Aztlán and Arcadia: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Creation of Place

In the wake of the Mexican-American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in North America. These “invented traditions” had a profound impact on North American religious and ethnic relations, serving to bring elements of Catholic history within the Protestant fold of the United
States’ national history as well as playing an integral role in the emergence of the early Chicano...