A historical whodunit that is not just a good read but also brimming with insights into the effects of broad historical processes on local societies, this book shows the possibilities of micro-history in creating alternative narratives of resistance and change. Set in late Bourbon-era Yucatán, Lentz's work is ambitious, complicating as it does the long-standing thesis of the “second conquest.” The book also provides critical insights into the fluidity of racial boundaries in late colonial Yucatán and sheds light on hitherto mostly invisible actors—servants, coachmen, blacksmiths, and even the town crier.
At the center of the narrative is an event: the murder of the Intendant, the highest royal official in the province, in 1792. Piecing together volumes of primary material that includes testimonies, court hearings, correspondences, and even sketches of the murder weapon, Lentz provides a blow-by-blow account of the protracted case, which lasted for eight years. The details of the plot help to flesh out the complicated reality of a multiethnic society at the peripheries of empire as the Bourbon reforms altered status quo in both urban centers and the countryside. The method of micro-history allows Lentz to bring vividly to life rivalries between Church and state—the main suspect, don Toribio, is the nephew of the bishop of Mérida—and between creoles and peninsulares.
Scholars of Yucatán will find this book an important addition to literature on the colonial period. Nancy Farriss pioneered the concept of the “second conquest” to explain the effects of Bourbon reforms on the Maya of Yucatán. Lentz's work effectively complicates our understanding of this process by illuminating the various ways in which the Maya benefited from the new setup. In fact, Lentz seems to argue that it was creoles rather than the Maya who experienced the most dramatic changes. He also points to the increasing “Mayanization” of not just Spanish-descended populations but also Afro-Yucatecos, as increasing numbers of non-Mayas poured into the countryside. Lentz offers the insight that by the late eighteenth century the system of dual republics (repúblicas de indios and repúblicas de españoles) was in practice already becoming defunct (see for instance, 216).
Another important contribution the volume makes is to our understanding of the usually unheard underside of privileged society—the criados or domestic servants. Often brought in as children, Yucatecan criados were an essential part of elite households. Lentz portrays them as active agents—adept in legal matters and entrusted with household secrets that they often used to their (or their master's) advantage. Whether Maya, casta, or black, for criados, Lentz argues, “official and informal affiliations” rather than race were the “final arbiter of one's place in society.” Indeed, what this murder mystery—replete with midnight trysts, love triangles, and jealous rivals—highlights is the importance of alliances and relationships at the local level. Far more important than one's race, circumstances of birth, or station, what defined the ambit of the possible was one's connections.
The structure and narrative of the book make it an engaging read, particularly for graduate students and scholars of Yucatán and colonial Latin America. The use of micro-history also makes this work important for historians interested in methodology. The detailed minutiae of the case, however, might deter undergraduates. The last few pages of the final chapter (Chapter 8, “A Strange Turn of Events”), on nineteenth-century Yucatán, feel abrupt and out of proportion with the rest of the book—two pages to cover an entire century, while the eight-year murder case is explicated in over 200 pages.
The author's skills as a writer, however, are in no doubt. He has managed the very rare feat of keeping alive the interest of the reader—I, for one, could not wait to find out who the murderer was!—while at the same time engaging in sophisticated historical analysis and transmitting his breadth and depth of scholarship.
