Resumen

DELAUNAY, Daniel. Cultures in Movement: Migration and Dissemination-Dilution of Beliefs in Mexico. Estud. demogr. urbanos [online]. 2011, vol.26, n.2, pp.267-297. ISSN 2448-6515.  https://doi.org/10.24201/edu.v26i2.1384.

Secular cultures also evolve on a local scale, sometimes quickly. This perspective is often overlooked since attention has focused on transnational influences. This is the case of two cultural features of Latin America: indigeneity, inherited from the Amerindian peoples and the Catholic religion. Although Catholicism acquired a virtually total monopoly from the time of the Conquest, since the 1960s, its influence has decreased due to the evangelical churches. The dynamics of these cultural traits, due to dissemination or dilution, has a component that interests demographers: the migration of people. This article describes the spatial dimension of three movements in Mexico during the 1990s, on the basis of census data and with the help of simple models with variable coefficients.

In a fine division of space, the comparison of the demo-economic profiles of 1990 and 2000 show the dissemination of the indigenous population outside their traditional lands. Indigenous migrations are not modified due to cultural rules -or at least these are not statistically apparent- but due to the will to escape a dual form of discrimination and the lack of resources characteristic of their ancestral land. Migrations enable indigenous people to re-appropriate the national territory. As for evangelical Protestants, no demo-economic bases were found in their migratory capacity, meaning that it can be classified as cultural. Their inclination to migrate helps them spread the evangelical church, particularly in regions with a more colonial tradition, which are more resistant to the dilution of Catholicism. This involves social as well as spatial dissemination, since statistical models show that the vectors for dissemination and dilution are women, indigenous people and the poor. This confirms the scope of Protestant proselytism in these target groups as well as their success in the places where Liberation Theology has failed: Protestants promote a popular religion that spreads a message of social progress as well as engaging in more intense migratory practices.

Palabras llave : Mexico; indigenous population; internal migration; geography of religion; multi-level analysis.

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