Velez Ibañez Review

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ReviewAuthor(s): Henry SelbyReview by: Henry SelbySource: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Sep., 1984), pp. 719-720Published by: on behalf of theWiley American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/678371Accessed: 23-02-2016 06:26 UTC

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2/3

APPLIED

719

logical symptoms,

which are

perceived

as

causes.

Marcia Elliott

Felker

("Ideology

and Order

in

the

Operating

Room")

compares

surgery

with

religious

communion.

The

comparison

(church/

hospital, priest/surgeon, altar/operating table,

cross/scalpel)

is

as

disturbing

as it is

powerful.

In

our

operate-first-and-ask-questions-later

culture,

an

indicator of

positive

social

change,

she

feels,

would

be an

overall decrease

in

surgical procedures.

A

few

papers

examine

the effectiveness of

non-Western medicinal

plants. Memory

Elvin-

Lewis

("The

Antibiotic

and

Healing

Potential of

Plants Used for Teeth

Cleaning"),

for

instance,

provides

us with a

comprehensive

cross-cultural

analysisof efficacious, and probablyefficacious,

indigenous

antibiotic

dentifrices.

Crest

and

Col-

gate

have,

apparently,

much

to

learn from

an-

thropologists.

Regretably,

some

of the

papers

are

highly

technical,

a

few

assuming

advanced

biochemis-

try

training,

so

the

volume

cannot

be recom-

mended for

a

general undergraduate

audience.

However,

this is

must

reading

for

all

medical

anthropologists,

physicians,

advanced medical

anthropology graduate

students,

and

advanced

medical

students.

The

Anthropology

of

Medi-

cine is an ambitious and monumental work that

should lead

medical

anthropology

in new

direc-

tions

in

the

coming

years.

Rituals

of

Marginality:

Politics, Process,

and

Culture

Change

in

Central Urban

Mexico,

1969-1974.

Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez.

Berkeley:

University

of California

Press,

1983.

xiv

+

296

pp.

$27.50

(cloth).

Henry

Selby

University

of

Texas,

Austin

If

you

drive

out

of

Mexico

City,

heading

southeast

for Puebla on the

eight-laned

Avenida

Zaragosa,

you

will

pass

an

equestrian

statue of

the

general,

with

raised sword

(local

joke:

"What is the

hero

of the battle of

Puebla

saying?"

"The

subway

is

straight

ahead "),

and

shortly

after

you

will

encounter,

on

your

left,

a

city

of

between

three

and four million

people

called Ciudad

Netzahualcoyotl.

The

city

is the

fourth

largest

in

Mexico,

but

it

is

indistinguish-

able from the federal district next

door,

making

it

a

part

of the

metropolitan

area

of

the

capital.

The scale of this

conurbation

is

quite stagger-

ing,

the vibrant residue of its

pell-mell,

ver-

tiginous

rush to house the millions that came

here to find their

own

lot

on

which

to build

their

houses and their lives.

If

living

in

contemporary

Mexico involves

a

time and cultural

warp

at

the best of

times,

then

CN

=

(M)2,

since all the most

warping

con-

tradictions

that structure the Mexican ex-

perience

are there

to

be

found,

and have been

studied

in

a

wonderful, warm,

full-blooded

book on the

place

by

anthropologist

Carlos

Velez-Ibanez.

He was

studying

Mexican

politics

and

ur-

banization after

1968,

and his

observations

began

in

1970

in

Neza

(as

it

is

called,

for

even

the locals cannot

always

manage

the

formidable

monicker of the

15th-century king

of

Texcoco)

and

spanned

the 1970s.

This was a

time of

rapid

change

and

political

ferment. At the

beginning

of the

decade,

middle- and

upper-class

apologists

successfully

promulgated

the notion

that

Neza was aswarm

with

all manner of

criminals,

deviants,

communists,

caciques,

dope

smokers,

glue

sniffers, radicals,

revolu-

tionaries,

and

political

subversives.

But

by

now

(and

Velez-Ibanez

notes

the

change

at the

end

of

his

period

of

study),

it

is

fast

becoming

a

haven of respectability, largely unnoticed by

"decent

people"

who continue

to wonder how

life

is

possible

in

the

putatively persisting

moral

vacuum.

This

is

a

gutsy

ethnography

written

by

some-

one who

has

not

just

an

excellent

feel

for the

situation,

but

a remarkable flair

for

writing

tangy English.

If

you

want to know what it was

like on the

urban frontier

when

Mexico

was

jumping

with

political

activity,

this

is

quite

simply

the

best book

in

English

there is.

The mud, the stink, the sheer aggravationof

a

city

without

services

is

movingly caught early

in

the book. Then

out of

the

muck and

social

chaos rises

a

hero: Arturo Valenzuela

Cisneros,

who,

supported

by

a

gang

of

courageous

and

formidable

women,

take on the

political

estab-

lishment.

The

author

is

there,

and the

report-

age

is

spare,

sympathetic,

and

superb.

The

struggle

is

joined

and

reaches

into the

highest

levels

of

government

and lowest levels of

chicanery.

There is a

tragic ending.

