The "little stories" and the traditions that grew up around St. Martin de Porres are fascinating in themselves, and every bit as charming as those told of St. Francis of Assisi. But as Garcia-Rivera shows in this book, these deceptively simple stories are equally the story of a submerged consciousness of resistance on the part of the marginalized peoples of Latin America. For the first time, Garcia-Rivera "unpacks" these stories, using the semiotic method and insights garnered from the works of Robert Schreiter, Eugene Genovese, and Antonio Gramsci.