| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Federico Garza Carvajal. Butterflies Will Burn: Prosecuting Sodomites in Early Modern Spain and Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2003. Pp. xx, 310. Cloth $55.00, paper $27.50.
This book is a revision of Vir: Perceptions of Manliness in Andalucía and México (1561–1699) (2000). Federico Garza Carvajal presents a thoughtful argument about contextualizing gender and masculinity in a larger process of imperialism and colonialism. This in itself is useful, as is his systematic linking of early modern Spain and New Spain. The book as a whole is less successful, however, because the challenges of writing a different kind of history sometimes overshadow the author's analytical insights.	1
In the prologue, Garza Carvajal sets himself the ambitious task of writing a radically new history, one built on a foundation of literary criticism, deconstruction, and materialism. He disdains what he calls "metanarrative history and proper history," arguing against "assign[ing] objective significance to what are actually contingent events" or an objective, impartial history (p. 3). Such practices, he states, are both "myopic and moribund" (p. 4). All history is fabricated, a construction, he argues, as are the sources historians rely upon. Most historians would agree that sources are constructed and not transparent, objective mirrors to a fixed past. But Garza Carvajal goes farther by implying that all construction is equal, and that one cannot make relative judgments about the fabrication or validity of sources.	. . .

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