Identity, Ritual, and Power in Colonial Puebla. By Frances L. Ramos. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2012. xiii + 247 pp. $60.00 cloth; $29.95 paper.

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(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Identity, Ritual, and Power in Colonial Puebla . By Frances L. Ramos . Tucson : The University of Arizona Press , 2012. xiii + 247 pp. $60.00 cloth; $29.95 paper.Book Reviews and NotesFounded in 1531, Puebla de los Angeles was the second largest and most important Spanish urban center in colonial Mexico, only surpassed by the viceregal capital Mexico City. Strategically positioned midway between the Caribbean port of Veracruz and the capital city, Puebla soon thrived economically and demographically as a trading center integral to the Spanish Atlantic commercial network. The city stood out for its prosperous textile and ceramics industries as well as its ostentatious baroque Catholicism. In colonial Puebla, like in other urban centers in the Hispanic world, economic, political, and religious powers--the three pillars of Spanish colonialism--negotiated and contested their space. However, despite its prominence, the city entered decline in the eighteenth century, when waves of deadly epidemics ravaged its citizens and enlightened reformers raised taxes to increase imperial revenue.Frances L. Ramos's award-winning book Identity, Ritual, and Power in Colonial Puebla examines Puebla's political culture through the display of public civil and ecclesiastical ceremonies during its economic decline. The book provides a thorough analysis of the ways public spectacles of ritual contributed to the formation of a local and imperial identity and were used by colonial officials to leverage power. Ramos argues that [i]n late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puebla, ritual permeated all aspects of political life. It helped councilmen legitimize church and state, cement corporate and civic identities, stimulate the local economy, develop patron-client relationships, and vie for power (xviii-xix). Borrowing from anthropologist Clifford Geertz, she further contends that public ceremonies shaped the political culture and identity of Puebla's citizens. However, Spanish colonialism was far from monolithic--Ramos illustrates how both Puebla's civil and ecclesiastical powers struggled to assert supremacy. The book ends with administrative changes brought during the apex of the Bourbon reforms in the 1760s and 1770s.The book's organization is thematic. After setting the historical context of colonial Puebla in the first chapter, the following three chapters center on various types of public ceremonies that range from royal oath ceremonies, funeral rituals, and the viceroy's entrance into Puebla to a variety of Catholic festivities. Ramos demonstrates how civil and ecclesiastical spectacles developed loyalties to the crown and to the Catholic church amidst Puebla's ethnically and socially fragmented society. For example, chapter 4, Universal Religion in a Local Context, shows how members of Puebla's cathedral chapter and cabildo (municipal council) used religious devotions to create a local as much as a trans-colonial and trans-Atlantic Catholic identity. Here, Ramos expands on William Christian's classic work Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, N. …