Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands

Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands PDF Author:
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804766215
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is a reflective, original, and sometimes speculative essay on the concept of power and the man-god tradition in Mexican colonial history, with some provocative thoughts on how that tradition affected the way the indigenous population reacted to the cultural upheavals of the Spanish Conquest and its aftermath. The basis of the work is the rich documentation that survives from efforts to prosecute cases of idolatry and witchcraft. The author closely examines four such cases - Indian peasants living in central Mexico who proclaimed themselves successors of the gods during various stages of the colonial era (in 1537, 1659, 1665, and 1761). Drawing on the testimony of these man-gods and their followers, the author describes the emergence of these native leaders, discusses their individual qualities, and evaluates their impact and hold on their followers. He also sets out in substance their speeches and depositions, which provide a rare critique of colonial society. Coming from the lower classes, socially and culturally marginal, these man-gods tried to understand and surmount the profound changes that were crushing their society. Their actions were doomed to failure, but they reveal a dynamism and creativity that have been ignored by conventional historians. In a more general way, the book demonstrates through concrete examples how popular cultures constantly change and recreate their own traditions, and how vanquished and dominated societies, in order to construct a new identity, create new cultural forms.

Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands

Man-Gods in the Mexican Highlands PDF Author:
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804766215
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is a reflective, original, and sometimes speculative essay on the concept of power and the man-god tradition in Mexican colonial history, with some provocative thoughts on how that tradition affected the way the indigenous population reacted to the cultural upheavals of the Spanish Conquest and its aftermath. The basis of the work is the rich documentation that survives from efforts to prosecute cases of idolatry and witchcraft. The author closely examines four such cases - Indian peasants living in central Mexico who proclaimed themselves successors of the gods during various stages of the colonial era (in 1537, 1659, 1665, and 1761). Drawing on the testimony of these man-gods and their followers, the author describes the emergence of these native leaders, discusses their individual qualities, and evaluates their impact and hold on their followers. He also sets out in substance their speeches and depositions, which provide a rare critique of colonial society. Coming from the lower classes, socially and culturally marginal, these man-gods tried to understand and surmount the profound changes that were crushing their society. Their actions were doomed to failure, but they reveal a dynamism and creativity that have been ignored by conventional historians. In a more general way, the book demonstrates through concrete examples how popular cultures constantly change and recreate their own traditions, and how vanquished and dominated societies, in order to construct a new identity, create new cultural forms.

The Origins of Mexican Catholicism

The Origins of Mexican Catholicism PDF Author: Osvaldo F. Pardo
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472113613
Category : Mexico
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
Offers a nuanced account of the evangelization in the Americas of the sixteenth century

Revolution and the Millennium

Revolution and the Millennium PDF Author: James F. Rinehart
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313389322
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
An interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, cross-historical analysis of three 20th-century non-Western revolutionary societies—China, Mexico, and Iran—that were profoundly impinged upon by European and American imperialism. The study explores the role of apocalyptic beliefs in radical movements bent on sociopolitical transformation. It concludes that millennial expectations performed important and similar preparatory, leadership, and therapeutic functions in each case. Millenarian movements are powerful and emotional social movements that expect an immediate, collective, total, this-worldly, supernatural salvation and transformation of society. They anticipate the complete destruction of the existing sociopolitical and economic order, which they assert will be followed by a new and perfect society. This study provides an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, cross-historical analysis of three 20th-century non-Western revolutionary societies that were profoundly impinged upon by European and American imperialism. It seeks to explore the functional role of millenarianism in these three revolutions. In all three cases, millenarianism prepared the way for revolutionary transformation. It acted as a catalyst for action among that group of the most ardent revolutionists who were willing to pay any price to achieve what they were convinced was the inevitable goal of a utopian society. Millenarianism created the potential for charismatic leadership to emerge. It functioned as a doctrinal platform that awaited the opportunity to elevate a prophetic revolutionary leader to take control. Finally, millenarianism performed a therapeutic, identity, and cathartic function by providing the doctrinal foundation and an effective organization for a social healing process to take place. A challenge to conventional arguments on the origins and outcomes of revolutions, this study will be of great interest to scholars and researchers in comparative politics, sociology, and religion.

Emiliano Zapata!

Emiliano Zapata! PDF Author: Samuel Brunk
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826325130
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
The life of Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was the stuff that legends are made of. Born and raised in a tiny village in the small south-central state of Morelos, he led an uprising in 1911--one strand of the larger Mexican Revolution--against the regime of long-time president Porfirio Díaz. He fought not to fulfill personal ambitions, but for the campesinos of Morelos, whose rights were being systematically ignored in Don Porfirio's courts. Expanding haciendas had been appropriating land and water for centuries in the state, but as the twentieth century began things were becoming desperate. It was not long before Díaz fell. But Zapata then discovered that other national leaders--Francisco Madero, Victoriano Huerta, and Venustiano Carranza--would not put things right, and so he fought them too. He fought for nearly a decade until, in 1919, he was gunned down in an ambush at the hacienda Chinameca. In this new political biography of Zapata, Brunk, noted journalist and scholar, shows us Zapata the leader as opposed to Zapata the archetypal peasant revolutionary. In previous writings on Zapata, the movement is covered and Zapata the man gets lost in the shuffle. Brunk clearly demonstrates that Zapata's choices and actions did indeed have an historical impact.

