Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States by Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey (review)

304 BOOK REVIEWS school education. Only nine of the Presbyterian schools remained open after 1920, two of which (boarding schools in Santa Fe and Albuquerque) provided instruction beginning at the seventh grade. In the main title of this book,A Contest ofFaiths, the author is referring to the religious conflict of Catholics and Protestants in the region, but in the rest of the book she states that by her use of the word "Faiths" she uses it as meaning "ideologies "In this context the author explains how the failure ofthe initial goal ofthe Presbyterian women missionaries to convert the Hispanics led them to direct greater attention to family and community social services which were needed by the Hispanics on every side, such as medical assistance, etc. These experiences brought a greater appreciation by both the women missionaries and the Hispanics of the reality of their basic differences in culture and the need to accept them as parts of a common destiny if peaceful human relations and co-operation were to endure. In the subtitle of the book the word Pluralism is used to elaborate on the fact that New Mexico is now a region of people with various recognized religious beliefs living in co-operation, a situation that came about partly as a result of the appearance ofthe Presbyterian women missionaries and their mission schools on the scene, and their eventual acceptance by the local Catholic Hispanics as neighbors living side by side. In the closing chapter of the book, entitled "From Mission to Social Service," the author points out that the Presbyterian women missionaries as they broadened their specialized contributions to public service set higher professional standards for women in public life in the region. J. Manuel Espinosa Washington, D.C, Miracles on the Border:Retablos ofMexican Migrants to the United States. By Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey. (Tucson: University ofArizona Press. 1995. Pp. xviii, 216. $50.00 clothbound; $24.95 paperback.) In September, 1988, the two authors visited the sanctuary of Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos and saw the innumerable oil paintings on tin that were left as votive offerings for favors received after persons had prayed for her intercession . Some of these retablos visually depicted and verbally described favors granted to Mexican migrants to the United States, and within an hour the two had located a dozen such. Being trained sociologists who specialized in Mexican immigration, they were able to make oftheir find the genesis ofthe present book and, indeed, of a new field of knowledge. The typical ex voto (or retablo) of the sort showed the trouble some person or group fell into, narrated in a legend of some fifty or seventy-five hand-painted words the fear and dismay and the consequent appeal to the heavenly patron, depicted the patron watching over the earthly event, and stated the donor's BOOK REVIEWS 305 gratitude for the favor—the "miracle"—received. Devout rural people commissioned untrained artists of limited talent to sketch and inscribe these testimonials to be left at the patrons' shrine as a lasting record of their trials and their heaven-assisted triumph of survival. Hence they are not only of interest as art; they are also primary documents in sociology. Retablos, each with its unique human story and divine rescue,offer the artist much more variety than do láminas, pictures of saints which repeat the same iconography over and over. The various patrons' standard iconographies recur, of course, but the narrative images and verbalizing texts are ever different. Hence, they have been a fountainhead of originality in Mexican painting, much appreciated by Rivera, Kahlo, Siquieros, and others for their bold colors and their theatrical handling of sequence and space. The authors analyze and categorize their subject matter in various ways, usually presenting clear, helpful tables with numbers and percentages. They report an interview with an elderly painter of ex votos. The book is both quite handsome and quite user-friendly with its good translations of all Spanish texts, its extensive bibliography, and its index. The forty color illustrations are excellent, and the interpretations of aesthetic and sociological dimensions are uniformly helpful and intelligent. The few minor faults: repetitiousness...