La Vida Sacra: Contemporary Hispanic Sacramental Theology (review)
It is at this point that Oleszkiewicz-Peralba might have tackled the complex issue of blackness (or non-whiteness) and its conflicted cultural meanings. Did black skin in colonial Brazil not carry any meaningful racial overtones, or is blackness ancillary to an image's potency and effectiveness? This contrast is especially fascinating in light of Our Lady Aparecida, a dark Marian figure of diminutive stature designated as the spiritual patroness and Queen of Brazil. Aparecida appeared in 1717 shortly after the emergence of nationalist movements in Brazil, but the author never addresses whether her darkness may have been deployed intentionally as a strategy to arouse patriotic as well as religious fervor. In other words, while identifying darkskinned Marian icons as "symbols of national identity" (p. 119), the author ignores the equally provocative issues of the causes and reception of their coloration. In contrast, Monique Scheer's historical reconstruction of the Black Madonna tradition cf German-speaking areas (American Historical Review, v. 107:5 [December, 2002]) concludes that the perception of blackness was a late, post Reformation phenomenon, stimulated by the progressivist discourse that surrounded copies made after the titular image. "Blackness" in other words, when made visible and thus remarkable, moves away from the allegorical to assume ethnic and/or racial implications that, in many cases, conveys a potent political message.