Description
Book SynopsisThe term
cacica was a Spanish linguistic invention, the female counterpart to
caciques, the Arawak word for male indigenous leaders in Spanish America. But the term’s meaning was adapted and manipulated by natives. This book explores that transformation, a conscious construction and reshaping of identity from within.
Trade Review“…this work examines how the institutions of pre-Hispanic female leadership, female lineages, and female succession evolved across three centuries of progressive Spanish patriarchalization of the Americas. [It] is a welcome and well-oriented contribution toward the firm establishment of native female leadership as a widespread historical fact in the Americas.”—
H-LatAm“
Cacicas: The Indigenous Women Leaders of Spanish America, 1492–1825 is not a story about vulnerable, submissive, or oppressed women, nor is it a narrative about women being victims of the colonial system or gender exploitation. Cacicas
’s editors, Margarita R. Ochoa and Sara Vicuna Guengerich, declare that “the microhistorical studies herein describe the everyday lives and struggles of colonial women who negotiated the extent of Spanish domination in their communities” Its authors have made major efforts to collect fragmentary sources proving Indigenous female leadership from various chronicles, numerous litigations and lawsuit records, testaments, and account books collected in dozens of archives and libraries located across Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Spain…
Cacicas, contrary to what its authors declare, is much more than just a microhistorical narrative about the Indigenous women of Hispanic America; it also looks from a macro perspective at reshaping the Spanish colonial empire, which was approaching collapse…The methodically researched, wellcrafted book brings together female inner perspectives and “connected history” to extract, re/construct, and compare single and collective memory under the Spanish domination in colonial Latin America.”—
Early American Literature“The pieces in this anthology are uniformly excellent, reminding us how far the study of Native American women has come in the past thirty years…
Cacicas is truly a joy, offering such rich evidence that readers are able to grapple with large questions and even form their own conclusions.”—
Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal
