Reinaldo L. Roman. 2007. Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, And Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898-1956 (Resena de Libro‪)‬

Reinaldo L. Roman. 2007. Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898-1956. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 273 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8078-5836-3. Reinaldo Roman's Governing Spirits explores a tense dialogue between those who intended to intervene in the control of practices not inscribed in an identifiable theology, by manipulating the legal apparatus and other specialized and modern knowledges of "fanatism," "millenarism" and popular beliefs, and a myriad of other interpretations of the links between occult and visible powers, human and non-human forces, and known and unknown spirits. Roman's insightful narrative on men-gods and brujos in Cuba and woman-virgins, healers, preachers, and chupacabras in Puerto Rico invites us to rethink the influence that an entire sociological tradition had in the characterization of what has been called popular religiosity and hybrid religious practices. However, more than a study of the sociology of religion in two Caribbean countries at the end of 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, the historical analysis of the practices of control of these supposedly superstitious practices in Puerto Rico and Cuba, reveals the complex links between diverse invisible powers and ontologies acting upon the sensible territories of the State and the Nation. "Witchcraft," healing, fantasy, social insubordination, and religious heterodoxy were produced by men and women in contexts of intense social transformation. These practices were not only repressed but also denounced because of their supposed disruptive powers. As Roman argues, "critics presented wizards, healers, visionaries, and saints as obstacles to regeneration and potential threats to public order. Suspicion that superstitious men and women could 'embrace misguided agendas gave rise to anxieties about the governments' capacity to keep moral and political order" (p. 5).