Mexico

Mexico, plus the former states of southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. 

Mexico is Catholic. As such, birth control is illegal; abortion is prosecuted as murder. Church and state are heavily integrated; practicing non-Catholic religions is legal, but excludes you from many normal social and civic functions. Mothers and children are strongly supported both socially and financially.

Marriage

Different tribunals vary in how permissive they are in granting annulments. You can only apply to the tribunal of wherever you live. People absolutely do move in order to get access to a tribunal known to grant annulments more readily. There are definitely a few tribunals in border dioceses that just rubber-stamp annulments for people escaping from Gilead.

The expected thing for women with abusive husbands is that they take the children, go move in with their mother/sister/friend/parish lady that their priest suggests to them, and appeal for a protective separation. That’s judged to a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, and if the judge finds that the woman or her children were being abused, she automatically gets a restraining order against the guy, full custody of the children, 2/3 of the shared property, and a note on the marriage certificate so that, like, if she ends up in the hospital the guy can’t go “I’m her husband let me in.” All of this is in theory also available to male abuse victims, but in practice there are similar biases at work to those in real life.

Someone with a protective separation can’t remarry; in practice, plenty of them end up with open secret boyfriends or girlfriends, which is regarded as a vice but not more so than, like, a gambling habit or a tendency to skip mass and watch the superbowl.

Education

Most children attend parochial schools, which vary in quality by location but are overall academically solid. Most of the rest are homeschooled. At 15, all but the most academically inclined students start spending half-days at school, with the other half spent in some kind of apprenticeship (usually but not exclusively boys) or in helping run the home (usually but not exclusively girls). The most academically inclined students instead start intensive (college-like) study in their field of interest.

Censorship

Printed books are lightly censored, by virtue of the fact that all publishing houses are Catholic. (You won’t get into any kind of legal trouble for smuggling in a censored book from elsewhere; they just aren’t printed.) Obscene books won’t be printed, for a basically reasonable definition of obscene -- descriptions of sex intended to titillate, except in the case of literary classics with redemptive artistic value. For books on most topics, that’s the only filter. Books on matters of “faith and morals” have to receive a nihil obstat (“nothing impedes it”) from the local Church authority, certifying that they’re not actively promulgating anything contrary to Catholic doctrine, before the printing houses will publish them. It’s common to further apply for an imprimatur (“let it be printed”) from the local bishop, which authorizes the text for use in churches and schools.

Most ISPs censor outright pornographic content, and websites expressly promulgating beliefs contrary to Catholic teaching. The latter runs off a list compiled based on reports and screened by very bored priests, and does not even remotely keep up with new online content popping up; scarleteen is censored, but some random wordpress blog is not. The former is done by machine. You can apply to your priest for dispensation from either, and if they think you have a good reason (e.g., you’re a theologian who wants to write counter-arguments to anti-Catholic teachings), they’ll write a letter to your ISP asking them to lift the censorship for you.

Immigration

Christian immigrants are broadly welcomed; non-Christian immigrants from countries where Catholicism is freely practiced are screened, and must seem like reasonably good neighbors willing to cohabit peacefully and refrain from corrupting the youth. Immigrants from countries where Catholicism is oppressed, and especially from Gilead, are strongly welcomed; helping them is considered to be a major Christian duty, and there are huge cultural institutions for it. 

Anyone who makes it across the border from Gilead can expect to be promptly set up with a host family, provided with necessities, have lots of locals stopping by to welcome them, and be offered counseling, childcare help, medical treatment, and so forth, as appropriate. This extends to people who would otherwise be stigmatized to one degree or another (e.g. atheists, gay people, etc). A significant number of Mexicans are involved in actively smuggling people across the border; this is considered heroically virtuous, despite the fact that it’s most often a gang activity, and the smugglers are often taking drugs the other direction.

In the other direction: if you are pregnant and travel to a country that offers abortion and come back no longer pregnant (and without a baby in hand) you are very likely to get prosecuted for murder. This provides a pretty major incentive not to travel to such countries at all while pregnant, because if you have a miscarriage the presumption is going to be much less in your favor.