Valenzuela

wins

(for

his

people

win

the

security

of their

tiny

house lots, and the minimal servicesthat can be

seen

today),

but

he

also

loses,

yielding

to

repeated

threats,

attempts

on

his

life,

and is

abandoned

by

his

friends,

his

compadres,

and

even

by

the women. He suffers

the ultimate


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3/3

720

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[86,

1984]

humiliation:

elevation to the National

Congress.

Velez-Ibanez follows

his

career

with an intelli-

gent

and

clinical

eye,

and

in so

doing

lays

bare

the

complexities

and

power

of the

Mexican

system

of

cooptation

in full

deployment.

There is a real art to this. Mexican

political

reality

does not

readily

translate into American

terms.

If

one

is literal about

it,

the

process

comes off

sounding

much too

exotic

and

byzan-

tine

and filled with

incomprehensible

rituals

and

transparent

struttings

and

phoniness.

The

author knows this

and so

translates

the

process

into

personal, populist,

reformist terms

that are

far

more

understandable,

and,

since

the

trans-

lation

is

mostly

unconscious,

little

of

importance

is

lost.

This

isn't

a

perfect

book.

Sometimes

there are

attempts

to

gussy up

the

argument

with some

theory

from the

inner

spaces

of

social

anthropol-

ogy.

One

can

quarrel

with the

title,

since it

will

mislead

anthropologists

looking

for a

study

of

rites de marge. But these are cavils. The book

presents

the

life, times,

and

struggles

of

people

engaged

in

the most

important

mass social

phenomenon

of

past

decades,

reminding

us,

as

we

constantly

need to

be

reminded,

that behind

such

analytical

terms

as

"migration,"

"labor

market

shifts," "social

reproduction,"

and the

like lies a

story

of

suffering

and

sickness,

broken

families and

fractured

lives

that

are the

in-

escapable

concomitants of

dependent capitalist

development.

Cultural/Ethnology

Cursillo:

Anatomy

of

a Movement.

Marcene

Marcoux.

New

York: Lambeth

Press,

1982.

viii

+

290

pp.

$14.95

(cloth).

Stan Wilk

Lycoming College

By

emphasizing

the

complex

and subtle

rela-

tionship

between

symbol

and

experience,

Marcene

Marcoux has

given

us

a work

that

reflects cultural

anthropology's

renewed

appre-

ciation

of

the concrete

humanity

we seek

to

clarify

through

our

investigations.

Thus the

author notes that her

interest

is

not

just

to

ex-

plain

the

cursillo,

a

contemporary

Catholic

revitalization

movement,

but to understand it

(p. 250). To this end she focuses with great sen-

sitivity

and restraint on the

relationship

between

human

consciousness

and

human

behavior;

both for the

cursillistas

she studied

in

Massa-

chusetts,

and

in

regard

to herself.

The

book is

divided

into two

parts.

Part

1,

"Description

of

the Cursillo" consists

of

four

chapters

that

give

the

history

and

contemporary

American structure

of

this

fascinating

move-

ment

that

began

in

Mallorca

during

the

World

War

II

period

and has

now

spread

to the

United

States

and

elsewhere,

claiming membership

of

well over a million

people.

Detailed discussion is

devoted

to

the

four-day

process

of

initiation as

well

as to

postinitiation

cursillista

life as

studied

through

fieldwork

by

the

author.

Part

2,

"Analysis

of the Movement" includes

an

interesting

chapter

on

"Catholicism

and Its

Discontents"

in which

Marcoux

observes

that

"through

its definitive discontents

with Cathol-

icism,

the cursillo comes

into

being

as

a

model

for

being

Catholic,

with its

own

particular

em-

phasis

on

community,

action,

and

piety" (p.

185).

The

most

interesting

chapter

is devoted to

"Charisma and

Tradition."

By

looking

at

charisma as

work,

she comes to see

that "the

successful leaders

not

only

catch

sight

of the

values, norms,

and

ethos of their

audience,

but

more

significantly,

their

message

reflects these

very

aspects" (p.

194).

Marcoux

goes

on to stress

that

charismatic

leaders

"generally

draft

altera-

tions

in

the norms or

goals

of

their audi-

ence.

.

.

. It is not

so

much

the

leaders'

nega-

tion of the past, as their use of the past as a

catalyst

that allows the desired

changes

to be at-

tained"

(p.

194).

The

concluding

chapter,

"The

Language

of a

Movement,"

is

an

appropriate

ending,

for

throughout

the

study

the

author

has

been

exploring

the

relationship

between

sym-

bols,

affective

experience,

and

ontology;

language,

experience,

and

being.

In

chapter

4,

"Conversion and the

New

Com-

munity,"

Marcoux observes that

"there is one

word

which

captures

what

happens

to

people

in

the cursillo:

experience.

. . . It is

not

so much

that

they

have

experiences,

but

that

they

are

the

experience

.

. . the

depth

of

experience poten-

tially

involves

an

ontological

sense,

where in-

dividuals realize

who

they

are

by

encountering

themselves

in an

unparalleled

fashion.

. . . It

is

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