This cutting-edge volume focuses on the many narratives that comprise the conquest and colonization of Latin America. The authors represent a range of disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, art, classics, literature, history, and sociology. Topics of study include imperial agents and colonial subjects, borderlands and core societies, and pre-Columbian through contemporary periods. These chapters vividly demonstrate how Latin Americanists now draw on far more than Spanish and Portuguese perspectives.

In Part 1 (Speculations), Gooijer explores how the British, Dutch, and Argentines (to 1900) thought about Tierra del Fuego as both terra nullius and terra incognita. Campbell examines the utopian writings of Balthazar Gerbier (d. 1663), suggesting that failed colonial plans reflect “shifts in European attitudes toward the Americas” (32). Melai demonstrates how a post-expulsion Jesuit (J. M. Peramás) criticized French revolutionary ideals through depicting the Paraguayan reductions as a Platonic political utopia.

McClure opens Part 2 (Constructions) by examining medieval Franciscan concepts of poverty, detailing how they adapted through contact with Nahuas and Mayas in colonial Mexico. Stefanelli explores how two nineteenth-century Italian scientists imagined South America in diverse yet complementary ways, highlighting intersections between science, immigration, and colonialism. Midgley focuses on Döblin's Amazonas (1937), calling the novel “manifestly anti-colonial,” transcending stereotypes of native South Americans (81). Finally, Marín-Aguilera, Adán Alfaro, and Urbina Araya study the Reche-Mapuche and Huilliche communities of Chile, finding that “native pottery and practices prevail over colonial ones” (93).

Part 3 (Records of Appropriation) begins with Pulido-Rull's study of sixteenth-century Mexican maps, demonstrating that native peoples participated actively in land distribution and litigation. Gänger focuses on Spanish American antiquities, arguing that they acquired their “modern significance and visibility” during the long nineteenth century (114). Pagnotta examines photographs from the Salesian mission among the Shuar of Ecuador (c. 1900-40), analyzing the “triumph of the civilization process” (135).

Tavárez launches Part 4 (Adaptations and Conflations), unearthing a forgotten Nahuatl text (an adaptation of a fifteenth-century European political treatise) and suggesting a “confidential mode” of Franciscan-Nahua collaboration (141). De Castro Rocha proposes a new literary theory, “the poetics of emulation,” attempting to overcome “the dichotomy between creatio and imitatio” (158). Focusing on popular poetry in northeast Brazil, Bloomfield-Gadêlha argues that twentieth-century folhetos challenged aesthetic, social, and racial hierarchies by incorporating Greco-Roman myths. Jones Corredera examines Charles III's effort to “colonize” southern Spain's Sierra Morena, demonstrating the “blurred distinctions” between Spain and its colonies (183).

Part 5 (Buried Histories) opens with Beaule's study of drinking vessels and tunics under the Tiwanaku, Inka, and Spanish; she argues that the Inka experienced the most success in controlling the design and circulation of these products. Garofalo demonstrates that Afro-Peruvians resisted official resettlement efforts and played significant roles as fishmongers and chicha-sellers in sixteenth-century Lima's San Lázaro neighborhood. Ostapkowicz explores a sculpture from Hispaniola c. 1500, revealing a moment in which the Taíno adopted “foreign elements, integrated entirely within an indigenous iconography” (223). Gibson studies California's history (c. 1880–1930), arguing that Anglo-Americans romanticized the new state's white Spanish past while marginalizing its mestizo and Indian history.

Sanders begins Part 6 (Legacies of Coloniality), exploring the Swiss Mountain Guide Association's partnership with Peru (1978–90), bringing “colonial” knowledge and technology to the Andes (251–53). Hernández Nova analyzes 89 oral interviews of present-day Peruvians residing in Europe, emphasizing the ways that the Spanish conquest informs their identities. Focusing on Guatemalan Q'eqchi’ pich'il (traditional blouse) textiles, Vandewiele aims to decolonize Western museum spaces through visual/virtual repatriation of museum objects to their source communities. Finally, Foster studies three photographic collections (1951–94) from the Costa Chica, exploring the different ways they depict Africans within Mexican “narratives of race and identity” (289).

Including contributions from established and emerging scholars, these 22 concise chapters represent a valuable snapshot of Latin American studies, advantageous for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars. Marshaling an unusually wide range of chronological, disciplinary, and geographical perspectives, this book will challenge scholars to reconsider the boundaries of their research.