... exchanges over matters of belief in relation to issues of citizenship and governance. It also considers the direct links that were forged between misbelief, fantasy, and religious forms that authorities found objectionable. Furthermore, the book examines how African-derived “witchcraft,” Spiritism, popular...

... Cemetery Deaths of patients Finlay Carlos J Patients at Mazorra Pérez Gervasio Román Reinaldo Witchcraft Alcoholism Pascual Religion Religious monomania Salome Valdés de la Puente Luis Archivos de Medicina Mental journal Córdova y Quesada Armando Folie à deux Madness contagious Spiritism...

.... Spiritism, Santeria, and other African-derived traditions were typically characterized in sensational fashion by the popular press as “a plague of superstition.” Examining seven episodes between 1898 and the Cuban Revolution when the public demanded official actions against “misbelief,” it finds that when...

... des esprits, Qu'estceque le spiritisme? (1859) and L'évangile selon de spiritisme (1864) sold widely in translation in Latin America, especially in Cuba, Brazil, and Puerto Rico. ³² In Cuba as elsewhere, Kardec's marriage of science and spirituality appealed...

...Spiritism arrived in Puerto Rico sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, finding a home in a district of the island's incipient ciudad letrada (“city of letters”), whose architects were mostly learned and propertied men driven by a “zeal for modernity.” Many of the Spiritists...