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This essay examines the construction of women in religious discourse and the negative views on religion and morality in Mercè Rodoreda’s much acclaimed novel La plaça del Diamant (1962). I analyse specifically the protagonist’s attitudes towards the Catholic Church as a patriarchal institution responsible for the predicament she goes through as woman and wife. Natalia’s attitude towards religious dogmas, forms and its rituals has so far remained a barely detected phenomenon in Rodoreda’s work, because her underlying radical ideas are often obfuscated by means of stylistic features like ellipses, metaphors and symbolism. Despite the constraints imposed by Franco’s state censorship and Rodoreda’s strategies to bypass it, Natalia’s unbelief in Christian theology and her loss of faith provide a context for reading the novel from a perspective which poses the need to overcome Christian morality on behalf of a higher, truer and more human sense of morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inquisitorial trials of pious women charged with being delusional and bewitched in 18th-century New Spain show how the "abnormality" of the mystic and ascetic model of spirituality to which women were so fond of moved into the realm of medical discourse. Male authorities were bewildered by the external signs of female spirituality, perceiving female bodies as the means through which abnormal behaviors such as raptures, possessions, fits, shudders, and melancholy were channeled. The fact that many pious women were poor and more independent only fueled priests' suspicions. Inquisitors adhered to the rationalistic logic of the era by institutionalizing the association of mystic phenomena, madness, and hysteria with women, thereby legitimating the connection between such behaviors and the female body within the colonial legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a current shortage of qualitative investigations on Islamic communities in Latin America. The aim of this study is to narrow the gap by presenting the results of field research and historical investigation of Islam in Cuba. The Muslim faith, both Shiite and Sunni, is an emerging belief system in Cuba. There are particular socio-psychological factors that help understand why, until recently, Islam had not been practiced as an organized religion. Nevertheless, it has been present both culturally and historically as it has been practiced privately. This paper provides updated statistics and ethnographic data; it also describes the relationships between Islam and other faiths, as well as the role of Cuba's women in liturgy and religious life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]