Colonial inhabitants of Mexico City were accustomed to coping with natural disasters, including disease epidemics, droughts, floods, and earthquakes, which menaced rich and poor alike and stirred fervent devotion to miraculous images and their shrines. This article revisits the late colonial history of the shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, an image preserved miraculously on an adobe wall in the Indian quarter of Santiago Tlatelolco. The assumption has been that archiepiscopal authorities aiming to deflect public worship toward a more austere, interior spirituality suppressed activities there after 1745 because they saw the devotion as excessively Indian and Baroque. The shrine has served as a barometer of eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms even though its story has not been fully told. This article explores the politics of patronage in the years after the shrine’s closure and in the decades prior to the arrival on the scene of a new Spanish patron in 1776, revealing that Indian caretakers kept the faith well beyond the official intervention, with some help from well-placed Spanish devotees and officials. The efforts of the new patron, a Spanish tailor from the city center, to renovate the building and image and secure the necessary permissions and privileges helped transform the site into one of the most famous in the capital. Attention to earlier patterns of patronage and to the social response to a series of tremors that coincided with his promotional efforts helps to explain why a devotion so carefully managed for enlightened audiences was nevertheless cut from old cloth.
This article argues for a decolonial response to elite understandings of the Nicaraguan folk play El Güegüense, highlighting a reading of Indigenous survivance. It examines the work from a perspective that seeks to eliminate the colonial interpretations placed on it by elite writers, thinkers, and nation builders. Through a review of the literature on the play, associated cultural expressions, and personal experiences and understandings, this article evaluates the work as a product of Indigenous culture and mentality rather than a product of mestizaje or other colonial forces. An analysis of the play’s dialogue, imagery, and dances is coupled with an Indigenous Chorotega perspective that demonstrates the spiritual significance of the work, in a discussion that seeks to lift the voices of Indigenous peoples of Pacific, North, and Central Nicaragua.
The construction of heritage is an ongoing process, with numerous voices involved in it. Physical remains of the past frequently-though not always-play a significant role as focal points that heritage narratives attach to. As resources, these remains can be used to draw both domestic and foreign tourism, providing economic benefit to states and providing a platform from which heritage narratives may be told. Such narratives can be economically, socially, and politically powerful. They have been previously examined through the authorized heritage discourse, wherein only certain 'pasts' are explored, or as heritage brands. In a world of change in society and in tourism, the authority of archaeologist/historian/scholar, governing bodies, tourism agencies, passionate 'non-specialists', and multiple publics over heritages is one of contestation. Each is a weaver of heritage. This article examines the creation of archaeological open-air museums (AOAMs) as renewable resources for tourism within a fragmenting market. It explores the authorities and threads of heritage that result in different capacities to actively address visitor perceptions of the 'past' and present they are touring. This paper concludes with viewing the use of an AOAM as a location of contestation, as any other heritage property can become, though one more malleable to the changing needs of heritage weavers due to its existence in conflict with understandings of linear time. ________________________________________________________________ Résumé: La construction d'un patrimoine est un processus inscrit sur la continuité, auquel s'associent de nombreuses voix. Les vestiges physiques du passé jouent souvent-mais pas toujours-un rô le important à titre de points centraux auxquels s'attachent les discours sur le patrimoine. En tant que ressources, ces vestiges peuvent être utilisés pour attirer le tourisme tant local qu'étranger, apportant ainsi un profit économique aux états et fournissant une plateforme à partir de laquelle les discours sur le patrimoine RESEARCH
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