with extinction. When his hand closed over the switch
that activated the outer Multi-Energon Screen, a wave of nausea
swept him from the intensity of the reaction.
And without warning the starry swarm struck. Like billions of
miniature stars exploding, the ship was enveloped in coruscating
flame, lurid, unbearable in the dazzling glare of the holocaust, until
even Bill Nardon doubted if the mathematically perfect Energon
Screen providing an infinite overlapping series, would hold. Beneath
was the invulnerable hull of Vulcanite, he knew. But would even
Vulcanite be impervious to this bombardment once the screen gave
way?
"All scientists at emergency stations!" He barked as he telepathed at
the same time. "Battle crews man all weapons and hold fire pending
orders. Everyone wear helmets!"

He, himself took over the Electro-Flash, Neptune's gift to the

Expedition. In a way, it was the ultimate weapon, disrupting as it did
the very electronic balances of organic and inorganic matter.
And then, as abruptly as it had come, the terrible grandeur of the
living curtain was withdrawn, receding into the far distance like a vast
nebula of microscopic stars.
Bill shook himself. This must be telekinesis, a nightmare instilled into
their minds, it couldn't be real! But the white-faced Venusian that
fluttered in, flashing incoherent messages as he tried to telepath,
dispelled that thought.
"Commander ... I have checked the graph of power intake of
automatic absorber P-6, set to absorb cosmic rays for auxiliary
power.... I...." He passed a tiny, weary hand over his smooth brow,
and his azure wings hung limp, "I can't believe it ... we have more
power, more atomic power than when we began this trip! It is as if
we had tapped an incredible source of radio-active energy!"
Silently, a Terran scientist handed Nardon a developed electro-photo
of a small segment of the "curtain" of fire. Unmistakably outlined
were myriad tiny insect bodies, unquestionably composed of some
living radio-active substance.
"The Absolute be praised!" Bill breathed fervently. "No known ship—
not even Vulcanite could possibly withstand a radio-active
bombardment of such scope!" He turned slowly to where the Martian
scientists stood silent in a group. "I salute you," he telepathed
gravely. "Your Multi-Energon screen is the greatest defensive weapon
in our Universe." Embarrassedly, the tall, violet-eyed Martians stirred
uncomfortably; they had a deep distaste for any emotions and
suppressed them ruthlessly. Other findings began to trickle in. The
nameless inter-stellar spacer that had emerged from the combined
ingenuity of half a dozen worlds, spurred by the ultimate incentive of
a brooding and catastrophic peril, all the more terrible because it was
unknown, literally swarmed with specialists in every known science. It
remained for the special mind of Bill Nardon to correlate all the
scientific details and weld them into a final complete knowledge,
behind which it was his task to find and solve the primum mobile—
the motivating factor that they sought.
One thing emerged beyond the shadow of a doubt. Each attack had
been characterized by a complete absence of a known presence. The
individual attempt on Bill's life on earth had been carried out by a
creature acting outside its own volition; the magnetic force that had
drawn their ship into Saturn itself, likewise was disembodied, and
now this radio-active swarm that would have consumed them but for
the Energon screen—it too gave no clue as to the final, directing
intelligence behind. And yet, in their very midst, a great scientific
mind had gone mad.
The stalemate was clear. Thus far they had weathered the
unimaginable behind their Energon Screen. But they were trapped
within just as effectively as long as they were unable to emerge. The
sum total of their knowledge resolved itself to a series of bizarre
incidents—to which it might be added the cryptic thought-projection
of Freml, the Panadur. He had mentioned "an ocean of submerged
life ... helpless" had been his final description. Yet he had also
indicated a "Mind of Power" far from helpless or submerged indeed.
And great as it might be, one single entity was, foe or not, worthy of
challenge. The incomplete puzzle in Bill Nardon's mind revolved with
all the maddening quality of a picture almost discerned, yet eluding
the final composition that would give it recognizable form.
The question was, should they correlate all findings and attempt a
return to Earth, and utilize their meager knowledge in preparation of
some sort of a defense. Or, take the final risk and visit that silent city
whence Freml had drawn vibrations of intelligent life. Bill Nardon
already knew what his decision would be. He would call a conference,
of course, but in his mind the determination to confront whatever
that 'Mind of Power' was—alone, had already crystallized.
And in another mind, alien beyond belief, in comparison with his, the
same idea had taken root. For Freml, the Panadur, had not told Bill
Nardon all he had obtained in that last mental projection of his. A
deep, inhuman horror had traveled the incredibly-faint thought
waves. Something ancient beyond calculation, as if the essence of
evil itself had come alive, had bridged the gap.

