Double baptism: personhood and ethnicity in the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico

Catholic Tarahumaras of northern Mexico are baptized twice: first by fire, then by water. Ethnographers of this colonized group have focused on fire baptism, dismissing water baptism as “borrowed.” By contrast, in this article I discuss a community where Tarahumara historical discourse claims that each baptism is equally indigenous and necessary. Fire baptism distinguishes Tarahumaras from neighboring non‐Tarahumara Mexicans, whereas water baptism separates them from their “uncivilized” native ancestors. Rejecting both primordial Indianness and modern Mexicanness, these baptized Tarahumara nevertheless partially embody both. Their personhood is composite, rather than totally “fragmented,” and draws on an ethnically coded cosmology in which twice‐baptized bodies are connected to alternating agricultural season.