The divine from the margin

Resignification of faith in Hispanic immigrant women in a hostile U.S. culture

Abstract

This essay addresses the complex reality of Hispanic immigrant women in the United States, exploring how exclusion, uprooting, discrimination, and racism act as catalysts for a profound reinterpretation of their spirituality. Far from adhering to imposed patriarchal religious structures and imaginaries, these women are reinterpreting the sacred from their bodies, their migratory experiences, and their daily struggles for survival and dignity. For them, faith becomes a radical act of agency and resistance. Adopting a critical and decolonial perspective, the essay examines how this embodied spirituality functions as a powerful source of healing in the face of the trauma of migration and cultural hostility. This living theology not only offers individual comfort, but also creates collective spaces of empowerment. By redefining their relationship with the divine, these women simultaneously challenge the conservative religious canons that seek to control them and the sociopolitical discourses of American culture that attempt to silence and marginalize them. The essay proposes an alternative reflection for understanding the complex and powerful intersection between faith, gender, and migration in the Hispanic experience.