Popcorn 4 Dinner was born from trauma and guilt, from that sneaky way religion exploits the cracks and makes perpetrators out of its victims. As Julio demonstrates over and over throughout the novel—religious trauma is both personal and societal. It gets handed down from generation to generation. It cuts deep and hides in plain sight. So it may seem antithetical when Julio laments: I wish my parents were Catholic. After all, the Spanish conquest of his motherland may have begun with the sword, but it was finished by Catholic priests—why would he monologue in Catholicisms’ favor?
Juan’s parents are Catholic. Rogelio’s too. And Sam’s. Alex’s. Ok, Alex lives with his Catholic abuelos but same difference. And they’ve all got it a hell of a lot easier than I do. Oh, what that sounds like loco talk? Your cushy white bread, Unitarian Universalist might think so. Your atheist would see it that way. All those rules. Rituals. Guilt. It sounds like torture.
Pschhh. Give me rules. Give me ritual. Give me guilt.
Just give me love.
Juan’s parents love him—no doubt about it. Rogelio’s mama crosses herself whenever he comes out of the baño eyes rimmed with kohl, but she loves him nonetheless. Sam = loved. Alex = loved. But me? Nah, man. Nah.
Could it be that the sect of Christianity Julio was raised in, the religion that persecutes him, acts with such psychological, spiritual, and even physical violence that being Catholic actually sounds like a good time? If you’re not familiar with evangelicals[1]—well that’s hard to believe after their hand in Trump’s near destruction of our nation, but anyway—they’re the ones who harass and scream lies outside of women’s clinics. The ones who spread the Gospel of Jesus’ love by promising Hell to all non-Christians. Who want the right to deny jobs and housing, the very means of existence, to people whose private bedroom activities violate their “beliefs”. Who want the right to deny life-saving medical treatment to those who don’t fit their gender ideals. Who want the right to discriminate and hate. Who then send their missionaries across the globe to spread those self-same seeds they call Jesus’ love.
It’s an indoctrination system that I am all too familiar with. In the summer of 1987, Jesus called my father to move our family to Tecate in Baja California, México, and spread his Gospel amongst the people. Or some mierda. The majority in México worships the same God we did—just in a slightly different way. Tomato tomate. Of course the encroachment of evangelical missionaries into Spanish-speaking, Catholic practicing countries doesn’t have any more to do with saving souls than it did when the Catholics invaded centuries earlier. And while the tactics have reversed course, it’s still imperialism at the helm. It’s still cultural genocide at play.
Was that my father’s goal as he passed out religious conversion tracks along with deliveries of rice and beans? Did he recognize his role in the homogenization and Americanization of global culture when he was helping build houses for those converts lucky enough to be rewarded with an upgrade from their plywood shack? Hardly. But that doesn’t absolve any missionary of the cultural violence that they’ve done in Jesus’ name either. Just because they switched up methods from stick to carrot—that doesn’t make it all right. Benevolence in the name of conversion is no longer benevolence. Those food deliveries and basic construction projects were tainted by the intent to convert, making them just another form of carnage. If one wants to feed people then feed people, but tying free food to the future of their soul is spiritual extortion.
The very heart of evangelism is witnessing the Gospel to non-believers and saving them from eternal damnation. Except non-believers doesn’t mean just non-Christians—anyone not following the Word of God according to evangelical interpretation counts—which makes pretty much every country directly south of the USA ripe for evangelical invasion. As many of them see it, Catholics are going to hell for their reverence to the Virgin Mary. By labeling Catholics as idolators, it frees up evangelical proselytizers to go after their market share. Religion is Big Business after all—and there is a lot of competition within Christianity for that tax-free income. They want your ten percent baby and they don’t care if you are a broke single mom living in government housing trying to make it on minimum wage. They want that tithe no matter how bad it hurts the giver and they will use any amount of guilt and shame to get it.
Make no mistake, the evangelical invasion into the southern two-thirds of the Western Hemisphere has been a very successful enterprise. There were already multiple Evangelical churches established in Tecate in the 1980s when my own family was guilty of perpetrating the same victimhood it had fallen prey to (I’ll discuss the particular ways that religion can traumatize its victims in a later article) and their reach has only grown since then. This isn’t just a matter of numbers and whose coffers get the tithes. Real people are affected. Lives are disrupted. With Julio’s character, I tried to delve into the insidious ways this missionary work changes the course for generations, the way children brought up in its results suffer extra guilt and hatred in the name of Christian imperialism.
Julio compares his life in the United States with his evangelical parents to what he sees when he visits his uncle’s family in México and wonders what his life would be like if a pair of missionaries named Paula and Art had never crossed the border. He wonders—would his father be more like his brother if he’d never met the two? Would he think like Tío Teo? Who makes Julio’s parents’ heads spin with statements like—‘Sometimes loving your kids is more important than tradition or religion.’
This isn’t to discount machismo in México or to pretend that it is fading any faster than it is, but rather to make the point of just how heinous this sect of Christianity is. And Julio experiences the worst of it—from conversion therapy to being thrown out on the street to an actual exorcism. Oh, you thought that was Catholic domain? Try typing evangelical exorcism into YouTube, you’re in for quite a disturbing treat.
The next issue of Popcorn 4 Dinner will feature a chapter adaptation from the novel where Julio will go deeper into the consequences that evangelical imperialism has had on him personally. I hope this essay has provided a little background information to make your reading experience a little richer.
[1] Non-denominational is often code for evangelical. Within this sect, they often believe they are the only true Christians and have zero understanding of how their beliefs have developed as an offshoot of Protestantism.