El Nio Fidencio and the Fidencistas: Folk Religion on the U.S.-Mexican Borderland, is an biographical ethnography examining the life of Mexicos most famous folk healer as well as the folk religious healing cult that has followed him since his death in 1938. Dr. Zavaleta examines curanderismo, the transmigrational patterns of Mexicans in the United States as well as Latino/a social psychology and importance of folk beliefs and practices in their daily lives. In 2009, Zavaletas lifetime of research supporting Mexican nationals living abroad, Mexicanos en el Extranjero earned him the prestigious Ohtli, a Nahuatl(Aztec) word meaning pathfinder. The Ohtli is regarded as the highest community-minded awards which the Republic of Mexico bestows to non-Mexican citizens for their service to Mexico. In 2010, Zavaleta was appointed by President Obama to the Good Neighbor Environmental Commission of the EPA which reports directly to the President and dedicated to observing and analyzing ongoing events within the cross-border eco-systems of the United States-Mexico borderlands. Zavaleta studied anthropology at The University of Texas a Austin completing a doctoral degree in 1976. For the past 40 years he has been a faculty member and administrator at The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College and The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Dr. Zavaleta retired in 2016 and lives in Brownsville, Texas.

The first anthology to focus specifically on the topic of Chicana expressive culture, Chicana Traditions features the work of native scholars: Chicanas engaged in careers as professors and students, performing artists and folklorists, archivists and museum coordinators, and community activists. Blending narratives of personal experience with more formal, scholarly discussions, Chicana Traditions tells the insider story of a professional woman mariachi performer and traces the creation and evolution of the escaramuza charra (all-female precision riding team) within the male-dominated charreada, or Mexican rodeo. Other essays cover the ranchera (country or rural) music of the transnational performer Lydia Mendoza, the complex crossover of Selena's Tejano music, and the bottle cap and jar lid art of Goldie Garcia. Framed by the Chicana feminist concept of the borderlands, a formative space where cultures and identities converge, Chicana Traditions offers a lively commentary on how women continue to invent, reshape, and transcend their traditional culture.

American society is culturally diverse with a variety of religious denominations, sects, cults, and self-help groups vying for members. This volume analyzes nine of these groups, chosen both for their intrinsic interest and because they illustrate a variety of sociological concepts. The groups included in this study are: Heaven's Gate, Jesus People USA, the Love Family, The Farm, Amish Women, Scientology, El Niño Fidencio, Santería, and Freedom Park. The contributors are social scientists with first-hand knowledge of the groups they examine.

The long-awaited follow-up to Garland-Thomson's field-defining book Freakery, Freak Inheritance illuminates the convergence of the freak show era with the eugenics era, explicating the cultural work of the freak show as a compelling range of performances of cultural and social Others that emerge as eugenic targets from the late 19th century into the 20th century and beyond. This book explores the wildly popular performances that told compelling stories about categories of people that scientific and social-scientific discourses increasingly described - and sometimes still describe - as biologically inferior. Although much work has emerged recently about the history of eugenics, this collection highlights the specific ways that modes of exaggerated commercial popular performances create a public conversation that mirrors pathological narratives of human difference that are now firmly established as the categories of normal and abnormal, healthy and diseased, beneficial and harmful. This connection between narratives of freakery and normalcy gesture towards a fuller understanding of how eugenic thinking has re-emerged strongly as a force in medical science and cultural thinking aimed at producing the supposed "best" and "most useful" kinds of people.

In Freak Inheritance, both leading authors and emerging voices use cutting-edge disability and cultural theories to expose the operations of eugenicist thought in historical and contemporary culture. It is the follow-up to the field-defining Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (1996).

“A refreshing new perspective . . . reframes borderlands history by focusing not only on faith healers, but squarely on the populations that they served.” —Western Historical Quarterly 2022 Americo Paredes Award, Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo were curanderos—faith healers—who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, worked outside the realm of “professional medicine,” seemingly beyond the reach of the church, state, or certified health practitioners whose profession was still in its infancy. Urrea healed Mexicans, Indigenous people, and Anglos in northwestern Mexico and cities throughout the US Southwest, while Jaramillo conducted his healing practice in the South Texas Rio Grande Valley, healing Tejanos, Mexicans, and Indigenous people there. Jennifer Koshatka Seman takes us inside the intimate worlds of both “living saints,” demonstrating how their effective healing—curanderismo—made them part of the larger turn-of-the century worlds they lived in as they attracted thousands of followers, validated folk practices, and contributed to a modernizing world along the US-Mexico border. While she healed, Urrea spoke of a Mexico in which one did not have to obey unjust laws or confess one’s sins to Catholic priests. Jaramillo restored and fed drought-stricken Tejanos when the state and modern medicine could not meet their needs. Then, in 1890, Urrea was expelled from Mexico. Within a decade, Jaramillo was investigated as a fraud by the American Medical Association and the US Post Office. Borderlands Curanderos argues that it is not only state and professional institutions that build and maintain communities, nations, and national identities but also those less obviously powerful.

On the plains between the San Antonio River and the Rio Grande lies the heartland of what is perhaps the largest ethnic region in the United States, Tejano South Texas. In this cultural geography, Daniel Arreola charts the many ways in which Texans of Mexican ancestry have established a cultural province in this Texas-Mexico borderland that is unlike any other Mexican American region. Arreola begins by delineating South Texas as an environmental and cultural region. He then explores who the Tejanos are, where in Mexico they originated, and how and where they settled historically in South Texas. Moving into the present, he examines many factors that make Tejano South Texas distinctive from other Mexican American regions—the physical spaces of ranchos, plazas, barrios, and colonias; the cultural life of the small towns and the cities of San Antonio and Laredo; and the foods, public celebrations, and political attitudes that characterize the region. Arreola's findings thus offer a new appreciation for the great cultural diversity that exists within the Mexican American borderlands.

This treasury of Mexican-American herbal medicine presents hundreds of safe, effective herbal treatments for everyday ailments--teas, liniments, compresses, salves, and soothing baths for headaches, colds, fevers, digestive problems, menstrual cramps, and aches and pains. In addition, more than 200 herbs are cataloged and cross-referenced. 10 line drawings.

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.

24 wise and compassionate Buddhist perspectives on crisis care—contemplative practices and spiritual principles to help individuals, families, and communities in crisis and the care providers who support them. Refuge in the Storm presents a wide range of Buddhist perspectives on crisis care. Written by experienced chaplains, spiritual teachers, psychotherapists, pastoral counselors, medical providers, and scholars, the essays in this timely anthology explore a spectrum of personal and global crises: climate chaos, COVID, natural disasters, racism, social inequity, illness, and dying. Drawing on Buddhist principles and practices, these essays offer a wealth of insights for supporting individuals and communities in crisis as well as preventing fatigue and burnout in care providers. The 24 essays in this anthology show readers how to: • Provide spiritual companionship to ill, aging, and dying clients • Infuse crisis care with mindfulness, compassion, prayer, and even playfulness • Prevent burnout with self-care practices rooted in Buddhist principles • Develop self-awareness and self-knowledge as a care provider • Pursue the path of Buddhist chaplaincy Edited by Nathan Jishin Michon—Buddhist priest, chaplain, meditation teacher, and editor of A Thousand Hands: A Guidebook to Caring for Your Buddhist Community—this one-of-a-kind anthology helps care providers develop the compassion, attention, wisdom, and presence needed to support individuals and communities to move through suffering into healing.