Book Review & Analysis: The Making Of a Moonie by Eileen Barker

The Making Of a Moonie:

Brainwashing or Choice?

by Eileen Barker

      During the Cult Scare of the 1970s-80s, the Unification Church, otherwise known as the Moonies, were a lightning rod for controversy. Their interface with the public was through proselytizers with glassy eyes and smiles that were a little too big to be true. Accusations of kidnapping, con artistry, teaching false religious doctrines, deceptive recruiting techniques, and brainwashing were common. Those last two issues are examined in an academic study by the sociologist Eileen Barker in The Making Of a Moonie: Brainwashing or Choice?

By the end of the 1970s, the Unification Church was spreading rapidly throughout North America, Western Europe, and Asia. Their belief system was ecumenical in its pursuit of uniting all religions into one under their leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a charismatic Protestant from South Korea. Church belief and ritual was syncretic, combining elements of Evangelical Christianity, Confucianism, Taoism, and Korean shamanism. Moon claimed to be the Messiah sent to Earth because previous leaders of world religions have failed to save humanity. The church was famous in those days for having mass weddings in which Moon chose brides and grooms at random to marry each other.

Sun Myung Moon had a colorful past. During the Korean War, he was tortured by the Chinese Communists in a prison camp. He claimed to have met Jesus Christ who told him that the crucifixion proved that he had failed as a messiah and it was Moon’s duty to pick up where he left off. After establishing the Unification Church in South Korea and Japan, Moon opened its world headquarters outside of New York City while overseeing a vast network of corporate businesses and real estate that included a weapons manufacturing plant and a newspaper with a right wing extremist editorial bias. Moon later went to prison in America for tax evasion and money laundering. Eileen Barker neglects to mention that Moon had worked for the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and liaised with members of the American CIA during the era when they were conducting brainwashing experiments in the MK Ultra program. She also doesn’t mention that the Unification Church has deep financial ties to the Republican Party through lobbying and campaign contributions.

Eilen Barker’s goal is to investigate whether accusations of brainwashing are accurate or not. “Brainwashing”, as she defines it, means erasing the contents of a person’s mind and filling it with the authority’s chosen contents thereby turning people into robots who do whatever they are commanded to withlut question. I have immediate suspicions of her definition. It isn’t hard to disprove her definition of brainwashing becase it doesn’t define what is done during thought reform conditioning.

A point of comparison could be made with the training of soldiers in the military when they are taught to obey commands from officers and to do so without thought or hesitation. This is necessary because anybody with common sense would be reluctant to walk into a battlefield with people shooting and bombing each other unless they have a death wish. But soldiers learn to do this on command. This could be considered a form of brainwashing and yet those soldiers still have the ability to make choices. The number of soldiers who go AWOL proves this as well as what they do during leisure time. Plus soldiers can and sometimes do disobey orders with the caveat that they suffer consequences for it. So I’m not convinced that brainwashing entails the idea of turning people into mindless robots. People inside high pressure control groups can still think for themselves and make choices. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t authorities setting the parameters of what choices they are allowed to make though. I’m not comfortable with the term “brainwashing” anyhow. I much prefer something like “psychological/social conditioning”. So right off the bat, there are problems with Barker’s study.

The fieldwork was done using two methods. One was participant observation in which Barker attended Moonie recruitment workshops. The other was having workshop participants fill in surveys. The workshops were held in attractive-looking buildings in rural areas outside San Francisco and London. Participants are brought in from cities on buses owned by the Moonies. Initial workshops run for three days with subsequent workshops running for one week or one month before a member commits to joining full or part time. Barker makes the observation that no one tried to leave the workshops, disproving the accusation that the church holds people against their will during the recruitment process. But I find her conclusion to be hasty as I think something more subtle was going on. It may be true that anybody could leave the premises any time they wanted. The doors weren’t locked as she pointed out. But being in a rural area without transportation was a factor she didn’t consider. Most people would be smart enough not to walk the long distance back to the city, especially when they didn’t have sufficient directions. Hitchhiking might be an option, but by the end of the 70s, violent crimes against hitchikers had made the practice almost obsolete. It would make the most sense to put up with the remainder of the workshop and be taken back at the end. So yes, the individual who wantsedto leave had a choice, but the parameters of the choice were limited, something that Eilen Barker never took into consideration.

The workshops consisted of group discussions, meals, walking, game playing, singing, group prayers, and listening to sermons. Sleep time was limited and potential recruits were woken up early to walk and play sports before breakfast. All activities were closely monitored and guided by Unification Church recruiters. Critics of the cult have made accusations of sleep deprivation being used to make members too fatigued to think clearly. But Barker dismisses this by saying she didn’t see any evidence that workshop attendees weren’t thinking clearly. Of course, the attendees weren’t allowed to have any in depth conversations during the workshops so it is hard to know what evidence she based her conclusion on.

Another accusation made by critics is that the Moonies brainwash people by inducing altered states of consciousness. Barker also dismisses this by saying she saw no evidence. But she never operationalizes the concept of “altered states of consciousness”. She doesn’t consider that singing or praying in groups could fall into this category. During the act of singing, for instance, the individual’s ego can get dissolved into the collectivity of the group, making the individual more susceptible to peer pressure and suggestion from outside. That doesn’t mean every time people sing they are being brainwashed; it means by submitting to the activity they can be softened up and made more receptive to suggestions, some of which may not be in their best interest. Singing and prayer can also be a way of creating an emotional bond between the individual and the group as well as being a means for controlling and regulating moods and emotions. Something similar can be achieved through group prayer or playing team sports, activities in which the group’s solidarity supersedes the importance of the individual in a goal directed task. Combine sport activities with sleep deprivation and some people can be turned into putty in the hands of an authority figure. Sleep deprivation works in the military and it is commonly used in cults too.

Also the constant supervision and guidance of recruiters was dismissed by Barker as being harmless, but it is easy to see another perspective. Aside from maintaining regulation of the groups through a daily organized program of activities, recruiters monitored and guided conversations so that potential members couldn’t discuss and evaluate their situation freely without someone watching over them and steering the conversations. Barker didn’t feel this direct control over the socializing of attendees had any influence over whether or not they chose to join. Even if you take the subjectivity of each workshop attendee out of the equation, the strict scheduling of workshop activities without sufficient time for unguided socializing indicates a high level of environmental control on the part of the Moonies.

Eileen Barker’s other method of data collection involved surveys of participants in the Unification Church’s recruitment workshops. These surveys were given accodring to rigorous scientific standards, including control groups and peer review, and were, in my opinion, the strongest and most interesting part of her study. One survey petitioned participants to explain why they chose to join or not to join the Unification Church after having attended the workshops. The most common reason for those who joined was that it potentially would fulfill the spiritual purpose they felt they lacked outside the cult. Most of them were spiritual seekers. For those who refused to join, reasons varied so widely that it was difficult to draw a definite conclusion. But for Barker, the larger point is that they didn’t join which to her means that they weren’t brainwashed and, further, this means that the Unification Church never brainwashed anybody or even had any intentions of trying to brainwash members.

