E-mail comments to the Editor

Download the complete PDF of this issue

Editor's Note:  Many of Dr. Guy Bensusan's articles were unpublished at the time of his death last October. Other writings are awaiting editorial assistance to integrate themes from personal dialogs, list serves, notes, and unfinished works. His stories distill the essence of his explorations and ideas about learning. He encourages us to adapt and experiment with his ideas rather than to imitate them.

 "What I offer is not a foolproof chart, it is my personal blueprint. It comes from a professor trained in history and experienced in teaching humanities, arts and culture courses.

I do not offer my path as one to be imitated. Only I can be Guy Bensusan. Rather I hope that the ideas, principles and tactics described will be considered, molded and adapted, adjusted and modified by each navigator to his or her specific desires, locations, areas, needs and goals. I sincerely hope they will be useful as springboards for experimentation."

Applying The Hexadigm

Guy Bensusan

Imagine you plan a project explaining Mexican poetry, discussing village agriculture or evaluating some local festival. As you begin your study, what would you do to get started? Recalling my own university days, I would immediately have headed for the library card catalog to look up some books and magazine articles to read -- but that was before I invented the HEXADIGM.

As student, I went after information first, rather than taking some time at the outset to consider a context into which that specific data might fit and relate. Now, as professor, I see the importance of first establishing the framework and surrounding circumstances, and also recognize that I am responsible for helping students become aware of "the big situational bowl of conditions, events, persons, spectrum and dynamics." Therefore, rather than going to the library first, I would now, as an older "student," think about the Hexadigm and how its interrelating precepts would apply to my assignment.

What would I think about, specifically? I would start with reminding myself of the six-part pattern:

Cultural Sequences
Mutual Influences
Regional Diversities
Modernizing Technologies
Expanding Comprehensions
Revised Interpretations

I would then work up an outline that started with the first layer in the Cultural Sequences and remind myself that in the above matter of poetry, agriculture or a village festival, Indians approached those subjects in one fashion while the second cultural layer of Spaniards approached them differently. In similar fashion, the subsequent layers of Africans and Chinese, Later Europeans and the 20th century globals appended their divergent colorations. Added together, the total would lead to an evolved vision of how things got to be the way they are today.

After dealing with the Cultural Sequences, I would consider the basic mutual influencing which would have come into play when Spanish culture affected and was affected by Indian culture -- adding each mutual influence stratum in ever-expanding ripples as layer after layer of cultural sequence appeared and settled in.

Then I would contemplate the geography part: a notable differentiation of climate, topography and resources -- factors which are variously felt in the several regions of Mexico, based on the elevation, the location in relation to areas of influence or importance, on the condition of being rural or urban, on the ratio of ethnic mixtures, the closeness or remoteness from Mexico City, Puebla, Veracruz and the main colonial era trade corridor from Acapulco to Veracruz, and so forth.

Next I would remind myself of the Modernizing Technologies side of things. I would consider the time-frame of my topic, and the state of technology then. That means, for instance, the level of manufacturing or industry, the circumstances of printing and distribution of knowledge, an awareness among the local people of what was being done elsewhere, ease of access by travel which would bring new people into the scene, or availability of new information from the outside world: features that would alter the pace of cultural change, or keep it static.

After that I would examine how changes in conditions then brought about Expanded Comprehensions, either in a growing awareness of new ideas or continued reinforcement of older ones, or with conflicts over how things should be accomplished or which procedures and styles were being considered "best."

Finally, I would consider the Revised Interpretations, the new explanations, defining of things that had arisen, were argued about, and in some cases were accepted at the time of the event I was studying. I would also pay attention to the conflicts in intellectual life that are going on today, both in terms of the academic discipline as well as interpreting the past. I would particularly keep in mind that the reference books and informational tools of today would reflect our own intellectual atmosphere, and therefore would direct my thinking towards one or more "schools of interpretation."

THEN, and only then would I do research in the library.

