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  • Exploring Colonial Oaxaca: The Art and Architecture
  • Jaime Lara
Exploring Colonial Oaxaca: The Art and Architecture. By Richard D. Perry; color photography by Felipe Faleón. (Santa Barbara, California: Espadaña Press. 2006. Pp. 222. $25.00 paperback).

Richard Perry has written another readable, portable, and affordable travel guide to the religious art and architecture of colonial Mexico. An erudite photographer [End Page 1008] and graphic artist, Perry, together with his wife Rosalind, spends long hours off the beaten track driving to towns and hamlets in search of colonial gems. In Oaxaca, those gems are the sculptured façades, gilded altarpieces, wooden statuary, and oil or mural paintings that adorn the parish churches and the evangelization centers from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

Oaxaca is an architecturally rich region of Mexico, bordered on the north by the states of Puebla and Veracruz, Guerrero on the west, and Chiapas on the east. The fact that the region was economically undeveloped in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries helped in preserving its Renaissance and Baroque splendor that fell out of fashion in other areas. Oaxaca is also earthquake country, and many monuments lay in ruins until recent times; some still do and retain their pristine, if sad, grandeur.

The evangelization of the indigenous civilizations, the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, was the work of the Dominican friars who brought not only their own friar-architects but also their own artistic and iconographic interests. As propagators of the rosary, for example, they have left us Rosary Chapels in several cities that are truly "wonders of the world" in their stucco, gilt, and polychromatic splendor. The artistic contributions of the Franciscans, Augustinians, and Jesuits are also represented here, although in a minor key.

Perry has a keen eye for detail, especially in stone carving. He photographs his chosen sites and later creates accurate black-and-white renderings that allow him to highlight what he wants his readers to notice. His line drawings permit very readable images that photos, subject to the light and shadow at a given time of the day, would not. In this book Perry has supplemented his illustrations with a block of sixty-nine color photos by Felipe Falcón. This is a welcome improvement over his earlier books Mexico Fortress Monasteries, Maya Missions, and Blue Lakes and Silver Cities because it permits us to see the fantastic colors about which Perry speaks so enthusiastically. Unfortunately, he fails to make any reference to the color plates in his text and leaves it up to the reader to discover the correspondences. This could easily be corrected in future editions.

The guide is meant to be carried and consulted on the spot. It is divided into three chapters that feature the churches and a few noteworthy civic buildings in the capital city of Oaxaca, in the central Valley of Oaxaca and nearly mountains, and in the Mixteca Alta region that borders Puebla to the north. Schematic maps accompany each section making it easy for the traveler to locate the next point of interest. Perry gives us the town or place name and then translates its meaning into English; this information is often helpful in appreciating why the friars chose the particular locale for their evangelization center. In the larger churches, Perry adds a plan of the important Baroque altarpieces with their iconographic subjects. Oaxaca is also rich in Baroque pipe organs; the author describes their elaborate cases and informs us which are in playing condition. A helpful glossary, index, and bibliography accompany the text. [End Page 1009]

Exploring Colonial Oaxaca is no guide for the intellectually light traveler with suggestions about four-star hotels, exotic dining, or tourist boutiques. This substantive paperback is the work a well-read specialist who admires and loves his subject. It is historically accurate but accessible for all readers. It is also a delightfully politically-incorrect testament to the great achievements of Catholic visual culture and successful missiology in the Early Modern era.

Jaime Lara
Yale University Divinity School, New Haven
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