Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (review)
intensify the religious experience among believers and tie all Catholics clearly to the Church hierarchy. Vatican actions and directives, as well as the broad and deep sweep of nineteenth-century apparitionism were central to his plans and ultimately related to the limits of their implementation. Wright-Rios shows that the bishop had more control over Oaxaca City, its Church activities and seminary-trained priests than he had over the autochthonous beliefs and practices of his rural parishioners who, ultimately caught up in the ambiguities of modernization but clinging to longstanding apparitionist traditions of their own, responded to the clash between secularism and religious revival in complex ways. The author argues that all the levels of society and Catholicism were connected and in significant communication, but the pretense of top-down revivalism was at least partially subverted by local, popular initiative and relative autonomy vis-a-vis clerical preference.