I know it seems like working backwards -- I also know it is possible to create a topic-oriented project without doing it. But, there are four powerful reasons for pursuing this multilevel procedure in this course:

1. The HEXADIGM is an alternative paradigm or pattern which has been created for the purpose of dealing with multicultural arts and culture in a way that goes beyond mere relativism.
2. By using this alternative model, you will learn to "CONTEXTUALIZE," which is, after all, one of the prime characteristics in being able to THINK CRITICALLY AND CREATIVELY.
3. By relating your topic to a cultural context, you will analyze, compare and evaluate as you develop the audio-visual presentations you are required to present over Interactive Instructional Television.
4. By working towards these goals, you will advance beyond the reactive-descriptive level on the ladder, and will broaden your abilities rapidly -- your effective GROWTH is the only standard I use for grading.

Some possible areas of study, ranging through the university curriculum, are:

Agriculture
Archaeology and Ethnology
Architecture and City Planning
Biology - Botany - Zoology
Business - Marketing - Advertising
Costume and Clothing
Consumers and Consumption
Cultural Subgroups
Dance, Gestures and Body Language
Ecology-Environmental Concerns
Economics - Resources - Workforce
Education, Schools and Universities
Etiquette, Proprieties and Manners
Festivals and Celebrations
Folklore and Folkways
Food, Drink, Cuisine
Forests and Products
Games, Toys and Sports
Health, Healing and Medicine
History and Interpretation of the Past
House, Home and Family
Indian or Native Studies
Jewelry and Metalwork
Labor and Organization
Language, Structures and Dialects
Literature and Poetry
Manufacturing and Industry
Markets and Fairs
Military, War and Defense
Museums, Study Centers, Archives
Music (Folk, Art, Religious, Popular, Autochthonous)
Musical Instruments
Myths and Legends
Painting and Sculpture
Politics, Structure and Organization
Pottery, Basketry and Weaving
Regional Studies
Religion and Church
Sciences and Technology
Social Welfare
Tales and Stories
Theater, Mime and Stage
Transportation - Roads, Rails and Wings
Water and Resource Uses

As working examples to illustrate some of our pre-research thinking, let us focus upon the following four areas:

1. Language,
2. Painting and Sculpture,
3. Architecture and City Planning,
4. Religion.

Each is a big and important subject, each is a distinctive humanistic art form and each is intertwined with others. People communicate, they move about in an organized materially constructed set of patterns, and they ideologically-spiritually envision the universe and its rules in which they function. However, instead of my writing an essay about each of these several areas, I wish instead to pose some questions and ideas that may evoke some thoughtful, organized construction for a project context.

LANGUAGE:

If we start with Cultural Sequences, what can we say about the languages of the first peoples, the second peoples, and the inter-blending that would come about when they met? When we did this in music we established some topical criteria that we could use to make comparisons with. For instance, we used: (1) musical scale, (2) musical instruments, (3) emphasis on melody, (4) emphasis on harmony, (5) emphasis on rhythm, (6) stylistic elements, (7) what meters were primarily used, and (8) what ways was the voice generally used.

When we considered foods, we divided things into several food groups by kind and point of origin. We listed ways of preservation, methods of preparation, and types of ordinary daily as well as special festive customs. With clothing, we looked at what was worn, how it was adorned, the various types of materials, adaptation of clothing necessary for warmth, occupation, or festival rites, sources and diversifications, trends and cycles in fashion, and similar elements.

Then what should we do to contextualize language? What are essential features we can use as points of comparison? Subtopics might be grammar, syntax (or sentence arrangements), vocabulary, language families or roots, tonalities, non-verbal cues, the territorial extent of usage, and so on.

Consider vocabulary; what is it called in Spain and what is it called in Mexico, or beyond that, in Regionally Diverse parts of Mexico?. Another aspect is what happens to the vocabulary in "mutual influences?" Some place names are obvious at first glance -- the Nahua Popocatépetl and Citlaltépetl as opposed to the Spanish Pico de Colima or Nevado de San Pedro. Likewise, in Spain they call an avocado "palta" while in Mexico it is "aguacatl." Tomato is easier; the native "jitomatl" became "tomate." Peanut was "cacahuatl" in Mexico and became "maní" in Spain.

