| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint. By Paul J. Vanderwood. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. xvi + 332 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $22.95, paper.)

Juan Soldado tells the story of how a young soldier, executed in 1938 for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Tijuana, came to be venerated as a saint. Vanderwood, professor emeritus of Mexican history at San Diego State University, begins the book with a detailed account of the crime and its immediate aftermath. Circumstantial evidence led to the arrest and summary conviction of Juan Castillo Morales, a young soldier from Oaxaca. Castillo Morales was executed in broad daylight in Tijuana's public cemetery, with thousands of townspeople in attendance. Authorities apparently hoped to quell social unrest, and in this they seem to have succeeded. But curious onlookers soon began to report events of religious significance: blood seeping from the young soldier's grave, his soul crying out to protest his innocence. Some believed he had repented, making his execution needlessly cruel; others questioned his guilt and called him a martyr unjustly punished for another's crime. They came to his grave to pray for his soul or for his aid, and soon came reports of miracles received through the veneration of Juan Soldado.

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