ABSTRACT
John Michael Vlach identifies the santos figures of Hispanic New Mexico as examples of genuine folk art, representing a collective spiritual vision and communal participation in a specific religious tradition. William Wroth examines the role played by these holy figures in the transmission and preservation of core religious values within a unified indigenous culture under increased pressure from the forces of modernization and Americanization. He explains the resistance of Hispanic Catholics in New Mexico to the values imposed upon them first by the Mexican Republic and then by the occupying Anglo-Americans as a concerted effort to prevent the de sacralization of their culture.
Many of these modern ideals were in direct conflict with the traditional way of life structured around communal landholding and common religious beliefs. Under constant pressure to adapt to the material and political realities of liberal capitalism, Hispanic New Mexicans sought to preserve the primacy of the Spanish Catholic spiritual values that were at the center of their social and cultural institutions. Finally, Wroth joins Vlach in his concern with the distortion and misunderstanding brought about by recent interest in the unique aesthetic qualities of these objects without attendant understanding of their pivotal role in the traditional culture for which they were made.