How about intonation? In many places in Spain, Spanish is spoken with a rapid pace and with little rise and fall in tone. Many Spaniards say they can recognize Mexican Spanish immediately because the "Mexicans sing when they talk" -- that is, the intonation is noticeable from the perspective of the listener, whose intonation does NOT go up and down.

There are also special usages, such as the Mestizo diminutive of "ito," which is not common in Spain. In similar fashion, the augmentative word "enormous" in Spain is said as "grandíssimo," in Mexico it is "grandote."

What others can you think of? For instance, what might happen to the Spanish language in political circles when the Hapsburg (Germanic) Dynasty died out in 1700 and was replaced by French Bourbons related to Louis XIV? The first Spanish Bourbon king was Philip V, who assumed the Spanish throne in the early 18th century, bringing to Madrid a large entourage of economists, politicians, governmental officials, military men, artists, personal staff, musicians, theater and dance folk, and various hangers-on.

Given the power elitism of high court circles, French customs would have affected language in Madrid almost immediately. Some Spaniards might have snickered about it, or objected to the Frenchification, but the way real-life works, you don't laugh at the boss with impunity. Thinking about the spread of the French effect, how long would it have taken for such language intonations and vocabulary to disseminate into the largest provincial cities in Spain, plus into the capitals and chief cities of colonial government overseas?

With culinary Regional Diversity, one can eat one's way from one end of the Mexican-US border to another, finding that the salsa changes from lots of tomatoes and onions near San Diego to very spicy, red and green mixes with lots of cumin, coriander and garlic on the New Mexico line, into a pure, fiery, chopped or pureed jalapeño liquid near Matamoros on the Gulf coast.

Moreover, the names of the dishes change -- a flauta in one place is a taquito in another and a pícaro elsewhere; the same applies with tostada, chalupa and gordita. From those, what can we assume about French vocabulary as one moved from one province to another across Mexico? Where would French likely be stronger, where weakest, and where in the various in-between stages?

For Modernizing Technologies, how about universal public education, rail-bus-air transportation, radio, movies and television? What effects for language maintenance or for transformation have they exercised and continue to have? One may now buy audio and videotapes to help learn one's own language as well as foreign languages. They used to emphasize standard speech, but that has changed; regional dialects are now available.

Here we might ask, "How do we perceive the Hexadigm continuing to encompass an explanation of language evolution as well as assisting, through the marvels of modernizing technologies, our ongoing expanding comprehension about language, plus helping us revise our comprehensions about what language really is and how it constantly evolves?"

This type of awareness might be enlightening for those advocates who demand laws be passed and enforced to prevent "our English" language from changing, or to force non-English speakers to abandon their languages and speak only English. Perhaps a good question would be "Which English will we adopt? When I taught in Western North Carolina in 1985-1986, I struggled to train my ear to understand the "different" pronunciation, intonation and vocabulary. And does this response point out my own biases?

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE:

If we apply the Hexadigm to art forms, what are some categories? One could be materials; what are they using to make paintings and sculptures with; what do they paint on, or paint with, how do they make the paints, what colors do they use, and what do they use to bind the color to the surface? Navajo sand painters, for instance, travel far to get special rocks and minerals for their art colors, while Acoma potters walk (there are no roads) to distant and secret locations to find the precise clays they need.

 With sculpture, the question would be what sort of stone or wood, bone, metal, sand, brick or other substances are being used -- and how does that choice relate to what is found in the immediate locale in contrast to what must be brought in from afar. Michelangelo brought marble from Carrara to Florence and Rome in the performance of his work; the texture, density, color and quality of marble (and other rock) varies from place to place. If we think about jewelry as sculpture, then the idea of using shells from a far-off coast or colored stones from a distinctive but remote site gives a different value and quality to the jewelry-making act, as opposed to simply using local materials.

