"The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders" maps and challenges many of the mythologies that surround the late iconic labor leader. Focusing on Chavez' own writings, Leon argues that" La Causa" can be fruitfully understood as a quasi-religious movement, based on Chavez's charismatic leadership, which he modeled after Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. Chavez recognized that spiritual prophecy, or political spirituality, was the key to disrupting centuries old dehumanizing narratives that conflated religion with race. Chavez's body became emblematic for Chicano identity, and enfleshed a living revolution. While there is much debate and truth-seeking around how he is remembered, through investigating the leader's construction of his own public memory, the author probes the meaning of the discrepancies. By refocusing Chavez's life and beliefs into three broad movements--mythology, prophecy, and religion--Leon brings us a moral and spiritual agent to match the political leader.

The practice of curanderismo, or Mexican American folk medicine, is part of a historically and culturally important health care system deeply rooted in native Mexican healing techniques. This is the first book to describe the practice from an insider's point of view, based on the authors' three-year apprenticeships with curanderos (healers). Robert T. Trotter and Juan Antonio Chavira present an intimate view of not only how curanderismo is practiced but also how it is learned and passed on as a healing tradition. By providing a better understanding of why curanderos continue to be in demand despite the lifesaving capabilities of modern medicine, this text will serve as an indispensable resource to health professionals who work within Mexican American communities, to students of transcultural medicine, and to urban ethnologists and medical anthropologists.

"The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders" maps and challenges many of the mythologies that surround the late iconic labor leader. Focusing on Chavez' own writings, Leon argues that" La Causa" can be fruitfully understood as a quasi-religious movement, based on Chavez's charismatic leadership, which he modeled after Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. Chavez recognized that spiritual prophecy, or political spirituality, was the key to disrupting centuries old dehumanizing narratives that conflated religion with race. Chavez's body became emblematic for Chicano identity, and enfleshed a living revolution. While there is much debate and truth-seeking around how he is remembered, through investigating the leader's construction of his own public memory, the author probes the meaning of the discrepancies. By refocusing Chavez's life and beliefs into three broad movements--mythology, prophecy, and religion--Leon brings us a moral and spiritual agent to match the political leader.