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

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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 socio-economic status. Accordingly, religion and the popular cultures surrounding it form the lens through which the author focuses this cultural history of south-east Mexico from independence (1821) to the rise of the dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1876. Drawing on a wealth of previously unused archival material, the author vividly reconstructs the folklore, beliefs, attitudes, and cultural practices of the Maya and Hispanic peoples of the Yucatan. 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 south-east Mexico in the 19th century. The author also links this rich local history with larger events to show how macro changes in Mexico affected ordinary people.