What of tools that are used: the old traditional types versus those made possible by the new modernizing technologies, like sledge hammers versus pneumatic jack-hammers, or chisels versus chain-saws, or hand-drills, versus electric drills versus lasers, or smoothing and polishing by using stone-on-stone versus sand-blasting or power-buffing. Battery-operated miniature tools now allow professional artists and home-hobbyists to do highly delicate work.

Another subtopic might be, "what is the subject matter?" What is depicted, and how does it function for that society in a literal, figurative or symbolic fashion? For hunting peoples, as an example, is a deer merely a pretty animal to be seen in the wild or a practical commodity to be hunted and eaten? Is the deer regarded as a fellow-being we share space and life on the earth with? A "Bambi" from the Disney cartoon? A "trophy" to be taken as a display of prowess in hunting, giving social stature to the hunter? Or is the deer one member of a larger harmonious system of life's balance whose existence serves the whole, and whose removal must be apologized for? All of these perceptions are appropriate to specific conditions and therefore alter the meaning of the actual sculpture.

The same could be true of "color." Where do the ideas of blue, green or red come from and what do they mean or imply -- and exactly what shades or tones of those "colors" are used? Are they merely coloration? Or does the color relate to a specific object or commodity which makes the color more symbolic of something else, thereby allowing the painter to express ideas on more than one level at the same time? Examples here might be blue for sky and a covering mantle, green for plants and living growth, red for blood and therefore fire or war or life.

Challenges to easy interpretation arise when the color symbologies of two or more sets of cultural sequences come together, are compared and mutually influence each other.  Then the yellow of Indian corn, representing earth's bounty and the gift of the gods becomes contrasted with and/or confused with the Spanish and European yellow of gold, implying richness of another sort in buying capacity, political power and possession.

With corn, Indian farmers collaborate with nature, exchanging labor and cultivation for harvest and sustenance. With gold, miners either pick up the alluvium or dig holes and take the ore -- the mineral bounty of "Mother Nature" is extracted, with no wish to later replace it.

Moreover, "arts" ideas of Africans, Later Europeans and subsequent Globals also get added into the overall mix of the centuries. In each case there are conditioning inheritances and traditions from the remembered culture -- what was thought and believed in the earlier place -- which means shapes, symbols, colors, icons, surfaces, textures, substances.

These add to the savor of the stew as well as to the interpretation of meaning posed from various cultural perspectives. Certainly the condition and heritage of each group in the Sequences along with their experiences in the new land help to account for the way they perceive the art objects, both their own and those of other groups in the developing American society.

Developing and changing conditions also have effect. Regional Diversity means that all the basics for "making art" will not be encountered equally in all places -- resources, access, techniques, traditions, families of artists, demand, and so on. That, along with the diverse experiences brought about by varied elevations, climate, location, racial mixtures, ways of life, etc, will contribute to dissimilarities in artistic products from different locations.

Modernizing Technologies help make it possible to create art out of manufactured materials, while more rapid transport hastens accessibility and expanded verbal-visual ideological communication, in turn bringing external ideas to local persons, influencing thinking and artistic creativity. The rapid growth of audio-visual aids make it possible to see and consider (albeit out of live context) various global arts from your own living room and classroom.

Contrast that type of Arts Education with what our great-grandparents had. Does it not suggest expansion of comprehension, leading almost inevitably to revisions of one's interpretation about what art, painting and sculpture truly are and do, and how they have variously evolved?

ARCHITECTURE AND CITY PLANNING:

What do you build with? In Northern Arizona and New Mexico, ancient Indians created Pueblo Bonito and Wupatki out of natural red sandstone which came in layers and was easily stacked in a land where earthquakes did not topple such things. In warmer southwestern climates, Indians dug pit-houses, placing upright juniper poles around the periphery to support a roof covered with brush. Sometimes walls would also be made from brush and long sticks, which would then be covered with mud. Others mixed mud with corn-husks and cobs into rectangular adobe blocks to be sun-dried for later stacking.

