Mexico City was America's largest city in the seventeenth century – a genuine metropolis. In this deeply researched book, Tatiana Seijas reveals a rich tapestry of stories about essential workers who remade and transformed the city during this period. Her narrative style carries readers to a unique place and time with residents from around the world who sold food, facilitated transportation, provided care, and valued the city's silver. Free and enslaved people from Africa and Asia, immigrants, and Native Americans pursued opportunities in a wealthy, yet deeply unequal environment, where working people claimed parts of the city for themselves. They carved out spaces to create new businesses and protect their livelihoods, altering the cityscape itself in the process. American Metropolis brings Mexico City to life from the perspective of the working people who transformed this early modern metropolis.

‘In American Metropolis, Tatiana Seijas delivers a brilliant and deeply original history of Mexico City. With empathy, precision, and a sharp eye for the overlooked, she brings to life the ordinary workers – vendors, barbers, transporters, silversmiths – who shaped the city from the ground up. Seijas’s masterful storytelling and meticulous research make this a landmark contribution to the history of urban life in the Americas.’

Roquinaldo Ferreira - University of Pennsylvania

‘American Metropolis drives home the point that Mexico City was unlike any other city in the seventeenth-century Americas. Tapping local archives and getting down to street- level working lives, Tatiana Seijas shows that the great capital was vast yet intensely local, profusely cosmopolitan, incessantly competitive, and fueled and lubricated by a silver-rich hinterland. If you could make it here in the great City of Mexico, you could make it anywhere!’

Kris Lane - Tulane University

‘There are lots of books about seventeenth-century Mexico, but none do what this book does, which is to give a from-the-ground perspective on working people and how their activities shaped a metropolis. The depth and sophistication of Tatiana Seijas’s research are evident on every page. Her lucid and elegant writing brings the people of Mexico City alive, making it easy for readers to relate to the book’s many actors and their everyday activities. This book is simply fantastic.’

Martin Nesvig - University of Miami

‘This is a truly brilliant book. How does a seventeenth-century city become a global metropolis? Tatiana Seijas shows us that it is not through the plotting and planning of a merchant class, but, rather, through the untiring efforts and creativity of ordinary folk. Readers are given a front-row seat to the drama of what made the early modern economy tick.’

Camilla Townsend - Rutgers University