Making the World Safe for Existence

Celebration of the Saints among the Sierra Nahuat of Chignautla, Mexico

Doren L. Slade

Looks at the place of saints in the life of a Mexican Indian community

Description

Making the World Safe for Existence presents an in-depth description of the cult of the saints as practiced in Chignaulta, an Indian community in the central highlands of Mexico. Data gathered over twenty years of field research and the rich interpretations offered allow the reader to explore Chignauteco cosmology as it is revealed in the elaborate rituals held to honor the saints. The primacy the author assigns to the perception and the Indians have of their world and the place of the saints within it reveals the vitality of an indigenous worldview that has endured since the time of the Conquest.

Making the World Safe for Existence will interest specialists in Mesoamerican studies, anthropologists, sociologists, and social psychologists.

Praise / Awards

". . . a vital and challenging study of a contemporary native people, all the more intriguing as it explores the effects of economic development, social change, and in general, the secularization of life in the Mexican countryside."
—Choice
"Anthropologists working in Mexico have long taken note of the central role of saint celebrations in indigenous communities. Slade offers one of the most thorough studies available of such celebrations, based on more than two decades of research among Nahuat people of Puebla."
—Choice