Wooden sculptures and relief paintings of saints such as St. Francis, the Blessed Virgin, and Apostles of Christ have for centuries been objects of devotion and worship in the Southwest Catholic culture. This centuries-old heritage is celebrated here through photographs, essay, and literary quotes that beautifully bring the devotion into focus. Crafting saints has always been seen as a high calling. These santeros and santeras (saint makers) created santos—images of saints, Christ, the Trinity, and Holy Family—painting them on wooden panels called retablos. They carved and painted wooden sculptures called bultos. And if they built a home chapel, they carved and painted an altar screen, or altar retablo, called a reredos, that was made up of smaller retablos and sometimes adorned with bultos. John Annerino is the author and photographer of seventeen distinguished photography books and thirty-two single-artist calendars, including The Virgin of Guadalupe (Gibbs Smith), Ancient America, New Mexico Wild & Scenic, Arizona Wild & Scenic, and the awardwinning books Desert Light, Indian Country, Grand Canyon Wild, Canyons of the Southwest, The Wild Country of Mexico, and Roughstock: The Toughest Events in Rodeo (acclaimed by the Rodeo Hall of Fame). He lives in Tucson.

Devotional folk art of the Southwest Wooden sculptures and relief paintings of saints such as St. Francis, the Blessed Virgin, and Apostles of Christ have for centuries been objects of devotion and worship in the Southwest Catholic culture. This centuries-old heritage is celebrated here through photographs, essay, and literary quotes that beautifully bring the devotion into focus. Crafting saints has always been seen as a high calling. These santeros and santeras (saint makers) created santos--images of saints, Christ, the Trinity, and Holy Family--painting them on wooden panels called retablos. They carved and painted wooden sculptures called bultos. And if they built a home chapel, they carved and painted an altar screen, or altar retablo, called a reredos, that was made up of smaller retablos and sometimes adorned with bultos. John Annerino is the author and photographer of seventeen distinguished photography books and thirty-two single-artist calendars, including The Virgin of Guadalupe (Gibbs Smith), Ancient America, New Mexico Wild & Scenic, Arizona Wild & Scenic, and the awardwinning books Desert Light, Indian Country, Grand Canyon Wild, Canyons of the Southwest, The Wild Country of Mexico, and Roughstock: The Toughest Events in Rodeo (acclaimed by the Rodeo Hall of Fame). He lives in Tucson.

Philanthropy is often associated with wealthy people giving large amounts of money to charitable organizations and indirectly to people they don't personally know. Ethnic philanthropy is almost totally different: it consists primarily of people sharing modest wealth with other people, most of whom the givers know well. Too often communities of color are portrayed as takers rather than givers -- this important study debunks that myth.

When European notions about angels and demons were exported to the New World, they underwent remarkable adaptations. Angels and demons came to form an integral part of the Spanish American cosmology, leading to the emergence of colonial urban and rural landscapes set within a strikingly theological framework. Belief in celestial and demonic spirits soon regulated and affected the daily lives of Spanish, Indigenous and Mestizo peoples, while missionary networks circulated these practices to create a widespread and generally accepted system of belief that flourished in seventeenth-century Baroque culture and spirituality. This study of angels and demons opens a particularly illuminating window onto intellectual and cultural developments in the centuries that followed the European encounter with America. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of religious studies, anthropology of religion, history of ideas, Latin American colonial history and church history.