A Mulatto Saint from Peru in Vietnam: The Devotion to Saint Martin De Porres from the 17th Century to Nowadays

The devotion to Saint Martin de Porres (1579- 1639) is still vibrant in Vietnamese Catholicism today. Born in Lima, he was the son of a Spanish knight Juan de Porres, and a former freed black slave Ana Velázquez. As descendants of Africans and Indians were barred from becoming full Dominicans, Martin lived and worked at the Convent as a “donado” who performed menial tasks, taking care of the poor and practicing indigenous herbal medicine. How did Saint Martin de Porres, so popular in Latin America and more recently in the US, arrive in Vietnam and why his cult still remains through his statue in churches, his Saint feast on November 3rd and hagiography in Vietnam as well as in the diaspora in the US? This paper describes how the Black Peruvian saint was introduced in Vietnam by Spanish Dominicans and how he became a model for the Third Order, a lay structure which was a major actor of the Vietnamese Catholicism’s survival during the persecution (17th - 19th centuries). It is another narrative than the one of French colonial and religious authorities which considered French missions as the main actors of Vietnamese Catholicism. The story of Martin de Porres in Vietnam shows the contribution of experiences in Latin America and the Philippines to Vietnamese Catholicism, in terms of acculturation, through the trading road by Manila galleon / Galeón de Acapulco, that linked the Spanish kingdom with Asia from Sevilla to Vera Cruz, Acapulco, Manilla to the Red River delta.