The Spiritual Evolution of Margarito Bautista : Mexican Mormon Evangelizer, Polygamist Dissident, and Utopian Founder, 1878-1961
Claremont, California
The Claremont Graduate University
2015
419
Ph.D. diss.
This dissertation uses the life of Mexican Mormon convert Margarito Bautista (1878-1961) as a lens through which to view the convergence of Mormon evangelization, Mexican nationalism, and indigenous religious improvisation in the Mexican/U.S. borderlands during the early twentieth century. It examines issues of race, chosen-ness, national identity, indigenous authority, and Mormon fundamentalism. It argues that Bautista promoted an indigenous re-centering of the spiritual world based on Mormon doctrine and Mexican nationalism, which insisted upon ecclesiastical self-governance for Mexican Mormons, promoted a radical racial exceptionalism for indigenous Mormons, and predicted that indigenous Americans who strictly obeyed God's commands would be able to wrest both political and spiritual authority from the descendants of Euro-American colonizers.