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Cut loose from their ancestral communities by wars, natural disasters, and the great systemic changes of an expanding Europe, vagabond strangers and others out of place found their way through the turbulent history of early modern Spain and Spanish America. As shadowy characters inspiring deep suspicion, fascination, and sometimes charity, they prompted a stream of decrees and administrative measures that treated them as nameless threats to good order and public morals. The vagabonds and impostors of colonial Mexico are as elusive in the written record as they were on the ground, and the administrative record offers little more than commonplaces about them. Fugitive Freedom locates two of these suspect strangers, Joseph Aguayo and Juan Atondo, both priest impersonators and petty villains in central Mexico during the last years of Spanish rule. Displacement brought pícaros to the forefront of Spanish literature and popular culture-a protean assortment of low life characters, seen as treacherous but not usually violent, shadowed by poverty, on the move and on the make in selfish, sometimes clever ways as they navigated a hostile, sinful world. What to make of the lives and longings of Aguayo and Atondo, which resemble those of one or another literary pícaro? Did they imagine themselves in literary terms, as heroes of a certain kind of story? Could impostors like these have become fixtures in everyday life with neither a receptive audience nor permissive institutions? With Fugitive Freedom , William B. Taylor provides a rare opportunity to examine the social histories and inner lives of two individuals at the margins of an unfinished colonial order that was coming apart even as it was coming together.

Christocentric devotion in New Spain--the colonial administrative territory that encompassed modern Mexico plus much of Central America and the Spanish borderlands that are now part of the United States--was closely related to European practices at the time, and rooted in medieval traditions. A self-restoring crucifix in central Mexico that stirred interest in two separate shrines during the eighteenth century offers an opportunity to reach beyond the idea of a hierarchy of shrines and the claim that written records generated by colonial institutions yield little more than the intentions of colonial elites and the operation of those institutions.

Consisting of three rare documents about miracles during the second half of the eighteenth century, each accompanied by an introductory essay, this study explores these divine signs and the move to change the role of the church and religion in colonial life.

A well-used devotional book with two names inscribed and the print of a miraculous image of Christ crucified pasted in next to the first page of text is examined for clues to religious life in Mexico City in the lateeighteenth century. The discussion features a counterpoint between \"external\" baroque spiritual practices and reforms meant to fix attention on the discipline of private, \"internar exercises and atonement for sins that continues to be a source of scholarly debate.

Bowhunter's syndrome, also known as rotational occlusion of the vertebral artery, involves posterior circulation ischemia resulting from dynamic compromise of the dominant vertebral artery. This case highlights the importance of provocative digital subtraction angiography in making the diagnosis. A 41-year-old man presented for outpatient neurological evaluation for \"lightheadedness\" of several years' duration provoked by leftward head rotation. The only abnormality identified on initial magnetic resonance angiography was atresia of the nondominant left vertebral artery. Conventional digital subtraction angiography (DSA) followed by provocative DSA revealed development of a dynamic stenosis of the right vertebral artery involving the extraforaminal segment just superior to the C1 vertebra. Noncontrast computed tomography of the cervical spine confirmed ossification of the posterior right atlanto-occipital membrane leading to a near complete bony arcuate foramen. Following neurosurgical decompression, the patient demonstrated complete resolution of all neurologic symptoms. Bowhunter's syndrome is a unique clinical entity that must be considered in the evaluation of patients with symptoms of posterior circulation ischemia. Provocative DSA remains the preferred modality for definitive diagnosis.

William Taylor explores the use of local and regional shrines, and devotion to images of Christ and Mary, including Our Lady of Guadalupe, to get to the heart of the politics and practices of faith in Mexico before the Reforma. Each of these essays touches on methodological and conceptual matters that open out to processes and paradoxes of change and continuity, exposing the symbolic complexity behind the material representations.

In 1960 the May 3 feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross was removed from the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church in order to reduce the number of major feasts and to focus devotion to the Holy Cross on September 14, the day commemorating its Exaltation. For many Mexicans, this change was more distressing than papal authorities had anticipated. People from various walks of life and places were not inclined to give up this favorite feast day, which they felt was a lifeline to well-being here and now and the promise of salvation hereafter. For them it was an essential practice, not a vestigial one Workers in the building trades were conspicuous dissenters. Virtually every construction site in Mexico must have its protective cross, to be decorated and honored on May 3. And communities all over Mexico, especially in rural towns and villages, celebrated the day by decorating their special crosses in public and private places, attending mass, praying for rain and an abundant harvest, and celebrating with food, drink, fireworks, music, and dancing. For many, it was the only Day of the Holy Cross they had known. To steer clear of a prolonged dispute over popular traditions of faith, Mexican bishops successfully appealed to Rome for May 3 to remain a major feast there.