Farther south, in wetter, rain-drenched lands, leaves and fronds kept one dry, while centuries of MesoAmerican evolution gave rise to cities and centers whose enormous pyramidal constructions seemed to copy surrounding volcanoes, especially around Teotihuacán, near Mexico City, which lay on a frontier between agricultural lands and the drier regions of the north where hunting groups abounded. In such places, igneous rock was quarried, shaped, transported, carefully oriented, mounded, embellished and painted for festive, commercial, sacred, as well as strategic purposes -- and about which we are still learning.

Euro-African-Asian Mediterranean developments, conversely, came from a series of different early architectural or constructional experiences. Egyptians developed monumental constructions from huge quarried blocks. Near-Easterners used bricks made in their relatively rockless alluvial plains, while Greeks established temples from cut and carved rock. Each established-urban or ceremonial complex was planned to suit the purpose, while architectural concepts became categorized into principles of post and lintel, columnar synthesis, and arch, vault and dome under the practical Romans.

Later Medieval additions included religious architectural extendings of Catholics and Moslems into high-arched cathedral and tiled mosque styles, culminating in Renaissance architecture and city planning (after the Crusades and territorial "purification" of the faith helped royal states such as Spain and Portugal to emerge).

Mutual encounter by all of these in the New World therefore brought building and purpose into a conflict which would be immediately won by the invaders, whose destruction of Aztec (and other) temples created both location and the building materials which would be used in the construction of new (now Catholic) "temples" for the victor, and signifying the overthrow of the vanquished gods as well as their human followers. (Some folks prefer to believe American Indians were influenced in their building by early trans-Atlantic voyagers, but there is little proof for this, and it certainly is not a necessary precondition for understanding Early American architecture.)

Still, after the colonizers arrived, it was the vanquished Indians who continued to quarry stone, move it to the desired location, shape it, construct the new buildings and decorate the interiors. A walk through Mexico's and Peru's Catholic cathedrals and churches with attention to decoration clearly indicates that the "conquest" (in an ideological sense) was limited.

Though Spanish edicts commanded that their religious buildings be built in accord with the floorplan and style of Seville's cathedral (reputed to be the largest in Christendom outside of Rome's St. Peter's), the execution never was carried through. Instead, many Mexican churches (and others in Latin America) are monuments not only to mutual influences, but to the ongoing ideology of Indians perpetuated in symbologies that the Europeans have interpreted (erroneously) as evidence of Catholic conversion.

Cultures came and influenced in sequence; Aztecs had expanded their island's central ceremonial complex with a surrounding orderly labyrinth of canals and chinampas (anchored rafts of gardens), producing the city's food. Spaniards transformed that with commercial, governmental and religious structures laid out in a different pattern, and dominating the former Indian cityscape -- the farms were now on the outskirts.

With the arrival of Later Europeans after Independence, especially the French, the older quadrangle pattern of downtown was expanded by creating Paris-style tree-lined, multi-laned, diagonal boulevards, particularly the Avenue of La Reforma, leading to the imperial castle in Chapultepec Heights. The word itself, "boulevard," is French and not Spanish. Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago (Chile) and many other cities share that Gallic pattern.

Modern architecture developed a new phenomenon. Instead of piling stone on stone from the ground up, skeletons of steel are erected so that glass and masonry walls can be draped from the I-beams, high above city streets, though dangerously at risk in the city's earthquake-and-smog-ridden environment. And the farms are having to be ever-farther away, even if their produce hurries to town on roads and rails.

Regional Differences also functioned: big capital versus provincial town versus frontier settlement versus isolated mission; sea coast, island, plateau, mountain, valley. What was land worth, where would construction  occur, who did the work, what were the prior traditions, what materials would be used and where would they come from, what purposes would the buildings serve, what money was available for construction and maintenance?