Of more interest, from a legitimate standpoint from my perspective, were the second set of surveys which categorized the personality types of people who did join the church. The majority of recruits were white, middle class or working class young people. They came from stable and comfortable homes, claiming to have had happy childhoods. Contrary to public perception, none of them suffered from mental illness or trauma. They tended to be religious but not fanatical. Most of them were unhappy with the wider society, but were too conservative to become part of the hippy movement. The ambiguities of life outside the comforts of their childhood homes caused them distress and they sought comfort and stability in a protective and tightly structured group that sheltered them from that outside world with its conflicts and uncertainties. They were people with a low tolerance for ambiguity. You could say they were people who weren’t well-prepared or tough enough for the world the rest of us live in.

While Eileen Barker raises some interesting counter-arguments to the accusation that the Unification Chrch brainwashes its members, her study seems naive and short-sighted. You could say that her study proves her conclusion according to her definition of brainwashing, but her argument is based on a false premise if you don’t accept her definition of brainwashing to begin with. I find her definition to be too narrow to be of use in a study of this kind. Her fieldwork and collection of data yield some significant insights, but she draws some hasty conclusions without fully examining the full range of possible explanations. For example, she claims that the large number of people who decided not to join the cult after the workshops proves that no brainwashing took place, but she doesn’t take some things into account like the possibilities that brainwashing is not effective 100 percent of the time, or that some people are resistant to it, or that the workshops might even be designed to weed out the people who don’t fit into the church’s social dynamics. In other words, it is possible that they don’t want everybody to join and limit their recruitment to finding those who fit a certain personality type. The fact that potential recruits are monitored so heavily during activities like sports or group discussions makes me question whether they apply recruitment pressure equally on all members of the workshop. Maybe they target certain individuals or even alter their approach to nudge potential members into joining while simply letting those who don’t fit well to leave without a fuss. In a cult based around mass conformity and mind control, they don’t want people who are going to go against the grain. On top of all that, from what I have read about other high control groups, the process of mind control is incremental. Social conditioning isn’t something done instantly. Barker’s conclusion that brainwashing didn’t take place is based on observations made of two different workshops and doesn’t take long range membership in the Moonies into consideration. From my perspective, it looks like the workshops are designed to lay the groundwork for stronger, long range conditioning and control over time and she says almost nothing about what happens to members once they have joined. Her study is like judging the quality of an 800 pages novel after only reading the first two pages.

The Making Of a Moonie is limited in its scope. The subject of whether or not the Unification Church brainwashes its members can’t be conclusive on her testimony alone. She doesn’t gather enough information to have a final say. Even if the Moonies don’t practice mind control, there are plenty of reasons to stay away from them. Like so many other versions of corporate Christianity, the church has been wracked with scandals including sexual abuse, fraud, and ties to extremist right wing politics. Sun Myung Moon died a few years ago and now the cult is run by his two sons who are fighting over who should inherit their father’s kingdom in just the way that sons of the Messiah would. Considering that Moon claimed Jesus Christ failed because he died, I wonder how they explain that the church is legitimate now that the Messiah Sun Myung Moon is dead. One son has formed a subsect of the Unification Church called the Rod of Iron. No that isn’t the title of a cheesy porno movie from the 1970s. It is a church that worships guns. You can watch their sermons on Youtube. The preacher wears a crown made of bullets and talks about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and the need to end democracy in America delivered in a voice that alternates between a conversational tone and hysterical screaming. This church sent busloads of members to Washington D.C. for the attempted coup on January 6, claiming that the Democrats are controlled by demons. It’s best to stay away from these kooks. Nothing good can come from this.

 

Book Review & Critical Analysis: Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco & Sugar by Fernando Ortiz

Cuban Counterpoint:

Tobacco & Sugar

by Fernando Ortiz

      If you mention Cuba, the first thing most people will think of is revolution, politics, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara. The second thing would probably be music and dancing. After that, I’m guessing another strong association with that Caribbean island nation would be cigars. There might be a few other general associations like beaches, palm trees, jungles, Ernest Hemingway, and rum. Somewhere in there you might also find sugarcane. This is significant for Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz since the titular essay of his book Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco & Sugar is about defining his country’s national identity through its most prevalent economic industries.

While Fernando Ortiz is considered to have been Cuba’s premier anthropologist to date, the titular essay really isn’t a work of social science. The point of it is to compare and contrast Cuba’s sugar and tobacco industries in order to define the national character of the Cuban people. From the start it is clear that he believes tobacco to be the ultimate symbol of Cubanismo and that he has a less favorable view of the sugarcane industry even though it has been the backbone of Cuba’s economy for at least two centuries.

His argument is provocative. Tobacco is a native plant to Cuban soil and its cultivation and use was a part of the Taino and Arawak indigenous people’s culture before the arrival of European colonialists. Tobacco is grown in dry riverbeds called “vegas” and even though some cigars are manufactured using machinery, those of the highest quality are hand-rolled. Thus, making a good cigar is a craft or an art form, as he puts it, more than an industrially produced commodity. Cuban cigars are also a source of national pride because they are popular worldwide and considered to be the gold standard of smokes by connoisseurs. That is why if you tell someone you have a box of habanas or puro cubanos they know by association that it is a box of the best cigars you can buy. Even cigars from neighboring countries like the Dominican Republic or Jamaica don’t compare. The use of the words “habanas” and “cubanos” to mean cigars proves semantically just how closely people outside the country associate cigars with Cuba.

Sugar, on the other hand, is just sugar. While the quality of tobacco can range from putrid to a champagne-like elegance, there is little to no difference once sugar crystals have been processed and granulated into the white powder we find in any grocery store around the world. Sugar that comes from sugarcane is also indistinguishable from that produced by sugar beets. People generally don’t associate sugar with any particular nation the way tobacco is strongly associated with Cuba. Sugarcane was also imported by colonialists and is therefore, not native to the Caribbean. Sugarcane cultivation and the manufacture of processed sugar is also the primary reason so many slaves were imported into Cuba. This is a source of shame to Ortiz who also uses this as a chance to take a swipe at capitalism since it requires that laborers, be they slaves, indentured servants, or wage laborers, get treated as commodities for production rather than as human beings. You could easily counter this claim by arguing that communism does the same thing. Thus that problem probably has more to do with the technology of industrialization than it does with whatever politico-economic system that utilizes it.

So as it stands according to Fernando Ortiz, tobacco is far superior to sugar when it comes to symbolically defining Cuba’s national identity.

