“Metaphysical Blending in Latino/a Botánicas in Dallas”

2004

2006

2001

African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative medicines, 2017

Background: Botánicas (literally botanies) are local dispensaries that offer spiritual, healing, and religious services to a mostly Latino and Caribbean population in the United States (U.S). Despite the vast literature on Latinos' alternative medical systems, little is known on the role of the informal economy of healing in the urban milieu. This paper attempts to fill this vacuum by addressing the role of botánicas in meeting the religious healing and mental health needs of the growing Latino population in New York City (NYC). Materials and Methods: A two-stage ethnographic study on botánicas took place between 2004 and 2016 in NYC. During the first stage (2004-2006), a research team conducted participant observation and ethnographic mapping. This entailed the identification of two major concentrations of botánicas in Queens and the Bronx, with smaller clusters found in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Participant observation and in-depth interviews were conducted with fifty-six healers during this phase of the project, and thirty in-depth interviews were accomplished during the second phase (2014-2016), which focused on the products and services offered by botánicas in Queens. Results: Botánica providers and spiritual counselors construct a language of illnesssupported by the sociosoma model that calls attention to the contextual factors of distress, including the harmful effect of troubled relationships in Latinos' lives. Most providers identified the "immigrant continuum" as one of the main causes of their patients' suffering. In this vein, they highlighted the impact of Latinos' undocumented status, family conflicts and financial concerns as key triggers of their deleterious mental health conditions. Participants also shared a holistic explanatory model of mental illness, which combines social stressors and divine causas (causes) as the main source of Latinos' mental and emotional suffering. Two main ailments, depression and nervios (nervousness) were seen as complementary and closely related to the multifarious impact of the immigrant continuum in Latinos' lives. These conditions were treated with natural medicines (e.g., herbs), informal counseling and religious ceremonies, such as prayer and ritual cleansing. Conclusion: The paper sheds light on the role of botánicas, and their providers, in supporting a shared language of illness among Latinos in the U.S. The prevalence of two mental ailments among Latinos, depression and nervios, informs culturally-based processes of diagnosis and treatment in an urban multiethnic milieu. The article ultimately highlights the need for additional theoretical models and empirical research focused on Latinos' growing mental-health issues in the U.S.

MLN, 2022

Michael D. Mathiowetz and Andrew D. Turner, eds. Flower Worlds: Religion, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. Reviewed in Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 64 (2022): 328-366.

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2017

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/a Theology, Orlando O. Espín (ed.), Wiley Blackwell, 2015 (ISBN 978-1-118-71866-7), xvi + 497 pp., hb £120 Academic US Latino/a theology now stands solidly in its second generation. This volume is what it purports to be: a 'panoramic' survey of many of the field's key conversations thus far (p. 1). All of the chapters present extensive bibliographies and literature reviews. Many chapters provide overviews of concepts important to theology generally but from Latino/a perspectives: revelation, the Bible, theodicy, Christology, pneumatology, soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology, ethics, sacramental theology, practical theology, gender, sexuality, spirituality, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue. Other chapters focus on topics of particular importance to Latino/a theology: social justice, community, hybridity, and migration. This latter class of topics, in addition to receiving chapters in their own right, run as themes throughout. Fittingly, one such theme is itself a theological method: theology done collaboratively (en conjunto). As explained briefly by Orlando Espín and more fully by Rubén Rosario-Rodríguez, Latino/a theologians have tended not to approach their task as isolated individuals or as mere adherents to an intellectual tradition, but as members of a living community of theology for whom mutual support, dialogue, and collaboration are a way of life. The cohesion and consistent quality of this volume represents the fruit of this ethos, as well as, of course, the work of the authors and their editor. The best chapters go beyond summarizing and substantially advance the conversation. Such is the case with Jorge Aquino's chapter on mestizaje, the state of being racially and/or ethnically mixed, especially in terms of Spanish and indigenous American heritage. Aquino problematizes the often simplistic appropriation of the term and offers a solution by way of illuminating its connection to systemic socioeconomic oppression in Latin America. Too often the term has promoted the assimilation and invisibility of indigenous peoples. Nancy Pineda-Madrid's chapter on Latina feminist and mujerista theologies likewise parses the fine distinctions of an expansive body Reviews 81

One of the most important breakthroughs in the study of indigenous religions in the Americas is the identification of the Flower World, a solar and floral spiritual domain that is widely shared in diverse manifestations among prehispanic and contemporary native cultures in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. Based on Jane Hill’s identification of the complex in the oral canons of Uto-Aztecan language speakers in the 1990s, subsequent scholarship by archaeologists, art historians, ethnologists, and linguists have emphasized both the antiquity and geographical extent of similar beliefs among a multitude of ethnic and linguistic groups in the New World. The Flower World is not simply an ethereal otherworldly domain, but rather it is very much a lived experience activated, invoked, and materialized through ritual practices, expressed in verbal and visual metaphors, and embedded in the production and use of material objects. Despite widening recognition of its broad distribution and centrality in indigenous belief systems, this symposium is the first to bring together scholars whose work directly engages the nature and representation of Flower World in material culture, beliefs, and practices, and its various historical and contemporary manifestations in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. While widespread and diverse in representation, this complex was not present among all cultures at all times in these regions. For this reason, a comprehensive history of the Flower World sheds light on the origins of this key aspect of religion, the circumstances of its dissemination among societies in Mexico and Central America, and the history of its transmission between societies in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest, as well as its role in shaping ritual economy, politics, cross-cultural interaction.

The establishment of a park in Mexico City, known today as Alameda Central, represented an unparalleled concept of a garden as public space. At least two Spanish cities, Segovia and Seville, developed alamedas before Mexico City's. Although indeed public, the spaces, as the name alameda indicates, formed tree-lined passages rather than true parks. We can name la Alameda as the first park in the Americas and also consider it the front-runner for the western world's first public one. Subsuming various traditions as it evolved and expanded, New Spain's Alameda paced Mexico-Tenochtitlan's state of flux, recording and reflecting the city's cultural pulse. This essay hopes to demonstrate that the characteristic that best defines la Alameda is its mestizaje. I will show that the park not only originated as a transcultured space but also facilitated the transculturaltion of the society it served.

Reviews in American History, 2020

A review essay on Mario T. García's book, "Father Luis Olivares."