These matters helped augment the extraordinary differentiation which so intrigues students of Mexican architecture and planning. Despite variations of form, some consistency of theme and idea are to be found everywhere as the unifying concepts of the faith found expression in stone and wood.

But modernizing technologies in industrial smoke and gases as well as the pollution of the personal and public traffic of twenty million may bring about extinction of modern life in that capital. The splendid beauty of city gardens and nearby mountains, highly visible in 1950 and 1960, is now obscured and foggy with smoke, grime, black soot, as well as ever-increasing crushes of people. Clearly Mexico City, as well as Puebla, Guadalajara, Morelia, Monterrey and other metropolises cannot continue to develop without some relief and change; another challenge to Expanding Comprehensions and Revised Interpretations.

RELIGION:

Take the first layer of the Cultural Sequences; Indians had their own beliefs, which we can subdivide into the bloodier Aztec type and the more bird-and-flower-oriented Quetzalcoatl-Topiltzín variety. This most likely represents an evolution of Pre-Conquest population-flows over millennia. Moreover, according to scholar June Nash and recent archaeological evidence from the Templo Mayor, a pre-existing female-focused religion existed. Beliefs and organization were community-centered and strongly formalized, with rather strict rules of conduct.

Lesser gods existed within many natural elements, and while it was believed that cycles of existence would terminate every fifty-two years, there was also emphasis on the interrelationship of persons to the god or elements of nature. Thus all beings had responsibility, and as plants and animals gave up their spirits to be "utilized" (including eaten by humans), men and women also were expected to give up their lives for the well being of the gods. The human sacrificial aspect of this seems most troublesome (repugnant?) to Christians. At the same time, it is now recognized that more humans were sacrificed in the Roman Colosseum after Christianity was adopted, than before: suggesting that members of the same faith who previously were in the arena now became the viewers!

Without seeming to excuse the Aztecs, two factors should be kept in mind. The Aztec era was one of rapid expansion, with religion playing a major unifying and militarizing role. Religion here may very well mean "tribal or community way of life" rather than church as a social institution one attends on Sundays. Aztec soldiers were expected to capture (rather than kill) enemies in battle so they might be sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli. In fact, one was promoted to higher military orders based on the number captured; a feature of very significant social, political, military and cultural consequence.

 Also, any historical documentation we read on Indian Religion comes from the perspective of Spanish Catholics, who saw things from a different worldview, conditioned earlier by centuries of fierce struggle against "heretical" Moslems and who also necessarily rationalized the destruction of the powerful politico-religious foundation of the society they were trying to conquer. We, as Indian or Non-Indian, are descendants of the events five centuries later -- we will probably never be able to see the situation in a truly balanced and objective manner. We are partially trapped, intellectually, by the books in our libraries.

The subsequent layer in the sequence was Spanish Catholic, highly organized in Spain, with a Spaniard as Pope, coming from a long heritage of religious struggle against what was termed "heresy" in the case of Islamic Spaniards, and at least "major dissent" (if not outright apostasy) in the case of Spanish Jews and Gypsies. Both groups were ordered expelled from Spain in 1492 as a result of strong urging by Inquisition leaders that Spain rid itself of deviancy in order to be pure and strong.

Sixteenth Century Spanish American Catholicism was ironic: filled with orthodox militant zeal, yet permeated with countless (and uncountable) secret practitioners of other faiths who rapidly moved into frontiers of conquest, later settling in remote parts of colonies and becoming "crypto-Jews, Gypsies and Moslems." These matters are increasingly well documented by Abraham Chanin's Southwest Jewish Study Center at the University of Arizona.

Consequences of the immediate encounter disestablished Aztec practices and destroyed temples, with Catholic cathedrals and churches built on top of them, just as the new Catholicism in Indo-America would superimpose itself on Indian foundations. Secular and regular clergy under an Archbishop of Mexico would build churches and missions throughout the land, would influence expansion, education, commerce, health and medicine, care and training for Indians, governing policies and many other socio-cultural-intellectual aspects of life.

