Virtues of the Indian/Virtudes del indio

Book excerpt: This important book is the first complete seventeenth-century treatise on Native Americans to be introduced, annotated, and translated into English. Presented in a parallel text translation, it brings the work of the controversial and powerful Bishop Juan de Palafox to non-Spanish speakers for the first time. A seminal document in the history of colonial Mexico and imperial Spain, Virtues of the Indian tells us as much about the Mexican natives as about the ideas, images, and representations upon which the Spanish Empire in America was built. Taken as a whole, this book will raise questions about the Spanish empire and the governance of New Spain's Indians. Even more significantly, it will complicate the prevailing view of Spanish imperialism and colonial society as one dominated by a unified and coherent ruling elite with common goals. The deeply-informed introduction, biographical essay, and annotations that accompany this vivid translation further explore the thoughts and actions of the dynamic and complex Palafox, contributing to a better knowledge of a key figure in the history of Spanish colonialism in the New World.