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- All Subjects: La Santa Muerte
- All Subjects: Latin American History
- Creators: Astor-Aguilera, Miguel
- Creators: Breault, Eric
Description
Antonio López de Santa Anna (1794-1876) is considered as one of the biggest villains of Mexican history. This frequent president in the first decades of Independence of México is the main character portrayed in the novels analyzed in this dissertation: Su alteza serenísima (1895-1896) by Ireneo Paz, Santa Anna, el dictador resplandeciente (1936) by Rafael F. Muñoz, El seductor de la patria (1999) by Enrique Serna, and México mutilado (2006) by Francisco Martín Moreno. Many Mexican novelists have tackled iconic personalities from Mexican history. However, based upon the historical context that occurred within their lifetime, each author takes a different approach to the story and characters they portray. In the novel Su alteza serenísima, Santa Anna is presented with identical characteristics as in the official history. That was written for other liberals, like Paz, the author. In El dictador resplandeciente an image almost romantic of the leader is presented through the valorization of his role in history. The narrator shows the contradictions of Santa Anna, who was a hero and villain. Santa Anna is presented from different perspectives in El seductor de la patria. The narrator uses Santa Anna's voice projecting a consciousness of the future's judgment of history upon his actions and the voices of "the others" that live around him. In México mutilado Santa Anna is presented from the same perspective as the official history, although other traitors are added to distribute the fault among various important figures. This dissertation works through the analysis of the discursive mechanisms used in these novels, of the configuration of the message that they wish to convey to the reader, of the level of re-writing official history, of the perspective from which each author is reviewing the history, of the recount of what historical aspects and voices were chosen for inclusion in each novel, and through the evaluation of how the authors recover the figure of Santa Anna. This study follows an eclectic model of cultural commentary, taking up critical concepts from Latin American literary scholars such as Perkowska, Pons, Jitrik, Aínsa, among others.
ContributorsSigüenza Ponce, Olga (Author) / Volek, Emil (Thesis advisor) / Acereda, Alberto (Committee member) / Hernández-Gutierrez, Manuel J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This doctoral thesis utilizes a material culture approach of lived religion to analyze everyday practices resulting from past social interactions and discourses that alter the relation of things and actors within structured categories of thought and action. The case study for this analysis is a genealogical investigation of the icon of Death that attracts both lived Catholic and Occultist practitioners within the shared self-identification of folk magic. La Santa Muerte is an icon of Death that recently emerged as a Mexican folk saint over the last two decades, but appears to be a historical outcome of medieval Western European material depictions of a Good Death. My thesis addresses the question, what social and historical processes led to the Occultist adoption of the Mexican folk saint La Santa Muerte? I conclude that a Romantic counter-ideology denying both empirical rationality and Christian normativity gathers a diverse assemblage of people to the icon of Death. My methods include iconology, historiography, ethnography, and iconographic fieldwork. The result is a genealogy that traces a deep history of practices and materiality from the ancient Mediterranean through medieval Western Europe and the colonization of Mexico until the present moment on social media. My fieldwork examines what La Santa Muerte signifies or embodies in Nezahualcóyotl (Mexico City), Puebla, Puebla, Mexico, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, and on social media. In my dissertation, I outline how lived Catholicism and Occultism converge within a gathering of religious practitioners who seek to subvert dominant social narratives that accuse them of deviancy.
ContributorsBreault, Eric Bruce (Author) / Astor-Aguilera, Miguel (Thesis advisor) / Arnold, Philip (Committee member) / Avina, Alexander (Committee member) / Bruner, Jason (Committee member) / Clay, Eugene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This research focuses upon the intersection of social complexity and leadership among commoners in complex societies as expressed through mortuary ritual. I study how ideology, materialized through treatment of the deceased body, was a potential source of power among commoners in ancient Maya society and how this materialization changed through time. Mortuary data are drawn from mid-level settlements of the Belize River Valley, located in western Belize within the eastern Maya lowlands. The primary research question addresses whether mid-level leaders in the Belize River Valley targeted certain human bodies for ancestral veneration through tomb re-entry and ritual interaction with skeletal remains. The ritual-political strategy of mid-level leaders is measured using archaeothanatology, an analysis of grave taphonomy based on forensic data, to reconstruct cultural beliefs about death based on treatment of deceased bodies, radiogenic strontium isotope analysis to reconstruct residential history, and analysis of dental metrics to assess biological kinship. While preservation of osseous material was poor, results indicate that the frequency of disarticulated and secondary burials was higher in eastern structures than in other locales, although eastern structures were not the only loci of these types of deposits. Overall, it does not seem like secondary burials were regularly and purposefully created for use as ritual objects or display. Radiogenic strontium isotope data enrich this analysis by showing that eastern structures were not a burial locale exclusive to individuals who spent their childhood in the Belize Valley. Data from upper-level eastern structures also suggests that within that part of society local birth did not guarantee interment in a local manner; perhaps the social network created during one's life shaped treatment in death more than residential origin. Biological distance analyses were inconclusive due to missing data. Comparison of mortuary practices to nearby regions shows distinct mortuary patterning across space and time. This is consistent with reconstructions of ancient Maya sociopolitical organization as regionally diverse and moderately integrated.
ContributorsNovotny, Anna (Author) / Buikstra, Jane E. (Thesis advisor) / Carr, Christopher (Committee member) / Robin, Cynthia (Committee member) / Astor-Aguilera, Miguel (Committee member) / Tiesler, Vera (Committee member) / Knudson, Kelly J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
La Santa Muerte is a folk saint depicted as a female Grim Reaper in Mexico and the Southwestern United States. The Grim Reaper, as an iconic representation of death, was derived from the Angel of Death found in pseudepigrapha and apocalyptic writings of Jewish and early Christian writers. The Angel of Death arose from images and practices in pre-Christian Europe and throughout the Mediterranean region. Images taken from Revelation were used to console the survivors of the Black Death in Western Europe and produced a material culture that taught the Christian notion of dying well. The combination of the scythe (used in the eschatological harvest), the black cowl (worn by medieval priests and monks officiating at funerals), and the skeleton (as the physical body of the deceased) are a series of apocalyptic Christian referents that form a metonymical composite referred to as the Grim Reaper.
In medieval Iberian Dances of Death, the Grim Reaper was depicted as female, an unyielding social leveler, and an important participant in the Last Judgment. Personalized Death became associated with healing, renewal, magic, and binding, as apocalyptic Christianity blended with the Christian cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary during the Reconquista and the colonization of Mesoamerica. Utilizing secondary historical sources, metonymy, and iconology this Master of Arts thesis posits that the La Santa Muerte image resulted from a long historical interaction of Greek, Roman, Jewish, Visogothic, Islamic, and Christian death imagery leading up to the colonization of Mesoamerica.
In medieval Iberian Dances of Death, the Grim Reaper was depicted as female, an unyielding social leveler, and an important participant in the Last Judgment. Personalized Death became associated with healing, renewal, magic, and binding, as apocalyptic Christianity blended with the Christian cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary during the Reconquista and the colonization of Mesoamerica. Utilizing secondary historical sources, metonymy, and iconology this Master of Arts thesis posits that the La Santa Muerte image resulted from a long historical interaction of Greek, Roman, Jewish, Visogothic, Islamic, and Christian death imagery leading up to the colonization of Mesoamerica.
ContributorsBreault, Eric (Author) / Astor-Aguilera, Miguel A (Thesis advisor) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / Maupin, Jonathan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014