Delirio—The Fantastic, the Demonic, and the Réel
Delirio—The Fantastic, the Demonic, and the Réel
The Buried History of Nuevo León
Striking, inexplicable stories circulate among the people of Nuevo León in northern Mexico. Stories of conversos (converted Jews) who fled the Inquisition in Spain and became fabulously wealthy in Mexico. Stories of women and children buried in walls and under houses. Stories of an entire, secret city hidden under modern-day Monterrey. All these stories have no place or corroboration in the official histories of Nuevo León.
In this pioneering ethnography, Marie Theresa Hernández explores how the folktales of Nuevo León encode aspects of Nuevolenese identity that have been lost, repressed, or fetishized in "legitimate" histories of the region. She focuses particularly on stories regarding three groups: the Sephardic Jews said to be the "original" settlers of the region, the "disappeared" indigenous population, and the supposed "barbaric" society that persists in modern Nuevo León. Hernández's explorations into these stories uncover the region's complicated history, as well as the problematic and often fascinating relationship between history and folklore, between officially accepted "facts" and "fictions" that many Nuevoleneses believe as truth.
This book is sui generis. In thirty-five years as a scholar, I have read nothing like it.... [We] will study it for years to come as a possible model for new ways of approaching and telling the past.
- Introduction
- Part One. History
- Chapter I. Don Gregorio Tijerina
- Chapter II. Before and after History
- Part Two. Landscape and Narrative
- Chapter III. Finding Alvarado
- Chapter IV. Spaces In-between
- Part Three. Ethnographic Imaginaries
- Chapter V. A Place of Origins
- Chapter VI. The Mystic and the Fantastic
- Part Four. Locations of the Réel
- Chapter VII. The Discourse of Illusion
- Chapter VIII. Inquisition
- Chapter IX. La Sultana
- Chapter X. La Joya: The House on Arreola
- Conclusion. Delirio: The Finality of Pragmatics
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
