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This article explores an analogical relationship between Mexican pilgrimage and migration to the United States. Toward this end, the article acknowledges pilgrimage scholarship that treats one of two, presumably mutually, exclusive objectives: (1) The formation of a social body, unstructured and free, and (2) fulfillment of individual motivations and institutional agendas. Pilgrims involved in migration undertake both objectives to reconcile differences and achieve an understanding of the sacred.
Keywords
AFS ETHNOGRAPHIC THESAURUS: Indigenous peoples, ethnic groups, pilgrimages, Catholicism, economic migration, calendar rites
In January of each year, residents of La Hacienda, Guanajuato, a rural village near the central Mexican cities of Silao and León, undertake a pilgrimage to San Juan de Los Lagos. Family members, who work and reside in different parts of the United States, customarily return home for the event. Groups of pilgrims from other places in Guanajuato and other states, some as far away as Mexico City, also participate. The pilgrims, whose numbers reach tens of thousands, walk down many roads and paths to arrive by February 2, a feast day commemorating the Virgin Mary's purification after childbirth according to Jewish law, and her presentation of the Lord. They enter a basilica in the city's center, walking in two lines single file throughout the day, and greet a Virgin known for miracles.
This article draws upon 18 months of ethnographic research that included the pilgrimage in 2006.1 The pilgrimage incorporated elements that have been topical foci of scholarship. These elements range from an ideal goal vested in the formation of a social body, unstructured and free from strictures of daily life, to accounts of strictures in the form of individual motivations and institutional agendas.2 These elements were a part of the scenery that pilgrims experienced with incremental in- tensity as their numbers grew in a collective movement toward the Virgin's sanctuary.
The article acknowledges previous scholarship by showing how pilgrims took prag- matic steps to reconcile life's strictures-social and material-with their discovery of the sacred. They achieved this goal through a transformation of their steps into ritu- al practice with figurative operations. The steps drew parallels to those of legendary and historical predecessors and, common in this region, of migrants en route to the United States, incorporating experiences of estrangement, loss,...