Delirio--the Fantastic, The Demonic, And The Reel: The Buried History Of Nuevo Leon

"This book is sui generis. In thirty-five years as a scholar, I have read nothing like it.... We] will study it for years to come as a possible model for new ways of approaching and telling the past." -- Robert A. Rosenstone, Professor of History, California Institute of Technology

Striking, inexplicable stories circulate among the people of Nuevo Leo n in northern Mexico. Stories of conversos (converted Jews) who fled the Inquisition in Spain and became fabulously wealthy in Mexico. Stories of women and children buried in walls and under houses. Stories of an entire, secret city hidden under modern-day Monterrey. All these stories have no place or corroboration in the official histories of Nuevo Leo n.

In this pioneering ethnography, Marie Theresa Herna ndez explores how the folktales of Nuevo Leo n encode aspects of Nuevolenese identity that have been lost, repressed, or fetishized in "legitimate" histories of the region. She focuses particularly on stories regarding three groups: the Sephardic Jews said to be the "original" settlers of the region, the "disappeared" indigenous population, and the supposed "barbaric" society that persists in modern Nuevo Leo n. Herna ndez's explorations into these stories uncover the region's complicated history, as well as the problematic and often fascinating relationship between history and folklore, between officially accepted "facts" and "fictions" that many Nuevoleneses believe as truth.