III

"I see no wisdom in risking your life too. For if I perish, my task falls
upon your shoulders, Freml. In that emergency, you were selected to
command the ship ... remember?"
Voicelessly the Panadur assented, and continued to patter softly
beside Bill Nardon.
"I've brought with me the League's ultimate weapons," the red-
headed Terran continued. "Electro-flash, power-rapier ... if those
were to fail, what use would there be in attempting to remain? Thus,
I would make a suggestion—return to the spacer in the Z-auxiliary
that brought us to the city; I'll keep in touch with you through the
ethero-radio," he lifted his left arm exposing the watch-like
instrument on his wrist.
The Panadur lifted his great beryl eyes to the tall Terran and
telepathed softly, "You don't expect me to agree to that!"
"No," Bill smiled, "it was the expression of a hope. But tell me this, if
as I expect, there's strife, what can you hope to add in my favor that
would be as important as your being safe in the ship, were I to die?"
Freml didn't answer right away. It was not hesitation, Bill knew that,
but the Panadur had blanked his mind. There were things they didn't
impart whenever they touched on secrets of his race. Then—
"A weapon you do not have!" He seemed to consider the next
thought before he telepathed:
"You know my race can store the accumulative power of radiant
energy, and direct it at will.... It's in the legends ... that's how we
saved the first Earthmen who trod Europa."
They were in the very heart of the silent city now, and the lofty
domes and exaggerated spires swam in the glaucous dusk that was
Saturn's eternal day. Overhead great stars blazed like flaming roses,
and the glory of the rings was a spangled ocean of glowing jewels,
shimmering in patternless rhythms of color. Their sense of reality
drained away as the full impact of its dissolving magic gripped their
minds.
At last they stood before the portals of the great building whose lofty
tower was the city's dominant note. For here the vibrations had led
them, vibrations of life—dormant, helpless—and something else too.
Their senses preternaturally alert weapons ready, they exchanged
one final look, then Bill Nardon pushed the great portal before him,
and it swung silently inwards. And then the great stars, the wheeling
moons, the glorious rings that poured down enchantment, were
forgotten before the sight that gripped them as they stepped inside.
For on an infinite series of tiers that filled the lofty immensity of the
room lay inert beings.
Row upon endless row of creatures that to all appearances could
have been highly evolved Terrans, except for an exaggerated
refinement of features, an evident fragility of bodies, as if evolved
almost to the very brink of decadence. Their marmoreal flesh had the
cold whiteness of death, and their hair had grown until it spread in
great festoons of yellow and black and silver grey. A fine, glittering
film of dust overlay their tunics and flesh, and over all, the
impalpable feeling of disaster, of a gigantic tragedy, hung like a pall.
"Cataleptic!" Freml flashed the thought, as he examined the nearest
beings. "A living death!"
"Rather," Bill Nardon said slowly, "a deathless sleep!" It occurred to
him that the entire city was thus peopled with sleepers in oblivion—
the ocean of submerged life Freml had sensed.

Upward through the broad ramps of a now motionless conveyor they

ascended floor after floor, filled to over-flowing with inert Saturnians,
until at last the conveyor ceased and only the polished walls of some
unknown substance of what appeared to be an ascensor, remained.
Nardon examined it carefully before pressing the colored disk on the
side of its closed door. Noiselessly the panel slid aside revealing a
shining quadrangle. Unhesitatingly they entered and the door
automatically closed. A series of vari-colored disks made a triangular
pattern on the left, and Bill pressed the black one at its apex. It shot
upwards swiftly without the slightest jar, its incomparable smoothness
gave no hint of the extraordinary speed save for the slight, hollow
feeling in the pit of their stomachs its occupants felt. After a brief
interval it stopped, decelerating as smoothly as it had begun, and the
sliding door swept aside. And before them opened a great,
transparent alcove beyond whose translucent walls and ceiling, the
colossal theatricalism of the heavens was visible.
But Bill Nardon and the Panadur had no eyes for the sidereal
spectacle above, two figures in the foreground held their eyes. A girl
and what was evidently a man. Two figures, no more. And just now
there was not the faintest hint of a belligerent move. Somehow the
sight of that girl seated immobile with her exquisite hands folded on
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