Colonial Intimacies is a welcome addition to the series Before Gold: California under Spain and Mexico, as it moves outside the box of conventional histories about conquest. Historian Erika Pérez argues that interethnic encounters and personal choices in response to coercion from the state “reveal limitations in colonial rule and ways that communities under duress pursued adaptive strategies of resistance to survive and attain social mobility” (p. 4). The work emphasizes several themes—cultural and racial fluidity, biculturalism, and cultural resistance—that are as significant today in understanding the complexity and divisions among Mexican-origin peoples in the United States.
Pérez utilizes a refreshing mix of primary and secondary sources to unveil the lives of indigenous and Hispanic women who remained mostly in the shadows of conquest. In particular, two Franciscan confessional manuals (confesionarios) of the late eighteenth century, combined with the Spanish Mexican cultural practice of Catholic godparenting (compadrazgo...
