The Power of the Illegitimate: La Divina Pastora and the “Coolie Mission” in Colonial Trinidad

Based on archival research and supplemented by ethnographic observations, this article critically revisits the history of La Divina Pastora, the Madonna of Spanish origin, in colonial Trinidad, focusing on how the spirituality and materiality of two statues of this Marian image intersected, competed, and reinforced each other: a fair-complexioned La Divina Pastora in northern Trinidad, created and patronized by the Catholic central authorities; and a dark-skinned, miracle-working La Divin/Sipari Mai in Siparia, formerly a peripheral Spanish mission in southern Trinidad. Tracing the trajectory of their lives and relations reveals the complexities of the ecclesiastical history of Trinidad, unearthing the contradictions and tensions between the patriarchal making and remaking of religious orthodoxy and the popular praxis of faith for day-to-day substantive issues needing medico-spiritual solutions. Unlike extant studies, addressing the two distinct statues representing the same Marian image, this article utilizes a holistic approach in order to appreciate why and how the Madonna at Siparia emerged, survived, and thrived as a shared empowering object, despite the colonial obsession with racial-cultural purity and regimes of the boundaries of belonging. The conflicts among the Christian communities were intertwined and thwarted the Catholic central authority’s attempts to exploit La Divin/Sipari Mai’s transgressive power to attract Hindus to the Church. The tangled conflicts also created conditions in which Hindu supplications for miraculous cures persisted and thrived, despite discrimination and repression by the Catholic authorities. The incessant interactions between Catholics and Hindu devotees in Siparia led to the combination of their originally divergent practices and worldviews and the transformation of the dark-colored Madonna from La Divina Pastora to La Divin/Sipari Mai, an alternative spiritual construction that represented various maternal/female bodies, each conforming to distinct religious traditions.The research for this article was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science’s Grant-in-Aid, a postdoctoral fellowship from Saint Louis University, and, not least, parish priest Fr. Martin Sirju and the parishioners of Siparia, Trinidad