Replicas

Chapter 6 explores how the Coatlinchan stone’s physical removal allowed it to multiply, producing reproductions and miniatures of different shapes, materials, and sizes. These replicas resonate with how processes of replication, iteration, and itinerancy—namely of saint images—have historically been involved in the production of territory in Mexican and other Latin American contexts. By paying attention to how replicas work—their materiality and scale, what exactly they reproduce, and the humor with which they are arranged and moved across space and time—this chapter shows how the stone continues to generate new objects and networks of relations amid the residents of a community known for its loss.