Los hijos de la luz is a study of the creation and growth of an evangelical church in the midst of conservative Catholicism. Guadalajara, known for its conservatism, center of the Cristero Revolt during the 1920s, is the home of La Luz del Mundo. This sect claimed four million adherents worldwide, with 35,000 in Guadalajara, in 1986. Sixteen temples dot the eastern neighborhoods of the city, with the center of activity in La Hermosa Provincia, a complex of buildings, homes, and shops. Renée de la Torre explores the unlikely success of this group in the Guadalajara context through an insightful ethnography.
Protestantism in Mexico began with small groups linked to U.S. missionaries and Mexican government officials during the mid-nineteenth century. These congregations made significant contributions to the revolution in 1910, but remained small until the 1950s. Various Pentecostal groups have since made significant inroads, but none has achieved the visibility of La Luz del Mundo.
This group was created during the years of the Cristero Revolt by a man known as Brother Aaron. Of campesino background, Aaron began life as Eusebio Joaquín González in Colotlán, Jalisco. At 17, he joined the Constitutionalist army under the command of General García Barragán, later governor of Jalisco. In 1926, while still in the army, Eusebio met two Pentecostals in Torreón, converted, and, after a revelation, believed he was chosen by God to construct la iglesia La Luz del Mundo. It was in this revelation that he was also told to take the name Aaron.
Other authors have studied La Luz del Mundo, but none has integrated the variety of methods and perceptions found in de la Torre’s work. This investigation focuses on the role of communication in the creation, preservation, and transformation of religious reality. In particular, de la Torre is concerned with the transmission of subjective representations into social objectives that are routinized. The study is divided into four parts that reconstruct perceptions of the history and discourse of the church as a means to explain its success.
Los hijos de la luz is an important contribution to a growing literature on non-Catholic religious traditions in Mexico. It is an ethnography that avoids some of the pitfalls that come with a focus on one isolated group. Still, La Luz del Mundo shares many of the same developmental characteristics found among Protestant groups in the nineteenth century. Successful congregations at that time were attentive to economic and educational issues, as was Aaron. The integration of that earlier history would have allowed a comparison to strengthen the analysis of La Luz del Mundo’s successful strategies.
