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An Excellent Historiography into the
Complexities of Mexican Mormondom
Reviewed by Brittany Romanello
The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878–1961 by Elisa
Eastwood Pulido is a commitment worth making. This volume, written
as an extension of Eastwood Pulido’s doctoral dissertation, withholds
no detail as it weaves a nuanced and important history that typically
goes unmentioned in most US Mormon spaces. Given that I, too, work
at the intersections of race, migration, and Mormonism, I praise Elisa
for identifying her own positionality while noting the kinds of historical negotiations nonwhite Church members have had to make. She
recognizes the ongoing dualities of those who identify as Indigenous,
Mexican, and Mormon without making one person’s experience a
monolith of representation. She also is truthful about Bautista’s moral
shortcomings, including his sexism and racism. The book maintains a
balance by elucidating his dualistic experiences—of both radical acceptance and mobilization to do good and the marginalization, assimilation
pressures, and ultimate rejection by both Anglo and Mexican Church
leadership. Indeed, Eastwood Pulido succeeds in giving us a historical
portrait of Margarito Bautista that accounts for “his achievements and
his failures, his gifts as well as his flaws” (4).
Chapter 1 builds a foundation for the reader by introducing them to
religious authority in Mexico. This backdrop, which highlights historical
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Elisa Eastwood Pulido. The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito
Bautista: Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident,
and Utopian Founder, 1878–1961. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2020. 356 pp. Hardcover: $99.00. ISBN:
9780190942106.
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Indigenous sovereignties, knowledge systems, and caretaking of the
land throughout Mexico before European contact, is essential if readers are to better understand the colonial contexts of Mexico before and
during Bautista’s lifetime and how they intersect with Anglo Mormon
colonization of the area. The author gives detailed accounts of how
the social and spiritual exclusion of Indigenous Mexicans, beginning
in 1519, continues even today throughout the region. In chapter 2, we
see how this history shapes the motivations and interactions of Anglo
Mormons as they utilized the US–Mexico border to their advantage.
Early leadership, including prophet Joseph Smith, saw the Church as a
pathway for salvation and assimilation of Indigenous peoples, whom
LDS scripture calls “Lamanites.” Early missionaries sent to the borderlands using Spanish Book of Mormon excerpts taught Mexicans about
their “true” heritage, encouraging them to embrace being a “chosen”
people. Eastwood Pulido describes how this missionary work also led
to increased Mormon migration into Mexican colonies, serving two
pragmatic purposes: increasing Church membership and allowing
white Mormons to escape scrutiny from the US government for practicing polygamy.
Chapters 3 and 4 offer an account of Margarito Bautista’s conversion
to Mormonism, describing how his worldview and lived experiences
were shaped by the legacies of subjugation and violence associated with
the Catholic Church. The Bautista family was well known for defending
and protecting locals’ farms from hacendados, who stole or intimidated
locals into donating land to make way for Spanish-style haciendas, similar to the European feudal system. Bautista expressed admiration for
Indigenous rebels who sought land reclamation, and for the Liberation Army of the South, or Ejército Libertador del Sur. Bautista found a
testimony of the Church, and he also believed that Mormonism could
provide an avenue by which Indigenous Mexicans could advocate for
reparations from the socioeconomic marginalization they experienced
on both sides of the border.
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Bautista believed that if Mexicans would assimilate with Anglo
ideals just enough, they could mobilize and assert their true supremacy as the chosen people described in the Book of Mormon. Bautista
merged his own background as an Indigenous Mexican with the ideas
of US Mormonism, positioning himself as an important mediator
between cultures. Eastwood Pulido is careful to thoroughly convey the
dichotomy Bautista often experienced as an Indigenous Mexican within
the Church. On one hand, Bautista was a powerful force in shaping the
direction of Mexican missionary work and inclusion among first-generation Church members, and on the other, he was still subjected to the
xenophobia, racism, and discrimination of white Anglos while working
as a gardener and landscaper in both Mesa, Arizona and Salt Lake City,
Utah, which boasted heavy Mormon populations. The author includes
many instances in which Bautista is fetishized, exoticized, and held
up as a type of model minority Lamanite in Church spaces, while at
the same time, whenever debating Anglo leaders about the scriptures,
stirring activism within LDS communities, or discussing polygamy, he
was minimized, underestimated, or dismissed for that same “Lamanite”
background. It is a raw disjunction many Church members or readers
from marginalized backgrounds may find themselves all too familiar
with.
