One cannot but be impressed by Sullivan’s ambition, insights, and command
of the literature on South American religion, but the book all but collapses
under the ‘meaning’ that the author seems to be able to find everywhere, from
the heights of the Andes to the depths of the Amazonian rain forest to his own
writing: ‘This book is not only full of images and symbols, originating in South
America, but as a written corpus, it represents a powerful and symbolic mode
of being in both literate and nonliterate cultures. A book becomes a world
unto itself.. .’ (p. 110, cf. p. 551). Less centered on meaning, despite the use
of the misleading term ‘spirituality’ in the title, are the contributions found in
South and Meso-American Native Spirituality, edited by Gary Gossen (1993).
Other collections of studies dealing with myth, ritual, and symbolism in Latin
America are The Power of Symbols, edited by N. Ross Crumrine and Marjorie
Halpin (1983); Animal Myths and Metaphors in South America, edited by
Gary Urton (1985); Rethinking History and Myth(1988), already mentioned;
and Native Religions and Cultures of Central and South America, edited by
L. Sullivan (2002). Aztec and Inca expansionism is studied in Geoffrey Conrad
and Arthur Demarest, Religion and Empire(1984); while crucial components
of Andean religion, such as sacrifice and pilgrimage, have been studied in Ritual
Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, edited by Elizabeth Benson and Anita Cook (2001),
and in Ritual and Pilgrimage in the Andes, edited by Brian Bauer and Charles
Stanish (2001).
From among the scholars who deal with religion in Latin America during
the colonial, republican, and contemporary periods, we may mention Frank
Graziano, who has written a history of millenarianism, The Millennial New
World(1999), of Santa Rosa of Lima, the continent’s first official saint,
Wounds of Love(2004), and, most recently, a study of non-canonized saints
across the continent (the process of popular canonization being remarkably
similar to what one finds in China), Cultures of Devotion(2006). After
authoring books on religion in Italy and on Irish pilgrimage—Madonnas that
Maim(1992), Veiled Threats(1996), and Irish Pilgrimage(1999)—Michael
Carroll has studied the contested border between the United States and Mexico
in The Penitente Brotherhood(2002). In Crossing and Dwelling(2006),
Thomas Tweed takes the rituals of citizens of another borderland, Cuban exiles
in Florida, as the point of departure for a theory that sees religions as
‘confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering
by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross
boundaries’. Work on Brazil includes Robert Levine’s study of the Canudos
movement, Vale of Tears(1992), and Todd Diacon’s sociologically astute
study of the early twentieth century Contestado rebellion, Millenarian Vision,
Capitalist Reality(1991). In Secrets, Gossip, and Gods(2002) Paul Christopher
Johnson has studied Brazilian Candomblé. Finally, reference must be made
to Daniel Levine’s work on religion and politics in Latin America, and to
the process of conversion to Protestantism, one of the most significant
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NORTH AMERICA
267
