Delirio: The Fantastic, the Demonic and the Reel (review)

Many anthropologists will appreciate this book. Some historians will not. The creative tensions and synergies between our two fields, and therefore within Ethnohistory, are highlighted in this postmodern ethnography of the "buried history of Nuevo Leon." Hern�ndez relates the fascinating twists and turns of oral histories, which range in subject from reports of Sephardic Jews who settled the region in the sixteenth century to myths of barbaric northern Mexico. Between the narratives, the author relates recollections of her own considerable field work in the region and frequently ties the analysis to recent theoretical assertions.

Hern�ndez traveled through small-town Nuevo Leon on a journey not unlike those of Carlos Castaöeda a generation ago. Accompanied by a series of Don Juan–style informants, she engages the mysteries of northern Mexican legends. The stories are alternately remarkable and believably ordinary. We read of women who were allegedly locked into subterranean spaces by priests who had been their lovers—gruesome tales that surpass Robert Darnton's stories of French cats that had been sealed alive in walls. In this book, the origin of Nuevo Leon's racial diversity is explained partly by stories of local women who were impregnated by French soldiers during the nineteenth-century occupation. Colonial settlements of Sephardic Jews, presumably continuing their tradition as conversos, appear in contemporary oral histories in Nuevo Leon.

The raw material for this "ethnography" is provided in the myriad legends collected by the author. Hern�ndez admits that Delirio "transgresses the boundaries between literature and ethnography" (256), becoming a work of literary criticism. She effectively argues that these stories, in their re-creation, have developed a mysterious, surreal vision of the region's history. Thus, the book also operates on the margins between folklore and history, engaging the past as well as the multiple representations of that (sur)reality.

The book is, on the whole, more concerned with these representations than with traditional documentation of the past. The lack of available written records has left the ethnohistorian with a tangled web of oral histories. Everyone seems aware of the region's Jewish past, for example, though not all will point to it within their own families. The surreal nature of these representations and their interpretations forms the basis of the author's theorizing about the "imaginary," the réel. The book alternates between retelling these stories and testing the histories against contemporary scholarly frameworks.

Despite its theoretical maturity, as a monograph, Delirio is hopelessly disjointed. The narrative follows the author's tracks as she accompanies several informants, storytellers, and ordinary nuevoleonses through the pueblos of the region. In a way, the book is as much about de Certeau, Hayden White, and other postmodern theorists of history as it is about the inhabitants of Nuevo Leon. However, if this is a weakness, it is also a strength: this book should provide plenty of grist for the mill of wide-ranging graduate seminar discussions, which themselves can be deliciously surreal. As much as I enjoyed sharing this journey through the "fantastic, demonic and reel" of Nuevoleonse legend, I doubt that many undergraduate students will find it accessible as a text. Nonetheless, despite this limitation, ethnohistorians who crave thought-provoking discourse about historical memory and its production will thoroughly enjoy Delirio.