Historic Churches of New Mexico Today

This interpretive guide combines history and ethnography to represent living traditions at the adobe and stone churches of New Mexico. Each chapter treats a particular church or group of churches and includes photographs, practical information for visitors, and context pertinent to current understanding. Frank Graziano provides unprecedented coverage of the churches by combining his extensive fieldwork with research in archives and previous scholarship. The book is written in an engaging narrative prose that brings the reader inside of congregations in Indian and Hispanic villages. The focus is less on church buildings than on people in relation to churches -- parishioners, caretakers, priests, restorers -- and on the author's experiences researching among them.

History

Graziano, Frank

Americas

Oxford University Press

Much has been written about millennialism in the U.S. and its European roots. But although it is widely recognized that millennialism is also endemic to Latin America, until now there has been no systematic study of this phenomenon as it has flourished in that part of the world. Graziano here offers the first such study, examining Latin American millennialism from its Iberian and indigenous antecedents to present social, revolutionary, religious, and political movements.

The Millennial New World

Historical Study & Educational Resources

The Peruvian mystic St. Rose of Lima (Isabel Flores y Oliva, 1586-1617) was canonized in 1671 as the first saint of the New World and remains the object of widespread devotion today. In this engrossing new study, Frank Graziano uses the example of St. Rose to explore the meaning of female mysticism and the way in which saints are products of their cultures. Virginity, austerity, eucharistic devotion, incessant mortification, and mystical marriage to Christ characterized the devotional regimen that structured St. Rose's entire life. Many of her mystical practices echo the symptoms of such modern psychological disorders as masochism, depression, hysteria, and anorexia nervosa. Graziano offers a sophisticated argument not only for the origins and meaning of these behaviors in Rose's case, but also for the reason her culture venerated them as signs of sanctity. In the process he explores a wide range of themes, from the idea of suffering as an expression of love to the assimilation of childhood trauma through religious repetition. Graziano also offers a penetrating analysis of the politics of Rose's canonization. He finds that her mystical union with God--bypassing the institutional channels of sacrament and priestly mediation--was inherently subversive to the bureaucratized Church. Canonization was a cooptation by which Rose's competing claim to Christ was integrated into the Catholic canon. The book concludes with a fascinating exploration of mystical eroticism, with its intense experiences of vision and ecstasy. The eroticized suffering of many mystics is shown to be very human in origin: the mystic's wounded love is projected onto a God conceived to accommodate it. Wounds of Love is based on a decade of research in archives, rare books, and an extraordinary range of secondary sources. Introducing an innovative method that integrates history, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and clinical psychology, this compelling work offers a bold new interpretation of female mysticism.

Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Rose of Lima

World

Spanish America has produced numerous "folk saints" -- venerated figures regarded as miraculous but not officially recognized by the Catholic Church. Some of these have huge national cults with hundreds -- perhaps millions -- of devotees. In this book Frank Graziano provides the first overview in any language of these saints, offering in-depth studies of the beliefs, rituals, and devotions surrounding seven representative figures. These case studies are illuminated by comparisons to some hundred additional saints from contemporary Spanish America. Among the six primary cases are Difunta Correa, at whose shrines devotees offer bottles of water and used auto parts in commemoration of her tragic death in the Argentinean desert. Gaucho Gil is only one of many gaucho saints, whose characteristic narrative involves political injustice and Robin-Hood crimes on behalf of the exploited people. The widespread cult of the Mexican saint Nino Fidencio is based on faith healing performed by devotees who channel his powers. Nino Compadrito is an elegantly dressed skeleton of a child, whose miraculous powers are derived in part from an Andean belief in the power of the skull of one who has suffered a tragic death. Graziano draws upon site visits and extensive interviews with devotees, archival material, media reports, and documentaries to produce vivid portraits of these fascinating popular movements. In the process he sheds new light on the often fraught relationship between orthodox Catholicism and folk beliefs and on an important and little-studied facet of the dynamic culture of contemporary Spanish America.

Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America

Oxford University Press, USA

Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico

Mexican statues and paintings like the Virgen de Guadalupe and the Señor de Chalma are endowed with sacred presence and the power to perform miracles. Millions of devotees visit their shrines to request miracles for health, employment, children, and countless everyday matters. When miracles are granted, devotees reciprocate with votive offerings. Collages, photographs, documents, texts, milagritos, hair and braids, clothing, retablos, and various representative objects cover walls at many shrines. Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico explores such petitionary devotion in depth through extensive fieldwork supported by research in a vast body of interdisciplinary scholarship. The study's principal themes include sacred power and human agency, reification, projective animation, faith as a cognitive filter, sacred power transfer, social and narrative construction, positive framing, collaborative and deferred control, vows (juramentos), and miracle attribution. The book is written in two alternating voices, one interpretive to provide an understanding of miracles, miraculous images, and votive offerings, and the other narrative to illustrate the interpretive chapters and to bring the reader closer to experiences at the shrines. Among the many miraculous images treated in the book are the Cristo Negro de Otatitlán, Niño del Cacahuatito, Señor de Chalma, Señor de la Misericordia (Tepatitlán), Señor del Rayo, Señor de las Tres Caídas (Teotilalpam), Virgen de los Dolores de Soriano, Virgen de Guadalupe, Virgen del Pueblito, Virgen de Juquila, Virgen de los Remedios, Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos, Virgen de Talpa, Virgen de Tonatico, and Virgen de Zapopan.

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Undocumented Dominican Migration is the first comprehensive study of boat migration from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. It brings together the interactive global, cultural, and personal factors that induce thousands of Dominicans to journey across the Mona Passage in attempts to escape chronic poverty. The book provides in-depth treatment of decision-making, experiences at sea, migrant smuggling operations, and U.S. border enforcement. It also explores several topics that are rare in migration studies. These include the psychology of migrant motivation, religious beliefs, corruption and impunity, procreation and parenting, compulsive recidivism after failed attempts, social values in relation to law, marriage fraud, and the use of false documents for air travel from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States.
Frank Graziano’s extensive fieldwork among migrants, smugglers, and federal agencies provides an authority and immediacy that brings the reader close to the migrants’ experiences. The exhaustive research and multidisciplinary approach, highly readable narrative, and focus on lesser-known emigrants make Undocumented Dominican Migration an essential addition to public and academic debates about migration.

Undocumented Dominican Migration

University of Texas Press

A fascinating account of political repression in Argentina, this book takes as its thematic locus the intersection of religion, violence, and psychosexuality as they relate to the desire for power and to the myths and rituals manifesting that desire. Graziano's inquiry into the source of political violence is culturally grounded, focusing on psychological, historical, anthropological, and religious phenomena--often dismissed as "insignificant peculiarities" in traditional investigations.The author traces the messianic mythology ratifying the Junta's "dirty war" to the medieval Christian paradigm on which it is based, providing a historical and ideological context for understanding contemporary perceptions of torture and execution as necessary, holy acts. The study also explores the relation of Argentine political atrocity to rituals of human sacrifice in Aztec and other preindustrial cultures, to medieval and early-modern practices of torture, to eighteenth-century public executions in Europe, and to sexual murders. "Disappearance" and torture as political strategies, the social roles imposed by repressive regimes, and symbolic constructs of the "invisible enemy" are also treated in depth.Divine Violence is based on analysis of victim testimony, formal and informal military discourse, trial transcripts, detention center vernacular, and torturer statements, substantiated by a vast multidisciplinary body of secondary literature. The result is a book that not only offers astonishing insights into state terror in Argentina but also elucidates the historical development of violent repression as a social rite and as a political practice in Western culture.

Divine Violence: Spectacle, Psychosexuality, And Radical Christianity In The Argentine ""Dirty War""

Westview Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Graziano, Frank. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Graziano, Frank

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Graziano, Frank. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Historic Churches of New Mexico Today

Historic Churches of New Mexico Today

The Millennial New World

Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Rose of Lima

Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America

Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico

Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico

Undocumented Dominican Migration

Undocumented Dominican Migration

Divine Violence: Spectacle, Psychosexuality, And Radical Christianity In The Argentine ""Dirty War""