This fascinating examination of bigamy in colonial Mexico reveals for the first time the lives, routines, and networks of ordinary people. The author, drawing from his close reading of Inquisition files, situates these people in the web of daily life: in families as they grow up and in communities as they learn the ways of society. With vivid glimpses of courtship, loss of virginity, marriage, adultery, abusive treatment, and failed marriage, he also follows them in their private lives.

"Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, illegitimate offspring of elite families in colonial Spanish America appealed to the Council and Camara of the Indies in Spain to purchase gracias al sacar legitimations. Their applications provided intimate testimony concerning their own lives, accounts of their parents' sexual relationships, and details regarding the impact of illegitimacy within their families and communities. Bourbon officials in Spain debated which petitions merited approval, and in the process forged policies concerning gender, sexuality, illegitimacy, and the family." --BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Drawing on historical, literary, and anthropological methodologies, Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World explores the meaning of an 'Atlantic community' and challenges the conventional boundaries of nation-bound inquiry in the humanities. The volume's contributors focus on European, indigenous, Creole, African, and mestiza women's interactions with shifting paradigms of Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and syncretic beliefs throughout the Atlantic basin to highlight the unique cultural dynamics of the Atlantic.Mapping these themes with a diverse range of individual, imperial, and institutional cases, the essays include studies of a Peruvian nun's battle against a black demon, an African slave whose knowledge of the Bible stunned white men, and native American healers accused of witchcraft. Through a thoughtful consideration of the complexity of the religious landscape of the Atlantic basin, the collection provides an enriching portrayal of the intriguing interplay between religion, gender, ethnicity, and authority in the early modern Atlantic world.

"Caribbean women - black, white and brown, free and enslaved, migrants and creoles, rich and poor - are assembled in this book and their lives examined as they battled both against male domination and among themselves for social advantage." "Professor Beckles uses the method of narrative biography with its appealing sense of immediacy of women's language, script and social politics, to expose the gender order of Caribbean slave society as it determined and defined the everyday lives of women. He also seeks to explore the effectiveness of women's actions as they searched for freedom, material betterment, justice and social security."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Deviant and Useful Citizensexplores the conditions of women and perceptions of the female body in the eighteenth century throughout the Viceroyalty of Peru, which until 1776 comprised modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Mariselle Melendez introduces the reader to a female rebel, Micaela Bastidas, whose brutal punishment became a particularly harsh example of state response to women who challenged the system. She explores the cultural representation of women depicted as economically productive and vital to the health of the culture at large. The role of women in religious orders provides still another window into the vital need to sustain the image of women as loyal and devout -- and to deal with women who refused to comply. The book focuses on the different ways male authorities, as well as female subjects, conceived the female body as deeply connected to notions of what constituted a useful or deviant citizen within the Viceroyalty. Using eighteenth-century legal documents, illustrated chronicles, religious texts, and newspapers, Mariselle Melendez explores in depth the representation of the female body in periods of political, economic, and religious crisis to determine how it was conceived within certain contexts. Deviant and Useful Citizenspresents a highly complex society that relied on representations of utility and productivity to understand the female body, as it reveals the surprisingly large stake that colonial authorities had in defining the status of women during a crucial time in South American history.