The focus of this study is primarily on the evangelization of the Tzeltal Indians of Chiapas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Megged contends that in the wake of the Council of Trent (1543-63) that codified the Catholic (Counter-) Reformation, evangelization was constrained in particular ways, with the post-Tridentine Catholic Church generally seeking to impose uniformity of religious practice and conformity in belief. In Europe the substrate beliefs were at least nominally Christian, while in the New World Christianity was expanding in tandem with European conquest and colonization, so New World Catholicism faced particular challenges.

Chapters in this volume are briefly titled (with the exception of the first: “The Sons of Shem, The Descendents of Noah”), suggestive of the broad analysis Megged attempts. “Administering” deals with matters of ecclesiastical organization; the chapter entitled “Translating” discusses conveying Christian doctrine in terms understandable to peoples of non-European language and culture; “Interpreting” treats questions of idolatry and religious negotiation; and “Departing” examines indigenous efforts to gain religious autonomy within the confines of colonial structures.

Chiapas remained isolated from the main centers of Spanish settlement in Mexico since it had little material wealth other than its relatively dense indigenous population. From about 1550-1680, Franciscan and Dominican friars attempted to convert the native peoples of this region, but in the absence of a larger European Christian presence, the small numbers of mendicants and the large size of their target populations stalled the campaign. Evidence from the seventeenth century indicates not only a deterioration of the mendicants’ conduct with Indians but also that many natives themselves pursued greater religious independence than the episcopal hierarchy was willing to tolerate. In some areas, whole groups of baptized Indians—such as the Manch, Chol, and Lacandon — became apostates. With these openly resistant groups, the mendicants and the crown agreed that a military response was required, undertaken in the 1680s. Another effort to exert control over the region was to increase episcopal oversight via visits by the bishops. Such increased vigilance may well have contributed to the Tzeltal Rebellion of 1712, which falls outside this study’s temporal focus.

Although religious resistance and rebellion were one part of the picture in Chiapas, another set of circumstances of considerable interest for social and cultural historians is religious negotiation, whereby Indians gained a degree of autonomy within the Christian context. The relatively small numbers of Spanish religious meant that Indian men could take leadership roles in the religious sphere, functioning as de facto priests in some situations, such as giving last rites to dying Indians. The founding of lay confraternities also presented opportunities for Indian men’s leadership. A finding from Megged’s research that is well worth pursuing is the evidence he adduces of social differentiation in confraternity membership. Founded for Indians in the 1560s and 1570s under the supervision of the regular clergy, cofradías were originally religious in focus, but quickly took on an economic role as well, developing enterprises that funded the construction and maintenance of churches and their ornamentation, as well as defraying the costs of religious celebrations and underwriting bishops’ visitations. Megged argues that confraternities were not a leveling mechanism, but instead exacerbated conflicts within indigenous communities. In the seventeenth century, confraternities became the loci for hispanized Indians (ladinos) to separate themselves from plebeian Indians, with elites joining Spanish confraternities organized under the aegis of the secular clergy. This type of differentiation, Megged argues, gave rise to a distinct ladino identity. Since hispanized Indians served as intermediaries between colonial authorities and the indigenous communities, the gaps between elite Indian males and their own communities became greater. Plebeian Indians and the regular clergy opposed the rise of the new confraternities since the commoners would end up supporting the elite Indians’ institution, with the plebeians and the regular clergy losing control over these organizations. As political indigenous autonomy from colonial rule was impossible to achieve, Megged argues, the religious sphere became an important contested area.

Megged’s study probes interesting questions that scholars of central Mexico and the highland Andes have raised about the interplay between indigenous peoples and Spanish ecclesiastics in the colonial encounter. How were orthodox Christian doctrines translated into practice by colonial friars and priests dealing with non-Christian or newly baptized peoples? To what extent was the encounter a negotiation? I would argue that the reforms of the Council of Trent did not significantly affect evangelical practice in Chiapas. Problems that the friars encountered there in the late sixteenth century were similar to those that had occurred in central Mexico in the period preceding the Council of Trent. The volume’s title suggests a significant role of the Catholic Reformation, but the subtitle is more accurate, for the book does indeed explore local religion, though in a more restricted and remote geographical region of New Spain than a reader might expect.

Integrated in the material on colonial Chiapas are Megged’s insights into late-twentieth-century practices in the same region taken from fieldwork he carried out there in the early 1980s. These ethnographic comparisons add a useful dimension to the historical analysis. A map would have been helpful, while more careful proofreading would have prevented readers from being distracted from the text’s flow. Overall, this volume adds to the expanding literature that has revised our views of Christianity and colonialism in indigenous regions of Spain’s New World empire, giving further examples of the cultural encounter.