Argentina's First Beatified Indian and Issues of Identity

This Sunday, the Roman Catholic Church will beatify Caferino Namuncura, an Argentine Mapuche who died of tuberculosis while training to become a priest at the age of 18. Beatification is the first step in what may lead to canonization (beatification occurs after the first miracle attributed to a subject; canonization only happens after the second miracle) . Namancura is notable because he is the first Argentine indigenous person to be beatified (the Church only canonized its first American Indian in 2002, when Juan Diego of Mexico gained the honor).

There are several interesting issues at play in the beatification of Namuncura. First, it is the first under Benedict XVI's policy of beatifying and canonizing in the subjects home country, rather than in Rome. Thus, the ceremony will happen this Sunday in Chimpay in Patagonia). Second, there is the issue of ethnicity and religious colonization. While Cardinal Nercone is cited in the BBC piece as saying that Namuncura "was a role model for many, many young people" whose "ideal was to serve his people." Mapuche Indians in Argentina view the issue differently, rightfully condemning the genocidal campaigns the Argentine military launced against the indigenous people of Patagonia in the late-19th century and saying Namuncura's handover and conversion were part of this process of militaristic imperialism. Many Mapuche are offended by the cooptation of Namuncura by the Catholic Church, both in the past and now in the present sugar-coating and simplification of his story (as each and every beatification has exactly that effect on an individual's biography).

More interesting to me, though, is a quick comment in the Yahoo story that points out that Namuncura "has a wide following among the Argentina's poor." Anybody who has traveled to Argentina knows that the class divide also intersects frequently with racial categories; there are a far more disproportionate number of poor indigenous peoples than the "whites" of Argentina (indeed, the only beggars and homeless people I saw in Buenos Aires were clearly of indigenous ancestry). This isn't to say that there are no poor whites. However, the disparity is obvious and present.

What strikes me about all this is the ways in which different groups are competing over Namuncura's identity. The Church has its own (obvious) reasons to add another saint, particularly one from Argentina (and indigenous to boot!); likewise, the Mapuches understandably want to resist this and maintain Namuncura's identity as part of their broader struggle to address their own issues of identity and the genocide [and while that word is often misused, that's exactly what happened in the Argentine case - the military set out to completely kill off the indigenous peoples of Argentina] they suffered in the 19th century and beyond at the hands of the Argentine military (often with religious complicity). The less obvious element in all this is the poor, who are also often indigenous. Framed in terms of identity, they can relate to him both in terms of economy and ethnicity. Of course, it is the masses whose opinions are left out of the reports on Namuncura's beatification - instead, it is the traditional (but not necessarily in the bad sense) framing of the beatification as "Church hagiography vs. Indigenous resistance to cooptation". Yet the thousands of indigenous Catholics who have multiple reasons to relate to Namuncura are left out of the equation, even while it's their devotion that makes the beatification possible. It just reminds us once more how complex race relations and issues of identity in Argentina (where many people still deny the existence of "real Indians") can be.