All the Agents and Saints, Paperback Edition by Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Author:Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

NOTES

1. Milagros, or miracles, are tiny votive charms made of silver or tin that represent parts of the body—hands, legs, eyes, lungs, hearts. Next time you or a loved one falls ill, buy a milagro, string it with red ribbon, and proffer it to your favorite saint with a prayer and a kiss. Practiced throughout the Americas, this custom is believed to have originated with the ancient Iberians along the coast of Spain.

2. This crucial matter of skin tone is what prompted the Mexican writer Carlos Monsivais to say of La Virgen, “She is, on the one hand, the pacific moment in the Christianization of the Indian peoples and, on the other, the Mexicanization of faith.”

3. While living in Mexico, I often heard this saying: “English is the language of business, German is the language of war, and Italian is the language of love, but Spanish is the language of God.” Some trace it back to Charles V, who supposedly declared in the sixteenth century, “To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse—German.”

4. The monstrance is the vessel that holds the large circular wafer that—during Communion—transubstantiates into the body of Christ. As such, they tend toward the extravagant, plated in precious metals, embedded with jewels, and weighing many pounds. Monstrances are also used to hold the relics of saints.

5. For those too young to remember or who have tried to forget: Jim Jones was the leader of the religious cult Peoples Temple who convinced more than 900 followers to swallow a cyanide-laced drink in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. Jones died of a gunshot wound to the head, in an apparent suicide, soon after. Until 9/11, it was the greatest single loss of U.S. civilian life from a deliberate act.

6. An ancient Mesoamerican sweat lodge, temazcales are womb-shaped constructions of mud or adobe heated by a pit of volcanic stones and firewood. Tradition dictates temazcales burn for four hours prior to use, symbolizing the four cardinal directions and the four earthly elements. Indigenous people throughout Mexico gather inside these chambers for curative ceremonies.

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