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Latin American Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha. By Juan Javier Pescador. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2009- Pp. xxiv, 256. $34.95. ISBN 978-0-826-34709-1.)
Juan Javier Pescador's thoughtful history of the Santo Niño de Atocha-from its Iberian origins as a Marian devotion (La Virgen de Atocha) through its rise in Zacatecas, Mexico, and spread into northern New Mexico and elsewhere-is a welcome addition for scholars of Catholicism in Mexico and the United States. Geared to a learned audience, it utilizes a wide range of archival and other primary documents, and vividly chronicles the devotion's evolution across borders as a "different way of connecting with the sacred" (p. 170).The first three chapters examine the Spanish Our Lady of Atocha; the rise of the shrine to the Holy Child in Plateros (Fresnillo), Mexico; and the emergence of the "borderlands saint" between 1848 and 1880 reportedly venerated in 1859 by the New Mexican Severiano Medina...