Traditional Cultural Expressions: An Analysis of the Secular and Religious Folkways of Latin@s in the United States

Abstract

?hroughout the Americas, cultural expressions include the syncretic process of 500 years of cultural mestizaj? that brings together European, chiefly Spanish, cultural expressions and the autochthonous practices of the Amerindian peoples of this continent. For the last thirty years, I have researched this cultural phenomenon by examining the traditional culture of Spain and of Texas as sites that reflect this blending of cultures. Contemporary Spanish culture includes elements from the three main cultural threads that have been celebrated and contested throughout its history. The three—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—as can be easily discerned in a number of locations such as Toledo, where the city prides itself in its multicultural past, have not always coexisted in harmony, but through the sheer power of historical weight have shaped each other, however reluctantly, despite the resistance of the currently predominant Christian culture. Thus, it was an already hybrid culture that arrived in the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century and became further hybridized for the next 400 years.