The Women Who Threw Corn

Martin Austin Nesvig is Professor of History at the University of Miami, and a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He is the author of five books including Ideology and Inquisition: The World of the Censors in Early Mexico (2009) and Promiscuous Power: An Unorthodox History of New Spain (2018).

• Introduction; Part I. Witches and Their Enemies in the Early Modern World: 1. Demonological and anti-sorcery theories in Spain; 2. Mesoamerican magic-medicine; 3. Inquisitions, sorcery investigations, and the law in Mexico, 1521–1571; Part II. Magic in the 1520s and 1530s: 4. Nahua women teach Iberian women how to cast spells; 5. A multi-ethnic world of magic; 6. African witches in Mexico City; 7. Bad girls club: Moriscas, North Africans, and Canarians in Mexico; Part III. The Cultural Hybrid Healer-Witch: 8. The evil eye and a mysterious tattoo; 9. Healing and magic in Oaxaca and Michoacán, 1561–1562; 10. Mulatas incorporate Peyote and Patle; 11. Catalina de Peraza, Canarian bad girl personified; Afterword; Select bibliography; Index.

'This is a beautifully crafted historical reflection on how dozens of mid sixteenth-century humble women from Spain, North Africa and West Africa used Nahua herbs and spells to manipulate bodies and nature to heal, seduce, and curse. The Inquisition did not try any of these women as witches, but it left rich documentation on the massive acculturation of Old-World newcomers to indigenous practices and ideas.' Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, The University of Texas at Austin