Hierarchy, Commerce, and Fraud in Bourbon Spanish America

Ruth Hill is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Sceptres and Sciences in the Spains: Four Humanists and the New Philosophy (c. 1680-1740) (Liverpool, 2000) as well as numerous articles. Ruth Hill is a professor of Spanish and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.

“However, much of our critical understanding of this text will now have to be rethought in light of Ruth Hill's provocative new book. Hill's book not only brings into focus many previously unfathomed layers of Carrio's text but also provides a fascinating glimpse into the underworld of Bourbon officialdom - a world of sexual, social, and occupational intrigues in which racial and class identities were more complex than has generally been appreciated by literary critics. Hill argues that the proto-nationalist historiographic commonplace that has frequently been invoked in order to explain all of eighteenth-century Spanish American literary culture in terms of a conflict or rivalry between criollos and peninsulares is inadequate for an understanding not only of Carrio de Lavandera's text, but also for much of eighteenth-century Spanish American literature and culture more generally. Most immediately, however, there can be no doubt that Hill's new book stands as a model of scholarly erudition, historicist methodology, archival research for literary scholars and that if makes important critical interventions that will set the parameters for all future discussions of Carrio's text and stimulate critical debate beyond."- Resenas"Richly detailed, amply documented, and wholly original, this book looks at eighteenth-century Spanish America through the dual prism of literature and history. The real focus, though, is race and class in the Spanish colonies . . . the entire field is richer and more interesting because of [Hill's] efforts.”- The Virginia Quarterly Review"A must read for scholars interested not only in El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes but also in the material reality of the Enlightenment in colonial Spanish America.”- Mariselle Melendez, Revista De Estudios Hispanicos"A study of great scope, depth and originality. It questions, challenges and surprises, and it cannot be disregarded by any contemporary scholar of Bourbon Spanish-America or of Lazarillo de ciegos caminantes”- Bulletin of Spanish Studies

• List of Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xiIntroduction 1Part I1 Mexico City versus Lima: Pila, Puente, Pan, and Peines 412 Defacing a Bourbon Legend: Pedro, Pardo, Paulino, and Perulero 71Part II3 En Route and in the Loop:Trade, Metals, and Elites, circa 1700-1750 1074 Of Gods and Men:Bourbon Blindness and the Post, circa 1750-1800 141Part III5 Before Race: Hierarchy in Bourbon Spanish America 1976 The Inca Impostor Unmasked:Culture, Controversy, and Concolorcorvo 2397 Trial of the Century: Humor, Rhetoric, and the Law 274Epilogue 305Notes 311Bibliography 355Index 379