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Honorable Mention, Bandelier/Lavrin Book Award in Colonial Latin America, Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies (RMCLAS), 2019
Honorable Mention, The Alfred B. Thomas Book Award, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS), 2019
Scholars have written reams on the conquest of Mexico, from the grand designs of kings, viceroys, conquistadors, and inquisitors to the myriad ways that indigenous peoples contested imperial authority. But the actual work of establishing the Spanish empire in Mexico fell to a host of local agents-magistrates, bureaucrats, parish priests, ranchers, miners, sugar producers, and many others-who knew little and cared less about the goals of their superiors in Mexico City and Madrid. Through a case study of the province of MichoacÁn in western Mexico, Promiscuous Power focuses on the prosaic agents of colonialism to offer a paradigm-shifting view of the complexities of making empire at the ground level.
Presenting rowdy, raunchy, and violent life histories from the archives, Martin Austin Nesvig reveals that the local colonizers of MichoacÁn were primarily motivated by personal gain, emboldened by the lack of oversight from the upper echelons of power, and thoroughly committed to their own corporate memberships. His findings challenge some of the most deeply held views of the Spanish colonization of Mexico, including the Black Legend, which asserts that the royal state and the institutional church colluded to produce a powerful Catholicism that crushed heterodoxy, punished cultural difference, and ruined indigenous worlds. Instead, Nesvig finds that MichoacÁn-typical of many frontier provinces of the empire-became a region of refuge from imperial and juridical control and formal Catholicism, where the ordinary rules of law, jurisprudence, and royal oversight collapsed in the entropy of decentralized rule.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Cast of Characters
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Conquest of MichoacÁn, Paradise's Lost and Found
Chapter 2: Burning Down the House, in Which the Spiritual Conquistadors Go to War with Each Other
Chapter 3: "I Shit on You, Sir"; or, A Rather Unorthodox Lot of Catholics Who Didn't Fear the Inquisition
Chapter 4: The Inquisition That Wasn't There, in Which the Locals Removed the Inquisition's Agent from Office and the Inquisition Gave Up
Chapter 5: The Crown's Man: An "Incorrigible Delinquent," in Which a Bunch of Sketchy and Murderous Dudes Wrought Havoc in Colima
Chapter 6: Caudillo Priests, in Which the Locals Triumphed and Trampled the Crown
Conclusion
Notes
Index