I’ll be honest at this point. I have no emotional investment in this subject. I have no ancestral ties to Cuba, but I find the history and culture of the nation endlessly fascinating. I do appreciate sweet foods, but I gave up smoking long ago when I became wise enough to admit that I am afraid of getting cancer. So the argument over whether tobacco or sugar is more suitable for defining Cuba’s identity is of no importance to me. I could weigh the pros and cons of Ortiz’s reasoning, but I don’t feel its necessary to expend my mental energy on the matter. It reminds me of John Milton’s rhetorical argument that the moon is superior to the sun. But Milton’s essay on that matter is a great work of art. I’d say that Fernando Ortiz’s essay is a great work of art too. It is fascinating to read from beginning to end and, even if you don’t agree with his opinion, or even care all that much, it does say a lot about Cuban history and society. It certainly serves as a good introduction to anybody who wants to learn about tobacco or sugar cultivation and how it relates to Cuban culture.

Some of the ideas might be outdated though. Ortiz argues that tobacco is masculine and sugar is feminine in a way that relies on traditional gender stereotypes. Even considering those stereotypes, I find his reasoning on that point to be vague and insufficient to make his case. And his attempt at defining national character leads in the direction of essentializing in a way that would get labeled problematic by hyper-sensitive social theorists today. I have some problems with the concept of “essentializing” to beging with, but this is not the place to take that up. The use of outdated words like “Negro” “retarded”, and “Mongoloid” will also be jarring to some, but this essay was written in the 1940s when those words were considered neutral terminologies. Any offense you might naively take will also be undercut by that fact that Ortiz was a strong proponent of racial equality and the bulk of his work was done to document the cultural practices and patterns Afro-Cuban people. Hopefully someday more of his works will be translated into English.

The following essay in the book is of some interest up to a point. Ortiz examines the cultural uses of tobacco in pre- and post-contact indigenous societies. Although he starts by examining the practices of the Taino, Arawak, and Carib peoples, the scope extends farther into what we now call North, Central, and South America. The cultural uses of tobacco fall into four main categories being the social, the medicinal, the ritual/spiritual/religious/shamanistic, and the individual/leisure uses. He examines the history of how tobacco was ingested and the paraphernalia used as well as the social etiquette and praxis. He also examines whether or not tobacco was the only substance used in these ways. Various other writers have labeled tobacco and nicotine with contradictory terms like “stimulant”, “depressant” amd “hallucinogen”. Thus he analyzes evidence from colonial, missionary, archaeological, and pharmacological sources to figure out if some naive scholars in the past, not paying careful attention to details, mistakenly designated plants other than tobacco as tobacco. A lot of the essay is also devoted to disputes amongst anthropologists and archaeologists over what tools and paraphernalia were used for ingesting tobacco smoke and snuff. I feel like those debates are of more interest to specialists in this field and not so much for the general reader. His arguments aren’t hard to follow though and if you want to learn about the reasoning process and problem-solving methodologies in the social sciences, this is an accessible place to look.

The remaining essays are about the history of sugarcane cultivation and the effects of the Industrial Revolution on mass production and consumption of sugar. Again, these essays are well-researched and easy to follow, however, they feel more like filler than anything substantially related to the supposed main theme of the book which is Cuba and the importance of tobacco and sugarcane to its culture and economy. These filler essays stand on their own but stray too far outside the subject of Cuban national identity to be worthwhile in the larger context of the book. If you are solely interested in the subject of Cuban culture, you might want to consider reading the titular essay only and skipping the rest of the book. If you’re interested in the history of tobacco and sugar from a global perspective than the whole book will be of value. I fall into the former category, not the latter, so reading a lot of this felt like a chore even though all the essays are well-written.

Cuban Counterpoint was written at the end of World War II when the post-colonial era was taking off. Cuba was politically turbulent at the time, but it was also at the peak of its pre-Revolution cultural development. At that time the island nation was asserting itself internationally as a tourist destination and a producer of goods for international trade. In this context you can see how the subject of national identity and character could be of importance to a social scientist like Fernando Ortiz, especially considering his high academic stature then and now. Still, the book feels a bit dated. The negative health effects of smoking tobacco have caused it to be associated more with lung cancer than Cuba. Processed sugar is now associated with obesity, tooth decay, and other diseases. The tobacco and sugar industries plus communism should have made outsiders’ perceptions of Cuba inherently bad yet the country’s reputation is still alluring. Maybe it’s time for Cuba to choose a new symbol to redefine its national character. I’d choose their music to be a symbol of that identity if it were up to me (it’s not). Who couldn’t be enticed by those beautiful curvaceous women in tight skirts and stilleto heels defying the laws of gravity while dancing to mambo, rumba, charanga, salsa, cha cha cha, or Latin jazz. And if this book is dated, it still can evoke fantasies of sipping rum in a shack on a beach, palm trees swaying in the wind while clear waved waters wash ashore as you relax with a burning puro, its tip dipped in honey, while the silvery blue smoke you exhale disperses in the Caribbean breeze. If we lived in a just world, cigar smoke wouldn’t be harmful. But we don’t. Your dreams, however, won’t hurt you. Let those dreams keep you alive. 

 

Book Review: Skulls To the Living, Bread To the Dead by Stanley Brandes

Skulls To the Living, Bread To the Dead:

The Day Of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond

by Stanley Brandes

      In the 1990s while living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I went to a Day Of the Dead celebration. On the day after Halloween, a crowd gathered in the neighborhood of Barelas. Many wore skull masks or homemade calavera costumes. Some just wore ordinary street clothes. Some solo musicians strummed guitars while others beat on congas. There were kids and adults, people of all ages, ethnicities, and economic classes. Political activists and artists showed up and camera crews from the local TV stations were there to make 30 second clips to be shown at the end of the 6:00 news. The crowd formed into a procession and circulated through the main streets of Barelas. It was fun and inclusive. Nobody was turned away or told to leave. Occasional cars would pass by, the drivers honking their horns to arouse cheers from the procession, but there were very few people standing on the roadsides watching, something unusual for a parade. But the emphasis was on participation more than observation. After winding through the neighborhoods a few times, the sun began to set and the procession found its way to the Mexican-American community center where information booths were set up and vendors sold sugar skulls, tamales, and hot chocolate.

This way of celebrating the Day Of the Dead is controversial to some. Purists might think it is an inauthentic reinterpretation of a holiday that doesn’t respect Mexican traditions. Less conservative people might say it is an educational opportunity that raises awareness of the Chicano community in America and brings people of other backgrounds into friendly contact. The anthropologist Stanley Brandes, in his study of the Day Of the Dead Skulls To the Living Bread To the Dead, explores the way this most famous of Mexican holidays has changed in practice and meaning over time.

