Secularization in Mexico City. a Wrong Paradigm?

The political situation of the world and the complicated relation of the West with Islamic countries have provided evidence that the most significant mistake in the theories of secularization is the conviction that modernization inevitably leads to the loss of the importance of religion. Thus the proposition of Berger (2001) replacing this paradigm with an analysis of the interaction between the forces of the secularization and a counter secularization is pertinent.

In a similar way, it can be said that globalization reminds us that the relationship between religion and politics as established in the Western world, that is to say the passage of the religious to the sphere of the private life, is rather an exception.

Religion in the history of Mexico is a key element in understanding the cultural reality of the country and there exist a collective memory linked to the Catholic Church. However, the first years of this century were an undeniable setback for Catholicism.  We can talk about changes in the nature of the religious that opened new perspectives for study. In that way studying the study of the process of secularization, its modalities and its particularities, become a pertinent subject.

 Likewise, it is suitable to indicate that during the first two decades of this century the paradigm of secularization began to be questioned and the idea of a return of religion or a re-enchantment of the world began to emerge. It is possible to speculate that in large Mexican cities, especially in Mexico City, the process of secularization remains constant only in members of a middle class who can be considered carriers of an international subculture; these are people who have received a Western-style higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences.