The essay “Breaking Paradigms: The Votive Offering, a Heritage in Resistance and Transformation,” included in this new issue of Encartes, is the result of the presentations and discussions that took place during the international symposium “The Ex-Voto: A Living Heritage,”,1 which took place on January 10, 11, and 12, 2024, at the Casa de Francia in Mexico City, as part of the irn miracle (International Research Mobility on the Connections and Limits of the Ex-voto).2 This network brings together several teams of specialists who are contributing to the renewal of research conducted in recent years on votive offerings, based on a multidisciplinary approach that combines anthropology, history, art history, sociology, and museology. This approach responds, in part, to the epistemological and disciplinary challenges posed by a research perspective centered on material culture for the humanities and social sciences.

Circulation, Interrelation, and Subversion

Globalization involves an increase in the flow of goods and people, accentuated by the circulation of information through digital media. It is in this context that the visual, material and cultural studies in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which shifts the focus on images and objects toward an analysis of their circulation and materiality. Consequently, the interest in the life of objects (Kopytoff, 1990), in their agency (Gell, 1998), and in the powers of images (Freedberg, 2004) is closely linked to the renewal of research on ex-votos over the past twenty years. In fact, the anthropological approach to images breaks with a reception based on visual meaning to focus instead on the uses to which images are put, through the study of the interactions they elicit. In France, both anthropology and sociology have undergone a significant paradigm shift in recent years, with a focus on interactions between humans and non-humans.3

That said, the ex-voto presents itself as a particularly heuristic subject of study, insofar as its analysis allows us to explore the notions of circulation, the “biography” of the object, agency, and power attributed to things. The votive practice manifests itself as the promise of a gift made to a higher power in exchange for its favorable intercession. In this relationship established between the human and the non-human, the ex-voto functions as a connecting agent that takes on a wide variety of forms. Latin America is a particularly fruitful field of research in terms of votive practices and uses. The result is a vibrant, eclectic, and massive materiality that takes on traditional votive forms but also creates new ones, underscoring the ex-voto’s character as both enduring and fluid. This material abundance makes the ex-voto a prime object for the study of interrelationships. Through its circulation, the ex-voto brings into interaction categories that we are accustomed to separating: human/non-human, individual/collective, high culture/popular culture, religion/aesthetics, tradition/innovation (Fabre, Perrée, and De la Torre, 2021: 49), and their study reveals relationships rather than oppositions.

The four articles included in this dossier bear witness to this relational dynamic that challenges the paradigms we typically rely on. Thus, Patricia Fogelman’s analysis shows how the votive building at Luján Cathedral articulates the secular with the religious in the realms of politics and economics. For his part, Carlos Mora’s study explains how the virtual circulation of visual ex-votos involves a shift from the devotional toward a secular and profane reinterpretation in a playful and critical manner; the author thus explores contemporary forms of religious practice in a transgressive way. By considering the ex-voto as an “actor-network”—as advocated by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law—José Cláudio Alves Olveira highlights its nature as an active object within a relational system encompassing tradition, religion, communication, and cyberspace.

However, the dossier reveals a unique aspect of the uses of ex-votos in Latin America, and in Mexico in particular: their subversive circulation, which offers resistance to the norms established by the ruling powers. The articles by Diana Perea and Carlos Mora highlight the tensions generated by votive practice between the lawful and the unlawful, the moral and the immoral, the norm and its transgression. The essays refer to a materiality that infiltrates a traditional votive practice to subvert the powers that organize it, using its own codes. The examples of painted ex-votos cited by Carlos Mora and José Cláudio Alves Oliveira illustrate a sociopolitical protest that is often satirical in nature. Carlos Mora mentions the ex-voto commissioned by the U.S. ambassador to Mexico to thank the Virgin of Guadalupe for the years he spent as a diplomat with his family in the country, at a time when Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant statements are flooding the media and social media platforms. For his part, José Cláudio Oliveira analyzes the votive offering painted by the artist Donovan, which depicts a furious woman expelling her unfaithful spouse from their home. The Virgin of Guadalupe approves of her actions by sending her a beam of light like that of comic-book superheroes, while the blue “comment” icon from Facebook emerges from her mouth. The creators of this type of ex-voto draw on traditional votive painting aesthetics but reinterpret them in a transgressive way through the themes addressed, the aesthetic codes borrowed from social media, and the absence of a devotional purpose. Born of a disconnect between tradition and innovation, humor ensures the viewer’s complicity and greater circulation of the subversive object. Arjun Appadurai highlighted how “the images offered by the media have been filtered through local irony, anger, humor, and resistance” (2015: 36). These votive offerings go even further in their resistance to various forms of power—social, political, and religious—because they, in turn, use the media as a tool for dissemination in the service of a subversive goal.

The votive offering: a gift for building bonds

The difficulty in identifying the votive object highlights the problem of its name, since “exvoto” is not a word used by the faithful but by scholars. This word comes from the Latin expression votive offering, which translates as “originating from a vow.” The word “ex-voto” takes us back to Roman culture, although its use was inherited from ancient Greek culture. In these ancient polytheistic cultures, the votive practice differs from other forms of offering because it takes the form of a promise to make a gift to a higher power in exchange for favorable intercession. As we noted in the book’s introduction: The Votive Offering, or The Metamorphoses of the Gift, “the word ‘exvoto’ was introduced as such into languages of Latin origin without resorting to translation, as if it designated a unique concept that had no equivalent in the language in question” (Fabre, Perrée, De la Torre, 2021: 15).

However, in Latin America and even in the Ibero-American region, various types of exchanges are based on this principle, though they go by different names depending on the act performed, the form the gift takes, or the purpose behind it. Thus, the donor may choose to fulfill their promise by engaging in various ways: they subject their body to a physical trial through the manda; by promising an altarpiece, they choose to represent the protagonists of the event; the miniature body part or organ in the “milagrito” metonymically represents the affected person; this is also the case with the gift of an object taken from everyday life, but whose use is based on a relationship of contact with the supernatural or divine forces invoked.

The promise of a gift in exchange for favorable intercession links the ex-voto to the fulfillment of obligations of gratitude for a favor received, as agreed upon within a relationship that Marcel Mauss described as “gift/counter-gift” (Mauss, 1950 [1923–1924]). This relationship enriches the analysis of votive practices insofar as it highlights the exchange at play, although it is worth noting that the ex-voto is not among the examples chosen by the author to illustrate this practice. In fact, the gift/counter-gift relationship was theorized by Mauss to describe the potlatch, and then applied it to the relationship that humans establish with the gods, excluding votive practices. In the introduction to the issue of the journal Techniques & Culture In this study devoted to votive objects, we note the extent to which scholars disagree on the nature of the relationship established by the ex-voto. Some view it as a contract binding the two parties through the promise of a gift, while others reject any notion of exchange, favoring instead the material manifestation of a desire (Dittmar, Fabre, Golsenne, and Perrée, 2018: 19). These differences stem, in large part, from the context in which the votive practice under study takes place. However, this practice cannot be reduced to a religious dogma, as the ex-voto is subject to multiple forms of appropriation.

Therefore, the relationship established by the ex-voto is complex to analyze because its terms take the form of a pact, which could be likened to a commercial transaction involving a debt to be paid. The offering in dollars to the popular saint Jesús Malverde, observed by Diana Perea at his shrine in Culiacán (Mexico), illustrates the expression “pagar una manda.” This expression is very common for describing the way in which the donor expresses gratitude to the invoked power for its intervention. However, the votive relationship is more complex than a simple debt because the votive exchange makes the donor bound to the deity within a sacrificial logic (Dittmar, Fabre, Golsenne, and Perrée, 2018). In her article on the Cathedral of Luján in Argentina, Patricia Fogelman explains that the materiality of the candle offered at the shrine is the visible result of the promised pilgrimage, a votive practice well known since the Western Middle Ages. The description shows how, while the presence of bodily simulacrum votive offerings disappears within the sanctuary, the pilgrimage perpetuates the body’s votive action in the fulfillment of the promise.

Pilgrimage reveals a temporal dimension to votive practice that involves sacrificial bodily postures (Perrée, 2021: 164–165). The time spent fulfilling a vow can take several months or several years, depending on the conditions set by the donor when making the vow. Thus, a votive calendar emerges, in which the donor fulfills their vow by visiting the shrine dressed in the saint’s habit, as is the case with Saint Jude Thaddeus in Mexico and Saint Charbel Majluf in Lebanon (Michelet Yazbeck, 1997: 103–104). The sacrifice is not merely symbolic when the donor subjects their body to the ordeal of physical suffering; for example, if they promise to walk on their bare knees for a distance they have set, or if they have a tattoo of the requested intercessor applied to their body. Thus, fulfilling the promise entails a sensory cost and establishes a bodily connection with the power being invoked. Consequently, fulfilling the commitment involves costs on several levels—sensory, temporal, and economic—which create a bodily and moral bond with the invoked power. However, this power is also under pressure because the gift implies that the deity is obligated to act. Consequently, some donors do not hesitate to retaliate when their wishes have not been fulfilled after they have carried out the terms of the contract.

This type of contractual relationship is common in Catholic religious practice as it is observed in Latin America. In most cases, church authorities disapprove of these practices, but they lack the power to control them because the ex-voto is based on a direct relationship between the donor and the invoked power. In Catholicism, the use of votive offerings implies a transgression of a relationship that should honor the divine selflessly, without demanding anything in return. On the contrary, the votive practice, which is very much alive in popular devotional culture, tends to place the participants on an equal footing. The informal, familiar tone observed by Diana Perea when donors address Jesús Malverde is evidence of this: the votive relationship subverts dogma because it breaks with the idea of authoritative power and the supposed submission of the faithful. Thus, the articles compiled in this dossier shed light on phenomena of transgression and subversion on different scales that arise from the use of ex-votos.

Votive practices carried out in this way are comparable to those that existed in ancient polytheistic Rome. In reality, the promise was fulfilled only if the divine partner had fulfilled the part of the contract that bound him to the donor (Scheid, 2014). According to John Scheid, the votive relationship took the form of give it to them (“Give me so I can give you”), instead of do ut des (“I give so that you may give to me”), often used to explain the votive relationship. The specialist in Roman religion then highlights the distinctive nature of the ex-voto by emphasizing the imperative nature of the deity’s action once the gift has been made. The promise made by the donor binds the two parties in a relationship of mutual contribution. Diana Perea notes that the same votive object sometimes constitutes both a request and a promise, creating enduring bonds of attachment over the long term between the donor and Jesús Malverde, which partly explain the persistence of faith in a particular entity.

The votive offering: a prime subject of study in material culture

Beginning in the 2000s, art historian Georges Didi-Huberman drew attention to the materiality and plasticity of votive offerings, highlighting the enduring nature of organic and anatomical votive forms (2006). This materiality partly explains the fragmentary approach taken up to that point, as illustrated by historiography. Throughout the century xx, votive offerings have most often been studied based on the nature of the object (paintings, model ships, anatomical parts, everyday objects, etc.), the historical period, the geographic region, or the religious context in which they are used. However, this disciplinary approach also contributes to a historical and thematic division that does not facilitate a cross-disciplinary analysis. Relegated to the margins of archaeology, ethnology, sociology, or history, the ex-voto has long been presented as a minor, folkloric object or, at best, as a source of sociocultural information.

In the 1990s, painted ex-votos became a focal point in the history of visual representations, particularly through the work of Bernard Cousin, which has contributed to the preservation of a heritage at risk of extinction in France. Around the same time, Marianne Bélard’s study (1997) on the ex-votos of the San Juan de los Lagos shrine in Mexico was part of a similar initiative, saving a local cultural heritage—subject to inevitable deterioration—from oblivion. Its promotion through a cd-rom, the content of which has been posted online on a website,4 marks the first digital circulation since the year 2000 for cultural heritage purposes. Due to its figurative nature, the painted ex-voto remains a socio-anthropological document of great value, as demonstrated by the ex-votos analyzed by Carlos Mora and José Cláudio Alves de Oliveira. Created for non-devotional purposes, they may have no other status than that of documents that shed light on a sociocultural context. Nevertheless, the vitality of the ex-voto in Mexico reflects the processes of appropriation and interpretation to which it is subjected. Thus, these votive paintings bear witness to an unbridled and hybrid imagination, imbued with a transgressive quality on the social and political levels.

These examples of images with a votive aesthetic but without a devotional purpose underscore the difficulty of distinguishing between what is votive and what is not. In this regard, the category of these objects is even more complex, insofar as they bear witness to a fundamentally eclectic materiality that is neither minor nor anecdotal. In his study of the ex-votos at the Cathedral of Luján, Fogelman describes how the ex-voto is a monumental architectural form, since the construction of the cathedral was a fulfillment of a promise made out of gratitude. In a kind of “mise en abîme,” this structure itself contains other ex-votos, as words of gratitude accompanied by names are engraved on the stone of the building.

In this way, an interest in materiality allows us to examine the forms and challenges of the subversive nature of votive practice. Let us recall that this practice was integrated into Catholicism relatively late in Western culture, first in the form of objects during the Middle Ages and then in the form of paintings in the xv. But it remains fundamentally a practice outside of Catholicism, into which it is more or less well integrated, and it is perhaps this original transgressive dimension that endures in today’s ex-votos. In his study of the chapel dedicated to Jesús Malverde—a saint not recognized by the Catholic Church—in Culiacán, in northern Mexico, Perea refers to a votive materiality common to offerings intended for traditional Catholic intercessors: flowers, letters, photos, money, paintings, and drawings. Even if it is subversive with respect to Catholic dogma, this non-human power or deity is honored on par with any other Mexican Catholic saint. Votive materiality forges the link between the intercessors and legitimizes them in the eyes of other believers, attesting to their powers because they receive the same kinds of gifts.

Although they circulate virtually or are created through technology, the ex-votos analyzed by Carlos Mora do not signal the end of materiality. On the contrary, they underscore that votive materiality is a fluid and malleable practice, due to its technological transformation and its ability to reflect its era. An analysis of the shift from materiality to immateriality invites reflection on the interplay between permanence and renewal, as votive iconography evolves only slightly, while the themes addressed and their protagonists are eminently transgressive. The circulation of these ex-votos—created without a votive intent and outside ecclesiastical control—gives rise to a subversive sense of humor in relation to the morality dictated by a religion’s doctrinal positions. The article demonstrates how the ex-voto participates in a ethos Latin American Baroque, which creates innovative spaces for cultural hybridization that blur the boundaries between the religious and the secular (De la Torre, 2023). This ability to break down boundaries reveals a power of resistance and, at the same time, of creativity that the ex-voto expresses in a subversive way.

The processes of adaptation and interpretation surrounding votive practices bear witness to the artistic forms taken on by a “lived religion,” to use Meredith McGuire’s (2008) terminology. This gives rise to an extreme fluidity in both the material objects present and the ways in which they are used. This plasticity explains, in part, the continuity of votive practice: traditional and adaptable without requiring the presence of a third party, it is based on direct communication with the power being invoked, as close as possible to the reality experienced by the donor. Perpetuated and reinvented through various interpretations and appropriations, the ex-voto lies at the center of circulations and displacements that partly ensure the practice’s permanence, while simultaneously making it difficult to identify. At first glance, the ex-voto multiplies contradictions because it breaks with the traditional structures of our cultural representations. In this sense, it constitutes a heritage in motion.

A Mobile Heritage in the Age of Cultural Modernity

The articles collected in this dossier bear witness to and highlight the heuristic richness of votive practice, thanks to its ability to subvert norms in order to transform them from within. In her article, Patricia Fogelman adapts to the malleability of her research material through an essay structured as an autoethnography. She proposes a historical-anthropological approach that spans from the late xix to the present day to study the votive offerings at the Cathedral of Luján in Argentina. The author analyzes this cultural heritage as a cultural mechanism in which the votive offerings bridge the sacred and the profane. This articulation occurs on the level of national identity, as the votive building was erected to serve as a bastion in defense of Catholicism against the rise of secular liberalism among the elites. But the link between the sacred and the profane is also at work on the scale of a local economy, through the commercial circulation of votive materials between the sanctuary, its surroundings, and the pilgrim’s home. Her observations also highlight how modernity has led to the disappearance of votive offerings depicting body parts, while continuing to perpetuate the tradition of a long-standing pilgrimage that puts the body to the test within a sacrificial framework.

For her part, Diana Perea’s text also focuses on these movements and reveals a traditional votive practice undergoing a transformation in the requests made by donors, whose gender has shifted in recent years. While the ex-voto was traditionally a female practice, migratory dynamics have made men the primary donors to the shrine, located in Culiacán. Their requests and expressions of gratitude add migration to the United States to the usual requests for health, marriage, or work for the families they leave behind in Mexico. The transgressive and subversive nature lies not so much in the materiality of the votive offerings—which is shared by other Catholic intercessors—as in the entity invoked and the movements of the donors. U.S. immigration policies in recent years have prevented them from crossing the border legally, and although they do not direct their petitions to a single entity, they voluntarily turn to the figure of an outlaw, one not recognized by Catholic ecclesiastical authorities. The offering of ex-votos takes place within a social, economic, and political context that, on one side of the border, encourages movement and, on the other, prohibits it. The ex-voto presents itself as a complex object of communication: visible to all visitors to the shrine, it reveals certain realities while overlooking others.

Transgression and subversion are at the heart of Carlos Mora’s study of votive offerings circulating online. “The adaptation of religious altarpieces to the context of cyberspace thus entails a playful reinterpretation, but also a critical appropriation of the structures and ideologies in the public sphere, revealing the transgressive power of the sacred in everyday life through the concept of ”lived religion,’” writes the author. Created without a votive purpose, these appropriations initiate a secular reinterpretation of religious images, reflecting a baroque modernity. These demonstrate how subaltern socioeconomic strata develop practices outside the frameworks established by the dominant classes and oppose dogma, as evidenced by the numerical ex-votos that recount abortions. The study shows how the ex-voto is an exemplary object for thinking about the interplay between permanence and renewal, tradition and innovation in the religious sphere through materiality. The circulation of online ex-votos and technology-generated ex-votos highlights the malleability of votive practice, which partly explains its persistence thanks to its ability to adapt to the realities of its time.

Although the request is individual, Diana Perea and Carlos Mora note the collective nature of the communication conveyed by the ex-voto. It is this “collective memory” that interests José Cláudio Alves de Oliveira in his comparative essay between this concept—theorized by Maurice Halbwachs—and that of ant (Actor Theory), developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law. Comparing these concepts highlights the active nature of the votive object, since its circulation creates interactions. These interactions help us understand that the votive offering is at the center of a network of connections that transcend the established logics between the local and the global.

The ex-voto is presented as an active object that mobilizes an “active memory, circulating between faith and the market, between shrines and the fair, between online storefronts and social media,” writes Alves de Oliveira. Unstable, mobile, and transgressive, the ex-voto intrigues and fascinates: it breaks down boundaries and opens up new horizons for thinking about heritage—in the sense of what we have inherited from a past that constitutes our history—in light of the circulatory dynamics of globalization and the processes of hybridization that form the foundation of our contemporary material cultures.

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Caroline Perrée (France) holds a Ph.D. (Sorbonne) and is a researcher in art history affiliated with the Center for Mexican and Central American Studies (cemca Mexico) and the University of Paris Cité. Her research focuses on the circulation of images and their compositions in Mexican culture and art. As a specialist in ex-votos, she explores the interactions between art and craft, tradition and transgression, heritage and innovation. She directs her research toward questions of temporality in art through the analysis of continuities and subversions in the creation of images, as well as the processes of making violence visible and commemorating it. She is the author of the book Mexico, Trash and Crafts. A design project by Thierry Jeannot (2020), and co-author with Ileana Diéguez of the book Memorable Bodies (2018). He has published several catalogs and articles on contemporary artists in Paris, Mexico City, and New York.