Book Reviews Pitarch, Pedro (2010) The Jaguar and the Priest: An Ethnography of Tzeltal Souls, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), xxii + 251 pp. £37.00 hbk. This very rich, relevant and significant contribution to the ethnography of souls is not exactly about the jaguar and the priest, but about the concept of ‘folds’ and the body in Tzeltal ontology. It is about the identity of the Mayan community of Cancuc in Chiapas, Mexico, belonging to the Tzeltal language group. This book integrates comprehensively the main arguments proposed by the author in journals and book chapters since his PhD dissertation (Pitarch, 1993) and the Spanish version of the present publication (Pitarch, 1996). The ideas that Pitarch develops on the Tzeltal perception of the soul correspond to a concept that Gilles Deleuze (1993) took from Leibniz, and may also be related to the phenomenology of body perceptions, developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1974). Pitarch independently seems to verify the value of these perspectives and explanations of human perceptions and subjectivity. Previous works, like that on the Nahua concept of teyolía (animistic entity) and yo:l (heart) and the body (L ´ opez Austin, 1988), on animism (Descola, 2006), and on the senses of the body (Surrali´ es, 2003), show the validity of this epistemological critique of humanism. This text helps us to understand the social construction of being Maya in present times, after 500 years of transformation since the Spanish conquest and, among other things, the massive intrusions of the Catholic Church in this region. The author’s thesis is about how the human soul is shaped, built up and transformed; the individual not only holds multiple souls or accumulates them through a lifetime, but, as the author proposes, there is an ontology of two bodies, one of flesh and blood and the ch’ulel (similar to the Nahua concept of yo:l), ‘the body’s other’ made of beings and souls. The book starts with an introductory chapter on the specific character of the soul, and the relationship with the self, comparing it with European concepts, and on how these conversions of the soul developed within the Cancuc people. The second and third chapters focus on the concept of the ch’ulel, the location of the soul and the expressions of these souls. The text explains the existence of multiple souls and animas outside the heart as well as in the interior of the mountains. Another pivotal concept analysed in depth is lab; as the author puts it ‘any anima can be the lab of a person’. The diversity and characteristics of lab are presented in a clear manner that facilitates our understanding of the individual person. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the construction of the person in relation to the concept of lab and their presence in dreams, signs, and words. It is then explained how the European became incorporated into the self and how this Spanish feature became part of the lab. Chapters 6 and 7 focus on rituals and narratives as manifestations of the resistance to dialogue with the ‘Castillians’. The Tzeltal explanation of the body of saints and their functions in Catholic liturgy is an illuminating way of looking at these images; this fundamentally different perception  2014 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research  2014 Society for Latin American Studies Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 33, No. 2 233