Witches, Wailers, and Welfare: The Religious Economy of Funerary Culture and Witchcraft in Latin America

Abstract

A new generation of scholarship on religion and society in Latin America emerging over the past decade and half has propelled the study of supernatural beliefs and practices from the margins to a more comfortable position closer to the core of Latin American studies. Until the late 1980s, the field was dominated by institutional studies of church and state. Scholars such as Mecham, Bruneau, and Mainwaring made important contributions to the field through their studies of the relations between Latin American states and national Catholic churches. What was often missing, however, from the focus on the ecclesiastical and political elite was consideration of the quotidian beliefs and practices of the masses of Latin American faithful.1 The confluence of the growth of religious pluralism in the region and the ascent of subaltern studies has led a new generation of social scientists to focus on the religiosity of the popular classes. Brusco, Mariz, Burdick, Drogus, Ireland and others examined the beliefs and practices