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.

Author: Marie Theresa Hernández
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 08/01/2002
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780292734623

About the Author
Marie Theresa Hernández is Associate Professor of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Houston.