In general, no one’s going to stop you emigrating to Gilead-or-wherever, but if you have minor children you are in fact not legally allowed to emigrate to a non-Catholic country. For legal procedures here, think “divorced couple with shared custody, except the Catholic Church is one of the parents.” That is, if you want to travel to a non-Catholic country with minor children, you’re going to have to get notarized approval from a Church official, who will want to have an interview with you and be convinced that you’re not going to run off with the kids and never come back.

LGBT

Homosexuality per se is not condemned, but any kind of homosexual activity is. Gay people are told they’re called to a life of celibacy; the official word is that you shouldn’t become a priest just because you’re gay, and that gay priests should be discouraged in general, but in practice gay guys become priests all the time and everyone knows it. It’s officially permissible to live chastely “as brothers” or “as sisters” with a member of the same sex, so long as you do it quietly to avoid giving scandal; in practice, you can only get away with this if you’re sufficiently devout and active in your parish that everyone is confident you really are living chastely together.

Bisexuality is basically not acknowledged as a thing; trying to explain it would be met with confusion (“but ... why wouldn’t you just marry a [member of opposite sex], then?”). Asexuality similarly (“you’re free from temptations to lust? That’s wonderful!”) Trans people are considered to be mentally ill, delusional, and self-harming. (On the other hand, mentally ill people are generally well-treated and integrated into the community. So there’s that.)

Women

Women in Mexico are allowed to work outside the home, and many of them do. The general reaction is not “how COULD you” but “oh, you poor thing, I’ll pray to St. Jude for you to fall pregnant soon.” A woman working when she has a child under about two is heavily socially stigmatized (“why would you do that? what’s WRONG with you??”); getting to stay at home with a child younger than that is considered a basic necessity like having a roof over one’s head, and if you can’t afford it yourself, your parish will pitch in and support you. A woman working (full-time, outside the home) when she has school-age children is still unusual, but the reaction is milder (“are you okay? are you sure?”).

Children

All hospitals are of course Catholic. Because of the very high infant mortality rate from bitoxiphosphene, it’s standard practice for the hospital chaplain to baptize all babies immediately after birth, regardless of the parents’ religion or preferences. The parents are thereafter required to bring the child to Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation, to provide it with Catholic religious instruction (either by sending it to a parochial school or by some other means), and generally not to interfere in its being raised Catholic; if the local pastor reports that they’re not complying, and an investigation confirms this, the child will be removed and given to Catholic foster parents.

15 is the age of legal adulthood for most purposes. You can marry at 15 (although you need parental permission until 18). Most people start attending only half-days of school at 15, and spending the other half in an apprenticeship or helping out at home. You don’t generally move out at 15, but in fact most people don’t move out until they get married, and sometimes not even then; living with extended family is common. You can vote at 15, and be tried as an adult. Catholics are confirmed at 15. Girls have a huge party (quinceañera) for their 15th birthday.

Calendar

The civic calendar follows the Catholic calendar. Civic holidays include: all of Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter); Christmas (Dec 25); Dia de los Muertos, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day (Oct 31-Nov 2nd); and the feasts of Mary the Mother of God (January 1st), the Ascension (40 days after Easter), the Immaculate Conception (Dec 8th), Corpus Christi (moveable, between May 21st and June 24th), Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12th), and Christ the King (movable, between November 20th and 26th).

Government

Church officials don’t technically have any civic power, but the structures of church and state are deeply entangled. The political organizational structure follows that of the Church: the smallest political unit is the parish, parishes are organized into dioceses, dioceses are organized into provinces, provinces are organized into the Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano (Episcopal Conference of Mexico). You’re registered with the parish of wherever you live (again, this causes complications for non-Catholics), vote in the parish hall, and so forth. (A parish ranges in size from “neighborhood” to “city”; a diocese from “greater metropolitan area” to “half a state”; a province from “half a state” to “several states,” all depending on the local population density of Catholics.)