Still, mutual influences played a major role. Indian beliefs, ways of worship, festive activities and ideological principles deeply affected the outworking of Catholicism in Mexico. The degree of synthesis and syncretism is almost impossible to perceive -- one is always at the mercy of one's own perception and sources of information. To read the words of clerics and missionaries, Catholic Conquering Conversion was a major and thorough success, but then, they had their own ideas and purposes; they may well have considered the formality of mass baptism sufficient.

Later, in the 18th century, other clerics became convinced that the effort had failed, and that Indians would never become good citizens in the Spanish fashion. However, the later clerics were at a different time, with a different set of challenges to their authority and had their own distinctive agenda in public pronouncements. We cannot take them at face value, either. Reading studies by pro-indigenists today, one concludes that most Indians kept on with their own ways, merely changing the names, as in Tonantzín to Virgin Mary.

It is also clear that African-derived religious practices were felt in Mexico. Mulatto or Americanized-African santería customs are better known and publicized in Caribbean Islands and shores, but they also exist along Mexico's eastern lowlands, northward into Louisiana. As in the cases of crypto-Judaism and crypto-Islam, Black Catholicism is an embryonic focus of academic study, and we will know more in time.

By the era of Independence, the power of Mexico's Church was enormous: many of the highest officials holding significant secular power. In fact, that tends to be one major difference in the thinking of North Americans and Latin Americans. When the word "Church" is mentioned, the former tend to think in terms of beliefs, creeds and a social community attending services in a building, rather than governmental power. Latins tend to think much more in political rather than doctrinal terms, making it somewhat difficult to have a religious discussion because each party has a different definition and set of assumptions.

Later Europeans, even Catholic ones, began arriving in the 19th century, long after the decline of Vatican power and prestige. Napoleon's influence was far more secular than religious, the church in nearly all western European states having been subordinated to the crown or central government. In Europe, Protestantism had become a very significant force, even though it would not penetrate into Latin America in any meaningful way until late in the nineteenth century.

The rise of European-based and also home-grown religious denominations in the United States as well as enthusiasm for the expansion of Manifest Destiny resulted in large numbers of missionaries entering Mexico and Latin America. In the early days they encountered much governmental and popular resistance. On the one hand, xenophobia or dislike of foreigners played a role, where hatred of Yankees was deep-rooted because of the horrors of the Mexican American War. At the same time, the depth of popular tradition perpetuated the strength of Catholicism, at least in name. Many governmental officials were suspicious of North American religious evangelizers, fearing additional losses to their northern neighbor in spite of their own hostility towards Church power -- seen thoroughly in the Cristero Rebellion of the 1920's.

The real explosion of conversion away from Catholicism would not occur until motion pictures, along with radio and television evangelism in the twentieth century, most especially after 1950 -- one more illustration of the impact of Modernizing Technologies, but also a testimony to the major dissatisfaction by Mexican Catholics against unsatisfactory socio-political conditions in their own country. The act of leaving the traditional faith and joining one that comes from the outside is, after all, a deliberate political statement and action.

Finally, it should be clear that we have merely scratched a few surfaces of four disciplines of study in these few pages. Much more could be said and worked out logically if we were methodically to work our way through the six elements. The Hexadigm must be considered as being merely one tool for our use, helping us find ways to explore the larger picture and context about a discipline of study and its relation to other aspects of the total culture being considered.

At the same time it continually shows us that the thing called cultural heritage is a if not the totality and that politics, economics, art, literature and others are subordinate to and a part of that much broader feature, The Cultural Heritage. Just as there is no History without Geography, and no language without art and music, there is no Culture without People, Ideas, Practices and Evolution -- all are components of the Whole.

I hope the six-part structure will continue to help you expand as well as organize your thinking. However, as with any tool, it is a methodology rather than a "Truth" in its own right.

In This Issue | Podium | Featured Articles | Student Exchange | Technology Exchange
State Exchange | Positions Available | Calendar | Call For Papers | Past Issues