Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
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Mormon Studies Review

Keywords

identity, indigenous, Mormons, Mexico, Margarito Bautista

Abstract

In 1935, after a twenty-five-year residency in the United States, Margarito
Bautista, a well-known evangelizer of Mexican and Mexican American
Mormons on both sides of the US-Mexico border, repatriated to Mexico.
Bautista had converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
in central Mexico in 1901. Of particular appeal to Bautista and his family
were Book of Mormon narratives offering an exceptional spiritual identity
to Indigenous Americans as lost members of the House of Israel and
promising them a glorious future destiny. Motivated by a desire to know
more about the religious movement he had joined, Bautista relocated two
years later to the Mormon colonies in the northern Mexican desert.1 By
1910 he had migrated further northward, crossing over the US-Mexico
border into El Paso and taking up residency in Mesa, Arizona. Four years
later, he moved to Salt Lake City, only returning temporarily to Mexico
in 1922 as a missionary.2 By his own account, he was astounded at the
progress made by Mexico and Mexicans during his twelve-year absence.3 He returned to the United States in 1924, longing to take part in the development of Mexico and vowing to someday return.4

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