How did Mexican farmworkers engage in religious practices to carve out community in the valleys of California? In Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California, Lloyd Daniel Barba answers that question by reconstructing the world of Mexican Pentecostal farmworkers in California. Specifically, he examines “how subaltern religious seeds of pious resistance were sown and ultimately flourished in unexpected places” (24). Throughout his study, Barba contends that Mexican farmworkers’ engagement with sacred cultural productions helped them overcome social marginalization and discrimination. Through meticulous research, the author weaves in photographs, oral histories, church records, Bible passages, and government documents to demonstrate farmworkers' ingenuity in turning profane spaces into sacred lands.
Each chapter of Sowing the Sacred takes the reader into the world of Mexican Pentecostal fieldworkers. Chapter 1 examines the methods by which Apostólicos carved out spaces in the rural valleys of California, which ushered in the development of an...
