Colonial Lives: Documents on Latin American History, 1550-1850

Colonial Lives offers a rich variety of archival documents in translation which bring to life the political and economic workings of Latin American colonies during 300 years of Spanish rule, and the day-to-day lives of the colonies' inhabitants. Intended to complement textbooks such as Burkholder and Johnson's Colonial Latin America by presenting students with primary sources, this reader strives to illustrate the impact of issues such as race, class, gender, sexuality, culture and religion in the daily lives of both natives and colonists alike. The concerns, perspectives and struggles of the inhabitants of colonial Latin America are reflected in these transcripts of civil and criminal court cases, administrative reviews, ecclesiastical investigations, Inquisition trials, wills, and letters. Each document is prefaced by an introduction that places it in the social and political context of the period.