Page - 91 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Using Latinx Theology’s Lo Cotidiano | 91www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 87–106 clesial spheres, religious practices of “everyday” believers (such as Holy Week pageants or home altars) are deemed “popular” and thus inferior, while those performed by the institutional church are “official”. But behind this distinction are power asymmetries that range from the doctrinal (e. g., orthodox and het- erodox) to the hierarchical (e. g., ordained and lay). Simply stated, that very dis- tinction between popular and official is colonializing – all practices are “done by people” – and the difference between them is power.11 From the standpoint of lo cotidiano, such dichotomies break down. Popular religion is religion. The theology of everyday Latinx folk is theology, not Latinx theology. For instance, a lo cotidiano concept of imago dei takes into consideration not only U.S./Euro- pean theological anthropologies but also the “dirt under [Latinx] fingernails”, that is, that being human includes being “for others”.12 Indeed, Latinx-lo coti- diano being human concentrates on community not the individual. Lo coti- diano, in sum, serves to decenter colonialized meaning within theology. The decolonial thrust of lo cotidiano becomes evident as a mechanism to subvert meanings, and since El Velorio’s subject matter is unavoidably lo coti- diano, what better framework to decolonialize it? As will be seen, Oller intend- ed El Velorio to communicate a specific message, yet in any painting the mes- sage depends as much on the painter’s production as it does on the beholder’s reception, and a decolonialized mindset certainly subverts the latter. Stuart Hall’s distinction and relationship between “encoding” and “decoding” can be helpful to parse out this mechanism. According to Hall, the producer “en- codes” meaning via discursive signs (such as words and images) with the goal that the receiver “decode” according to the producer’s intention. Since the whole process is influenced by conditions internal and external to both pro- ducer and receiver and by the communicative mechanisms themselves (such as technological, semiotic, and social aspects), the message may fall some- 11 For an excellent recent resource on decolonializing Christianity and theology, see Barreto/ Sirvent 2019, esp. 1–21. They note: “The decolonial turn therefore examines how those in the ‘underside of modernity’ create spaces that serve as sites for producing theory, knowl- edge, philosophy, and we add, theology” (6). 12 González 1990, 129, 132. Imago Dei refers to Genesis 1:26–27, where we are told that God created humans “in God’s own image”. It is a central concept in theological anthropology, the area of theology that asks what being human is and means. For instance, what are the implications of being “like” God? In which ways, if any, are humans divine? What makes human beings human, especially among other humans? What does it mean that humans were created, and what does the God-given human mission of lordship over the rest of creation imply? What does the racial, sexual, and other diversity among humans say about being human and, by extension, God?