You might not realize it, but Latinos make up the second largest demographic group in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In fact, the Mormon temple in Mesa was the first ever to offer religious rites in Spanish.
And, in ASU professor Sujey Vega’s new book, “Mormon Barrio,” she tracks the history of it back more than a century.
Vega herself is not LDS. In fact, she was raised Catholic, though she’s no longer practicing — but, as she told me, her research with Latino LDS communities kept reminding her of her own Catholic grandmother.
Full conversation
SUJEY VEGA: I kept seeing, because I was interviewing a lot of older women for the initial part of it, which was the history of Mesa, Mesa’s LDS Latino population. And I was sitting across these women as they were telling their histories. And I was just at some point looking at their hands. And they reminded me of my grandmother’s hands when she was praying the rosary…