Sanchez’s subject is the power of imperial myths – and the subversive power unleashed when resistance movements takeover those myths for their own purposes. Moving from Johnof Patmos’s inversion of Roman imperial mythology in Revelation12 to the indigenous appropriation of Spanish symbolism and mythology, in seventeenth-century Mexico, Snchez then explores the continuing power of the Virgin of Guadalupe(La Guadalupana) to inspire movements for a better society in our own day.

From Patmos to the Barrio reveals new insights into the biblical Apocalypse of John, and the enduring power of its legacy down to the present day, and includes contemporary translations of two important 17th-century documents concerning La Guadalupana: Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuioltica and Miguel Sanchez’s Imagen de la Virgen Maria. Also included are images of La Guadalupana in the murals of East Los Angeles.