The seven essays in this stimulating volume reflect on the ways in which the singularly individual physical event of death is “coded into” a variety of colonial Spanish American social, cultural, and political processes (p. 16). These articles not only accomplish well the volume’s explicit intention of bringing to an English- speaking audience some of the current approaches to the subject; they also synthesize and engage with recent work that, rather than focusing on church policy and dogma, highlights the everyday social prac-tices surrounding death as they relate to notions of prestige, hierarchy, and social unifi-cation. The essays trace the colonial imaginary of death among diverse groups, including native peoples, evangelizing priests, African slaves, and creole elites. Taken together, they illustrate vividly, as the editors affirm in their introduction, that while “death gave meaning to life, the ways in which it did so were particular and contingent” (p. 5).
This...
