Abstract
The word “Latino” as generally used in the United States is short for “latinoamericano.” Candelaria uses the term in a broader sense that includes Spaniards. In addition to Catalan artist Salvador Dalí and Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, C. treats the Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco; writers Jorge Luis Borges and Ricardo Rojas (both Argentines); and Spanish-American poet Fray Angélico Chávez. A single chapter deals with liberation theology, and another with the origins of the idea of “The Mestizo Christ.”
The artists and authors treated “are not representatives of the Latina/o/Hispanic world” (5). Rather, they are intended to exemplify untypical varieties of thinking within Hispanic culture. Although the organizing principle of the book is the artists’ concept of Christ, C.’s interest is not theological. For him “theology and philosophy, generally, are forms of fiction” (4). Representations of God and of Christ are “projections of human self-understanding” (6). “All claims about Jesus/Christ are fictitious” (215). C. prescinds from whether such assertions should be understood reductively. His interest is in what these “projections” reveal about the artist.
The book’s strength is in introducing Hispanic perspectives on Christ that are probably unfamiliar to most US Christians: Orozco’s “Christ Prometheus,” Unamuno’s “Quixotic Christ,” Rojas’ “Invisible Christ.” The chapter on the Christ of liberation theology summarizes the origins and causes of the movement and includes a valuable introduction to the questions of hermeneutics that it raises.
Writing at a level accessible to undergraduates, C. presupposes no knowledge of either his subjects or of theology. He therefore provides biographical, historical, and theological contexts, often in the form of lengthy excursuses. These expositions convey a great deal of valuable data and raise important questions. But C. sometimes indulges in large generalizations and simplifications. For example, he tells the reader that “Spanish thought, and derivatively Latin American thought, is quixotic, anti-intellectualist, other-worldly, idealist, voluntarist, and vitalistic” (100). Yet he also writes that “positivism” is preeminent in Latin America (172).
Along with much valuable exposition the book contains some careless oversights. For example, C. gives the first name of author Bruce Barton as “Bob.” He misidentifies a sunrise in a Dalí painting as a sunset, missing the symbolism. He incorrectly informs the reader, “by the way, the word sphincter derives from the name Sphinx” (49). C. writes “the crucified Cross” (31) instead of “crucified Christ”; Christ’s suffering to “atone for all human suffering” (134) instead of “for all human sin.”
More serious are the simplifications and omissions in C.’s presentations of Christian doctrine. C. writes that the Nicene Creed teaches that “the Logos is both eternal and not eternal. That is a contradiction” (55). Angélico Chávez says that the phrase “fill the hungry with good things” in the Magnificat “hints” at the transformation that takes place in the Eucharist, in the context of God’s larger transformation of the entire world. C. accuses Chávez of ignoring what he calls its “materialist” meaning in Luke. The hunger of the poor, C. says, cannot be satisfied by the Eucharist, which he calls “a wafer of bread and a swig of cheap red wine from a tiny plastic cup” (216).
A major claim of C.’s book is that “Docetism recurs frequently in Latino representations of Christ” (42). C. twice gives a definition of Docetism as the teaching that the humanity of Christ was mere appearance. Nevertheless, he persistently uses the term loosely and inaccurately, to designate any idea of Christ that does not give full attention to his humanity. In this sense C. claims that Dalí’s representations of Christ recall “docetic theology” that denied the materiality of Christ’s body (36). He bases this assertion on the painting The Christ of St. John of the Cross, which shows an unwounded Christ in crucified posture, but not attached to the cross. But this picture, like the Corpus Hypercubus, represents the glorified cosmic Christ (Dalí was influenced by Teilhard), not the historical crucifixion. C. does not consider any of Dalí’s pictures of the Passion itself. Of Dalí’s many representations of Christ, he considers only four, two of which show Jesus as an infant. He states that in the 1949 version of The Madonna of Port Lligat “there is no evident sign of the Passion” (28). But there is: the Christ child holds a cross, whose dark shadow falls on the sleeve of Mary’s gown.
Examples of these kinds could be multiplied. Such errors and oversights mar what could be a valuable text for undergraduates. But unfortunately those who would most profit from this book’s unusual perspectives and background information are also those most likely to be misled by its over-generalizations and simplifications.