First in his prize-winning Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887-1934 (2009) and then in Searching for Madree Matiana: Prophecy and Popular Culture in Modern Mexico (2014), Edward Wright-Ríos has dedicated his career to exploring the history and mysteries of religion in Mexico, especially in the state of Oaxaca. The endurance of a popular Catholicism, the beliefs and rituals fundamental to mexicanidad (Mexicanness), lies at the heart of his research project. Devotion in Motion continues this quest: it is cultural history, religious history, oral history, microhistory, ethnography, and a work of digital studies, based on a plethora of archival sources, historical literature, interviews, material culture, digital/social media, and delightfully, participant observation.
In his effort to deromanticize and demystify pilgrimage, to demonstrate how it is a part of everyday life for many Mexicans, Wright-Ríos takes us along on various pilgrimages to the shrine of the Virgin of Juquila. Purportedly, the Virgin Mary appeared sometime in the sixteenth century in the indigenous Chatino village of Amialtepec, Oaxaca, and a local artisan rendered her image into a wood carving only 1 foot tall. But then, the bishop of Oaxaca ordered her removal to the town of Juquila hoping to cash in on her growing popularity. Despite this colonial power grab, Juquila has almost always been a grassroots, working-class pilgrimage with little priestly involvement. For those in search of a “heavenly advocate” to relieve suffering, favor economic endeavors, or any number of petitions, devotees believe that the Lady of Juquila bestows her “miraculous grace” directly on the faithful (8).
The author skillfully links the sacred and the profane, interweaving the “entanglements” of religion and commerce (21), the social and the personal, and the individual and the communal experience of pilgrimage. He writes with a deep appreciation for the intersecting dynamics of class, ethnicity, and gender, fascinated by the masculine piety of pilgrimage. He takes us on the 120-mile trek with Caminando Juntos (Walking Together), the vendors of the city of Oaxaca’s Central Market. Among others, we meet the Robles family: “Silvio Piñas” (with his pineapple tattoo that announces his wares), his cousin Marta, and her father Don Valentín, whose home in the city of Oaxaca serves as a way station for pilgrims from all over Mexico. His knowledge of pilgrimage derives from his relations with the merchants of Huixcolotla, Puebla, the grandaddy of pilgrimages (60 years straight except for Covid), famed for its hundreds of devout cyclists. Huixcolotla has also influenced the Apatzingo, Puebla, and Coscomatepec, Veracruz pilgrimages, which reveal the tight bonds between devotion and commerce among the states of Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz.
One must be “hearty” warns Don Carlos, the leader of the Coscomatepec pilgrimage, which takes 14 days to walk to the shrine (102). Wright-Ríos describes each pilgrimage as a “symbolic drama” (145) in which everyone plays a role: some oversee food, blankets and sheets, medical supplies, and flowers. Others direct the design and production of matching t-shirts, caps, and the group banner. Still others reserve basketball courts for sleeping or provide the support vehicles, the trucks that accompany the walkers or riders. Today, pilgrimage is inconceivable without social media: Facebook pages serve as communication, promotion, and fundraising hubs for each group and even house cyber chapels. YouTube now accommodates hundreds of videos that narrate pilgrimages.
How fitting a title, Devotion in Motion, for a study that deftly captures movement on so many levels. This is embodied religion at its best: whether walking or cycling or sleeping on the ground, waking up with aching bones to the aroma of diesel fumes, or carrying the group’s image of the Virgin on one’s back or making the last steps on one’s knees. At last, “multicolored throngs” of pilgrims in their matching outfits arrive at Juquila (population 18,654) accompanied by brass bands. They enter the darkened basilica lit by the candles of the faithful to stand before this diminutive, but awesome, Virgin. They have cumplido la manda, completed the vow to visit her shrine.
Pilgrimages involve movement in many ways: they expand, they “fission” and spawn offspring, they fuel the growth of local economies and their rivalries. Wright-Ríos believes that “individuals and societies reveal themselves in all their messy, contradictory complexity amid their religious practices” (9), of which pilgrimage is a prime example. Because everyone wants a piece of Juquila, the author must narrate these messy contradictions and conflicts between local government, state tourism departments, local clergy, Catholic hierarchy, merchants of Juquila, neighboring towns, and those along the route (10). As “tradition” adapts to the modern, we witness the rise of virtual communities, of digitized and “networked” religion (90). On a more personal level, a pilgrim may not only be transformed by their individual ritual journey, but also the “social magic” (95) of the collective experience of movement toward a shared goal.
There are a few typos of village names. Marked as an Indigenous pilgrimage, more on Juquila’s historic bloody conflicts with surrounding Chatino villages would have enhanced the context for the reader. Nevertheless, few scholars have had the patience, knowledge, compassion, and analytic power to explore this subject as brilliantly as Wright-Ríos has. If you have never been on a pilgrimage, reading Devotion in Motion, and enjoying its stunning, glossy plates, is certainly the next best thing.