While doing fieldwork in the town of Tzintzuntzan, set in the Mexican state of Michoacan, Brandes began seeing changes to the way the Day Of the Dead, which should properly be called the Days Of the Dead because it is celebrated on November 2 and 3 on All Souls Day and All Saints Day, was celebrated. More people from outside the town were coming in for celebrations and a commercialized aspect was being introduced. This was in the 1960s. To his surprise, the local people welcomed these changes. So he set off to explore the origins of the holiday, how it changed over time, and what it has become today.

Brandes starts off with the common belief that the Days Of the Dead originated with the pre-Conquest indigenous people under the Aztec empire. After checking all the written records in the documented history, he did find evidence that those people had festivals commemorating death, but he did not find any direct connection to the Days Of the Dead. In fact, in most of its aspects, including sweet foods, altars, and the symbol of the skull, it appears to have been imported to Mexico by the Catholic church. In its most traditional form, people built altars in their houses, cleaned ancestral graves, gave sugar skulls to children as gifts, and attended an overnight mass in the cemetery. It was a small affair that mostly involved the family and not much else.

During the Mexican Revolution, the artist Jose Guadalupe Posada used iconography from the Days Of the Dead to make scathing commentaries on the politicians of his day. This brought the holiday into greater prominence both nationally and internationally. By the 1970s, the Mexican government realized how the Days Of the Dead could be used to promote a stronger cultural identity for Mexicans and attract tourists for the commercial benefit of the country at both local and national levels. As Halloween became more popular in Mexico and elements of the two celebrations merged, some Mexican intellectuals started questioning the meaning of the Days Of the Dead and how it related to Mexican national identity.

The controversies get more heated as Brandes’ studies take him north of the border into the United States where he examines the use of the Days Of the Dead as an educational tool. A whole passage is dedicated to how the holiday is presented in public schools, children’s books, and displays in libraries and community centers. He goes a little too in depth here for my tastes. He examines some of the Latino community’s reactions including controversies about what is presented and how. From my own point of view, which has nothing in common with anything the author says, these types of educational programs either overly-glorify aspects of cultural diversity or underwhelm the observer with watered down versions of cultural differences. From my own American perspective, educational programs teaching people about a holiday like Thanksgiving can be misleading. Books and displays make it look more festive than it really is and present history as if it is an important part of every American’s life. The truth is, most Americans can’t explain what Thanksgiving is supposed to be about let alone how it originated. Most people see it as a time to eat like pigs and care little about its intended meaning. Thanksgiving dinners with my family tend to be less than exciting and often not much different from other dinners we have together with the exception of what we eat. Likewise Mardi Gras, as celebrated in New Orleans, is a huge party where lots of people get blind drunk, but very few of them have any idea of what the celebration is actually about. But a survey of children’s literature on these holidays would give an entirely different picture. Community educational displays are also often weak and shallow without providing much in the way of experience or insight; they often come across as little more than scraps of information in a society already super-saturated in information and advertising. My whole point here is that attempts at teaching cultural and national traditions should be looked at with a critical eye since the people producing them mostly fail to give an accurate picture, usually little more than a small taste, of what they present. This applies to the educational representations of the Days Of the Dead just as much as to Thanksgiving and Mardi Gras.

There is little wonder that Chicano community leaders and their supporters raise questions about the authenticity of how the Days Of the Dead are promoted and celebrated in the United States. Brandes examines the whole spectrum from an activist group, at one extreme, that tries to create a Days Of the Dead celebration that is entirely composed of pre-colonial indigenous cultural motifs and from there to a working class neighborhood fiesta with music, dancers, theatrical performers, and vendors that seeks to build bridges between communities while fostering a positive image of Chicanos to those of other ethnicities. Beyond that is a Days Of the Dead art fair in the Mission District of San Francisco that is organized by a Korean woman and has displays that only marginally touch on the themes of the holiday. This is further complicated by the fact that the Mission District used to be a Mexican and Central American enclave that has since been gentrified and now is a predominantly Korean and Asian neighborhood. Brandes analyzes how each festival along this entire range generates its own controversies and disputes about representation and the Mexican-American identity in the USA. This is important as the Chicano community is growing and they need to establish some sense of identity in a sometimes hostile cultural environment where your average citizen knows nothing about Mexican culture aside from tacos, undocumented immigrants, and drug cartels along with whatever caricatures and cliches are found in popular culture.

Brandes finishes the book with a discussion on how the Days Of the Dead prove that Mexicans have a uniquely jocular attitude towards death. He contrasts Mexicans with other Western nationalities who he claims are more serious and less accepting of death. I have to say I disagree with him strongly on this. While I’m not qualified to speak on behalf of Mexican people, I can say that Americans are not any less casual about imagery representing skulls, grim reapers, ghosts, or other things we consider to be macabre. Horror movies are wildly popular as are haunted houses that are staples of carnivals and amusement parks, not to mention the ones that crop up at Halloween time. Jack o’lanters are ubiquitous in the Fall. Skulls are common on t-shirts, album covers, and tattoos. People tell jokes about death and it is a common subject for songs especially in the punk, goth, and metal genres. There was a musical trend in the 1950s called “death rock” in which teenage crooners sang about losing lovers in car wrecks. Death and murder as plot devices are ever-present in movies and TV shows. True crime is a popular genre in literature. And doesn’t he even know about the Grateful Dead? That cult band has done more to spread Days Of the Dead imagery around El Norteno since the 1960s than anybody else with their t-shirts and album covers. The list can go on forever. We see so many skulls and crossbones in America that it hardly even registers with us. Nobody is sad, disgusted, offended, or disturbed when somebody wears a Misfits t-shirt in public. We have a casual attitude towards death too; it just manifests in a different cultural style. Brandes isn’t the only anthropologist I know of who has made this erroneous claim about Mexico either. Leave it to the academics to be completely unaware of their own culture, the one they live in. I guess fish don’t comprehend the water they swim until they reach dry land.

While the conclusions aren’t infallible, Skulls To the Living Bread To the Dead provides a useful history and cultural analysis of Mexico’s most famous holiday. It forces us to question what cultural authenticity really is and also draws attention to socio-political issues embedded in representations of traditional practices. Stanley Brandes doesn’t come to any strong conclusions, but he thoroughly provides enough information to give the reader direction in how to think about Mexico and the Days Of the Dead.

 

Book Review: Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte the Skeleton Saint by H. Andrew Chesnut

Devoted to Death:

Santa Muerte the Skeleton Saint

by H. Andrew Chesnut

Over the last two decades, interest in a skeleton saint has grown in both Mexico and Latino communities north of the border in the U.S.A. In fact, the popularity has begun to spread outside of Latino communities too as different ethnic groups become familiar with each other. This saint is called Santa Muerte and it has also begun to attract media attention because of its popularity with Mexican drug cartels and other people associated with the underworld. What the media doesn’t tell you is that Santa Muerte’s appeal is wider than realized and in fact most of her devotees are ordinary people without any nefarious intentions. Anthropologist R. Andrew Chesnut sets the record straight in his study of this fledgling religious movement in Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte the Skeleton Saint.

After stating his intention to save the Santa Muerte community from negative publicity, Chesnut examines the history of this saint. He starts by discussing the Uto-Aztecan death goddesses. But he is more convinced that the image of Santa Muerte was not part of pre-Conquest culture and actually arrived with the Spanish invaders and the Catholic church. They brought over images of the Grim Reaper which sprung up during the Black Plague. The intention was to scare the people of Mexica into submission, but secretly some people were secretly putting the Grim Reaper on altars and making sacrifices to him for favors. Similar traditions have proliferated in Central America and Argentina, but these involved a male Grim Reaper and appear to be unrelated to the current phenomenon of Santa Muerte. In recent years, due to syncretism with African diaspora religions like Candomble, Vodou, and Santeria, Santa Muerte has emerged from hiding and taken on a new life.

In Mexico City, a grocery store with a shrine to Santa Muerte started attracting so much attention that the owner began offering monthly prayer and worship services complete with mariachi bands. Another chapel called the Temple of Death opened and the cult has been snowballing in membership ever since. Chesnut uses the word “cult” in the Latin sense of the word “cultus” which means “religious community” and in no way applies to the more current usage indicating authoritarian, high control groups led by charismatic leaders.

Each chapter in this book is about the different ways Santa Muerte is worshiped and petitioned for favors with some commentaries on who her devotees are along the way. Whether people are making offerings for money, work, love, or protection from harm, most ceremonies are relatively benign and innocent. Offerings of candles, incense, food, and drinks are common. The most controversial gifts include alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana. Animal and human sacrifices are mostly the stuff of urban legends and media sensationalism.

While there are Santa Muerte devotees from all walks of life, a quick survey of the book reveals that most of them are working class mestizos like truck drivers, small business owners, police, and prison guards. There are, however, some upper class and educated followers too. Some are lawyers, some are teachers, and some are celebrities or corporate businessmen. A couple people the author interviews are goths with black clothes, nose rings, and tattoos. It should be considered that some people from a counter-culture like that might be pre-disposed to being receptive to a saint whose appearance is that of the Grim Reaper in women’s dress. And while Chesnut does rightfully downplay the media’s negative association of Santa Muerte with criminal activity, he does provide a chapter detailing the appeal of Santa Muerte to drug cartel members and organized crime gangs since altars to the Mother of Death are commonly found on their premises during police raids.

While the author does provide a lot of details regarding the practices and culture of the Santa Muerte cult, he doesn’t do any heavy theorizing and there is only minimal explanation as to why it has grown in popularity. He does identify some causes though. One is that Santa Muerte is available to everybody regardless of class, gender, ethnicity, or position in life. Santa Muerte is also amoral in a way that has caused the Catholic church to condemn her; she is believed to do favors for good or bad purposes without passing judgment on the devotee and that is why doctors as well as drug kingpins can approach her. Santa Muerte has a strong presence in the ambient popular culture too. She appears in novels, TV shows, horror movies, song lyrics, tattoos, and t-shirts. Finally, Santa Muerte is believed to be more powerful than other saints, especially those approved of by the church.

Chesnut doesn’t explain much beyond that. You are left to your own thoughts as to the proliferation of the Skeleton Saint. Personally I feel that the issues of power and condemnation from religious leaders are a part of the appeal. The skeptic in me that doesn’t believe in magic says that there is an equal statistical chance of any saint, spirit, or deity delivering what a devotee asks for in exchange for ritual offerings. There would be a random chance of obtaining the desired outcome no matter who or what is prayed to. But the perception that any one of these supernatural entities is more powerful than the others is what matters to the believer. Therefore as more people align themselves with the cult of Santa Muerte the more stories of successful rituals will circulate socially making it appear that she is the most powerful of them all. Meanwhile, people are more likely to remain silent about the ceremonies that fail creating a socially derived illusion that Santa Muerte ceremonies have a higher rate of success than they really do.

There might also be a subversive element in the worship of Santa Muerte. Since she is not recognized by the church, interacting with her could be a way of rebelling against traditionally accepted authority. This trend might be wider than Santa Muerte since the author points out that Evangelical Christianity is currently catching up in popularity to the Catholic church while African diaspora religions and secular humanism are also making inroads into Mexican society. This would indicate that Mexico is in a time of social transition and attraction to Santa Muerte is one manifestation of that change in answering to people’s needs.

The issue of power might also say something about who follows Sants Muerte. Occupations involving criminal activities on both sides of the law are extremely high risk. Life is just as dangerous for prison guards as it is for prisoners. People who work in construction, poorly regulated factories, the sex industry, or the taxi business are risking their safety every time they go to work. An unemployed man on the verge of going homeless would have extreme levels of anxiety. Santa Muerte, the most powerful saint, often appeals to those whose lives have put them on the front line of danger or despair so it would make sense that they would petition and desire to placate the representative of death to bless them with the gift of life. As for more mundane concerns like winning a poker game, passing an exam, or attracting a lost lover back, those desiring such favors might as well turn to the most powerful saint available. Why turn towards weaker saints? But otherwise the widespread devotion and rapid spread of Santa Muerte’s cult might be an indication of growing social anxiety. If magic is about power and control, than the growing popularity of a religion involving magic might indicate that wide sectors of society feel as though they have little or no control over the circumstances of their lives. While that lack of control could be present at any given time throughout history, the beginning of a new cultural practice addressing that anxiety might be a sign that the old ways are failing and the younger generations are searching for something more effective. Widespread anxiety might be commonplace, but changing cultural practices could indicate that a precarious rupture with the past might be happening.

R. Andrew Chesnut’s intentions here are to clear up misconceptions about Santa Muerte and advocate for the variety of people who are attracted to her rising popularity. It is written for the general reader. This is good because clarifying the beliefs and practices should encourage people to tolerate something about Mexican culture that they don’t understand. It’s too bad Devoted to Death doesn’t go deeper into an analysis and explanation for what is happening on both the south and north sides of the border though. It would be nice to have heard a professional anthropologist’s views on what this says about Mexican society. He just leaves you hanging to draw your own conclusions.

Anyhow, the next time you see a veladora decorated with an image of Santa Muerte, probably beside candles depicting the Virgen de Guadalupe, in a grocery store, a market, or a bodega you can ask the people selling it how to do a ritual. My experience with Mexicans and Chicanos has been that they are usually eager to talk about their culture with non-Latinos like me if you show a sincere interest. You might open some doorways, make some new friends, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you might even be blessed with good fortunes from the Skeleton Saint herself.

 

Book Review: People Of the Peyote edited by Stacy B. Schaefer & Peter T. Furst

People Of the Peyote:

Huichol Indian History, Religion, & Survival

edited by Stacy B. Schaefer & Peter T. Furst

      If you’ve ever been to Mexico, you might have seen some brightly colored yarn paintings on black backgrounds or other crafts in similar styles using pointilist technique or depicting animals or other objects in ways that might be considered mind altering or psychedelic. You would see these in markets or tourist trinket shops. Sometimes they are on display in art galleries. Chances are you were seeing the creations of Huichol Indians whose vibrant artwork is known for its depiction of mystical and shamanic themes. Their cultural and religious traits are largely intertwined with the use of the hallucinogenic peyote buttons found in the desert. People Of the Peyote, edited by Stacy B. Schaefer and Peter T. Furst, is a collection of essays about the Huichols, mostly centered around their shamanic traditions and religious practices and how they influence their community.

This book starts off with the definition and history of the Huichols who are a sub-branch of the Azteco branch of North American Indians. They live in the Sierra Madre Occidental region in the states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Durango. Culturally and geographically they are close to the Cora people and linguistically they are connected to the Pimas of southern Arizona. These early chapters give brief information about pre- and post-Conquest interactions with the Spanish and mestizo population of Mexico. Their social, political, and economic organizations are introduced as well. One chapter is written by a German traveler from the 19^th century named Konrad Preuss. Despite not being proficient in anthropological fieldwork techniques, his writings are highly valued because they provide some of the only accounts of Huichol religion and ritual from that time. Unfortunately, his writing isn’t very good. Another chapter lists the botanical and pharmacological properties and applications of peyote and other plants in Huichol medicinal culture. Also a theory is asserted that the Huichol’s use of peyote, while still being considered traditional, is actually of recent historical origins in their shamanic practices. These early chapters are sometimes difficult to read due to both poor writing, a serious problem for authors of history, as well as an abundance of technical terminologies and analyses that alienate a layperson. Fortunately, the book gets more accessible and interesting as it goes along.

As the more interesting parts of the book begin to pick up, we get some good chapters on the shaman’s role in society. The Huichol word for shaman is “ma’akame” and, as difficult as it may be fore an English speaker to pronounce, it is used throughout the entirety of the book. The mara’akame’s purpose is to organize and lead ritual practices. It gets more complicated than that though since the Huichol rituals are tightly intertwined with social structures and hierarchies, familial roles, seasonal calendars, and agricultural practices. A missing or altered piece of these interrelations can throw a whole village out of balance so the position of mara’akame is one of great responsibility. He also holds the place where the human and spirit worlds interact so of course that is a position of great power and influence. Aside from community rituals, the mara’akame also leads people on ritual peyote gathering expeditions and pilgrimages to the sacred mountain where it is believed that peyote originated. The psychotropic effects of peyote ingestion are also examined from neurophysiological and spiritual perspectives. The authors make it clear that peyote use is taken seriously by the Huichols for creative cultural purposes and that recreational indulgences in the drug is strictly forbidden.

Huichol mythology gets an interesting examination. They have a complex web of deities, elemental spirits including a pantheon of malevolent wind spirits, and animals. They have two deities superficially corresponding to Santa Maria and Jesus Christ although they don’t appear to play a major role in religious practices. Deer occupy a central place in the theoretical aspects of the mara’alame and they believe in a unified trinitarian spirit made up of deer, peyote, and corn which they are different manifestations of the same element. One way to think of it is the way water can hold the three forms of mist, ice, and liquid. This might be hard to grasp for people outside the Huichol culture, but to them it is obvious. This is the challenge of encountering a culture other than your own and that is where anthropologists come in for the sake of explaining this insider knowledge to outsiders. Otherwise, the ritual deer hunt is a sacred practice and a mara’akame who takes peyote can speak with living deer or deer in the spirit world. Huichol religious rituals are re-enactments of mythological stories so the mythology can be seen as an instructional guide to religious practices.

One standout chapter describes the practice of a rare subset of Huichol mara’akame, one that practices shamanic lycanthropy. Through ritual and peyote use, these shamans interact with wolves in the spirit world, eventually learning how to turn into wolves, and communicate with them for guidance on living in the human world. In the older days of anthropology, especially during the colonial era, anthropologists could be guilty of exoticizing the people they studied, especially by over-emphasizing the parts of other cultures that appear bizarre due to being the most different from the culture of the anthropologist. That accusation could apply here to this chapter, but it is probably unjust since the author makes it clear that this is not an ordinary practice among Huichol mara’akame. She didn’t write this essay to dazzle or entertain her audience either; it is a serious attempt at explaining a practice that may baffle anybody outside Huichol society.

By the end, the essays address the issue of how Huichols interact with the modern world, the market economy, and the problems these cause while they try to preserve their traditional culture. More and more, they are forced to interact with mestizos, some of which respect them and some of which don’t. Being at the margins of the economy makes them subject to exploitation for cheap labor. The importation of alcohol and guns are also causing disruptions. An even bigger problem is how they should deal with outsiders coming into their villages. Once the Huichols lived in remote mountain farming communities; now the building of new roads has resulted in busloads of clueless tourists gawking at them like exotic animals and burned out hippies showing up and demanding a shamanic spiritual experience that sometimes results in them running around naked and screaming at the sky until they pass out. Patronizing new age types are showing up hoping to find the crap that Carlos Castaneda wrote about in his fake anthropological books with the fictional character Don Juan. Such intruders are a nuisance and the hospitable Huichols have difficulty knowing what to do with these louts. They have reacted to all this by retreating deeper into the privacy of their own traditions and minimizing their contact with outsiders.

Aside from the previously mentioned difficulties of reading the opening chapters, my only real complaint about this book is that it says very little about day to day life in a Huichol community. Almost every essay is about the religion, mythology, or shamanism of the mara’akame and how they relate to the community as a whole, but it doesn’t give any real sense of what it would feel like to be born into this culture or to live in it for a lifetime. While the things written about in this book are fascinating and written about with sincere interest, sometimes it is worth hearing about the mundane parts of a society too since those also play a major part in holding a society together. My guess is that those mundane details are left out for commercial purposes. The essays were written and collected in good faith by professional anthropologists whose intentions are clearly enthusiastic so I’m assuming they questioned this as they pieced the book together. But very few people read books, an even smaller amount read anthropology books, and of those that do, most of them are probably casual readers who want to read about mysticism and drug experiences without much concern for the people being studied. Book publishing is a business and sometimes authors need to make compromises in order to send something to press. But otherwise these are excellent essays, written with care and clarity so for what it is, it is a great book.

People Of the Peyote leaves me with one last thing to consider. Given that I, and many others, can’t accept the beliefs and practices of the Huichol people as objectively true or as scientific facts, does that mean that I have to reject those beliefs in totality? The anthropologists demonstrate how important their rituals are in maintaining and regulating their society and also how any disruption in these rituals can cause lasting damage to the Huichols who practice them. Should it be considered that scientific objectivity should always be supported as the primary goal of human knowledge? What if believing in something that isn’t real is necessary to maintain social order? But it’s difficult to believe in something once you’ve admitted that it isn’t factually true. As of now, I can’t answer these questions. But what I can say is a big thank you to the anthropologist friend I had in Albuquerque who recommended this book to me after I returned from a trip to Mexico 30 years ago. Good luck Dr. S.T. wherever you happen to be these days.

 

Book Review: Corn Is Our Blood by Alan R. Sandstrom

Corn Is Our Blood:

Culture and Ethnic Identity In a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village

by Alan R. Sandstrom

      “That’s a weird name for a book,” said the bookstore cashier where I purchased Corn Is Out Blood by Alan R. Sandstrom. Of course, things that are unfamiliar are thought of as weird by default. And there is nothing more unfamiliar than a culture you know nothing about. Besides, the title is an idiom and, linguistically speaking, an idiom is a metaphorical phrases that makes no sense when translated into another language. Only those fluent in the language and culture will understand what it means. That is the value of the social sciences and, in this case specifically, anthropology. The author of this book did fieldwork in Mexico for the purpose of being able to explain a foreign culture to those from outside that culture. His intention is to prove that, contrary to what outsiders say, the people he studied are making effective rational choices in the maintenance of their ethnic identity given the living conditions they are faced with.

Sandstrom spent several years off and on over two decades with Nahua Indians in Mexico located in the Amatlan region of Veracruz state. The Nahuas are contemporary descendants of the pre-colonial Aztecs and speak Nahuatl as their language. Very few of them are fluent in Spanish. They mostly survive by subsistence farming, largely maize and beans, although they sometimes take surplus produce to market. Through language, religion, and clothing, they maintain a fiercely independent ethnic identity that is remote from the dominant mestizo identity of most Mexican citizens. Loyalty to their traditions and identity has caused many mestizos to call them irrational, especially because they live so precariously, being marginalized socially and economically, when they could join modern society and live more comfortably with greater wealth. Sandstrom therefore desires to prove that their supposedly irratoinal clinging to tradition is actually a strategy for survival in a host culture that is hostile to them.

The book starts out with a brief history of the Indian people in Mexico beginning with the pre-Conquest Aztec empire up to contemporary post-Mexican Revolution times. The Nahuas have suffered persecution and marginalization all along the way from the conquistadors, the Catholic church, and the modern mestizo state. They are therefore relegated to remote ejidos, or communally owned farmlands, and have little contact with the outside world. But they aren’t hostile people at all. Sandstrom describes them as gentle, quiet, good natured, and avoidant of conflict. The opening chapters are useful, interesting, and informative. The biggest problem is that some of the personal testimonies are dry and a little difficult to follow. However, they do illustrate the types of problems the Indians have with government officials and law enforcement that is corrupt, violent, and exploitative.

The book progresses into chapters on daily life for the Nahua people. Since they are subsistence farmers, agriculture plays a central role in their lives. Their milpas, or farming territories, are arranged according to ownership and, after a chapter describing those ancestral categorizations of geneologies and familial structures that anthropologists love so much, we learn that the Nahuas are patrilocal with groupings of brothers being the central building block of social organization in their society. The distribution of milpas is based on this form of social organization. They also use slash and burn techniques of agriculture and crop rotations that are loosely related to their sometimes unpredictable rainy seasons. All of these horticultural realities have a direct influence over the Nahua’s world view and religious practices. When they say that “corn is our blood” they literally mean that without corn they would die. As a source of food, health, income, and meaning it is the most important thing to them. In America we might think of money in a similar way since, like it or not, we can’t live without it within the context of our culture.

At one point, Sandstrom argues his case that Nahua people are highly rational even though mestizos insist they aren’t and just blindly follow traditions even though it would make more sense to modernize and join the market economy. One claim they make against the Nahuas is that they inist on making maize their staple crop even though beans fetch higher prices at the market. Sandstrom points out that maize is more cost effective, less labor intensive, and easier to grow in high quantities on a regular schedule. Beans on the other hand require higher monetary investments, grow irregularly, and are more likely to get eaten or contaminated by vermin. Beans are also more difficult to harvest and transport to the market. Maize is simply more efficient and more reliable. The mestizos could always ask the Nahuas why they prefer it, but they are human and that means it is better to live in the certainty of their own illusions than to find out the truth.

After describing the material culture of the Nahuas, Sandstrom goes on to examine their religious practices, most of which revolve around their horticultural cycle. They believe in a type of animism or pantheism that is similar to what Hindus and Buddhists believe. There is one unifying spirit permeating the entire world and we only see it in fragments because of our own natural limitations. Like other Aztec derived cultures, they believe in wind spirits that cause illness, accidents, and death. During ceremonies, they attract and then banish them through the use of figures made out of colored paper. Their religious rituals are performed to maintain a balance in the interaction between the material and the spiritual world. Shamans are the religious authorities of the Nahuas and aside from performing rituals, they also act as doctors, fortune tellers, and politicians in the ejido.

By the time Sandstrom returns to Amatlan in the 1980s, the Nahuas have begun to change. The government has built roads into Amatlan along with sturdy houses. They are in the process of bringing in electric power. More Nahuas are learning Spanish and going into the cities to work. American missionaries have also discovered them and done some damage too. A rift in the community happens as Protestant converts refuse to interact with the other Nahuas and the missionaries insist that vaccines are evil so a portion of the converts die from an outbreak of measles that could easily have been prevented.

The end of the book is a thorough examination of how the Nahuas benefit from having a strong ethnic identity that sets them apart from the mestizos in the surrounding areas of Veracruz.

Alan Sandstrom has written a fascinating book about the Nahua people. He advocates for them by making and defending the claim that Nahuas are rational despite what others think. There is one point where he drops the ball in his argument. He addresses the reason why Nahuas keep farm animals even though they don’t eat meat, don’t use them for farm labor, and don’t see them as status symbols. They are economically inefficient because they cost a lot to feed, but he claims the Nahuas keep them so they have something to use their unusable milpas for. But if those milpas are unusable, why have them in the first place? Despite this one weak point, the other arguments he gives are sufficiently strong enough to support his claim. Even without the theoretical argument he makes, this book would still be interesting as it gives such a clear impression of what it is like to live in this culture. And it seems like the ultimate work on anthropology since it is so accessible to lay people without losing its value for professional anthropologists. It isn’t bogged down or made confusing with abstract theories and endless references to other scholars in the field the way a lot of anthropology books tend to be. Better still, the author doesn’t glorify the Nahua people by making them look quaint or by turning them into noble savages of the 20^th century. He makes them out to be ordinary people living ordinary lives in a way that is outside the ordinary for most of us.