Much of chapters 5 through 7 continues to describe the complexities that molded Bautista’s experience as an Indigenous Mexican
Mormon. Again, Eastwood Pulido is painstakingly careful in her narrative, pulling from not only Bautista’s personal writings (including the
development of his five-hundred-plus-page magnum opus) but other
accounts of that time period that document Bautista’s rise and fall from
within US LDS Church society. Only a decade or so after his influence began attracting many Mexican nationals to Mormonism, Bautista
found himself being rejected and criticized for his “controversial” teachings while in Mexico (93). During his mission throughout Mexico, he
found that many Anglo missionaries from the US had not bothered to
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teach alternate accounts of Joseph Smith’s history, polygamy, or other
doctrine that he considered the “meat” of the gospel. He was frustrated
that the Mexican Mormons were not being entrusted with or given
the same access to enrichment, knowledge, and leadership positions
considering their divine and chosen heritage as described in the Book
of Mormon.
This open criticism and declaration of the supremacy of Mexican
members, specifically those who oversaw Indigenous lands and traditions, led to Bautista’s increased popularity within the Mexican Church
but a fall from favor back at Salt Lake City headquarters. Bautista found
himself increasingly frustrated with being used by white leadership as
a model minority while simultaneously spoken down to when implementing any type of ideology that would bolster Mexicans’ ability to
self-govern and establish independence from the US Church. Eastwood
Pulido describes Bautista’s journey as a spiritual evolution many times
throughout these chapters, with Bautista ultimately realizing that Anglo
American authorities of the Church would continue to do “little to
foster the empowerment that would allow Mexicans to take their place
as spiritual authorities in their own right” (107). These chapters show
the reader all the happenings and circumstances that would eventually lead to Bautista’s personal spiritual revolution, which to outsiders
like white US Mormon leadership would look like a rebellion and even
apostasy.
The final chapters, 8 and 9, outline Bautista’s role in the Third
Convention, which would end with a large schism as Mexican Church
members left mainstream LDS practice. The US leadership’s response to
dissidents, who were asking for equal representation and self-governance
that would better promote cultural sensitivity and social egalitarianism,
perpetuated the same cycle of discipline and excommunication that we
have seen occur throughout LDS historical practice. Bautista and many
other male Mexican leaders expressed resentment of white Mormon
paternalistic treatment of their communities, US ethnocentrism, and
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the US Church’s interference with Mexican members’ political participation in Campesino and Zapatista social movements. Eastwood
Pulido illustrates how Bautista’s disenfranchisement both from the US
LDS Church and, later, the Third Convention, led him to spend the
rest of his life in his own version of a polygamous “utopia” called New
Jerusalem, isolated from many with whom he used to associate. Despite
his shortcomings, it is unfortunate that Bautista’s contributions to the
growth and well-being of the early Church in Mexico have long been
overlooked, if not in many cases completely erased from mainstream
LDS historical or social discourse. Most Latinx members I have interviewed in my own research have never heard of Margarito Bautista
or the Third Convention, which I find troubling. Additionally, I have
seen many times in my life already this same pattern of social activists
who were once highly valued in Church communities being rejected
and then disfellowshipped or excommunicated when their passionate
efforts are seen as a threat to the status quo. It seems that the institutional approach toward those considered Mormon dissidents often
results in community erasure unless the caretakers of history ensure
that changemakers are remembered.
Overall, I think The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista is an
excellent historiography that offers a view into the complexities of Mexican Mormondom. In my own academic research, I have found that
although almost a century has passed, many Latinx Mormons are still
encountering the same dichotomies, exotifications, and exclusions that
Bautista (and many others) documented in their lifetimes. Many nonwhite members have expressed the same feeling of needing to be model
Mormons while being excluded from their right to autonomy, sovereignty, and equity within US Church spaces. With Latinx membership
being one of the only areas of consistent growth in the US Church, and
numbers throughout Latin America staying strong, Eastwood Pulido
has provided Church members and leadership with an important historical record that is as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. I
Dialogue 54, no. 2, Summer 2021
148
BRITTANY ROMANELLO {bromanel@asu.edu} is a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology at Arizona State University and a current member of
the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship Women’s Consult. Her ongoing
dissertation project focuses on Latina migrant Mormons’ mothering experiences as well as their sociopolitical positionality within Arizona Church spaces.
Her passions include gardening, cooking, Miyazaki animated features, and
community activism.
•
Heavy Lifting on Broken Ground
Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman, eds. Americanist
Approaches to The Book of Mormon. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2019. 443 pp. Paperback: $36.95.
ISBN: 9780190221935.
Reviewed by Michael Austin
Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon cannot quite be
described as “groundbreaking.” It covers ground, the editors acknowledge right up front, that has been broken many times before. In their
introductory essay, Elizabeth Fenton and Jared Hickman describe
the “the clockwork reiteration, at least once a generation, of a specific
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hope as we enjoy the complicated story of Margarito Bautista, we will
do more than read. I hope we consider the lessons of history by turning
inward as individuals to address our own biases, while also reflecting on
the ways US Mormonism has historically benefited from and perpetuated practices of racial oppression and erasure. I hope we will commit
to listen to those who have been minoritized or marginalized within
LDS spaces. I hope we will commit to act as agents for equitable inclusion and change. I hope we, too, will evolve.