Abstract

ROSAS PAZ, Leonardo Daniel  and  PROPIN FREJOMIL, Enrique. Spatial Diffusion of Worship to the Black Christ of Esquipulas in California, United States of America. Invest. Geog [online]. 2023, n.110, e60648.  Epub June 26, 2023. ISSN 2448-7279.  https://doi.org/10.14350/rig.60648.

Black Christs are devotional figures that catalyze different meanings through their color. In the Central American context, their color rescue elements of the pre-Hispanic past and recalls, to a large extent, the link of natives with the land. One of the most representative Black Christs for his spiritual magnetism is the Lord of Esquipulas, Guatemala, revered in large parts of Central America and the United States, as a result of different periods during which his image expanded, anchored, and resignified in these territories.

The present work describes the processes that have favored the presence of the devotion to the Lord of Esquipulas in a differentiated way in California, United States, from the perspective of the spatial diffusion theories. To this end, the article applies a descriptive- explanatory qualitative research design to illustrate the expansion of this veneration. The methodological strategy included a hemerographic analysis to reconstruct geohistorical expansion scenarios and fieldwork in the state of California during July 2022 that allowed reconstructing the contemporary expansion route based on principles of multi-location ethnography. Our findings show that the diffusion process in California occurs primarily from a multicentric relocation model due to the different trajectories of worshipers over their migration and integration in the country.

Keywords : spatial diffusion; Black Christ; Lord of Esquipulas; California; geohistorical analysis.