Of Wonders and Wise Men : : Religion and Popular Cultures in Southeast Mexico, 1800-1876 / / Terry Rugeley.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Rugeley, Terry,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (365 p.)

In the tumultuous decades following Mexico's independence from Spain, religion provided a unifying force among the Mexican people, who otherwise varied greatly in ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Accordingly, religion and the popular cultures surrounding it form the lens through which Terry Rugeley focuses this cultural history of southeast Mexico from independence (1821) to the rise of the dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1876. Drawing on a wealth of previously unused archival material, Rugeley vividly reconstructs the folklore, beliefs, attitudes, and cultural practices of the Maya and Hispanic peoples of the Yucatán. In engagingly written chapters, he explores folklore and folk wisdom, urban piety, iconography, and anticlericalism. Interspersed among the chapters are detailed portraits of individual people, places, and institutions, that, with the archival evidence, offer a full and fascinating history of the outlooks, entertainments, and daily lives of the inhabitants of southeast Mexico in the nineteenth century. Rugeley also links this rich local history with larger events to show how macro changes in Mexico affected ordinary people.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Orthography -- Introduction. Strange Lights, Mysterious Crosses, and theWord of GodDenied -- Chapter 1. Geography, Misery, Agency, Remedy: The Unwritten Almanac of Folk Knowledge -- Chapter 2. Rural Curas and the Erosion of Mexican Conservatism: The Life of Raymundo Pérez -- Chapter 3. The Bourgeois Spiritual Path: A History of Urban Piety -- Chapter 4. Spiritual Power,Worldly Possession: A History of Imágenes -- Chapter 5. Official Cult and Peasant Protocol: Rural Cofradías and the History of San Antonio Xocneceh -- Chapter 6. A Culture of Conflict: Anticlericalism, Parish Problems, and Alternative Beliefs -- Chapter 7. ‘‘Burning the Torch of Revolution’’ Religion, Nationalism, and the Loss of the Petén -- Conclusion: The Motives for Miracle -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index