Non-Christians cannot take legal oaths, which excludes them from testifying in court or holding most public offices. Baptismal, Confirmation, and marriage certificates, respectively, serve the social/legal/bureaucratic functions of birth certificates, driver’s licenses (as proof of adulthood), and marriage records; so people lacking those will find themselves in frequent bureaucratic quandaries. It is both legal and fairly common to be nominally Catholic but varying levels of devout/practicing; children are usually pushed to be more practicing than their parents, partly so that they can obtain the above Sacraments, but dropping off a bit after 15 is not unusual.

Catholicism

Violations of Catholic teaching, like extramarital sex, eating meat on Fridays, or skipping Mass, aren’t generally illegal. In theory, “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” can result in your priest refusing to give you Communion, at which point you are no longer a Catholic in good standing and lose the various privileges associated with Catholicism. In practice, this is enforced unevenly: it will happen if you keep getting caught having gay assignations, it won’t happen if you keep skipping Mass whenever the Superbowl is on. There are also scandal laws, with penalties ranging from fines to a few months in prison, applied similarly. In practice, though, if you’re willing to keep “repenting” after each incident, the worst consequence is going to be social ostracization.

There aren’t actually legal penalties for apostasy, and even on an ecclesiastical level it’s handled very gently. The primary case of apostates they’re dealing with is Catholics from Gilead who converted under tremendous pressure, and no one really wants to give them a hard time.

  • Christ the King (Cristo Rey) and Bl. Miguel Pro
    • Associated with: a Catholic state, freedom to practice Catholicism
  • Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego
    • Associated with: the Americas, the rights of indigenous peoples
  • St. Elizabeth, Sts. Anne and Joachim
    • Associated with: infertility, hoping for children in old age
  • Saint Gianna Beretta Molla
    • Associated with: pro-life movement, dangerous pregnancies
  • St. Joseph
    • Associated with: workers, fathers, children, families, raising children not biologically one’s own
  • St. Gerard Majella
    • Associated with: pregnancy, childbirth
  • Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin
    • Associated with: choosing marriage and children over the religious life; the loss of infants
  • St. Jude
    • Associated with: hopeless causes
  • Marian devotions in general
    • Associated with: miraculous pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, the gift of children, unmarried mothers

Unofficial devotions, generally discouraged by the Church but still widely practiced, include but are not limited to:

  • Juan Soldado
    • Associated with: illegal immigrants
  • Jesús Malverde
    • Associated with: drug traffickers
  • Teresa Urrea
    • Associated with: insurgents, resistance fighters
  • Santa Muerte (strongly condemned by Church; very popular)
    • Associated with: death, oppressed people, criminals, LGBT people

Other Religions

Other religions in Mexico and what it’s like to practice them:

  • Judaism:
    • In Spanish-speaking areas: somewhat ghettoized but not otherwise generally badly treated; general attitude is “weird foreign people” but not “evil.”
    • In English-speaking areas: ranges from attitudes similar to those in Spanish-speaking areas, to outright holocaust-denying antisemitism. (The latter is associated with influence from the SSPX, which in this timeline did not schism; for further inside-baseball details, see Wikipedia.)
    • In general: not going to have stones thrown at them in the street, but definite social outsiders. Getting Saturdays instead of Sundays off from work is often possible (no one else wants to work Sundays!) but not always. Giving birth at a hospital means your baby gets baptized and you’re legally required to raise them Catholic, so lots of homebirths.
  • Gileadism:
    • Not uncommon in the border areas, for obvious reasons (not all escapees immediately deconvert). Mostly treated as “you poor thing, we’ll keep exposing you gently to Catholicism until you get over the brainwashing.”
  • Atheism:
    • Most atheists just put up with attending Mass and catechesis until age 15, get their Sacraments, and proceed to be not-very-practicing nominal-Catholics who attend Mass on Christmas and Easter because their grandmother hassles them about it. Explicit atheists are much rarer, and generally assumed to be amoral and Corrupting The Youth; it doesn’t help with that assumption that, for the most part, the only people who are going to bother being explicitly atheist here are fundamatheist types.
  • Miscellaneous Protestants:
    • I think you mean HERETICS. Not going to be burned at the stake; totally going to be referred to as HERETICS, harassed about the obvious error of their ways, kept away from impressionable children, turned down for jobs, etc. There are not a lot of miscellaneous Protestants in Mexico.
  • Santeria:
    • Very popular; third most common religion in Mexico. Constantly condemned from the pulpit. This does not stop anyone. Lots of people are nominally Catholic and actually practice Santeria, or consider themselves devout practitioners of both, or are mostly Catholic but have a few Santeria practices they picked up from their grandmother, or anywhere else along that spectrum. (Basically the whole point of Santeria, after all, is being able to practice it when Catholicism is being forcibly imposed on you.)
  • Santa Muerte:
    • Very, very popular; second most common religion in Mexico, after Catholicism. In a similar situation to Santeria: constantly condemned from the pulpit, commonly practiced alongside Catholicism with varying degrees of devotion to each. Stigmatized as blasphemous, Satanic, idol-worship, criminal, perverted, etc. etc. etc. Somehow this doesn’t stop anyone either.

