This essay explores the evolving landscape of religious and racial difference in the Sierra Tarahumara region of Chihuahua, Mexico, over the first half of the twentieth century. Specifically, the essay explores the competing efforts of Jesuit missionaries and the Mexican state to evangelize and “civilize” the Tarahumara Indians after the revolution of 1910. A fundamental argument is that, in the Sierra Tarahumara, both the religious (Jesuit) missionaries of the Catholic church and the secular (cultural) missionaries of the Mexican state played important roles in linking local understandings of race and religion to the national-level debates over the “Indian problem” and national identity that emerged in Mexico after the revolution.
Keywords: Catholic, Chihuahua, Indians, Jesuit, Mexico, missionaries, revolution, Tarahumara,