Michoacan and Eden Vasco De Quiroga and the Evangelization of Western Mexico
- List Price: $40.00
- Binding: Hardcover
- Edition: 1
- Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr
- Publish date: 04/01/2000
In this broadly synthetic study, Bernardino Verastique explores Vasco de Quiroga's evangelizing project in its full cultural and historical context. He begins by recreating the complex and not wholly incompatible worldviews of the Purhepecha and the Spaniards at the time of their first encounter in 1521. With Quiroga as a focal point, Verastique then traces the uneasy process of assimilation and resistance that occurred on both sides as the Spaniards established political and religious dominance in Michoacan. He describes the syncretisms, or fusions, between Christianity and indigenous beliefs and practices that arose among the Purhepecha and relates these to similar developments in other regions of Mexico.
Written especially for students and general readers, this book demonstrates how cultural and geographical environments influence religious experience, while it adds to our understanding of the process of indigenous appropriation of Christian theological concepts in the New World.