Abortion

Abortion is prosecuted as murder. In practice, women are very rarely convicted of abortion; it’s too hard to prove that it was an abortion, given how common miscarriages are. Back alley abortion providers are convicted rather more often. In either case, it’s invariably a huge media circus, with lurid anecdotes and public outrage.

Mexico really doesn’t want fertile women to end up spending their lives in prison, so penalties for a first-offense abortion are relatively light, despite the fact that it’s a murder conviction. If you repent convincingly and have living children and your husband and parish priest show up and look like good upstanding people and promise to keep you on the right track, you’re likely to get parole with a hefty suspended sentence, for the sake of the children not having to be motherless. If you don’t have living children, you get a sentence on the order of decades; women’s prison for nonviolent offenders is basically “go live with these nuns who signed up to effectively run a low-security prison,” and after a few years if you have convincingly Turned Your Life Around, you’re very likely to have the nuns start introducing you to Nice Young Men (if you’re unmarried), and eventually get paroled to get married/return to your loving husband.

Repeat offenders, and abortion providers, are eligible for the death penalty; the former is moderately controversial, and it’s not uncommon for judges to take extenuating circumstances into account and give the woman life in prison instead. (The latter is uncontroversial.)

Birth Control

Birth control is illegal; you’ll get a prison sentence for possessing it, and a much heftier prison sentence for dealing, or for possessing amounts that make it look like you’re dealing it. This applies to all forms of birth control, including the Pill, implants, condoms, etc.

It may be possible to obtain birth control from your friendly local drug dealer; you have about a 50/50 shot on whether he’s far too Catholic to dream of such a thing. If he will sell it to you, it’s still subject to all the usual pitfalls of illegal drugs: it’s expensive, you have to talk to sketchy people to obtain it, your supply might be suddenly interrupted, you can’t be sure of what you’re getting, and so forth.

You may also be able to get birth control shipped illegally from countries where it’s legal; customs and border control will search for it, but of course some manages to slip through. 

In theory, it’s possible for an unmarried woman to travel to Cascadia once every two years and get a shot of long-lasting birth control. This is illegal, of course, but Cascadia’s Planned Parenthoods are hardly going to share records with Mexico, so it’s very hard to get a conviction. In practice, the downside is that someone is likely to notice this -- border crossings are public record -- and guess what you’re doing, and then you’re going to be a social pariah and definitely no one is ever going to marry you. 

(If a married woman tries this, her husband can go in front of a judge and produce border crossing records and point out that she’s not getting pregnant, and he’s likely to be able to pull together enough probable cause to get her banned from travelling to countries that offer birth control for a number of years.)

Condoms are somewhat easier to obtain than hormonal birth control, but typically of very iffy quality. (Do you want to use a condom that’s been smuggled hundreds of miles through the baking desert heat in the back of a drug dealer’s van?)

No Comments
Back to top