New Spain’s Inquisition in Santiago de Guatemala (present-day Antigua) designated women under investigation for sorcery, healing, and spiritual leadership as “mujeres de mal vivir” (women who live evil lives). These women, most of them mulatas, enacted physical and spiritual cures, settled disputes, and performed “love magic.” Martha Few’s concise presentation of their history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, based primarily on inquisitorial documentation, brims with fascinating details about the clandestine activities of these “evil living women.” Her chapter on illness is especially rich in its presentation of healers’ and midwives’ herbal and supernatural remedies.
Few makes a significant contribution to the discussion about the relationship between marginal groups and institutional power that has engaged historians of Latin America for three decades. Her goal is to analyze “the gender and ethnic dimensions of cultural authority and power within the process of colonial rule in Latin America” (p. 2)....
