" Beautifully written, capaciously documented, and compellingly argued, this book contributes enormously to the colonial Spanish-American historiography on race, social status, and culture, as well as on how these themes were played out in daily life as concerns for honor, gender, and sexuality." -- Ramo n Gutierrez, University of California, San Diego
" Fresh, well written, thoroughly documented, and extraordinarily informative, this outstanding social history is one of the most important works in colonial Spanish American history published in the 1990s." -- Choice