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Book Review
| Laura A. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft and Caste in Colonial Mexico, Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Pp. xvi + 262. $79.95 cloth (ISBN 0-8223-3111-X); $22.95 paper (ISBN 978-0-8223-3147-6).
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| In this very suggestive study, Laura Lewis analyzes the social and racial complexities of New Spain by placing them boldly within two broad "domains": the "sanctioned," in which "routine caste behaviours and meanings" were "condoned by the colonial state and its agents," thus allowing power to be passed down by the (predominantly Spanish) elite groups; and the "unsanctioned," where practices and beliefs that were explicitly prohibited took place, thus allowing power, in converse fashion, to emanate upwards from the indigenous majority at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The central argument of the book revolves around this dichotomy; and from it Lewis develops an interpretation of Colonial society as structured into neat geometric patterns: at the top, Spaniards used the power of "sanctioned" institutions in order both to exploit and to protect their indigenous subjects; at the bottom, the process was mirrored and inverted by the monopoly enjoyed by indigenous peoples over the "unsanctioned" domain and by their ability to harm and to heal through witchcraft and magic. |
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But Lewis is no crude simplifier and she is careful to nuance such a stark dichotomy. Within the "sanctioned domain," for instance, she demonstrates that Spaniards often used blacks, mulattoes, and mestizos to control indigenous communities, and that, in response, these often turned to litigation and Spanish law in order to fight such unwelcome intrusions. Indigenous peoples, in other words, could happily perceive Spanish judicial authority as a type of "magic" used by Spaniards to heal the effects of abuse and exploitation; and very much the same process was mirrored in the control over magic that indigenous peoples exerted in the "unsanctioned domain," where they "inflicted the greatest harm but were also the most effective healers." Thus, in the same way as Spaniards had the authority to withhold their "healing" power by ruling against indigenous communities in litigation, Indians could likewise refuse to heal those whom they had harmed by witchcraft. Once again, blacks, mulattoes, and mestizos often acted as intermediaries, learning from indigenous healers and purchasing remedies and magic from them, sometimes even on behalf of Spaniards (a practice that could easily backfire by leaving Spaniards vulnerable to denunciations to the Inquisition). |
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Lewis's thesis is highly suggestive and her book succeeds particularly well in its able reconstruction and insightful interpretation of a wealth of fascinating information from Inquisitorial and criminal records. The majority of such cases are intriguing in themselves, replete as they are with demonic pacts, love potions, magical powders, printed texts of mysterious content, mixtures of herbal remedies and Christian invocations, and a good number of truly extraordinary cures and practices that are obviously not intended for the squeamish. But Lewis's analysis goes well beyond the episodic and anecdotal; her interest is directed to the complex intricacies of the social relationships that produced such cases, and the attention she gives to issues of gender and ethnicity leads to some genuinely illuminating insights. Take, for instance, her careful exploration of the alliances that Indians established with a view to gaining some degree of unsanctioned social mobility; or her convincing demonstration that curative magic was almost exclusively the field of indigenous practitioners, despite the widespread evidence of malevolent magic (witchcraft) among wide ranging sectors of the non-Spanish population; or her persuasive analysis of the way in which people accused of witchcraft often skilfully deployed their knowledge of the different racial hierarchies in order to deflect accusations or even to dismiss them by, for example, claiming innocence through a pointed association with "Spanishness" in their relations with friends and relatives. |
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In all these instances Lewis shows sharp analytical acumen and genuine insight. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the broader theoretical framework in which she places her findings, and her frequent references to its alleged significance, should be comparatively unpersuasive. Her repetitive references to the intermediary role of blacks, mulattoes, and mestizos, and the resulting "fluidity" of ethnic hierarchies in the deployment of different levels of power, for example, will be only too familiar to the majority of historians, who will therefore be apt to see Lewis's claim that her book "debiologizes" the study of ethnicity, or her discussion of what she terms the "feminization" of the Indians as, at best, dated; at worst, uninformed. For although Lewis is evidently aware of the complexities of ethnic and gender relations, and despite her stated intention to read "texts that are already ambiguous and fragmented for their also ambiguous and fragmented content," the reader is nonetheless left with the feeling of having been presented with a neat reordering of a subtle and complex reality into a rather predictable set of archetypes. |
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This is a pity; but it would be even more unfortunate if this limitation were allowed to detract from the many merits of an otherwise ambitious, illuminating, and thoroughly engaging book. |
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| Fernando Cervantes
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| University of Bristol |
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