Faith and politics: The socio-political discourses engaged by Mexican ex-voto paintings from the nineteenth-century and beyond. Page: I

                                
Hamman, Amy. Faith and politics: The socio-political discourses engaged by
Mexican ex-voto paintings from the nineteenth-century and beyond. Master of Arts (Art
History), May 2006, 66 pp., references, 37 titles.
The Universalis Ecclesiae of 1508 authorized Spanish colonization of the
Americas in return for the conversion of native populations to Christianity. From its
inception therefore, the Mexican nation lived an alliance between Church and State.
This alliance promoted the transfer of Castilian Catholicism to American shores.
Catholic practices, specifically the ex-voto tradition, visualize this intermingling of
religion and politics.
The ex-voto is a devotional painting that expresses gratitude to a religious figure
for his/her intervention in a moment of peril. It is commissioned by the devotee as a
means of direct communication to the divine. This project analyzes 40 Mexican ex-votos
for their reflection of political issues in Mexico. I assert that the Mexican ex-votos
engage discussions of social politics. To support this argument, visualizations of socio-
political discourses such as the Virgin of Guadalupe as a national religious symbol,
police action and economic disparity were examined.