The book advances this argument through close readings of published and archival sources from the 16th and early-17th centuries, and is informed by two main conceptual concerns. First, it considers how segregation was envisioned, codified, and enforced in a historical context of consolidating racial differences and changing demographics associated with the racial mixture. Second, it theorizes the interrelations between notions of race and reproductive sexuality. It shows that segregationist efforts were justified by paternalistic discourses that aimed to conserve and foster indigenous population growth, and it contends that this illustrates how racially-qualified life was politicized in early modernity. It further demonstrates that women's reproductive bodies were instrumentalized as a means to foster racially-qualified life, and it argues that processes of racialization are critically tied to the differential ways in which women's reproductive capacities have been historically regulated.
Race, Sex, and Segregation in Colonial Latin America is essential for students, researchers and scholars alike interested in Latin American history, social history and gender studies.