A contemporary of Columbus noted "those crazy Spaniards have more regard for a bit of honor than for a thousand lives." This obsession flourished in the New World, where status, privilege, and rank became cornerstones of the colonial social order. Honor had many faces. To a freed black woman in Brazil it proscribed spousal abuse and permitted her to petition the Church for permission to leave her husband. To a high church official charged with sodomy in Alto Peru, honor signified the privileges and legal exceptions available to those of his background and social position. These nine original essays assess the role and importance men and women of all races and social classes accorded honor throughout colonial Latin America. "The best work on honor in Latin America and an invaluable and insightful volume. A must for both scholars and classroom use."--Professor Susan M. Socolow, Emory University

The history of emotions is a new approach to social history, and this book is the first in English to systematically examine emotions in colonial Mexico. It is easy to assume that emotions are a given, unchanging aspect of human psychology. But the emotions we feel reflect the times in which we live. People express themselves within the norms and prescriptions particular to their society, their class, their ethnicity, and other factors. The essays collected here chart daily life through the study of sex and marriage, love, lust and jealousy, civic rituals and preaching, gambling and leisure, prayer and penance, and protest and rebellion. The first part of the book deals with how individuals experienced emotions on a personal level. The second group of essays explores the role of institutions in guiding and channeling the expression and the objects of emotions.

With limited resources to contextualize masculinity in colonial Mexico, film, literature, and social history perpetuate the stereotype associating Mexican men with machismo--defined as excessive virility that is accompanied by bravado and explosions of violence. While scholars studying men's gender identities in the colonial period have used Inquisition documents to explore their subject, these documents are inherently limiting given that the men described in them were considered to be criminals or otherwise marginal. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century resources, too, provide a limited perspective on machismo in the colonial period. The Origins of Macho addresses this deficiency by basing its study of colonial Mexican masculinity on the experiences of mainstream men. Lipsett-Rivera traces the genesis of the Mexican macho by looking at daily interactions between Mexican men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In doing so she establishes an important foundation for gender studies in Mexico and Latin America and makes a significant contribution to the larger field of masculinity studies.

With limited resources to contextualize masculinity in colonial Mexico, film, literature, and social history perpetuate the stereotype associating Mexican men with machismo--defined as excessive virility that is accompanied by bravado and explosions of violence. While scholars studying men's gender identities in the colonial period have used Inquisition documents to explore their subject, these documents are inherently limiting given that the men described in them were considered to be criminals or otherwise marginal. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century resources, too, provide a limited perspective on machismo in the colonial period. The Origins of Macho addresses this deficiency by basing its study of colonial Mexican masculinity on the experiences of mainstream men. Lipsett-Rivera traces the genesis of the Mexican macho by looking at daily interactions between Mexican men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In doing so she establishes an important foundation for gender studies in Mexico and Latin America and makes a significant contribution to the larger field of masculinity studies.

History is not just about great personalities, wars, and revolutions; it is also about the subtle aspects of more ordinary matters. On a day-to-day basis the aspects of life that most preoccupied people in late eighteenth- through mid nineteenth-century Mexico were not the political machinations of generals or politicians but whether they themselves could make a living, whether others accorded them the respect they deserved, whether they were safe from an abusive husband, whether their wives and children would obey them-in short, the minutiae of daily life. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera's Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856 explores the relationships between Mexicans, their environment, and one another, as well as their negotiation of the cultural values of everyday life. By examining the value systems that governed Mexican thinking of the period, Lipsett-Rivera examines the ephemeral daily experiences and interactions of the people and illuminates how gender and honor systems governed these quotidian negotiations. Bodies and the built environment were inscribed with cultural values, and the relationship of Mexicans to and between space and bodies determined the way ordinary people acted out their culture.

The eighteenth century in New Spain witnessed major changes: among these, one of the most significant was the adoption of French customs among the upper groups of society in response to the spreading ideas of the Enlightenment. In addition, New Spain's economy and culture were also changing radically. The spread of these French-inspired ideas and customs soon reached the rest of urban society. These new ideas, it has been assumed, brought a relaxation of social customs. But Viqueira Alban takes this assumption, and raises the question: Was it really a period of relaxation of social customs, in this age of "growth without development?" He discovered that the movement of rural workers and their families to urban centers created a concern within the church and government hierarchy about the threat of disorder, leading to the need for new social restraints. By the end of the eighteenth century, New Spain was characterized by a very rich, agitated, and varied social life. This book explores the history of Mexico City in the eighteenth century, focusing on society, social classes, elite culture and popular culture. Propriety and Permissiveness examines how the elite culture in Mexico City attempted to create more space between themselves and the masses. Their anxiety about their status encouraged laws and practices that enforced social space. Bullfighting, the theater, street diversions, and the game of pelota (called jai-alai in the United States today) are all examined as part of the culture of this period. This new text is ideal for colonial Latin American survey courses, courses on the history of Mexico and Latin American literature, and courses on the popular culture and social history of Latin America.