Our Lady of Lujan. National Identity and Mass Mobilization in Argentina

ROBERTO DI STEFANO ; DIEGO MAURO

Marian Devotions, Political Mobilization and Nationalism in Europe and America

Pallgrave McMillan

Año: 2016; p. 279 - 312

As we will show in this chapter, the developments surrounding the worship of our Lady of Luján were closely linked, in many ways, with the deep social, economic and political transformations underpinning the creation of both the State and the Church in Argentina, which completely changed the foundations of Argentine society itself. We will commence by exploring its origins in the colonial period, back in the seventeenth century, and then we will ponder the impact of the international context, the positions of the Papacy, the structural process of secularization and the changing local circumstances on it. Among the local factors, we shall underline the revolutionary cycle started in 1810 and the 1822 Ecclesiastical Reform, the cumbersome creation of a centralized State and political order nationwide, mass immigration, the impact of the agro-exporter economic boom and the social issues. On top of these, we have nationalisms and working class conflict, the granting of the right to vote and the rise of party politics, the crisis of 1930, the emergence of a mass society, the industrialization and the emergence of Peronism. In the light of these developments and the subsequent scenarios that drew upon them, we will deal with the question of how the faithful experienced and expressed their devotion at different times.