This is a great read for understanding the reworking of indigenous culture into the making of all aspects of a colonial society in the borderlands of Latin America.--Alex Borucki, Hispanic American Historical Review

The author's analysis of African slavery in Paraguay is a major achievement. . . . Africans, the author convincingly argues, must be viewed within the context of indigenous society.--Barbara A. Ganson, the Catholic Historical Review

The author's analysis of African slavery in Paraguay is a major achievement. . . . Africans, the author convincingly argues, must be viewed within the context of indigenous society.--Barbara A. Ganson, the Catholic Historical Review

The challenge faced by a scholar writing the history of a specific region in colonial Latin America is . . . at once to detail the human experience of that place and time and to tell us something larger about the colonial societies of the Americas . . . dual goals not always easily reconciled. Shawn Michael Austin is to be commended for his efforts to hit both targets.--Matthew Restall, Bulletin of Spanish Studies

Austin accomplishes an innovative, ethnographic-based reevaluation of Spanish colonialism in the province of Paraguay during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [He] identifies that a Guaraní-derived sociocultural framework of cuñadasgo laid the foundation for the embattled colony's survival and proved a primary medium through which a wide spectrum of social relations in Paraguay evolved.--Michael Huner, associate professor of history, Grand Valley State University