@article{1398874,
      recid = {1398874},
      author = {Sarat, Leah,},
      title = {Fire in the canyon religion, migration, and the Mexican  dream / [electronic resource] :},
      pages = {1 online resource (xi, 241 pages)},
      abstract = {"The canyon in central Mexico was ablaze with torches as  hundreds of people filed in. So palpable was their shared  shock and grief, they later said, that neither pastor nor  priest was needed. The event was a memorial service for one  of their own who had died during an attempted border  passage. Months later a survivor emerged from a coma to  tell his story. The accident had provoked a near-death  encounter with God that prompted his conversion to  Pentecostalism. Today, over half of the local residents of  El Alberto, a town in central Mexico, are Pentecostal.  Submitting themselves to the authority of a God for whom  there are no borders, these Pentecostals today both embrace  migration as their right while also praying that their  "Mexican Dream"--the dream of a Mexican future with ample  employment for all--will one day become a reality. Fire in  the Canyon provides one of the first in-depth looks at the  dynamic relationship between religion, migration, and  ethnicity across the U.S.-Mexican border. Faced with the  choice between life-threatening danger at the border and  life-sapping poverty in Mexico, residents of El Alberto are  drawing on both their religion and their indigenous  heritage to demand not only the right to migrate, but also  the right to stay home. If we wish to understand people's  migration decisions, Sarat argues, we must take religion  seriously. It is through religion that people formulate  their ideas about life, death, and the limits of government  authority. Leah Sarat is Assistant Professor of Religion at  Arizona State University"--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1398874},
}