Mass, Promises and Commitment in a village in Eastern Yucatan. Catholic Sacrifice at the Church’s Margin

Abstract

Based on observation and participation in numerous cargo festivals in a town in the east of the state of Yucatan, this article concludes that the parishioners, self-proclaimed Catholic, and the Mexican Catholic Church use divergent but complementary notions of “commitment”, attributable to different sacrificial practices. To achieve a non-reductionist analysis of this concept it is necessary to incorporate some theological categories, such as “accommodation”. This text describes how both parties, Mayan-speaking parishioners and a Dominican priest, make a paradoxical accommodation of the sacrificial economy of the other, distorting it creatively.