Other Mormon Histories: Lamanite Subjectivity in Mexico
Journal of Mormon History 26.2 (2000)
36 Pages Posted: 19 Nov 2012
Date Written: 2000
Abstract
Other Mormon Histories, narratives in which formerly passive objects of history become active subjects, draw attention to the power relationships in the production of Mormon history. The Book of Mormon and traditional Mormon history imagine and then subjugate American Indians as Lamanites in a story of Christian triumphalism. Nahua authors, Margarito Bautista Valencia and Agricol Lozano Herrera, adopt the label of a Lamanite other and then domesticate Mormonism through narratives of Mexican peculiarity. Bautista's domestication of Mormon theology and his deployments of a Lamanite identity in the 1930s provoked hostility from Church leaders but that of Lozano fifty years later did not. Bautista's writings threatened power relations within the LDS Church because the other not only became a self, but the original subject also became a stigmatized object. Lozano did not stimatize Anglo-Americans in the same manner as Bautista. He moved them from subjects of their own accounts to romanticized objects of his account. While romanticizing Anglo-Americans Lozano internalized negative characterizations of Lamanites and used this imagery to warn Mexicans to avoid strident challenges to the Church hierarchy.
Keywords: Mormon, Lamanite, Nahua, Self, Other, Subject, Object, History, LDS, Margarito Bautista Valencia, Agricol Lozano Herrera
JEL Classification: Z10
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation