Reviews
"An accessible, well-written case study of the relationship between popular culture and the state."
--CHOICE
"Boldly presents material that may be considered taboo in the secular, material, discourse of western academia: spells, hexes, talismans, magic, spirit possession, communication with the dead, with the gods, etc. He discusses the social and political effects of these phenomena without becoming mired in the attendant phenomenological or ontological concerns"
--Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Vol. LXXXIX
"Routon manages to grapple with this complex interplay of political and magical power, and his book will be a valuable intervention in Cuban studies."
--Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Vol. LXXXIX
"Demonstrating an impressive command of the literature on Cuba, Routon weaves together ethnographic vignettes drawn from his fieldwork in the town of Guanabacoa, just outside of Havana, and locally known as the 'barrio of brujos' (neighborhood of witches)."
--Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, Vol. 19, No. 1.
"demonstrate[s] how anxiety over the seen and unseen, and thus dominance through visuality, have been key to nation-state-formation in Latin America"
--Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology