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According to Dávila (2005), some global executives would be surprised to learn that many Mexicans like to work in the presence of religious images such as Our Lady of Guadalupe. Such images are not only tolerated but actively promoted in Compartamos. In order to understand the context of the Compartamos case study, it is necessary to explore some aspects of the Mexican culture that affect working styles and practices in Mexico.

Mexico is a “mestizo” country, which means that its people are of mixed race resulting from the combination of European and Indigenous American descent. The concept of mestizo is central to the Mexican identity, which is neither wholly Spanish nor wholly indigenous, and the word mestizo has acquired a double meaning of mixed cultural heritage and descent. During the siege of Tenochtitlán by the Spaniards in 1521, Tlatelolco was the scene of the last desperate stand by the Aztecs. In front of the church, a plaque displays these simple but moving words: “On 13 August 1521, heroically defended by Cuauhtémoc, Tlatelolco fell into the hands of Hernán Cortés. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat: it was the painful birth of the mestizo nation that Mexico is today.”

Riding (1984) tries to capture this mix by describing the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Mexico City, a central square that takes its name from the juxtaposition of buildings from three different periods: Pre-Columbian pyramids and ruins, a Spanish conventual church, and modern tower blocks. Riding (1984) argues that the birth pains of the mestizo race are not yet over. More than 490 years after the Conquest, Mexico’s identity remains ambivalent between the ancient and the modern, the traditional and the fashionable, the Indigenous American and the Spanish, the Oriental and the Western. “It is in both the clash and the fusion of these roots that the complexity of Mexico resides” (Riding, 1984, p.3).

Our Lady of Guadalupe, a symbol that synthesises the two cultures that emerged during the Spanish conquest, is present in daily Mexican activities, including business practices. The story goes that on the morning of 9 December 1531, a newly-Christianised Aztec peasant, Juan Diego, was walking up a hill in the Tepeyac area, near what is now Mexico City, when he heard a voice calling him from above and a brown-skinned woman appeared, announcing that she was, in fact, the Mother of God. She asked that a church be built for her on the spot where Juan Diego stood. Juan Diego told the bishop about the apparition, but the disbelieving prelate demanded concrete evidence. The Virgin instructed Juan Diego

to go to the top of the hill, where he would find special Spanish roses that could not possibly bloom there in winter. Juan Diego cut the roses and placed them in his tilma (cloak). Later, when he opened his tilma to reveal the roses to the bishop, an imprint of Our Lady Mary appeared on it. The bishop now believed in the apparition (Leeming, 2014). Eventually, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe was built, and it became the primary pilgrimage site in Mexico. The tilma image displayed there is the most popular religious image in Mexico. Today, this picture is present and displayed in homes all over Mexico, and is frequently seen in factories and businesses, accompanying workers and managers in their daily jobs. Our Lady of Guadalupe was mestiza. She shared many similarities with the Nahuatl goddess, Tonantzin, whom the Indians called “Our mother”. In this way, pre-Hispanic ecumenism was allowed within the new religion imposed by the Spaniards. She thus became and has remained the icon of Mexican-ness (Arnal, 2010).

In 1810, Miguel Hidalgo, considered the Father of the Nation, announced the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence by crying out in the public square: “Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe! Muera el mal gobierno!” (Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe! Death to the bad government!). Hours later, accompanied by a small, informal army of peasants and craftsmen, Hidalgo used a banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe that would later become the sign of the insurgents and the symbol of independent Mexico (Arnal, 2010).

As a secular, quasi-religious rite, each year Mexico celebrates its independence with a ceremony called “El grito” (the Cry). The highlight of this ceremony comes at eleven o’clock in the evening of 15 September, when the President of Mexico appears on the central balcony of the National Palace and “cries” an ode to the national heroes, ending with a resounding “Viva Mexico!” (Long live Mexico!), joined by a crowd in the main square. The same liturgy, at the same time, is repeated in every city in the country, and in every Mexican embassy and consulate around the world. This ritual seeks to replicate the beginning of Mexican independence; however, the government has replaced the praise of the Virgin of Guadalupe with “Viva Mexico”.

This change in the ritual illustrates the secularism currently promoted by the Mexican government. However, despite this anti-religious mood of the Mexican authorities and the secularism of modernity, Mexicans continue to value religion highly (De la Torre, 2014). According to Camp (1994), Mexicans live in a constant contradiction between, on the one hand, a secular government that promotes a liberal and non-religious education, and on the other, religious education at home:

“Both in school and at home, Mexicans typically have been raised in a contradictory social milieu that indoctrinates young people in nineteenth-century Mexican liberalism while providing them with moral points of reference within the dominant Catholic-Latin culture” (Camp, 1994, p.84).

According to the World Values Survey (WVS, 2015), average Mexicans rank adherence to the family, faith, work and national identity as the most important factors in their lives, and consider religion to be far more significant than politics (Camp, 1994; WVS, 2015; Newell, 2016). Eighty-three per cent of the Mexican population claims to belong to the Catholic Church (Ornelas, 2015). Catholicism has an ideological and cultural hegemony over Mexican value systems. It is therefore difficult to understand the cultural and social history of the country without addressing the influence of Catholicism (De la Torre, 2014).

One way of understanding the importance of religious practices to the activities of Mexicans in the twenty-first century is through pilgrimages (Shadow and Rodriguez Shadow, 1994). A pilgrimage to the Basilica of Guadalupe is considered by some to be one of the greatest pilgrimages in the world (Rinschede, 1992; Carrasco, 2010); for example, Carrasco (2010) claims that it is even greater than a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia or the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Just recently, on 12 December 2016 – the date on which the apparition of the Virgin is commemorated – the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe was visited by more than seven million people (Gómez, 2016), and other temples in Mexico also receive millions of pilgrims annually (e.g. the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos; Christ the King, a stone statue situated on the hills above Guanajuato; the Sanctuary of Chalma; Holy Infant of Atocha in Zacatecas; and the Basilica of Our Lady of Zapopan).

Leeming (2014) explains that Our Lady of Guadalupe represents the psychological bond between the Mexican people and the sacred power of the Mother. She is “the psychological underpinning of the Mesoamerican collective Self” (Leeming, 2014). Rodriguez (1994) argues that this symbol is a liberating and empowering catalyst, particularly for Mexican women. The Mexican Marxist writer, Carlos Monsiváis claimed that, despite not belonging to any religion, he, like most Mexicans, was Guadalupano (cited in Arnal, 2010).

The importance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the daily lives of Mexicans goes far beyond faith; she is a symbol of national identity. As Arnal (2010) explains, throughout Mexico’s history, Guadalupanism has marked many aspects of Mexican culture, from the pillar around which Independence pivots, to the (few) goals scored

by the Mexican national team in football’s World Cup. Attias (1999) claims that the anguish and fear caused by Mexico’s economic crises of the late 1990s gave rise to an upsurge in religious experience.

Compartamos is not unaffected by this cultural influence. The founders have a strong Catholic tradition that, according to the case-study data, has influenced the bank’s management practices. Religious images, mainly of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Mother Theresa of Calcutta, are frequently displayed on desks and around the workplace. Senior managers use religious culture in their value system to communicate the organisation’s purpose and to influence the “how”. Compartamos may be seen as the ultimate expression of this Mexican religious idiosyncrasy adapted to today’s business workplace.