Customer Reviews

From Patmos to the Barrio: Subverting Imperial Myths

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This is a scholarly, thoroughly researched and articulated analysis of Our Lady, and how the image has symbolized several cultural transformations. Dr. Sanchez makes a compelling argument, within an enjoyable read.

Alas, Mr. Sanchez's thesis rests on a thin reed at best. He contends with some conviction that the colonized appropriate the colonizer's foundation myths to undermine the colonizer's intentions of assimilation. But he also contends that such efforts of semi-adoption of these "imperial myths" disturbs the colonizer in some vague way, but not enough to be able to take repressive measures versus the appropriators. He offers the Apollo myth as the foundation of Revelation 12's pregnant woman, and from this to the the virgin Mary and her Mexican avatar, the Virgin of Guadalupe. This part I could accept as being an imaginative synthesis of various Middle Eastern myths, but then he leaps from this debatable point to the contention that the Guadalupe myth was all along a creole icon, rather than an indigenous Aztec one. Even sparcer is his assertion that this same Virgin was intentionally appropriated by the Chicano movement as a symbol of anti-gringo resistance. He impressively amasses sources but his summary of these sources left me feeling unsatisfied. Unfortunately, his concluding chapter is just a redundant compilation of his earlier thesis of colonized peoples' subliminal subversions. So I can recommedn this little book for a quickie read and it will get you thinking, but at the end you'll say, "Gimme more than a taste, Mr. Sanchez. Gimme the whole enchilada."