Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture

In 1876, a handful of Mormon missionaries arrive in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and initiated the church's proselytizing effort there. Vehemently opposed by the Catholic clergy and greeted by hostile crowds, the tentative Mormon missionary effort was scarcely successful. Yet today, more than 300,000 Mormons in Mexico constitute the largest Mormon population in Latin America. Dr.F. LaMond Tullis examines how and why the Mormon church, a quintessential product of nineteenth-century America, converted individuals in a third-world, Catholic culture. In part, the restrictive social and political climate surrounding Mormons in the United States combined with the ultimately receptive political environment of La Reforma's Mexico to create a unique opportunity. Overall, religious conversion was inexorably linked to rapid development and change. As in the early days of the Mormon church in nineteenth-century Utah, Mormonism in Mexico symbolizes not only a religion but a normative, economic, and social way of life.