The Flower and the Scorpion

The Flower and the Scorpion PDF Author: Pete Sigal
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082235151X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sigal argues that sixteenth century Nahua sexuality cannot be fully understood only through colonial sensibilities and sources. He examines legal documents, clerical texts, pictorial manuscripts, images and glyphs of Nahua gods and goddesses and descriptions of fertility rituals and other historical accounts and stories to show the complexity of Nahua sexuality.

Peyote

Peyote PDF Author: Beatriz Caiuby Labate
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440834016
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explains the role that peyote—a hallucinogenic cactus—plays in the religious and spiritual fulfillment of certain peoples in the United States and Mexico, and examines pressing issues concerning the regulation and conservation of peyote as well as issues of indigenous and religious rights. Why is mescaline—an internationally controlled substance derived from peyote—given exemptions for religious use by indigenous groups in Mexico, and by the pan-indigenous Native American Church in the United States and Canada? What are the intersections of peyote use, constitutional law, and religious freedom? And why are natural populations of peyote in decline—so much so that in Mexico, peyote is considered a species needing "special protection"? This fascinating book addresses these questions and many more. It also examines the delicate relationship between "the needs of the plant" as a species and "the needs of man" to consume the species for spiritual purposes. The authors of this work integrate the history of peyote regulation in the United States and the special "trust responsibility" relationship between the American Indians and the government into their broad examination of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus containing mescaline that grows naturally in Mexico and southern Texas. The book's chapters document how when it comes to peyote, multiple stakeholders' interests are in conflict—as is often the case with issues that involve ethnic identity, religion, constitutional interpretation, and conservation. The expansion of peyote traditions also serves as a foundation for examining issues of international human rights law and protections for religious freedom within the global milieu of cultural transnationalism.

Spiritual Encounters

Spiritual Encounters PDF Author: Griffiths,
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567250628
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book Here

Book Description
Encounters between religions and the resulting questions pertaining to belief and faith are among the most intriguing subjects with which scholars grapple. How do people adjust, accommodate, resist, reinterpret and harmonize different systems of belief? Do religious conversions often mask more worldly concerns such as political power, economic well being, and the ability to control one's destiny? Specifically adopting a cross-hemispheric approach, this volume draws on experiences of religious change principally in hispanophone America, but also in anglophone and francophone America, in order to transcend cultural frontiers, illuminate the circumstances and conditions which determined the form that spiritual encounters took across the hemisphere, and encourage a comparative approach.

The Devil in the New World

The Devil in the New World PDF Author: Fernando Cervantes
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300068894
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
Until the end of the eighteenth century, missionaries to the New World agreed that diabolism lay at the heart of the Native American belief system and at the root of their own failure to establish a church purged of Satan and pagan superstition. The Devil mattered, and he occupied a central place in discussions of all non-Christian religious systems and in the bitter disputes over how to combat them. In this elegant and sensitive analysis, Fernando Cervantes gives the Devil his due, illuminating a neglected aspect of the European encounter with America and setting the full history of the "spiritual conquest" in a rich and original context. He reveals how Native Americans reinterpreted the view of Christianity presented to them, how they refused to see the world as the missionaries saw it. Drawing on archival sources, he brings into clear focus the complex, often bewildering, and sometimes tragic clash between a theology that posited the existence of competing forces and one that insisted that all deities were multiform beings within which good and evil coexisted. He deals in compelling and persuasive detail with the social history of the interaction between the two cultures, explaining not only the impact of European ideas upon the New World but the influence of diabolism on the ideology of the Old. And he provides a subtle account of the role of diabolism in the emerging baroque culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that strikingly challenges conventional explanations of the growth of skepticism in the period.

State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Volume 3

State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Volume 3 PDF Author: Miguel A. Centeno
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108874517
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 563

Get Book Here

Book Description
Neoliberalism is often studied as a political ideology, a government program, and even as a pattern of cultural identities. However, less attention is paid to the specific institutional resources employed by neoliberal administrations, which have resulted in the configuration of a neoliberal state model. This accessible volume compiles original essays on the neoliberal era in Latin America and Spain, exploring subjects such as neoliberal public policies, power strategies, institutional resources, popular support, and social protest. The book focuses on neoliberalism as a state model: a configuration of public power designed to implement radical policy proposals. This is the third volume in the State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain series, which aims to complete and advance research and knowledge about national states in Latin America and Spain.

Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico

Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico PDF Author: M. Butler
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230608809
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
While Mexico's spiritual history after the 1910 Revolution is often essentialized as a church-state power struggle, this book reveals the complexity of interactions between revolution and religion. Looking at anticlericalism, indigenous cults and Catholic pilgrimage, these authors reveal that the Revolution was a period of genuine religious change, as well as social upheaval.