I’m no expert in the social sciences, but if anybody ever asked me to recommend books from that field Corn Is Our Blood would be one of the first suggestions I would make. Humanizing people in other cultures isn’t a task that should have to be done, but unfortunately it is and this book does a good job of it. It also adds another dimension to whatever it is you know about Mexican society and culture. Like anybody else, I love Mexican food, but there is so much more to this fascinating country and its richly layered culture that should be learned about. You might as well start by letting Alan Sandstrom point you in the right direction.

 

Book Review: Micronations by Mohammad Bahareth

Micronations 

by Mohammad Bahareth

      It’s not widely known that Ernest Hemingway’s brother Les once built a bamboo raft off the coast of Jamaica and declared it a nation called New Atlantis. Actually only half the raft was New Atlantis because the other half, he believed, was a territory of the United States, Under the raft was a sandbar which Les Hemingway thought to have bat guano on it. Based on an obscure American law from the 19^th century, any uninhabited island in international waters with bat guano could be claimed as American property. If that law isn’t batshit crazy than Les Hemingway certainly was for coming up with this scheme in the first place. It’s a good thing he didn’t try to liberate the American half in a war of independence because I don’t think that would have gone in his favor. He didn’t need to do that anyways because his raft and the nation of New Atalntis got blown away in a hurricane and ceased to exist.

Now if Les Hemingway was anything like his more famous brother, he might have been a lush. This is significant because I’ve nursed enough pints of Guiness in to know that if you hang around enough bars over the years, you will inevitably meet dozens of drunks on benders who will tell you what could be done to fix the country if only the right people would listen to them. Stoners aren’t any different only they’re more likely to lay around listening to Grateful Dead tapes while watching nature shows on TV with the sound turned down while they tell you what they’d do differently if they had their own country to run. Usually the legalization of drugs is the first and only idea they have If you’re getting doing bong hits with them, you probably aren’t listening anyway. What I’m really getting around to saying here is that every so often one of these guys gets up enough gumption to literally try to start their own micronation. Sometimes they succeed. Most of them fail. These days they mostly just end up on the internet. Mohammed Bahareth’s Micronations chronicles some of these attempts.

Like any good book of this sort, the author starts out by defining the concept of a micronation. There are people who declare themselves to be the king or leader of their own mini-state. Up until recently, many of them have laid claim to small pieces of land, empty islands, abandoned military towers, or boats anchored in international waters. Some of them don’t exist anywhere except in people’s heads or on websites. Some issue currencies, stamps, or passports and even go so far as composing their own national anthems, writing constitutions, and inventing their own languages. Most of them seek international recognition from other countries or the United Nations. It’s probably safe to say that most, if not all of them, are run by people who are completely nuts. The author would likely not agree with that last charge since he appears to be interested in founding his own micronation, although he doesn’t give any specific details in this book,

After Bahareth explains what micronations are, he explains what micronations are. Again. Nobody would argue that he isn’t an amateurish author. Then he proceeds to list and describe real micronations. Reading this is a trial at first since some of the entries at the beginning have nothing but geographical facts which were probably copied from Wikipedia. But the book gets more engaging in later chapters when he gives information about the history and ideologies that some micronations were founded on. The organization of the chapters is a little weird. One is about the strangest micronations and the following chapter is about the most famous micronations. But the two most famous micronations, The Principality of Sealand and The Republic of Minerva, are in the former chapter and I’ve never heard of the ones listed in the latter chapter so maybe the titles are out of order. I’ll give credit where it’s due though, because my favorite micronation of all, The Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland, gets one paragraph. Those guys claim their country exists in your mind and you enter their kingdom every time you fall asleep and dream. Now that’s some real psychedelia for you. I’d love to see how their parliament works.

While the beginning of the book is all about the shrimp sized sovereignties that exist, did exist, or tried to exist usually somewhere in the three dimensions of our physical universes, the ending of the book covers the tiny countries, bringing new meaning to the term “petit bourgeoisie”, that own no land and exist only as ideas or internet pages. This is where the meat of the matter really enters your mouth. I have no idea what that last sentence is supposed to mean, but I thought I’d throw it in there anyways. You see, a lot of these new micronations want to become officially recognized states. Some have claimed territories on Mars or distant comets, a few have laid claim to territories on Antarctica. Some want to build massive platforms on the ocean surfaces for seasteading ventures. Some wish to inhabit places where nobody in their right mind would want to live like New Jersey for instance. Also somebody has put together a United Nations for micronations and many of them seek recognition there as a first step to petitioning the real UN for acceptance. They even send mini-diplomats to micronation conventions. The next one is being held in 2025. For some of these people, this is all a big joke or an art project (same thing), but some take it quite seriously. At least, I think they take it as seriously as an internet role playing game can be taken and that’s what I think this latter grouping of tiny intentional communities mostly is. It seems like a hobby for those at the geekiest end of the nerd spectrum. On a more down to earth level, even if none of these people ever succeed in starting their own countries, I can see how this type of role playing game might inspire a political science scholar to come up with a plan or theory for improving the practice of governance in the real world. They say that when young children play house or cops and robbers they are actually preparing themselves for roles they might play when they get older (the kids who pretended to be robbers will probably go on to be businessmen and the kids who played doctor probably became perverts) and this micronation trip might just be a more sophisticated version of that.

This is not a well-written book. It’s published by a vanity press which is usually a good enough excuse to avoid reading something, but I am an aficionado of all things odd and obscure so I thought I’d give it a chance. The writing can be redundant to say the least. Sometimes one paragraph is repeated word for word following its first iteration. The layout is confusing and the organization of information doesn’t always make sense. It’s full of typos, misspellings, and bad grammar. But the author’s first language isn’t English and, according to his online biography, he is also dyslexic so I’ll cut him as much slack here as I possibly can. Besides he obviously has a passion for his subject matter and that enthusiasm shines through. If this isn’t a great book, at least it is unique and interesting. It may be best as a work of bathroom literature, but many people have to admit that they have some of their most philosophical inner dialogues while sitting solitary, taking a dump in the porcelain Republican party cranium (otherwise known as the toilet).

Mohammed Bahareth’s Micronations isn’t a widely read book and it isn’t destined to be. That’s why I’m happy to have read it and why it has a prominent place on my bookshelf which gets more crowded by the week. And to all you barflies, boozehounds, lounge lizards, saloon swillers, and barroom political scientists whose livers are pickled in gin and tonics who have had a few and start spilling out over the sides to whatever schmuck in unlucky enough to be occupying the stool next to you, if your topic of conversation is how great it would be if you could run your own country, or even just be king for a day, I propose a toast in your honor. Let’s all do a shot of hooch and a round of rotgut for everyone chased with a bottle of mad dog. You’re all invited when I take the oath of office as the first president of The People’s Republic of Mike Hunt, population of one.