Ignacio M. Garcia

GNACIO M. GARCIA {[email protected]} is the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professor of Western & Latino History at Brigham Young University. He is the author of six books on Mexican American civil rights, politics and sports, a war novel (Can Tho), and a memoir, Chicano While Mormon: Activism, War and Keeping the Faith. He is currently working on a biographical work of Eduardo Balderas, the first translator for the LDS Church. He has served as an LDS bishop twice.

Thoughts on Latino Mormons, Their Afterlife, and the Need for a New Historical Paradigm for Saints of Color

Articles/Essays – Volume 50, No. 4

The following thoughts come from my experience as a faithful and ortho dox Latter-day Saint, as a Mormon bishop, as a critic of some aspects of institutionalized Mormonism, and as an activist and scholar of faith navigating what is and has been for most of my life a complicated environment where racial/ethnic issues are ever present but rarely discussed in ways that bring closure. My particular scholarship and activism on behalf of Mexicans and Latinos is encapsulated within this setting and I admit that I have not been freed from the complication that it brings to my faith except for those moments when I immerse myself in those Latino Mormon spaces that are my Spanish-language barrios (wards).