When I walk down the street, I can not help but notice the dominant presence that churches and places of worship have in the area. Every church that I see is accompanied by a grand plaza and park, sitting on their own city block and easily accessible so that all can come. The grandeur and size of these churches are not similar to the ones that I saw back home. They could be fairly big, with some in philadelphia taking up just as big a space as the ones I see here, but they just don’t look the same. Here, the churches feel Godly – they feel fit for service as opposed to the small places of worship I see back home and in rural America.
It harkens back to a different time, and echoes the missions and agendas of the Spanish colonizers to fully consume and overcome the traditions of the people they conquered. The presence of churches shows the power of the catholic institution, an organization that had such extreme power over one continent and now hoped to expand its influence deep into the new world. Nothing echoes this sentiment more than the convent at Izamal.
Visiting this historical site and sitting in the church, I thought of all the people that were gathered in the square outside that were forced to undergo conversion to save their lives. They were forced to renounce their identities, their beliefs, to compromise the integrity of everything they had been taught since birth. One can easily understand how the Mayans can say the rapture and the end of the world began with Spanish boots hitting the beaches of the peninsula.
In the grand plaza during the walking tour, it was noted that the three houses that faced each other were symbolic of economic, military, and religious power. The Spanish colonizers had the framework of how to exploit the lands and the people on it and were able to effectively carry out their means of oppression through forced integration and maintaining a complete monopoly on violence. Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “Religion associates heaven with an idea of equality that keeps the rich from being massacred by the poor.” Religion is a means of oppression when weaponized, with figures preaching how violence, rioting, and demonstration is an afront to God himself. We must love one another, turn the other cheek. An institution as big and bad as the Catholic church can be quite convincing when they have agents and armies with rifles, torches, and pitchforks at the throats of your members of society.
