Review
Title: Grass Roots in Mexico: Stories of Pioneering Latter-day Saints
Author: F. LaMond Tullis
Publisher: Religious Studies Center BYU / Deseret Book
Genre: History
Year Published: 2021
Number of Pages: xix + 330
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-1-9503-0427-1
Price: $27.99
Reviewed by Gabriel González for the Association for Mormon Letters
From F. LaMond Tullis comes a new book shedding light on the history of the Church in Mexico. Titled Grass Roots in Mexico, it is exactly what the subtitle promises: a set of stories of pioneers in Mexico. The term pioneer for many Latter-day Saints is associated specifically with the people who crossed the plains in wagons or handcarts, but this book reminds us that there are indeed “pioneers in every land.”
Grass Roots in Mexico is organized into three parts. The first part is two chapters that outline the history of the Church in Mexico. These initial chapters serve the purpose of contextualizing the stories that are told in the second part of the book. This second part is comprised of 19 chapters that cover the life stories of at least 22 individuals (some chapters cover several people). These chapters are called “pioneer vignettes,” which is a strange name for what are in essence biographical sketches. One might as well think of these as case studies of what it means to convert into the Church and live the Restored Gospel. They vary in length from 6 to 28 pages each, which makes some very detailed and highly contextualized and others more general. The stories are organized chronologically. The first focuses on Desideria Quintanar, who lived from 1814 to 1893, and the last one focuses on Agustín Gutiérrez, who was born in 1963 and is still alive. Except for chapters dedicated to Anthony Ivins and Ammon Tenney, all “vignettes” focus on ethnic Mexicans. The third part is some end-matter that includes an afterword calling for further research and a taunting appendix about Book of Mormon Lamanites and their connection to the descendants of pre-Columbian peoples (more on this below).
Tullis is no stranger to Church history in Mexico. He has written extensively about it, including the books Mormons in Mexico: Dynamics of Faith and Culture (which was translated into Spanish) and Martyrs in Mexico: A Mormon Story of Revolution and Redemption. The first of those books tells the history of the Church in Mexico and the second focuses on the story of Latter-day Saint martyrs Rafael Monroy and Vicente Morales. Grass Roots in Mexico builds on those two books by providing a very brief history of the Church in Mexico and then focusing on the lives of several Latter-day Saints, including some that had been highlighted in previous books.
This book, in fact, draws on many of his previous publications. The author is transparent about his sources, not only through extensive footnotes but also through a paragraph, at the beginning of each chapter’s Notes section, which specifies exactly what his sources were. These include previous publications but also an impressive number of oral interviews that took place between 1975 and 2019.
Like in the previous books, Tullis is very sympathetic to the people he writes about, many of whom he met personally. He at times goes out of his way to contextualize certain practices that might be striking to non-Mexican readers, such as Juan Camacho’s decision to set up booths with Church literature in the cemetery. Thus, while this book is not devotional in nature, by highlighting the conviction with which these converts moved forward in life, Tullis narrates stories that are bound to be inspiring for some readers.
The life stories are at heart of the book, but the material that bookends them is interesting too. For example, the discussion of Church schools in Mexico that is found in chapter 2 can be enlightening to any reader unfamiliar with the Church’s educational projects in that country. On the other end, the book finishes with a curious appendix titled “Latter-day Saint Fascination with Native Americans as Lamanites.” (The term “Native Americans” is to be broadly understood as not only US-based Indigenous peoples but also those in Mexico and other parts of the Americas.) The appendix is a very short narration of the Church’s thinking about the descendants of pre-Columbian peoples, from the days the Book of Mormon was first brought forth to more modern controversies surrounding DNA studies. The point seems to be to show how that “fascination” was an important thrust behind early missionary efforts in Mexico.
What the appendix does not address, unfortunately, is how this doctrinal view of Indigenous and Mestizo populations conditions the way Mexican Latter-day Saints see themselves. This is issue is not banal for the Church in Mexico, especially during the first half of the 20th century. The belief arose, among some Mexican Saints, that as descendants to the people of the Book of Mormon, they would raise triumphantly as a chosen people to a glorious future, even within the Church. This belief is called Lamanism, and it informed, at least in part, the thinking that led to the schism within the Mexican Church. This belief still informs the thinking of some Church members in Mexico. For that reason, it seems that if the issue of Mexicans-as-descendants-of-the-Lamanites was going to be addressed, some discussion should have been given to how this belief has affected the Church in Mexico.
Ultimately, Grass Roots in Mexico is not about Church schools or Lamanism but about lives lived with the same determination of the pioneers that crossed the plains. The context is different, but the fire within is the same. Thus, if one had to describe the book, the best way to do this would be to simply quote Tullis himself, who in the afterword provides this one-sentence summation:
In the undulating vicissitudes of the Latter-day Saint message in Mexico[,] that among its successes included periods of abandonment, dissidence, falling interest, and a falling away, one nevertheless sees good people striving to find the will of their Lord for them and, once having found it, dedicating enormous personal and collective efforts to bring it to fruition.
That is the message, and if that is something readers are interested in, Tullis offers a set of engaging biographical sketches to be inspired by.