Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo (1478-1557) wrote the first comprehensive history of Spanish America, the Historia general y natural de las Indias, a sprawling, constantly revised work in which Oviedo attempted nothing less than a complete account of the Spanish discovery, conquest, and colonization of the Americas from 1492 to 1547, along with descriptions of the land's flora, fauna, and indigenous peoples. His Historia, which grew to an astounding fifty volumes, includes numerous interviews with the Spanish and indigenous leaders who were literally making history, the first extensive field drawings of America rendered by a European, reports of exotic creatures, ethnographic descriptions of indigenous groups, and detailed reports about the conquest and colonization process.

Fernandez de Oviedo's Chronicle of America explores how, in writing his Historia, Oviedo created a new historiographical model that reflected the vastness of the Americas and Spain's enterprise there. Kathleen Myers uses a series of case studies--focusing on Oviedo's self-portraits, drawings of American phenomena, approaches to myth, process of revision, and depictions of Native Americans--to analyze Oviedo's narrative and rhetorical strategies and show how they relate to the politics, history, and discursive practices of his time. Accompanying the case studies are all of Oviedo's extant field drawings and a wide selection of his text in English translation.

The first study to examine the entire Historia and its evolving rhetorical and historical context, this book confirms Oviedo's assertion that "the New World required a different kind of history" as it helps modern readers understand how the discovery of the Americas became a catalyst for European historiographical change.

Kathleen Myers brings together portraits and autobiographical texts of six seventeenth century Latin American women, drawing on primary sources that include Inquisition and canonisation records, confessional and mystic journals, and legal defenses and petitions. These sources illustrate how the development of institutions that examined individual merit according to a set of guidelines resulted in an "autobiographical boom" in which people began to dictate or write their life stories for confessors, bishops, lawyers, and judges. These writings provide a window through which we can see the interaction of women with religious and civic leaders and study the voices of early modern women, voices often absent from the more formal literary and historical genres of the period. In every case, Myers finds, the women's stories are intricately interwoven with the larger political and religious movements of the period. Myers shows that the ideal model for seventeenth th century Hispanic women was that of the woman religious - silent, obedient, cloistered, and virginal. This role, which was in reality for as much as a fourth of all white urban women, is the common ground for all six women studied.

Madre Maria de San Jose (1656 - 1719) mystic, chronicler, and co-founder of an Augustinian convent inscribed her life story within the model of spiritual autobiography set by St. Augustine and Teresa of Avila, but at the same time included her individual story as a seventeenth-century woman of the landowning classes in New Spain. The resulting manuscript records in intimate detail her family life, convent surroundings, and social milieu; it introduces us to a combative and engaging person and gives us a rare and vivid glimpse of a complex society."

Five hundred years ago, the army of conquest led by Hernan Cortes marched hundreds of miles across a rugged swath of land from Veracruz on the Mexican Caribbean to the capital city of the Aztecs, now Mexico City. This journey was the catalyst for profound cultural and political change in Mesoamerica. Today, many Mexicans view the Ruta de Cortes as a symbol of an event that forever changed the course of their history. But few U.S. Americans understand how the conquest still affects Mexicans national identity and their relationship with the United States. Following the route of Hernan Cortes, In the Shadow of Cortes offers a visual and cultural history of the legacy of contact between Spaniards and indigenous civilizations. The book is a reflective journey that presents a diversity of voices, images, and ideas about history and conquest. Specialist in Mexican culture Kathleen Ann Myers teams up with prize-winning translators and photographers to offer a unique reading experience that combines accessible interpretative essays with beautifully translated interviews and dozens of historical and contemporary black-and-white and color images, including some by award-winner Steven Raymer. The result offers readers multiple perspectives on these pivotal events as imagined and re-envisioned today by Mexicans both in their homeland and in the United States. In the Shadow of Cortes offers an extensive visual narrative about conquest and, ultimately, about Mexican history. It traces the symbolic geography of the conquest and shows how the historical memory of colonialism continues to shape lives today.